Fire Through Dry Grass uncovers in real-time the devastation experienced by residents of a New York City nursing home during the coronavirus pandemic. Co-director Andres “Jay” Molina takes viewers inside Coler, a public facility on Roosevelt Island, where he lives with his fellow “Reality Poets,” a group of mostly gun violence survivors. They used to travel around the city sharing their art and hard-earned wisdom with youth. Now, using GoPros clamped to their wheelchairs, they document their harrowing experiences on “lock down.” Covid-positive patients are moved into their bedrooms; nurses fashion PPE out of garbage bags; refrigerated-trailer morgues hum outside residents’ windows. All the while public officials deny the suffering and dying behind Coler’s brick walls. The Reality Poets’ rhymes flow throughout the film, underscoring their feelings that their home is now as dangerous as the streets they once ran. But instead of history repeating itself on this tiny island with a dark history of institutional neglect and abandonment, Fire Through Dry Grass shows these disabled Black and brown artists refusing to be abused, confined, erased.

Director Penny Lane’s decision to become a “good Samaritan” by giving one of her kidneys to a stranger turns into a funny and moving personal quest to understand the nature of altruism. “Confessions of a Good Samaritan” is a provocative inquiry into the science, history, and ethics of organ transplantation, asking an ancient question in a whole new way: Who is your neighbor, and what do you owe them?

Going to Mars: The Nikki Giovanni Project recounts the story of acclaimed poet, Nikki Giovanni and the revolutionary historical periods through which she lived—from the Civil Rights and Black Arts Movement, to present-day Black Lives Matter. Combining visually innovative treatments of her poetry, along with intimate vérité, rich archival footage, and Giovanni’s own captivating contemporary performances, Going to Mars pushes the boundaries of biographical documentary film to reveal the enduring influence of one of America’s greatest living artists and social commentators.

There is a city in Southern California that is teeming with pregnant women from China. How to Have an American Baby is a kaleidoscopic voyage, told through multiple perspectives, into the booming shadow economy catering to Chinese birth tourists who travel to the U.S. on birthing vacations in order to obtain U.S. citizenship for their babies.

Miami is ground-zero for sea-level-rise. When residents of the Liberty Square public-housing community learn about a $300 million revitalization project in 2015, they soon discover that this sudden interest comes from the fact that their neighborhood is located on the highest-and-driest ground in the city. Now they must prepare to fight a new form of racial injustice – Climate Gentrification

Body Parts is a documentary feature exploring the nude female body in Hollywood media—hyper-sexualized, under attack, exploited on- and off- screen. From a wide range of perspectives, the film examines how actresses protect their bodies, how studios push back, and how unions have fought for better standards. The film also looks at how the female and queer gaze are redefining desire and sexuality. From the first body doubles in the 1920s to the digital enhancements of the internet age, the film asks: when scenes are about sex, to whom are they sexy? By what standards? How do race, age and body type factor in?

My Name Is Andrea is the story of controversial feminist writer and public intellectual Andrea Dworkin, who offered a revolutionary analysis of male supremacy with iconoclastic flair. Decades before #MeToo, Dworkin called out the pervasiveness of sexism and rape culture, and the ways it impacts every woman’s daily life.

What happens in Vegas stays in Vegas — until now. When Ruby Duncan faces the stigma and harassment of a fraud-obsessed and broken system, she ignites “Mother Power” — a fiery combination of Feminism and Civil Rights activism — mobilizing a welfare rights group to march down the Strip demanding an adequate income in 1971. Unearthing archival film and featuring a cast who played pivotal roles in these events, this film chronicles the journey of low-income mothers in their own words. Challenging the pernicious lie of the “Welfare Queen,” Storming Caesars Palace highlights the visionary leadership of Black women organizers whose courage, tenacity and dreams could not be quashed, against all odds.

When a young woman turns to the camera for refuge, she ends up with a firsthand account of what will become the deadliest man-made epidemic in United States history. Filmed over thirty years, Anonymous Sister is director, Jamie Boyle’s chronicle of her family’s fall into opioid addiction, providing a poignant and timely study of what it means to experience life in all its beauty and pain.

The number of women in U.S. prisons has grown by 800% over the past 40 years. And the vast majority are mothers. In a Midwestern state caught between the opioid epidemic and rising incarceration for women, three unforgettable mothers—Tomika, Lydia, and Amanda— return home from prison and rebuild their lives after being separated from their children for years. Their stories overlap at a new reentry program for women, run by Malika, an advocate formerly incarcerated in the same prison. Filmed over 3 ½ years, APART traces their steps as they reconstruct lives derailed by drugs and prison.

When residents of a remote Siberian coal mining settlement discover an old Soviet mine has caught fire beneath their neighborhood, they turn to Natalia Zubkova, a local homemaker-turned-journalist, for help. But when her independent news coverage starts going viral, they instead find themselves the targets of a massive government disinformation campaign, forcing Natalia to embark on a dangerous and revelatory quest to reveal the full extent of the environmental catastrophe unfolding in their midst.A taut and revelatory thriller told through the eyes of a maverick citizen journalist which promises to shine new light on the human cost of coal.

