Who runs the world? With the recent surge of women in politics, director Chloe Sosa-Sims's timely feature debut focuses on three political stars in three countries. For Jess Phillips of the UK, Pramila Jayapal of the US and Canada's Conservative MP Michelle Rempel Garner, politics is a deep and committed passion. Positioned on different points along the political spectrum, they take on their jobs in government with bold determination, advocating for their individual agendas. Phillips is focused on combating domestic violence, while Jayapal has set her sights on a new bill to expand American health care and Rempel Garner is looking for ways to create jobs for oil workers in her home province of Alberta. With elections looming in all three countries, the women are working hard on reforming patriarchal political institutions from the inside, and despite their differences they each fight to rise to the occasion.
When international sport governing bodies rule that 'identified' female athletes must medically alter their healthy bodies under the guise of fair play, four champion runners from the Global South fight back against racism, the policing of women's bodies in sport, and the violation of their human rights.
Anne Bennett wakes up in a hospital, convinced she is recovering from minor surgery only to find herself in a battle of wits with a psychiatrist who can't let her leave until she remembers "what happened that night." Events turn a darker corner as doctor and patient try to unlock not only what traumatic event Anne is suppressing, but also who was there, why it happened, and why Anne's subconscious is fighting so hard to prevent her from talking about it.
Return To The Moon is a CG short film created in Blender. It follows a hypothetical mission called HLS I. It's goal is to perform an uncrewed Lunar Landing.
“Luminous” tells the story of the first astronomer in history to publicly predict the near-future explosion of a star. But will he be right? Others in the astronomical community are skeptical, and professional reputations hang in the balance. In production since 2014, “Luminous” follows Calvin College astronomy professor Larry Molnar’s five-year journey to test his unprecedented prediction, knowing that its success or failure will unfold squarely in the international spotlight.
Mobile homes have long been an affordable option for people who struggle with the cost of other housing in the United States. But now the economy of mobile home parks is under threat as private equity firms are buying up properties and looking to squeeze more money out of mobile home owners. Filmmaker Sara Terry uses this backdrop to explore urgent class issues that resonate across America, and especially in the high-priced rental market of New York City.
Fifty-year-old Maria Garcia is the owner of the Dos Estaciones, a once-majestic tequila factory struggling to stay afloat, and the final hold-over from generations of Mexican-owned tequila plants in the highlands of Jalisco; the rest have folded to foreign corporations. Once one of the wealthiest people in town, Maria knows her current financial situation is untenable. When a persistent plague and an unexpected flood cause irreversible damage, she is forced to do everything she can to save her community's main source of economy and pride.
At a late-night seance, attended by twelve people, the medium announces that five secrets will be revealed before midnight. There might, however, be one more - the darkest of them all.
Summer 1967. Two little boys, 9 and 11, drive a pony cart from Needham, Mass. to Montreal on their own—325 miles—to visit the Expo ’67—the World’s Fair.
From its shocking opening image of a bridge snapped in two, Zero Position crosses an eerie landscape fractured by dueling Russian separatist and Ukrainian forces. On this cinematic journey, there are no interviews or extensive explanations of the conflict between the opposing sides. Accompanied by an evocative soundscape, the film moves like a ghostly presence through a troubled region, pausing at heavily armed checkpoints and competing front lines. As the camera captures people scurrying past the aftermath of conflict, carrying plastic bags bulging with items gleaned from abandoned homes, we see the stark reality of a people caught in a borderland between East and West. Director Louie Palu's expressive, sparse and poetically delivered voiceover adds context to places the nightly news cameras don't take us, including an old coal mine and a family's home. Through its mood and atmosphere, Zero Position offers us an experiential look at a region on the brink of all-out war.
Although the Chinese government promised that Hong Kong would retain separate status until 2047, in recent years the Chinese state has consolidated its power over the metropolis. Large-scale protests by the populace have been brutally suppressed. This mix of documentary, fiction, and visions of the future reveals the current state of desolate depression among the people of Hong Kong. “A desperate attempt to capture the final moments of a sinking island”, as maker Chan Tze-woon himself puts it.
On Nov. 5, 2021, rapper Travis Scott headlined the Astroworld Festival in Houston, which tragically led to the deaths of 10 concertgoers in a crowd crush.
In the shadow of the pandemic, a small town rallies to protect a beloved local bookstore. A landmark in Lenox, Massachusetts, The Bookstore is a magical, beatnik gem thanks to its owner Matt Tannenbaum, whose passion for stories runs deep. This portrait of The Bookstore and the family at its heart offers a journey through good times, hard times, and the stories hidden on the shelves.
The fall of 2021 marked the 50th anniversary of Fiddler on the Roof, the film Pauline Kael (The New Yorker) called "the most powerful movie musical ever made." Narrated by Jeff Goldblum, FIDDLER'S JOURNEY TO THE BIG SCREEN captures the humor and drama of director Norman Jewison's quest to recreate the lost world of Jewish life in Tsarist Russia and re-envision the beloved stage hit as a wide-screen epic. Oscar-nominated filmmaker Daniel Raim puts us in the director's chair and in Jewison's heart and mind, drawing on behind-the-scenes footage and never-before-seen stills as well as original interviews with Jewison, Topol (Tevye), composer John Williams, production designer Robert F. Boyle, film critic Kenneth Turan, lyricist Sheldon Harnick, and actresses Rosalind Harris, Michele Marsh, and Neva Small (Tevye’s daughters). The film explores how the experience of making Fiddler deepened Jewison as an artist and revived his soul.
A rogue Chinese biophysicist disappears after developing the first designer babies, shocking the world and the entire scientific community, but an investigation shows he may not have been alone in his attempts to create a “better” human being.
A filmmaker unearths a pervasive history of multigenerational trauma in her Italian-American family. As decades of secrets, home movies, and long-avoided conversations surface, a family once bound by tradition forges a new path forward.
When Portugal was a great power bridging the Old and New Worlds, wild mountain horses, small enough for large ships, were captured and exported to gold-hungry conquerors. Now the seahorses of the Algarve in Portugal are threatened by the excesses of tourism: sinking anchors, noisy jet skis, illegal fishing...
The plight of China’s Kazakh Muslims is little-known. But tens of thousands of them are locked up or missing in China’s Xinjiang province, alongside hundreds of thousands more Uyghurs. Now, whistle-blowers who worked inside mass detention units – so-called 're-education centres' - have revealed shocking accounts of ethnic Uyghur and Kazakh Muslims being subjected to horrifying abuse and systematic violence. Since 2014, Chinese authorities have been imprisoning Muslims in Xinjiang. Thousands of Kazakh muslims have been detained in 're-education' camps. Khalida Aqitqan's three sons are currently imprisoned: 'I don't know which prison they are in. I don't know if they are dead or alive'. Appalling treatment has been documented: 'There is evidence of mistreatment amounting to torture', says journalist Alison Killing.
Interior decorator Zuri Maxwell had it all – a career she adored, loving family and friends, and a good man in her life, artist Stephon Gardner. But greed threatens to destroy everything, when Zuri meets handsome benefactor and entrepreneur Godfrey Anderson and his fabulously wealthy aunt Miss Viv. They have everything Zuri thinks she wants. As Godfrey romances her, she compromises the values and morals that should guide her in an effort to be part of the moneyed world she so desperately wants to be part of.