Famous for its Heavenly Hots (pancakes topped with fruit compote), Ina’s was a Chicago breakfast institution. Every customer received a warm welcome from proprietor and chef Ina Pinkney, the “Breakfast Queen.” After 33 years in the restaurant business, Pinkney retired in 2013. Following the restaurant’s final month, Breakfast at Ina’s celebrates a beloved Chicago eatery and a woman who achieved her dream against the odds.
Two best friends spent the last fifteen years touring the country in their performance art punk band. When one of them decides to quit, they both face deeper challenges than expected.
Forty years after the Fall of Saigon, a young Vietnamese woman is among the Vietnam War's uncounted casualties. Born near fields where American planes sprayed Agent Orange, Thao lives with severe physical deformities. Halfway around the world, a woman in New York is struggling to cope after the sudden death of her famed younger sister. In the midst of her crippling depression, a friend shows Elizabeth a black-and-white photograph from a recent trip abroad. The image haunts Elizabeth.
The life, legacy and musical accomplishments of singer, musician, pianist, songwriter and Civil Rights activist, Nina Simone through interviews with over 50 of the subject’s friends, family, band members, lovers and fellow activists. The film has been called the best of the three Nina Simone films by The New Yorker Magazine.
Celebrates the stories of eight female vocalists in the heavy metal genre. Through personal interviews, behind the scenes insights, and concert footage, these women describe in their own words, their choices, their lives, and the hardships and triumphs of being center stage in what is widely perceived as a male-dominated music scene.
This captivating documentary follows tough-as-nails lawyer (and former Mrs. Wisconsin) Kimberley Motley, the only American allowed to practice law in Afghanistan. Motley defends US and European citizens caught in the country’s legal and political quagmire, even as she finds herself under threat of assassination. While Motley brazenly chastises Afghani judges on behalf of her clients, she must also balance the needs of her family a world away.
More than 10 years after the release of Green Day's American Idiot, the 2015 Rock and Roll Hall of Fame Inductees present this time capsule rock doc that takes us inside the making of their award-winning punk rock opera.
In the frontlines of the war against ISIS, Seyyed Ahmad and Seyyed Jafar lead a group of Shia volunteer fighters in action at the battle for Jorf al-Sakhar, 60 km southwest of Baghdad. These under-equipped but determined volunteers manage to liberate in two days of intense fighting an area that the American forces had all but conceded to Al-Qaeda for over a decade.
A feature documentary on African American ballerina Misty Copeland that examines her prodigious rise, her potentially career ending injury alongside themes of race and body image in the elite ballet world.
In 2014 & 2015, filmmaker Robert Mugge assisted Philadelphia public radio station WXPN in it's exploration of the Creole culture of Southwest Louisiana via it's yearlong Zydeco Crossroads project. The resulting film features performances by C.J. Chenier, Rosie Ledet, Buckwheat Zydeco, Nathan Williams, Chubby Carrier, Rockin' Dopsie, Jr., Major Handy, Vasti Jackson, Creole United, and Soul Creole.
Can the Holy Spirit direct a movie? In this emotional follow up to the popular and controversial Holy Ghost, Director Darren Wilson continues his journey around the world in his quest to make a movie that is completely led by the Holy Spirit.
In 2012, jihadists took control of northern Mali. They imposed one of the strictest interpretations of sharia law in history. On August 12th they banned music - radio stations destroyed, instruments burned and musicians facing torture, even death. Overnight, Mali’s most revered members of society – the musicians – were forced into hiding or exile. This film follows Mali’s musicians as they fight to keep music alive in their country. We witness fierce battles between the army and the jihadists, capture life over borders at refugee camps where money and hope are scarce, follow perilous journeys home to war ravaged cities, and for one band, Songhoy Blues, their path to international stardom.
43 young male students were abducted from a Mexican college on September 26, 2014. They have yet to resurface. This documentary probes the disturbing event, how it shook a community, and the troubling search for the missing students.
The follow up to The Prime Ministers: The Pioneers, which opened in theatres throughout North America in the fall of 2013, The Prime Ministers: Soldiers and Peacemakers follows the experiences of Ambassador Yehuda Avner during the years he worked for Prime Ministers Yitzhak Rabin and Menachem Begin. Based on Ambassador Avner's best-selling book, "The Prime Ministers", the film opens in 1974 as Rabin becomes the country's first native born Israeli Prime Minister. It then examines the negotiations for the first bilateral treaty between Israel and Egypt in 1975, the events surrounding Israel's rescue of hostages in Entebbe in 1976, Rabin's tense relationship between newly elected US President Jimmy Carter, and his subsequent resignation after financial scandal involving his wife Leah.