Boycotts have long been a tool used by Americans rallying for social and political change, from civil rights leaders to anti-apartheid activists. But in recent years, 33 U.S. states have introduced anti-boycott legislation or executive orders designed to penalize individuals and companies who choose to boycott Israel due to its human rights record. Boycott looks at the cases of a news publisher in Arkansas, an attorney in Arizona, and a speech therapist in Texas whose careers are threatened by the harsh measures of these new laws. A legal thriller with “accidental plaintiffs” at the center, the film is a bracing look at the far-reaching implications of anti-boycott legislation and an inspiring tale of everyday Americans standing up to protect our rights in an age of shifting politics and threats to freedom of speech.

In 2018, Shiro (writer) and Wachuka (publisher) quit their jobs to restore a derelict colonial library in bustling downtown Nairobi. Horrified at the condition of the historical, state-owned building, they successfully lobbied city officials to take-over management of the junk-filled library. With zero experience in building, the pair find themselves with a mammoth task ahead. But with an undying passion for books, and a unique flair for glamour, instagram, and finding funds where least expected, they activate an army of homegrown artists, intellectuals, tech developers, architects and writers, all energised to transform the space into a technological hub of creativity and learning for future generations. They call it Book Bunk.

Listen to Me is the story of four women and the cost of motherhood. These women stand at the frontlines of the Black maternal health struggle as birth workers and public health experts while walking the delicate tight rope through pregnancy. This is a story of the deep complexities and troubling challenges black women experience when attempting to birth children in the United States. Beyond dismal statistics, Listen to Me centers the joy, voices, and spirit of Black women.

Doris Muñoz is an ambitious music manager whose undocumented family depends on her ability to discover aspiring pop stars. At just 26, she has already launched multiple Chicanx musicians, carving out space for her culture within a turbulent industry. ‘Mija’ dives into the world of a young woman hustling harder than anyone else, because for Doris and her family, “making it” isn’t just a dream—it’s a necessity.

Chinese investors create one of the largest industrial zones in West Africa, where thousands of locals earn their livelihood at the risk of losing what they value most – sacred land, religious practices, and identity. Through verité scenes, the film follows both Chinese investors who dream of turning a backwater town into West Africa’s manufacturing epicenter and local community leaders who question the high price of survival in a country of profound inequity.

Epic in scope, but intimate in feel Simple As Water is a meditation on the elemental bonds of family. Portraits of Syrian families now living in Turkey, Greece, Germany, Syria and the US form a finely rendered illustration of the human cost of war, and the lengths we go to protect our loved ones.

In this film, set in Italy, we follow Sister Raquel, a woman who works on the front-line of the battle against human trafficking, helping survivors gain back their freedom, from rescue operations to long-term rehabilitation. Raquel works with an entire network of religious sisters across the Mediterranean. Together, they’ve come to form an unlikely sorority with women survivors of sexual slavery; the strength of their bond endures across differences.Sisters Act follows fearless religious sisters forming a network to end sexual slavery, challenging the dark and abusive rings of traffickers who exploit women internationally.

Standing Above the Clouds follows the largest political movement in modern Hawaiian history and the indigenous women leaders who have successfully sustained it for so long. At the center of the global movement to protect Mauna Kea are the families of Pua Case, Leina’ala Sleightholm, and Mehana Kihoi. To prevent the building of the world’s largest telescope on their sacred mountain, all three families have put their bodies on the line, faced arrest standing off with police, and testified as key petitioners suing the state of Hawaiʻi. Through the lens of mothers and daughters, the film explores intergenerational healing and the social and emotional labor of retaining ancient ceremonies in a rapidly modernizing world.

Belly of the Beast intimately chronicles the journey of women fighting reproductive injustice in their communities.

Violence. Outrage. Impunity. Repeat. Black Mothers follows the journey of two women working to disrupt the cycle of racist police violence within our country’s judicial system. As one mother investigates her son’s attack by local police, the other channels her grief into organizing other mothers to fight for concrete change and justice.

They came as campers, and left as rebels. Just down the road from Woodstock, in the late 1960s and early 1970s, a parallel revolution blossomed in a ramshackle summer camp for disabled teenagers. Crip Camp explores summer camp awakenings that would transform young lives, and America, forever. Told from the point of view of former camper Jim LeBrecht, the film traces the journeys of several teenagers from camp to the raucous early days of the disability rights movement – and up to the present, in this compelling and untold story of a powerful journey towards inclusion.

Disclosure: Trans Lives on Screen is an unprecedented, groundbreaking look at the depiction of transgender people and experiences throughout the history of film and television. Over 100 years of footage, from A Florida Enchantment (1914) to Pose (2018), is woven together with the personal stories of prominent media figures like Laverne Cox, revealing how Hollywood has simultaneously reflected and manufactured our deepest anxieties about gender. Through the specific lens of trans representation on screen, Disclosure shows both the consequences of depicting marginalized communities without their participation, and the liberatory potential of the medium when their voices are centered.

