Jane
Culled from hundreds of hours of recently discovered 16mm archival footage, filmmaker Brett Morgen crafts an enchanting portrait of legendary primatologist and activist Jane Goodall when her revolutionary work was still in its infancy. Shot by National Geographic during her first encounter with the chimpanzees of Tanzania’s Gombe Stream National Park, we witness the transformative […]
Faces Places
In Faces Places, 88-year-old nouvelle vague legend Agnès Varda teams up with 33-year- old French photographer and muralist JR to create an enchanting travelogue/road movie. Sharing a lifelong passion for images and the means by which they are created, displayed and shared, the duo hits the road to travel through France’s small villages, meeting locals, […]
City of Ghosts
Director Matthew Heineman returns with another immersive documentary from the front lines of one of the most dangerous places on Earth. In City of Ghosts, Heineman focuses his camera on the heroic citizen-journalists of Raqqa is Being Slaughtered Silently (RBSS), who take great risks in order to document Islamic State atrocities in their home city. […]
Chasing Coral
Coral reefs are the nursery for all life in the oceans, a remarkable ecosystem that sustains us. Yet with carbon emissions warming the seas, a phenomenon called “coral bleaching”—a sign of mass coral death—has been accelerating around the world, and the public has no idea of the scale or implication of the catastrophe silently raging […]
Abacus: Small Enough to Jail
Thomas Sung relates to George Bailey, Jimmy Stewart’s character in It’s a Wonderful Life. In the 1980s, he was a busy lawyer in New York City, but he saw a need. There was no bank serving the Chinese immigrant community. Institutions were willing to take in millions in deposits from Chinese families but were unwilling […]
Weiner
After a humiliating exit from political life, Anthony Weiner reentered the public arena with an ambitious run for mayor of New York. But what began as a hopeful opportunity to redeem himself to his family and voters quickly spiraled out of control as new sexting allegations came to light and a media frenzy formed around […]
Tower
On August 1st, 1966, a sniper rode the elevator to the top floor of the University of Texas Tower and opened fire, holding the campus hostage for 96 minutes. When the gunshots were finally silenced, the toll included 16 dead, three dozen wounded, and a shaken nation left trying to understand. Combining archival footage with […]
Tickled
When David Farrier came across social-media notice of a “competitive endurance tickling” event in Los Angeles, he thought he’d lit upon another amusingly weird topic for his lighthearted reports on New Zealand television. But the Donkey Lady, frog-eating survivalists and Justin Bieber were nothing compared with what the pop-culture journalist would uncover. In the captivating […]
Sonita
Sonita Alizadeh, a teenage Afghan refugee living illegally in Iran and attending school at a children’s protection agency, wishes she were Rihanna and Michael Jackson’s lovechild and daydreams about becoming the next female rapper to emerge from the Middle East. But living in a culture that refuses her personhood, let alone the right to sing […]
Presenting Princess Shaw
Talented but isolated, New Orleans care worker Samantha spends her spare time uploading acapella videos of her original songs to YouTube, to a smattering of viewers. Unknown to her, in a far away kibbutz, Israeli mash up artist Kutiman is composing his next viral sensation – with Samantha as the star. Following them both, director […]