NYC PREMIERE Young love—and heartbreak—is captured through a tailor-made soundtrack in Elvira Lind’s sweetly observed naturalistic portrait. 18-year-old hopeless romantic Ryan writes songs about his 16-year-old girlfriend Alexis as the couple navigates a long-distance relationship between Long Island and San Francisco. But in contrast to his supportive family, Alexis’s father doesn’t approve of their relationship […]
WORLD PREMIERE In Sara Newens and Mina T. Son’s spirited sports film, three driven teenage athletes attempt to go for Olympic gold. Their sport? The perpetually popular but underappreciated game of table tennis. Northern California’s Ariel Hsing and Lily Zhang balance friendship and professional rivalry to see who’ll come out on top, while Long Island’s […]
WORLD PREMIERE Jay Shapiro’s classic underdog sports story follows a baseball team with a dream. In its nearly 70-year history, the Little League World Series has never hosted a team from Africa. Ugandan coach George Mukhobe, mentoring his preteen players with a deep love and respect for America’s pastime, hopes to change that. Filmed over […]
WORLD PREMIERE While polio had been all but eliminated since the development of vaccines in the 1950s, the debilitating disease has shown a resurgence in Pakistan. After the Taliban bans polio vaccinations and spreads misinformation about sinister conspiracies to frighten the masses, the country suffers devastating outbreaks of the disease, prompting strategic problem-solving from the […]
NYC PREMIERE In 1984, Keva Rosenfeld profiled the senior class of a typical California high school in All American High, exploring teenage life through the eyes of Rikki, a Finnish exchange student trying to make sense of a foreign culture of big hair, prudishness and popularity. It’s fitting that a film about high school should […]
NYC PREMIERE What makes a good parent? How do you prove you are one, after you’ve been deemed unfit? Having lost custody of their children to Child Protective Services, two parents in New York City and Seattle fight to win back the trust of the courts and reunite their families in Stephanie Wang-Breal’s moving film. […]
WORLD PREMIERE Illustrating the transformative power not only of music, but of mentorship, Ben Niles’s film is an uplifting look at Juilliard’s Music Advancement Program for inner- city youth. Several diverse and inviting kids are followed for two years as they devote their weekends to developing their musical proficiency, receiving hands-on instruction typically impossible in […]
The Chaperone tells the previously untold, true story of a lone teacher chaperoning a school dance in 1970s Montreal, when a menacing motorcycle gang invades. The Chaperone recreates the scene using hand drawn animation, miniatures, puppets, Kung Fu and explosions. This film screens before the film RUBBLE KINGS.
NORTH AMERICAN PREMIERE Confronting a bankrupt, decaying city and the dashed hopes of the civil rights generation, African-American and Latino teenagers violently took over the streets of 1970s New York. The South Bronx became a war zone ruled by gangs like the Savage Skulls and the Ghetto Brothers. Hypnotic archival footage and present-day interviews with […]
NYC PREMIERE Drawn to the Central African Republic to study the songs of the Bayaka pygmies 25 years ago, American musicologist Louis Sarno abandoned modern civilization to join the tribe and start a family. Fulfilling a long-standing promise to show his teenager, Samedi, the world, father and son trade the rainforest for the concrete jungle […]