In a small blue-collar city in Vermont, Rutland Mayor Christopher Louras and a passionate group of volunteers lead the fight to resettle Syrian refugees in their town. The Rutland community sharply divides into those who embrace resettlement as an engine for economic growth and new diversity for a white and graying town, and those who fear majority-Muslim newcomers will seed terrorism and drain social services. Closely following Chris and an evolving ensemble of intersecting characters over two years, For the Love of Rutland explores what happens what changes – and what doesn’t – when small-town America meets the Syrian civil war.

Love & Stuff is a multi-generational love story that starts with a good death, takes off with an unexpected birth, and commits to the ride of a lifetime. Told from both sides of the camera and a thirty-year archive of “home movies” documenting life cycle challenges and universal rights of passage, filmmaker Judith Helfand, together with her mother Florence and long-awaited adopted daughter Theo, explores evolutionary life-changing love, grief, our complex attachment to “stuff,” and what it is that we really want to leave our children.

Mayor is a real-life political saga following Musa Hadid, the Christian mayor of Ramallah, during his second term in office. His immediate goals: repave the sidewalks, attract more tourism, and plan the city’s Christmas celebrations. His ultimate mission: to end the occupation of Palestine.

9,000 miles. 3 families. 1 chance to escape. As the European Union works in violation of human rights law to transform North African countries into brutal holding cells for those fleeing war and poverty across the African continent, The Burning brings the untold story of Africa’s migrant and refugee crisis to life for the first time.

Exploring the unsolved murder of celebrated Indigenous activist Annie Mae Aquash, we uncover a mysterious and complicated web of deception spun over the course of several decades. Annie Mae is one of thousands who make up the staggering number of missing and murdered Indigenous women and girls. By reframing her story, the film hopes to shed light on this current epidemic.

A film on female ultra-marathoners takes a haunting turn when director Rebecca Byerly turns the camera on herself – and the deadly family violence that caused her to start running 200-mile races. By turns, a meditation on endurance and a deep inquiry into the nature of family trauma, this film goes to the heart of what women will do to survive.

Ernie & Joe is an intimate portrait of two Texas police officers who are helping change the way police respond to mental health calls.  The film takes audiences on a personal journey, weaving together their experiences during their daily encounters with people in crisis. These two officers are not your everyday cops. They are part of the San Antonio Police Department’s 10-person Mental Health Unit.

Jones Farm is a lush, 688-acre farm situated in the heart of western Alabama. Three generations of black women explore their very different ties to this place that shaped them and continues to exert a strange hold on their identities. This is the same plot of land that their ancestors once worked as slaves—a history that is important to their identities and to how they navigate the world.

Amal is a feisty teenager growing up in post-revolution Egypt while they’re both undergoing a tremendous change. Within a constant political turmoil, Amal searches for her place, identity, and sexuality in a patriarchal society. Amal, whose name literally translates to “hope”, is embarking on a 6-year compelling journey from childhood to adulthood. Along the way, she realizes her limited options as a woman living in an Arab police state.

El Retorno /The Return is the story of Aura Taibel, an immigrant woman with a gut-wrenching backstory who arrived in the U.S. to work, to forge a new path in her life. The film follows Aura during her last months in New York before joining the wave of Colombians returning home since peace was declared.

When the Taliban puts a bounty on Afghan director Hassan Fazili’s head, he is forced to flee with his wife and two young daughters. Capturing their uncertain journey, Fazili shows firsthand the dangers facing refugees seeking asylum and the love shared between a family on the run.

As a child growing up during Uganda’s civil war, Isaac Nabwana escaped into American action movies. As an adult making bricks for a living, he decided one day to abandon brick making to make action movies, and turned his home in the slum into “Wakaliwood,” Uganda’s first action movie studio. When the trailer for their first action movie, Who Killed Captain Alex, goes viral, it attracts the attention of film nerd Alan Hofmanis who shows up unannounced on Isaac’s doorstep one day. With Alan’s marketing skills, they attract international attention and press from all over the world. But their newfound celebrity soon threatens to unravel everything that they’ve built.

First-time mother and filmmaker Nanfu Wang uncovers the untold history of China’s One-Child policy and the generations of parents and children forever shaped by this social experiment.

If playing ball meant risking your life…what would you do?

Diving deep inside the Somali National Women’s basketball team’s first season of since the civil war, former basketball players Mulki Nuur and Suad Galow shepherds their team of fearless young women to overcome violent threats and reclaim their place on the international stage.

What happened when unarmed Black teen Michael Brown was fatally shot by White police officer Darren Wilson?

In the summer of 1964 a quiet revolution began in Mississippi when a group of Black and White women reached across the chasm of race, class, geography, and religion to end segregation in America. This quiet revolution was called “Wednesdays in Mississippi.” The story of these brave women has never been told. It is a story of courage, danger, and transformation. The one hour documentary film Wednesdays in Mississippi will finally tell their story.

