Playlist
<p>A bureaucrat interviews five souls to decide which of them will be given a life on Earth. But he soon faces an existential challenge of his own.</p>
<p>A pair of teenage girls in rural Pennsylvania travel to New York City to seek out medical help after an unintended pregnancy.</p>
<p>Reunited after a 17-year separation, Walter, an Angolan immigrant, is joined in the U.S. by his wife and teenage daughter. Now absolute strangers sharing a one-bedroom apartment, they discover a shared love of dance that may help overcome the emotional distance between them.</p>
<p>Cole Freeman maintains an uneasy equilibrium in his rural Appalachian town, looking after the old and infirm while selling their excess painkillers to local addicts. But when an old friend returns with plans that upend the fragile balance and identity he’s so painstakingly crafted, Cole is forced to take action.</p>
<p>Turquoise, a former beauty queen turned hardworking single mother, prepares her rebellious teenage daughter for the “Miss Juneteenth” pageant, hoping to keep her from repeating the same mistakes in life that she did.</p>
<p>A young Brooklyn couple head upstate to disconnect from their phones and reconnect with themselves. Cut off from their devices, they miss the news that the planet is under attack.</p>
<p>Amy, an 11-year-old girl, joins a group of dancers named “the cuties” at school, and rapidly grows aware of her burgeoning femininity—upsetting her mother and her values in the process.</p>
<p>When her village is threatened with forced resettlement due to reservoir construction, an 80-year-old widow finds a new will to live and ignites the spirit of resilience within her community.</p> <p>In the mountains of Lesotho, an 80-year-old widow named Mantoa eagerly awaits her son’s return from working in the South African mines, only to learn of his demise instead. Yearning for her own death after the loss of her last remaining family member, she puts her affairs in order and makes arrangements to be buried in the local cemetery. Her careful plans are abruptly upset by the news that provincial officials intend to resettle the village, flood the entire area, and build a dam for a reservoir. Mantoa resolves herself to defend the spiritual heritage of the community.</p> <p>Writer/director Lemohang Jeremiah Mosese crafts a vivid and ethereal meditation on life, death, and the power of the human spirit. Veteran actress Mary Twala Mhlongo commands the screen, beautifully portraying a woman fighting her last and most important battle. This Is Not A Burial, It’s A Resurrection creates an ode to a way of life perhaps soon to disappear in the name of progress and guides us through a world where the dead co-exist with the living.</p>
<p>Exil tells the story of a chemical engineer of foreign origin who feels discriminated and bullied at work, plunging him into an identity crisis.</p>
<p>When British aid worker Hana returns to Luxor, a sleepy city on the banks of the Nile, she comes across Sultan, a talented archeologist and former lover. As she wanders, haunted by the familiar place, she struggles to reconcile the choices of the past with the uncertainty of the present.</p>
<p>Tasya Vos, an elite corporate assassin, uses brain-implant technology to take control of other people’s bodies to terminate high profile targets. As she sinks deeper into her latest assignment, Vos becomes trapped inside a mind that threatens to obliterate her.</p>
<p>A look at the lives and trauma surrounding three people living in a southern town.</p>
<p>Chronicling the life of Lay’n Pipe, a 47 foot TopGun Cigarette speedboat, from its conception through the end of human civilization. It’s not just a speedboat ride, it’s a Miami adventure.</p>
<p>Desperate for an online following, a rideshare driver has figured out a deadly plan to go viral and he will stop at nothing to get his five minutes of fame.</p>
<p>Brilliant, visionary Nikola Tesla fights an uphill battle to bring his revolutionary electrical system to fruition, then faces thornier challenges with his new system for worldwide wireless energy. The film tracks Tesla’s uneasy interactions with his fellow inventor Thomas Edison and his patron George Westinghouse. Another thread traces Tesla’s sidewinding courtship of financial titan J.P. Morgan, whose daughter Anne takes a more than casual interest in the inventor. Anne analyzes and presents the story as it unfolds, offering a modern voice to this scientific period drama which, like its subject, defies convention.</p>
<p>A man refuses all assistance from his daughter as he ages and, as he tries to make sense of his changing circumstances, he begins to doubt his loved ones, his own mind and even the fabric of his reality.</p>
<p>A mother helps her daughter work through four crucial days of recovery from substance abuse.</p>
<p>An equal rights crusader, journalist and activist: Gloria Steinem embodies these and more. From her role in the revolutionary women’s rights movement to her travels throughout the U.S. and around the world, Steinem has made an everlasting mark on modern history. A nontraditional chronicle of a trailblazing life.</p>
