Hooligan Sparrow
Intrepid young filmmaker, Nanfu Wang, follows activist “Hooligan Sparrow,” and her band of colleagues to China’s Hainan Province to protest the case of six elementary school girls who were sexually abused by their principal. Marked as enemies of the state, the activists are under constant government surveillance and face interrogation, harassment, and imprisonment. Through smuggled […]
Heroin: Cape Cod, USA
Heroin: Cape Cod, USA is a cinema-verité look at the heroin epidemic currently sweeping America’s small towns and communities, focusing on eight young heroin addicts in idyllic Cape Cod, Mass. (HBO)
Happy Valley
Happy Valley centers on the people of State College, Pennsylvania and its conflicted reactions to the Penn State football scandal in the months following Jerry Sandusky’s arrest for child molestation. With interviews with those directly involved and die-hard fans alike, documentarian Amir Bar-Lev (The Tillman Story, My Kid Could Paint That) captures the college town […]
Gleason
After former New Orleans Saints defensive back Steve Gleason receives a devastating diagnosis of ALS, or Lou Gehrig’s disease, he turns the camera on himself to provide his then-unborn son a sense of the father he may otherwise never know in this emotionally powerful portrait. Steve and his steadfast wife Michel use humor to cope […]
Fire at Sea
Winner of the Golden Bear at this year’s Berlin Film Festival, Gianfranco Rosi’s documentary observes Europe’s migrant crisis from the vantage point of a Mediterranean island where hundreds of thousands of refugees, fleeing war and poverty, have landed in recent decades. Rosi shows the harrowing work of rescue operations but devotes most of the film […]
Extremis
Faced with harrowing situations on a daily basis, doctors and nurses at Oakland’s Highland Hospital work closely with patients and their families to make the most difficult choices. (San Francisco)
The Eagle Huntress
The Kazakh tradition of eagle hunting has been passed down from father to son for over 2,000 years in Western Mongolia. Aisholpan, a determined and spellbinding 13-year-old, dreams of becoming the first female huntress. With the support of her family, and against all odds, she trains diligently with her father to prepare for an annual […]
Do Not Resist
Starting on the streets of Ferguson, Missouri, as the community grapples with the death of Michael Brown, Do Not Resist—the directorial debut of Detropia cinematographer Craig Atkinson – offers a stunning look at the current state of policing in America and a glimpse into the future. The Tribeca Film Festival winner for Best Documentary puts […]
Dead Slow Ahead
A freighter crosses the ocean. The hypnotic rhythm of its pace reveals the continuous movement of the machinery devouring its workers: the old sailors’ gestures disappearing under the mechanical and impersonal pulse of the 21st century neo-capitalism. Perhaps it is a boat adrift, or maybe just the last example of an endangered species with engines […]
Contemporary Color
The choreographed and vibrant art form known as colour guard gained an enraptured fan in music icon David Byrne. The former Talking Heads frontman found the world of high school students synchronizing complex dance sequences with flag spins and rifle tosses to be creatively invigorating but generally underappreciated. Byrne came up with an ambitious project […]