NORTH AMERICAN PREMIERE Three children from the impoverished Venezuelan district of Las Brisas channel their pain and joy into music as part of a unique, government-sponsored orchestral music program, El Sistema. For ten years, as her native Venezuela gradually collapsed in the background, director Marianela Maldonado followed the students, developing an intimacy that gives their […]
WORLD PREMIERE After the death of her mother 18-year-old Sahar is left in charge of her poor, mentally disabled father in an isolated village in Iran. Sahar dreams of attending university and becoming a doctor, but extended family insist she play the role of caretaker unless her father remarries. This warm and intimate observational portrait […]
US PREMIERE Leonie is a rising teen influencer living on the outskirts of Berlin. As her fame grows, her parents see the economic opportunity of social media and become her managers. The pressure to create content and appease brands soon blurs the lines of their relationship, however, as it begins to dominate all of Leonie’s […]
US PREMIERE As a suicidal 16-year-old Marusya Syroechkovskaya falls in love with a humorous grunge kid named Kimi. Fueled by drugs and music, the inseparable couple films the euphoria, anxiety and misery of their precarious existence under the shadow of their oppressive government. Captured over 12 years, this raw, exuberant, and moving love story, provides […]
INTERNATIONAL PREMIERE An extraordinary and necessary essay film constructed entirely out of a vast archive of news footage from the ‘80s and ‘90s, OUR MOVIE (NUESTRA PELICULA) is a response to the violent history that imprinted itself on the director in her formative years in Colombia. Images of blood spatters, bullet holes, coffins, and Colombians […]
US PREMIERE A sensorial film about the members of a Zoque community in Chiapas, whose village was buried in a volcano eruption in 1982. Thirty-eight years later, a poet named Trinidad, prophetically born on the day of the eruption, leads the community to excavate their former town and unearth the relics of their church. Their […]
NORTH AMERICAN PREMIERE Jorge leaves his family and his moto-taxi business in the outskirts of Lima to try his luck in the most dangerous Andean gold mine in Peru.The precarious nature of life and labor ground this documentary-infused drama set in a frontier town where the flow of gold requires human sacrifice. Captured with exquisite […]
US PREMIERE On the violent border between Brazil and Paraguay, a battle between agribusiness and indigenous sovereignty wages. Filmmakers Laura Faerman and Marina Weis outline the clash between lawyer Luana Ruiz, heiress to the contested land and staunch Jair Bolsonaro supporter, and Alenir Ximendes, Guarani-Kaiowá leader, teacher and activist. A powerful cinematic chronicle of Ximendes’s […]
WORLD PREMIERE When Cirque du Soleil moves to reboot its flagship production, O, more than a year after an abrupt global shutdown, both performers and crew members face uncertainty as they work to return to their world-class standards in time for the (re)opening night curtain in Las Vegas. With unprecedented access, filmmaker Dawn Porter (John […]
WORLD PREMIERE Camp Confidential reveals the secret government-sanctioned camp that smuggled Nazis into the United States after World War II, as camp workers come forward for the first time in history. The November 18th screening will be followed by a Q&A with Directors Daniel Sivan and Mor Loushy. This short is part of the program […]