62 Days is a documentary film about Marlise Muñoz, a brain-dead pregnant woman whose family was forced to keep her on life support against her wishes. This film shows the human story behind the headlines, and shines a light on a controversial law.

93Queen follows a group of tenacious Hasidic women who are shattering the glass ceiling in their Hasidic Brooklyn neighborhood to create the first all-female volunteer EMS corps in NYC.

Dispatches from Cleveland is a feature-length documentary in five parts that closely examines the city of Cleveland, Ohio, one of the most racially divided cities in America, in the wake of the police murder of 12-year-old Tamir Rice. The film follows ordinary people – long shaken by police misconduct, social discrimination, and poverty – whose love for their home pushes them to work together to bring about real change.

Beginning one year before the events in Ferguson, Missouri, Levine and Van Soest’s intimate and cinematic For Ahkeem is the coming of age story of 17-year-old Daje Shelton in neighboring North St. Louis. Falling in love and fighting with mom, Daje struggles with typical teen growing pains, but also must increasingly combat the institutional and social roadblocks that keep black teens like her from succeeding in America.

Every year, hundreds of rape kits containing DNA evidence are left untested by police around the country. Over 175,000 kits have been uncovered to date, resting in backlogs and storage facilities, each of them an unsolved case. Currently, only eight states (Georgia, Colorado, Illinois, Kentucky, Texas, Pennsylvania, Ohio and New York) have passed laws requiring that rape kits be tested by police. As a result, decades worth of kits have been shelved, perpetrators remaining free and victims ignored, the potentially crucial evidence left to languish.

China’s one-child policy has created an untenable situation for many stigmatized single women who are under immense pressure from society, from families afraid of losing face, and from a government desperate to maintain population numbers. Filmmakers Shosh Shlam and Hilla Medalia explore this phenomenon, from the spectacle of awkward public dating contests and government sponsored matchmaking festivals to parents’ marriage markets and excruciating family encounters. Leftover Women is a poignant and ultimately hopeful profile of three brave women seeking to define life and love on their own terms.

In America’s capital of wrongful conviction, a man is imprisoned at 19 for a murder and rape he didn’t commit – and spends nearly a quarter century fighting to be freed.

Muhi, a brave and spirited boy from Gaza has been living in an Israeli hospital accompanied by his grandfather for the last 7 years.

In One Bullet Afghanistan, a filmmaker embedded with the military befriends the mother of an Afghan civilian casualty, a 14-year-old boy shot by unidentified forces. Over many years she follows Bibi Hajji, fighting for her family’s survival on the real frontlines of America’s longest war.

The Art of Rebellion is a film that follows LA-based street artist, activist, and single mother, Lydia Emily, as she defies a crippling diagnosis that threatens to take away her livelihood. Fighting against an unforgiving healthcare system while she battles the symptoms of progressive multiple sclerosis, Lydia ties paintbrushes to her failing hands to create large-scale works of creative resistance.

In 2016, a black, female professor at Wheaton College, IL lost her job for wearing a hijab and claiming that Christians and Muslims worship the “Same God.” The ensuing controversy exposed the simmering rifts within evangelical Christians over race, Islamophobia and gender… foreshadowing the even deeper schism over Donald Trump and the shocking presidential election.

The 8th tells the story of how Ireland overturned one of the world’s most restrictive laws on abortion. The film embeds in Together for Yes campaign HQ following veteran campaigner Ailbhe Smyth as she navigates the complexities of convincing a historically conservative electorate to vote for women’s reproductive autonomy. The film also follows nail-bar owner and self-described glam-artist Andrea Horan who takes a less orthodox approach to feminist organizing. The vérité of the campaign is framed by a vivid exploration of the political and cultural history that charts the transformation of a country.

When two young immigrant-activists get detained by Border Patrol, on purpose, their mission to expose the abuses inside a detention center becomes much more complex and dangerous than they imagined…

Blowin’ Up (formerly Imitation of Choice) is the story of an innovative human trafficking court, the compassionate 53-year-old Japanese-American judge who runs it, and the women who pass through its doors every day. Arrested in police raids for prostitution-related offenses, the women in Judge Toko Serita’s court are presented with three options: plead guilty to a criminal offense, fight the charge, or take the state’s offer to attend a handful of counseling sessions and get their record wiped clean. Through raw and intimate cinéma vérité storytelling, Blowin’ Up invites audiences to witness the growing pains of this emerging court, and explores how we define trafficking and prostitution from the perspectives of the criminal justice system, the social welfare system, and, most importantly, the women and girls who are at the center of it all.

A talented group of orphaned children in the Kingdom of Swaziland confront past trauma through the creation of a fictional character, a young girl named Liyana. The world that they imagine for her is brought to life in a unique style of animation. Drawing from painful memories, the children describe a violent attack at Liyana’s home. In the aftermath of this terrible night, Liyana must embark on a dangerous quest into the wilderness. Profound insight is revealed as the children shape their heroine’s mythic journey, and parallels are drawn between Liyana’s fate, and that of the young storytellers.

