North by Current
“North By Current” is a visual rumination on the understated relationships between mothers and children, truths and myths, losses and gains. After the inconclusive death of his young niece, filmmaker Angelo Madsen Minax returns to his rural Michigan hometown prepared to make a film about a broken criminal justice system. Instead, he pivots to excavate […]
The Other Side of Everything
The Pearl
Far from the celebrity and magazine covers of Laverne Cox and Caitlin Jenner, THE PEARL witnesses the loss and extraordinary risk of four middle-aged senior war vets, steel foremen, and fathers and grandfathers coming out for the first time as transgender women in the hyper-masculine culture of the Pacific Northwest. Over the course of the […]
Plastic China
Yi Jie’s uneducated parents left the area where they grew up, looking for work. They now sort and recycle plastic waste from Europe, the United States and other parts of Asia. The family literally lives among mountains of plastic and the disgusting stench from incinerators. Nevertheless, the children always manage to find hidden treasures: a […]
Present.Perfect.
Shengze Zhu’s third feature shines a light on the curious world of live-streaming, a singularly contemporary form of human connection and commerce wherein “anchors” document their lives and interact with a virtual audience. Cobbled together from 800 hours of live-streaming footage, Present.Perfect. advances a fascinating documentary portrait of Chinese society by focusing on the most […]
The Raft
In 1973, five men and six women drifted across the Atlantic on a raft as part of a scientific experiment studying the sociology of violence, aggression and sexual attraction in human behavior. Although the project became known in the press as ‘The Sex Raft’, nobody expected what ultimately took place on that three month journey. […]
Roll Red Roll
The Silence of Others
The Silence of Others reveals the epic struggle of victims of Spain’s 40-year dictatorship under General Franco, who continue to seek justice to this day. Filmed over six years, the film follows victims and survivors as they organize the ground-breaking “Argentine Lawsuit” and fight a state-imposed amnesia of crimes against humanity, in a country still […]
Socks on Fire
Bo McGuire composes a cinematic love letter to his grandmother as his homophobic aunt and drag queen uncle wage war over her estate in Hokes Bluff, Alabama.
Stranger in Paradise
‘Stranger in Paradise’ is a controversial role play in three acts about a controversial topic: the refugee crisis. The scene is a classroom in Sicily, the students are real refugees hoping to get asylum. In the role of a teacher is an actor who alternates between right-wing conservative, humanist and genuine ‘realpolitik’ approaches to whether […]