STAY CLOSE
2019 SHORT LIST: SHORT DIRECTING AWARD An underdog fencer from Brooklyn overcomes a gauntlet of hardships on the road to the Olympics. Courtesy of New York Times Op-Docs/POV Shorts.
Religion
THE RABBI GOES WEST
NYC PREMIERE A Hasidic rabbi relocates from Brooklyn, New York to Bozeman, Montana with the hopes of spreading Chabad—his brand of orthodox practice—throughout “Big Sky Country.” As his prominence grows in the state, he faces neo-Nazi threats and resistance from members of the established Jewish community in Montana. The delicate balance between traditional values and […]
TOWN BLOODY HALL
As the festival honors the late D.A. Pennebaker, we present a special screening of a new DCP of this rare classic. In 1971, Pennebaker filmed an event at New York’s Town Hall exemplifying the crosscurrents of feminism. On stage, Norman Mailer engaged in a debate with Female Eunuch author Germaine Greer, lesbian journalist Jill Johnston, […]
TUNGRUS
A week in the peculiar lives of a middle-class suburban Mumbai household, which is turned topsy-turvy when the family adopts a chicken as a pet. Courtesy of New York Times Op-Docs.
WE BELIEVE IN DINOSAURS
NYC PREMIERE In rural Kentucky, a creationist group builds a life-size, $120 million Noah’s Ark museum—replete with animal, human and dinosaur models—in an attempt to affirm the factuality of the Biblical story. Standing against this attempt to co-opt history and science are a local geologist, an atheist activist and a former creationist. Throw in a […]
WHAT WE LEFT UNFINISHED
NYC PREMIERE In this artfully constructed project, a set of unfinished films commissioned by the state during communist-era Afghanistan revisits a nation that only existed in celluloid. Recovered reels, accompanied by the reflections of filmmakers, actors and critics, reveal genre films whose stories of love, war and history offer great insight into the heartbeat of […]
BRAVE GIRLS
WORLD PREMIERE Three young Indian women in a conservative Muslim town seek to change their futures through education and self-determination. The opportunity to continue their schooling has opened up the possibility of a different future for Karishma, Apsana and Samira, but even as they prepare for final exams, their families threaten to pull them back […]
COMMANDER ARIAN: A STORY OF WOMEN, WAR & FREEDOM
NYC PREMIERE Faced with the amorphous threat of ISIS, resourceful Commander Arian gathers her all-women Kurdish battalion to rescue enslaved civilians in northern Syria. During the final battle of a two-year campaign to free the besieged village of Kobane, Arian is shot five times. Weaving together footage of the intrepid commander training recruits, the troops […]
EMANUEL
NYC PREMIERE On June 17, 2015, national headlines blazed the story: Churchgoers gunned down during prayer service in Charleston, South Carolina. After a 21-year-old white supremacist opened fire in Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church, nine African Americans lay dead, leaving their families and the nation to grapple with this senseless act of terror. Featuring intimate […]
FATHER K
NYC PREMIERE When Palestinian Lutheran Pastor Khader El-Yateem decides to run to become NYC’s first Arab American elected official in his conservative Brooklyn neighborhood, he does what no one thinks possible, igniting his marginalized community’s hopes and dreams. In the election’s aftermath, an unforeseeable blow threatens the foundation of the movement they started, and the […]