In the wake of the mass shooting at Pulse nightclub in Orlando, Evangelical Christians grapple with their relationship to the LGBTQ community.

Queer filmmaker Jessica Devaney grew up deeply immersed in Evangelical Christianity in Florida. After breaking with her youth as a nationally recognized activist and leader among conservative Evangelicals, Jessica left Florida and didn’t look back. She built a life that took her as far away from home as possible. Over time, her daily life became a progressive echo chamber.

The mass shooting at Pulse was a wake up call. By avoiding hard conversations with church leadership, had she missed opportunities to challenge homophobia?

Love the Sinner probes our responsibility to face bias in our communities and push for dignity and equality for all.

Duanne Luckow begins a scary, dangerous and ever-escalating cycle of arrests, incarcerations, Mental institutional stays including Oregon State Hospital (The setting of “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest), an inability to aid and assist in his own defense and releases to the streets without a plan. Until court ordered, he exercises his right to refuse treatment. HIPPA laws intended to protect his privacy, inadvertently cuts off his most ardent advocates from access to him, leaving him vulnerable to an overburdened system. Serendipitous events and coincidences gave documentary filmmaker, Sandra Luckow, access to intimate and illuminating footage because Duanne is her brother. With their cameras, they expose an ineffectual and inhuman system as well as themselves.

In Cooked: Survival by Zipcode, filmmaker Judith Helfand takes audiences from one of the most extreme heat waves in US history deep into the politics of disaster.

Filmed over seven years, Drawing the Tiger is an intimate portrait of a family in Nepal who get a chance to break their cycle of poverty: Their brightest child is awarded a scholarship to attend school in the city. When her life ends tragically, the family is forced to survive without her and her education—the opportunity they believed would change their fate. It is the story of the power of girls’ education from the perspective of its absence.

** 2015 Hot Docs Film Festival

Her home is “the most dangerous place on earth,” where sports are decried as un-Islamic, and girls rarely leave their homes. But she did. She’s a world-renowned athlete and a flashpoint in her country’s battle over feminine identity.  She is Maria Toorpakai Wazir, the young woman known as Genghis Khan.

A feature documentary film about women breaking down gender barriers in blue-collar construction trades.

Each year, millions of tourists flock to the Dominican Republic for a taste of tropical paradise and for one of the island’s main attractions: sex. Massacre River tells the story of two women, a Haitian sex worker and a Dominican prostitute-turned-activist, as they strive to build better lives for their families. Through their stories, we discover the racial tension and violent demonstrations that have erupted recently as two nations, the Dominican Republic and Haiti, attempt to share the island of Hispaniola.

What happens when the place where you work, socialize, love and play becomes toxic? Netizens chronicles the proliferation of online harassment and abuse women journalists, technologists, game developers and others face as it spills from the web to the most intimate corners of their lives.

The parents of a three-year old girl in India believe her to be the reincarnation of their son, and train her to become an Olympic archery champion.

On a search to escape poverty and homophobia in Mexico, two men leave home and make the dangerous journey to New York City. But social and economic freedom costs them more than they ever imagined.

The true story of Bassem Youssef, a heart surgeon, who launches a satirical news program amidst the chaos of the Egyptian Revolution. Under constant threat of arrest by the Egyptian government, Bassem and his staff manage to transform “Al Bernameg” into one of the most popular comedy shows in the world. This is a film about free speech, non-violent action, and the power of satire.

Tocando la Luz (Touch The Light) weaves three stories – all set in the blind community of Havana, Cuba – into a tale of personal independence. As Lis, Mily, and Margarita each face family problems and heartbreak, their dependence on others turns out to be a double-edged sword. From the music halls of Havana to a cinema club for the blind, their stories reveal both the pain and the joys of fighting for yourself.

The 2010 midterm election resulted in a seismic rightward shift in America. Newly elected legislators often backed by Tea Party activists brought with them a hard line conservative agenda, and abortion was high on the list of targets.

From 2011 to 2013, hundreds of regulations were passed restricting access to abortion in America. Reproductive rights advocates refer to these as “TRAP” laws, or Targeted Regulation of Abortion Providers. While these laws have been enacted in 11 states, Southern clinics, in particular have been hit hardest and are now in a fight for survival. In Texas, less than half of the clinics open in 2013 are still functioning. In Alabama, five clinics struggle to keep their doors open. And in Mississippi, just one abortion clinic remains. Some of the most common requirements with which clinics struggle to comply include: requiring physicians to obtain admitting privileges from local hospitals for any doctor performing abortions, requiring that clinics undertake expensive renovations such as widening hallways by a few inches to accommodate wheelchairs and gurneys they will rarely use, and requiring other regulations usually reserved for hospitals even though abortion providers rarely require such a high level of care.