<p>Struggling to provide her daughters with a safe, happy home, Sandra decides to build one - from scratch. Using all her ingenuity to make her ambitious dream a reality, Sandra draws together a community to lend a helping hand to build her house and ultimately recover her own sense of self.</p>
<p>A socially awkward woman with a fondness for arts and crafts, horses, and supernatural crime shows finds her increasingly lucid dreams trickling into her waking life.</p>
<p>Cold War spy Greville Wynne and his Russian source try to put an end to the Cuban Missile Crisis.</p>
<p>A young woman, traumatized by a tragic event in her past, seeks out vengeance against those who crossed her path.</p>
<p>Kenneth Feinberg, a powerful D.C. lawyer appointed Special Master of the 9/11 Fund, fights off the cynicism, bureaucracy, and politics associated with administering government funds and, in doing so, discovers what life is worth.</p>
<p>A woman inherits a house in her ancestral village, but she’s unaware that members of the community have been trying to locate and kill her to remove the curse that has plagued them for years.</p>
<p>When elderly mother Edna inexplicably vanishes, her daughter rushes to the family’s decaying home, finding clues of her increasing dementia scattered around the house in her absence.</p>
<p>Kyle and Mike are best friends who share a close bond — until Mike sleeps with Kyle’s fiancée. A stormy but enduring relationship ensues between Kyle, with limitless patience, and Mike, who only lives his life by sowing discord in that of others, across many years of laughter, heartbreak, and rage.</p>
<p>In the aftermath of a tragic fire in a Romanian club, burn victims begin dying in hospitals from wounds that were not life threatening. A team of investigative journalists move into action uncovering the mass corruption of the health system and of the state institutions. Collective follows journalists, whistle blowers, and authorities alike. An immersive and uncompromising look into a dysfunctional system, exposing corruption, propaganda, and manipulation …more</p>
<p>Accused of the genocide of Mayan people, retired general Enrique is trapped in his mansion by massive protests. Abandoned by his staff, the indignant old man and his family must face the devastating truth of his actions and the growing sense that a wrathful supernatural force is targeting them for his crimes.</p>
<p>Preeminent West African curator and scholar Funmilayo Akechukwu’s magnum opus, , leads her to the heart of the Atlantic Ocean, drawing a journalist into a journey that shatters her understanding of consciousness and time.</p>
<p>This film follows Sweetwater Sahme and Jordan Mercier's wanderings through each of their worlds as they wonder through and contemplate the afterlife, rebirth, and the place in-between. Spoken mostly in chinuk wawa, their stories are departures from the Chinookan origin of death myth, with its distant beginning and circular shape.</p>
<p>This raucous journey into the heart of democracy captures an unusual rite of passage: 1,100 teenage boys from across Texas coming together to build a representative government from the ground up.</p>
<p>Down the road from Woodstock in the early 1970s, a revolution blossomed in a ramshackle summer camp for disabled teenagers, transforming their young lives and igniting a landmark movement.</p>
<p>Desperation drove Sibil and Rob Richardson to rob a bank in 1997, not far from a location where Bonnie and Clyde once operated. It earned them the dubious nickname “the Black Bonnie and Clyde.” The loot amounted to a little more than five thousand dollars. Sibil got five years in prison, but Rob was sentenced to sixty years.</p> <p>When she was released after three years, Sibil did more than hold her own. She raised her six sons alone, and as Fox Rich she developed into a successful entrepreneur, rhetorical powerhouse and spokesperson for the Black community.</p> <p>Fragments from her past and present are combined to produce the epic yet intimate testimony of a woman on a mission. She continued to fight against the judicial system: every year she tried in vain to have her husband released early. Lively home videos show her sons growing up to be intelligent young adults, despite the absence of their father. Sometimes Sibil’s doubts and anger are almost tangible, but the central theme is always her all-encompassing love for her family.</p>
<p>This searing investigative work shadows a group of activists risking unimaginable peril to confront the ongoing anti-LGBTQ program raging in the repressive and closed Russian republic. Unfettered access and a remarkable approach to protecting anonymity exposes this under-reported atrocity–and an extraordinary group of people confronting evil.</p>
<p>Inside the ACLU, five scrappy lawyers battle against the Trump administration’s historic assault on civil liberties - from separating families at the border, to rolling back transgender, reproductive, and voting rights.</p>
<p>Nowhere is the worldwide erosion of democracy, fueled by social media disinformation campaigns, more starkly evident than in the authoritarian regime of Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte. Journalist Maria Ressa places the tools of the free press—and her freedom—on the line in defense of truth and democracy.</p>
