NORTH AMERICAN PREMIERE BMX champion and 2018 Youth Olympic medalist Iñaki Mazza retired from his sport during a period of personal crisis. Years later, he returns to his bike, emboldened by a new quest, and reunites with his partner after their stint at a rehabilitation center in Tierra del Fuego. Mazza sets out on a […]
NORTH AMERICAN PREMIERE In an imagined future where humans no longer exist, an AI system reflects on dance as the essence of consciousness, spontaneity, and identity. Philosophers, historians, artists, and Nobel laureates trace dance across ritual, flamenco, butoh, rave culture, and historical dance epidemics. Eclectic archives, experimental interludes, and candid testimonies weave a vibrant essay […]
NYC PREMIERE Sonia Manzano, best known as “Maria” on Sesame Street, shares her inspiring journey from childhood in the Bronx to becoming a trailblazing television icon. Through her own words, and with appearances by Stephen Schwartz, Justice Sonia Sotomayor, and more, STREET SMART celebrates Manzano’s groundbreaking work as an actress and Emmy-winning writer while exploring […]
Twenty years after it first charmed its way into audiences’ hearts, DOC NYC presents a retrospective screening of Marilyn Agrelo and Amy Sewell’s classic about NYC public school fifth-graders competing in the extracurricular world of ballroom dancing. The filmmakers followed students from a school in each of Bensonhurst, Tribeca, and Washington Heights as they learned […]
WORLD PREMIERE In today’s America, children are taught how to prepare for school shootings through elaborate drills. As children continue to be gunned down in the country, this smart and heartbreaking film takes an acerbic and caustic tone, perhaps aptly fitting the mood of civilians disgusted with politicians who do nothing to change the country’s […]
WORLD PREMIERE Filmmaker Penny Lane brings her inimitably quirky outlook to the art and business of children’s music, an industry generally skipped over by those above the age of 10. Way beyond the grating basicness of “Baby Shark,” Lane profiles performers invested in creating the tastes of kids—artists wanting to shape what children will understand […]
NYC PREMIERE Gorgeously rendered through picturesque cinematography, Always offers a meditative portrait of an adolescent wannabe poet in rural China. Director-cinematographer Deming Chen follows the protagonist from ages 9 to 13, capturing family life, both its hardship and resilience, without sentimentality. Poetry lives in both intertitles and luminous images of land, labor, and people. Expansive […]
NYC PREMIERE A professor leads a history class for a group of incarcerated and non-incarcerated students, revealing the traumatic effects of America’s mass incarceration system while bridging a divide between worlds. – Anita Raswant The first and second screening will be followed by a Q&A with director Eden Wurmfeld. All in-person screening venues provide sound […]
NYC PREMIERE A filmmaker investigates a surreal childhood memory—involving a gym teacher and a large plastic fish—to discover a hidden ally in her growing awareness as a queer woman. – Anita Raswant The first and second screening will be followed by a Q&A with director Drew Dickler. All in-person screening venues provide sound amplification headphones […]
NYC PREMIERE A tenacious Atlanta music teacher creates the first youth orchestra for undocumented and mixed-status families, providing a place to find community, beauty, and hope in the face of increasing adversity. – Anita Raswant The first and second screening will be followed by a Q&A with co-directors Monica Villavicencio and Stephanie Liu. All in-person […]