But even in this hostile environment the doctors, clinic owners and staff refuse to give up. Trapped interweaves the personal stories behind these regulatory battles: from the physician who crisscrosses the country assuring medical services are available; to the strong women who run the clinics; to the lawyers leading the legal charge to eliminate these laws; to the women they are all determined to help. In this feature length character driven film, our main characters fight alongside a dedicated cadre of attorneys to preserve abortion rights in a country living with the mistaken belief that Roe v. Wade still protects a woman’s right to choose.

** 2016 Sundance Film Festival

When God Sleeps depicts the journey of Iranian musician Shahin Najafi who is forced into hiding after hard-line clerics offer a $100,000 reward for his murder.

The City of St. Louis has a little known nuclear past as a uranium-processing center for the Atomic bomb. Government and corporate negligence led to the dumping of Manhattan Project uranium, thorium, and radium, thus contaminating North St. Louis suburbs, specifically in two communities: those nestled along Coldwater Creek – and in Bridgeton, Missouri adjacent to the West Lake-Bridgeton landfill.

Our film documents those (mostly women) who have mobilized to get answers, created a powerful coalition and continue to fight for environmental justice.

After decades shooting top documentaries, cinematographer Kirsten Johnson creates a visually radical memoir investigating how she’s shot and what it might mean to those filmed.

** 2016 Sundance Film Festival<

From This Day Forward is a moving portrayal of an American family coping with one of the most intimate of transformations. When director Sharon Shattuck’s father came out as transgender and changed her name to Trisha, Sharon was in the awkward throes of middle school. Her father’s transition to female was difficult for her straight-identified mother, Marcia, to accept, but her parents stayed together. As the Shattucks reunite to plan Sharon’s wedding, she seeks a deeper understanding of how her parents’ marriage survived the radical changes that threatened to tear them apart.

** 2015 Full Frame Documentary Film Festival

While multinational Lapindo was drilling for natural gas in Indonesia’s East Java in 2006, they hit an underground mud volcano, unleashing a tsunami of hot mud that covered an area twice the size of Central Park. Roads, factories and homes were destroyed, 20 lives were lost and nearly 40,000 people displaced. In a film that inspires one to fight against injustice, we see that over a decade later the mud still flows and neither Lapindo nor the government have made the reparations that they promised. Dian was six years old at the time and her mother Harwati has struggled to raise her. The mother/daughter duo, along with many neighbours, fight against the corporate powers accused of one of the largest environmental disasters in recent history. The film bears witness to Dian’s transformation from a young girl to a politically active teenager determined to defend the powerless.

Thanks to the Internet, thousands of young American women are entering the “amateur” porn world, fulfilling a growing demand for girl-next-door starlets. Hot Girls Wanted follows one such girl, eager to leave small-town life in search of freedom and fame. With the click of a mouse she transforms from A-student to fledgling amateur actress. She initially feels independent and popular starring in professionally produced videos – uploaded on sites garnering an average of 41 million hits a month. But as she and some of her new friends fall deeper into the darker corners of the Internet, and as new faces arrive daily, they’re forced to reconsider an increasingly dubious line of work. Filmmakers Jill Bauer and Ronna Gradus, along with producer Rashida Jones and partners from the Kinsey Institute for Sex Research, rip the lid off of the often unchecked amateur porn industry. ** 2015 Sundance Film Festival

Out in the Night follows a group of African American teenagers who went to a gay-friendly neighborhood in New York City for a night out. These lesbian and gender non-conforming friends, Patreese, Renata, Terrain and Venice, were confronted by an older man on the street. They defended themselves. Strangers jumped in to support them and a fight ensued. Only the women were rounded up by police and charged and convicted as perpetrators of gang assault. They became known as The New Jersey 4. The film follows their journey to Rikers Island, to the courtroom, and through slanderous media coverage that labeled them a “Wolfpack” and “Lesbian Gang”. While exploring the fight from all sides through the security camera footage that captured it, that hot August night in 2006 can be seen from many perspectives. But our film’s purpose is to examine the events after the fight: biased media coverage likening the women to “man-hating” animals, and unprecedentedly harsh sentencing by the court. This story shows how four young, queer women of color were unfairly criminalized for defending themselves.

** 2014 Los Angeles Film Festival<

Born out of the revolutionary zeal of the ’60s and ’70s, the modern women’s liberation movement brought feminism to the mainstream, with bra burnings and massive protests in the name of empowering women to feel equal to their male counterparts at home and in the workplace. But this revolution wasn’t without tension—issues of race, sexuality and the role of men within it all threatened to tear the movement apart. Elucidated by interviews from participants as varied as Rita Mae Brown and Congresswoman Eleanor Holmes Norton, She’s Beautiful When She’s Angry illuminates the roots of the modern battle for gender equality, one that still rages to this very day.

