Headdress

For First Nations communities, the headdress bears significant meaning. It's a powerful symbol of hard-earned leadership and responsibility. As filmmaker JJ Neepin prepares to wear her grandfather's headdress for a photo shoot she reflects on lessons learned and the thoughtless ways in which the tradition has been misappropriated.

Zaineb Hates the Snow

When her mother remarries and her newly blended family moves to Canada, a 9-year-old Tunisia girl's life takes a profound turn as she struggles to find her place and maintain her Muslim identity in a new land.

The Cola Road

A short documentary following the launch of the first trial to use Coca-Cola's crates and distribution know-how to deliver life-saving anti-diarrhea kits in Zambia.

Before Summer Ends

After five years studying in Paris, Arash has not adjusted to life there and has decided to return to Iran to live. Hoping to change his mind, his two friends Hossein and Ashkan convince him to take a last trip through France.

Seven Moments

Is the story of women that were guerrilleras in Uruguay at the beginning of the 70's. Under an intimate focus, the film shows the moments of decision and the personal crossroads that it involve. The documentary search the experience and the look of common individuals in exceptional situations and goes to the bottom of the load of tensions, fears, contradictions and personal costs that those labor instants of the History have.

The Mermaid and the Diver

The body of Sinbad the Diver turned up floating off the Atlantic coast of Nicaragua. The mermaid had turned his soul into a turtle, and the turtle was the one who returned him to the world of men. Sinbad was born once more as a Miskito and was raised on the banks of the wonderful Coco River. When he grew up, nature took care of carrying him back to the sea, where the mermaid is waiting for him. The Mermaid and the Diver is a journey to Central America, to Nicaragua, to the Atlantic Coast, and to the Miskito people.

Let Them Wear Towels

During the 1977 World Series, Sports Illustrated reporter Melissa Ludtke was denied access to the players' locker room. After a very public fight, the door was opened, but the debate about female journalists in the male sanctum of the clubhouse remained. Through interviews with pioneering female sports writers, Let Them Wear Towels captures the raw behavior, humorous retaliation, angry lawsuits and remarkable resolve that went into the struggle for equal access for women reporters.

Rehje

After forty years living in Mexico City, Antonia longs to go back to her home town, a Mazahua village in the state of Mexico. When she returns, she discovers many things, including that a scarcity of water threatens life in her community.

Unteachable

Ng Meixi returns to Singapore having spent time in Mexico working with low-performing students. She joins a local school as a relief teacher but takes on a mammoth task: to pilot a new pedagogy to help students in the Normal (Technical) stream learn better. She reconfigures the classroom from a teacher-directed one to a community that aims to empower students as learners and tutors to each other. Will this work in Singapore’s result-oriented education system?

Bombshell: The Hedy Lamarr Story

The life and career of the hailed Hollywood movie star and underappreciated genius inventor, Hedy Lamarr.

The Aviatrix

In 1928, Lady Heath became the first person to fly solo from Cape Town to London. Eighty-five years later, Tracey Curtis-Taylor set out in a vintage biplane to fly that adventure again. Following Tracey as she retraces the journey, The Aviatrix is more than just a film about the rapture of flying – it’s a story about living life on your own terms and having the courage and determination to realise your greatest dreams.

She's Beautiful When She's Angry

A documentary that resurrects the buried history of the outrageous, often brilliant women who founded the modern women's movement from 1966 to 1971.

I Was Only 14

Filmmaker Froukje van Wengerden’s 86-year-old grandmother shares a powerful memory from 1944, when she was just 14. As her story unfolds, we see a group of contemporary 14-year-old girls. Their procession of portraits permits the spectator to see simultaneously forward and back, into the future and towards the past. A miraculous testimonial that uses eye contact to focus the viewer inward and evoke unexpected emotions.

Typhoid Mary

Story of Mary Mallon. Typhoid fever carrier

Wild Women Don't Have the Blues

Recaptures the lives and times of Ma Rainey, Bessie Smith, Ida Cox, Alberta Hunter, Ethel Waters, and the other legendary women who made blues music a vital part of American culture. The film brings together for the first time dozens of rare, classic renditions of the early blues.

Germany in Autumn

Nine fictitious documentaries and films reflect the mood of late 1970s Germany, particularly the two-month period in 1977 when a businessman was kidnapped by the RAF (Red Army Faction). The kidnap had been made to orchestrate the release of the original leaders of the RAF, aka the Baader-Meinhof.

Lessons for Zafirah

A metaphor of the Flood in our times, The Flood is the rain of violence that washes over us. Noah´s Ark is the train that runs through Mexico toward the United States and migrants are the species attempting to save their lives. For the directors, cinema moves people not just by condemnation, but by confronting and fostering emotions which lead to new, constructive ideas. This documentary became a cinematographic diary for their first viewer, their three-year-old daughter, Zafirah.

Abxang

New Generation Queens: A Zanzibar Soccer Story

On an island where religion bars women from playing soccer, the Queens resist cultural norms and challenge local assumptions about Islam and gender identity. The film explores the history and character of the team, and the evolving perception of women in sports on the island.