Strong Island chronicles the arc of a family across history, geography and tragedy – from the racial segregation of the Jim Crow South to the promise of New York City; from the presumed safety of middle class suburbs, to the maelstrom of an unexpected, violent death. It is the story of the Ford family: Barbara Dunmore, William Ford and their three children and how their lives were shaped by the enduring shadow of race in America. A deeply intimate and meditative film, Strong Island asks what one can do when the grief of loss is entwined with historical injustice, and how one grapples with the complicity of silence, which can bind a family in an imitation of life, and a nation with a false sense of justice.

In the male dominated, testosterone-fueled sport of powerlifting, the last person one expects to see is a slight, young, Modern Orthodox Jewish girl. Since she began competitively lifting at the age of eight, Naomi “Supergirl” Kutin  has consistently shocked spectators and lifters alike, breaking one record after another. Standing at 5’0” and weighing 95 lbs, she can squat and deadlift more than double her bodyweight. These feats have not gone unnoticed; Naomi has accumulated a moderate amount of fame. She has appeared in the international media, including multiple television shows, and has a large social media following. Supergirl follows Naomi and her family as they prepare for and compete in powerlifting contests around the country, attempting to break new world records. Simultaneously, the film observes Naomi’s transition from a girl to a young woman as she prepares for her Bat Mitzvah – the symbolic entrance to womanhood in Jewish tradition which occurs at age twelve. The film follows Naomi as she attempts to navigate the disparate worlds of competitive powerlifting and Orthodox Judaism – – facing the physical and psychological challenges of her own body’s growth and development while struggling to conform to strict religious laws. Supergirl observes Naomi as she confronts these issues head on, discovering and building her own physical and emotional strength while figuring out who she is along the way.

Compared to girls, research shows that boys in the U.S. are more likely to be diagnosed with a behavior disorder, prescribed stimulant medications, fail out of school, binge drink, commit a violent crime, and/or take their own lives. The Mask You Live In, a film that is an exploration of American masculinity, asks society: how are we failing our boys?

** 2015 Sundance Film Festival

Johanna Hamilton’s 1971 tells the story of eight activists who plotted an intricate break-in to the local FBI offices to expose the illegal surveillance of ordinary Americans. Despite searching for the perpetrators in one of the largest investigations ever conducted, the FBI never solved the mystery behind the identities of the burglars. Until Now. For the first time, the Citizen’s Commission reveal themselves, reflecting on their actions and raising broader questions surrounding security leaks in activism today. ** Nominated, Best Documentary Feature, Tribeca Film Festival 2014

Bei Bei Shuai, a Chinese immigrant living in Indianapolis, battles charges of murder and feticide. Her crime? Attempting suicide while pregnant. Abandoned by the father of her unborn child and suffering from severe perinatal depression, Bei Bei Shuai attempts suicide while eight months pregnant. She survives the attempt, but her baby, delivered by emergency c-section, dies in her arms three days later. Following devastating personal tragedy, Bei Bei finds herself transformed from a grief stricken mother into a criminal, charged with murder and attempted feticide. Bei Bei is moved to the Marion County Jail where she remains for a year and a half, until her lawyer Linda Pence is able to secure her release on bail. As Bei Bei and Ms. Pence take on the Indiana state justice system, her case begins to gain national attention. Their fight raises important questions about personhood laws, fetal rights, immigrant rights, and the criminalization of the mentally ill.

Dr. Rebecca Gomperts sails a ship around the world, providing abortions at sea for women with no legal alternative. Her idea begins as flawed spectacle, faced with governmental, religious, and military blockade. But with each roadblock comes a more refined mission, until Rebecca realizes she can use new technologies to bypass law – and train women to give themselves abortions using WHO-researched protocols with pills. From there we witness her create an underground network of emboldened, informed activists who trust women to handle abortion themselves. Vessel is Rebecca’s story: one of a woman who hears and answers a calling, and transforms a wildly improbable idea into a global movement.

**Winner, Grand Jury Award, SXSW 2014
**Winner, Special Jury Recognition for Political Change, SXSW 2014

Intrigue. Romance. Revolution. It all comes together in a documentary film which chronicles the tumultuous birth of a new nation in East Timor through a never-before-seen perspective. Kirsty Sword, a young Australian activist, aspired to be a documentary filmmaker, but instead became a underground operative for the Timorese resistance in Jakarta code named ‘Ruby Blade’. Her task: to become a conduit of information and instruction for the enigmatic leader of the resistance, Kay Rala “Xanana” Gusmão, while he was serving life in prison for his revolutionary activities. Through correspondence, they fell in love. Alias Ruby Blade captures their incredible love story from this beginning to the ultimate triumph of freedom in East Timor, demonstrating the astonishing power of ordinary individuals to change the course of history.

** Tribeca Film Festival 2013

In this searing exposé on the state of American Democracy, Deal and Lessin follow the money behind the rise of the Tea Party. In the wake of the Citizens United ruling, the film investigates the impact on unlimited, anonymous spending by corporations and billionaires on the electoral process. Both humorous and deeply troubling, Citizen Koch is an essential portrait of our political time.

** 2013 Sundance Film Festival

A perfect storm is brewing as agriculture pioneer Cary Fowler races against time to protect the future of our food. Gene banks of the world are crumbling, crop failures are producing starvation inspired rioting, and the accelerating effects of climate change are already affecting farmers globally. But Fowler’s journey, and our own, is just beginning: From Rome to Russia and, finally, a remote island under the Arctic Circle, Fowler’s passionate and personal journey may hold the key to saving the one resource we cannot live without: our seeds.

** CPH: DOX 2013<

Sexy Baby is the first documentary film to put faces to a seismic cultural shift: the cyber age is creating a new sexual landscape. While doing research for the film, we had intimate and candid conversations with kids in middle school classrooms, suburban shopping malls, nightclubs, college dorms, and even conducted an informal roundtable during a high school house party. While chronicling trends among small town and big city kids, we discovered this: Having pubic hair is considered unattractive and “gross.” Most youngsters know someone who has emailed or texted a naked photo of themselves. Many kids have accidentally or intentionally had their first introduction to sex be via hardcore online porn. Facebook has created an arena where kids compete to be “liked” and constantly worry about what image to portray – much of what was once private is now made public. Sexy Baby is the first documentary film to put faces to a seismic cultural shift: the cyber age is creating a new sexual landscape.

The Invisible War is a groundbreaking investigative documentary about one of our country’s most shameful and best kept secrets: the epidemic of rape within our US military. Today, a female soldier in Iraq and Afghanistan is more likely to be raped by a fellow soldier than killed by enemy fire with the number of assaults in the last decade alone in the hundreds of thousands. ** Academy Award Nominee 2012, Best Documentary Feature ** Sundance Film Festival 2012

The Iran Job follows American basketball player Kevin Sheppard as he accepts a job to play in one of the world’s most feared countries: Iran. With tensions running high between Iran and the West, Kevin tries to separate sports from politics only to find that politics is impossible to escape in Iran. Along the way he forms an unlikely alliance with three outspoken Iranian women. Thanks to these women, his apartment turns into an oasis of free speech, where they discuss everything from politics to religion to gender roles. Kevin’s season in Iran culminates in something much bigger than basketball: the uprising and subsequent suppression of Iran’s reformist Green Movement – a powerful prelude to the sweeping changes across the Middle East in the wake of the Arab Spring.
** German Film Award 2014 Shortlist – Best Documentary
** Los Angeles Film Festival 2012

In this exposé, an intrepid group of Florida farmworkers battle to defeat the $4 trillion global supermarket industry through their ingenious Fair Food program, which partners with growers and retailers to improve working conditions for farm laborers in the United States. There is more interest in food these days than ever, yet there is very little interest in the hands that pick it. Farmworkers, the foundation of our fresh food industry, are routinelya bused and robbed of wages. In extreme cases they can be beaten, sexually harassed or even enslaved – all within the borders of the United States.

Sun Come Up follows the relocation of some of the world’s first environmental refugees, the Carteret Islanders – a community living on a remote island chain in the South Pacific Ocean. When rising seas threaten their survival, the islanders face a painful decision: they must leave their beloved land in search of a new place to call home.

The Only Real Game is a fighters’ and dreamers’ story about the magic of baseball for people in a remote and troubled place. Once princely Manipur, a strife-torn border state in northeast India, defies civil war, drugs, gun traffic, and HIV/AIDS through love of our national pastime. Dreams chase reality in this ancient region when a small group of baseball-loving New Yorkers, and two Major League Baseball Envoy coaches, team up with Manipuri men, women and children to “Play Ball.” It’s a far away story that brings us to the heart of the great American Game, or as Babe Ruth put it, “the only real game in the world.”

Starting in March of 2008, director Kat Vecchio began documenting the rise of men’s flat track roller derby. Chronicling the fringe of a fringe sport, the film follows the rise, occasional ridicule, and good spirited rivalries of men on roller skates. This is How I Roll is about being an outsider, an underdog, and an athlete. It is a story about having a passion for something most people just don’t understand and doing it anyway, in spite of the obstacles, the injuries, and even occasional ridicule. It also happens to be about men, with names like Dr. Spankenstein and Justice Feelgood Marshall, on roller skates.

Family Affair is an uncompromising documentary by Chico Colvard, which explores the complexities of a family subjected to enormous trauma, the depths of suffering a parent can inflict on his own children and yet also the remarkable resiliency that some people can muster even in the face of all this. The film is a meditation on forgiveness, on grace, and on the capacity of the human spirit to find love and meaning under the worst of circumstances. It was the first film to join OWN (The Oprah Winfrey Network)’s Documentary Film Club.</d

** Sundance Film Festival 2010

Playground is director Libby Spears’ sensitive investigation about the commercial sexual exploitation of American children, revealing that this sinister industry is not a problem exclusive to back-alley brothels in developing countries. Spears intelligently traces the epidemic to its disparate, and decidedly domestic, roots—among them the way children are educated about sex, and the problem of raising awareness about a crime that inherently cannot be shown.