Johanna sucht das Glück

For three years, filmmaker Marion Kainz followed Johanna, a 13-year-old girl from Berlin, and captured her longing for security and freedom in a documentary about her journey toward an independent life.

All the Beauty and the Bloodshed

The life of internationally renowned artist and activist Nan Goldin is told through her slideshows, intimate interviews, ground-breaking photography, and rare footage of her personal fight to hold the Sackler family accountable for the overdose crisis.

How to Survive a Plague

A story of two coalitions – ACT UP and TAG (Treatment Action Group) – whose activism and innovation turned AIDS from a death sentence into a manageable condition. Despite having no scientific training, these self-made activists infiltrated the pharmaceutical industry and helped identify promising new drugs, moving them from experimental trials to patients in record time.

Feminists: What Were They Thinking?

In 1977, a book of photographs captured an awakening - women shedding the cultural restrictions of their childhoods and embracing their full humanity. This documentary revisits those photos, those women and those times and takes aim at our culture today that alarmingly shows the need for continued change.

Howard

Though legendary lyricist Howard Ashman died far too young, his impact on Broadway, movies, and the culture at large were incalculable. Told entirely through rare archival footage and interviews with Ashman’s family, friends, associates, and longtime partner Bill Lauch, Howard is an intimate tribute to a once-in-a-generation talent and a rousing celebration of musical storytelling itself.

Heart of a Dog

Musician and performance artist Laurie Anderson reflects on the deaths of her husband Lou Reed, her mother and her beloved dog.

Beyoncé: Life Is But a Dream

Life Is But a Dream is a HBO documentary about the life of US singer Beyoncé Knowles during the years 2011 and 2012 and on the recording of her fifth album. The film was directed by Beyoncé herself. The film shows Beyoncé from intimate moments of her pregnancy to behind the scenes and rehearsals of the main concerts of that time.

Cameraperson

As a visually radical memoir, CAMERAPERSON draws on the remarkable footage that filmmaker Kirsten Johnson has shot and reframes it in ways that illuminate moments and situations that have personally affected her. What emerges is an elegant meditation on the relationship between truth and the camera frame, as Johnson transforms scenes that have been presented on Festival screens as one kind of truth into another kind of story—one about personal journey, craft, and direct human connection.

Anna Nicole Smith: You Don't Know Me

From the heights of her modeling fame to her tragic death, this documentary reveals Anna Nicole Smith through the eyes of the people closest to her.

Harry Dean Stanton: Partly Fiction

An impressionistic portrait of the iconic actor Harry Dean Stanton comprised of intimate moments, film clips from some of his 250 films and his renditions of American folk songs.

Love, Gilda

Diaries, audiotapes, videotapes and testimonials from friends and colleagues offer insight into the life and career of Gilda Radner -- the beloved comic and actress who became an icon on Saturday Night Live.

Jane Fonda in Five Acts

Girl next door, activist, so-called traitor, fitness tycoon, Oscar winner: Jane Fonda has lived a life of controversy, tragedy and transformation – and she’s done it all in the public eye. An intimate look at one woman’s singular journey.

Fuck

A documentary on the expletive's origin, why it offends some people so deeply, and what can be gained from its use.

I Am Ali

Unprecedented access to Muhammad Ali's personal archive of "audio journals" as well as interviews and testimonials from his inner circle of family and friends are used to tell the legend's life story.

The War Room

A behind-the-scenes documentary about the Clinton for President campaign, focusing on the adventures of spin doctors James Carville and George Stephanopoulos.

Pray Away

In the 1970s, five men struggling with being gay in their Evangelical church started a bible study to help each other leave the "homosexual lifestyle." They quickly received over 25,000 letters from people asking for help and formalized as Exodus International, the largest and most controversial conversion therapy organization in the world. But leaders struggled with a secret: their own “same-sex attractions” never went away. After years as Christian superstars in the religious right, many of these men and women have come out as LGBTQ, disavowing the very movement they helped start. Focusing on the dramatic journeys of former conversion therapy leaders, current members, and a survivor, PRAY AWAY chronicles the “ex gay" movement’s rise to power, persistent influence, and the profound harm it causes.

Come See Me in the Good Light

In an intimate and joyful story of love in the face of loss, celebrated poets Andrea Gibson and Megan Falley find strength—and unexpected hilarity—in what might be their final year together.

Disclosure

An investigation of how Hollywood's fabled stories have deeply influenced how Americans feel about transgender people, and how transgender people have been taught to feel about themselves.

The Irishman: In Conversation

Martin Scorsese, Robert De Niro, Joe Pesci, and Al Pacino in conversation about The Irishman.

Bright Lights: Starring Carrie Fisher and Debbie Reynolds

An intimate portrait of Hollywood royalty featuring Debbie Reynolds, Todd Fisher, and Carrie Fisher.

Unknown Dimension: The Story of Paranormal Activity

A deep dive into the making of the Paranormal Activity films with first time ever interviews with cast and crew, never-before-seen footage from the movies, and a preview of the seventh installment in the franchise.