<p>Modern society sits at the intersection of two crucial questions: What does it mean when artificial intelligence (AI) increasingly governs our liberties? And what are the consequences for the people Al is biased against? When MIT Media Lab researcher Joy Buolamwini discovers that most facial-recognition software does not accurately identify darker-skinned faces and the faces of women, she delves into an investigation of widespread bias in algorithms. As it turns out, artificial intelligence is not neutral, and women are leading the charge to ensure our civil rights are protected.</p> <p><em>Not available - 13th Annual Imagine Science Film Festival (Oct 16-23, 2020)</em></p>
<p>An industry insider exposes the devastating consequences of the Deepwater Horizon oil spill and uncovers systemic corruption between government and industry to silence the victims of a growing public health disaster. Stakes could not be higher as the Trump administration races to open the entire U.S. coastline to offshore drilling.</p>
<p>Once the world’s most famous astrologer, Walter Mercado seeks to resurrect a forgotten legacy. Raised in the sugar cane fields of Puerto Rico, Walter grew up to become a gender non-conforming, cape-wearing psychic whose televised horoscopes reached 120 million viewers a day for decades before he mysteriously disappeared.</p>
<p>In 1991 a group of countercultural visionaries built an enormous replica of earth’s ecosystem called Biosphere 2. When eight “biospherians” lived sealed inside, they faced ecological calamities and cult accusations. Their epic adventure is a cautionary tale but also a testament to the power of small groups reimagining the world.</p>
<p>Based on the book by Naoki Higashida, filmmaker Jerry Rothwell examines the lives of five non-speaking, autistic youngsters.</p>
<p>Single mother Anna and her four children live in the front-line war zone of Donbas, Ukraine. While the outside world is made up of bombings and chaos, the family is managing to keep their home a safe haven, full of life and full of light. Every member of the family has a passion for cinema, motivating them to shoot a film inspired by their own life during a time of war. The creative process raises the question of what kind of power the magical world of cinema could have during times of disaster. How to picture war through fiction? For Anna and the children, transforming trauma into a work of art is the ultimate way to stay human.</p>
<p>Charting the recent advancements in weaponized communication by investigating the rise and fall of the world’s most notorious public relations and reputation management firm: the British multinational Bell Pottinger.</p>
<p>In 2016, a young Austrialian filmmaker began documenting amateur inventor Peter Madsen. One year in, Madsen brutally murdered Kim Wall aboard his homemade submarine. An unprecedented revelation of a killer and the journey his young helpers take as they reckon with their own complicity and prepare to testify.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>Explore the personal and professional triumphs and challenges of actor Natalie Wood, which have often been overshadowed by her premature death.</p>
<p>The Okavango River, one of Earth's most remarkable waterways, embarks on a 1,500-kilometer journey from Angola's highlands through Namibia and into Botswana, where it forms an expansive delta before vanishing into the Kalahari Desert. This inland delta creates a lush oasis that sustains a rich tapestry of life. The documentary delves into the intricate relationships between the river's seasonal rhythms and the survival of its diverse inhabitants, from majestic elephants and stealthy leopards to resilient lion prides and vibrant bird species. Through stunning visuals and insightful narration, the film captures the essence of this unique ecosystem and the challenges faced by its wildlife.</p>
<p>The community of Paradise, California, a town in the Sierra Nevada foothills, attempts to rebuild after devastating wildfires in 2018.</p>
<p>This documentary-drama hybrid explores the dangerous human impact of social networking, with tech experts sounding the alarm on their own creations.</p>
<p>The haunting story of music executive Drew Dixon as she grapples with her decision to become one of the first women of color, in the wake of #MeToo, to come forward and publicly accuse hip-hop mogul Russell Simmons of sexual misconduct. A gripping and profound examination of race, gender, intersectionality, and the toll sexual abuse takes on survivors and on society at large.</p>
<p>Since an attack on students of the Ayotzinapa Rural Teachers’ College in 2014 resulted in six deaths and in the forced disappearance of 43, the students’ families have been living in limbo with their unanswered questions, their struggle embodying the psychological and emotional toll of endemic violence upon Mexican society.</p>
<p>This is a film for these frenetic times; a meditative respite from the rush and chaos of the modern world. A study of the universal experience of sleep, that unites us all.</p>
<p>A visceral, rarely-seen look into the personal stories of those most affected by ongoing national emergencies.</p>
<p>A black boy learns contradicting lessons of manhood and masculinity on the day of his cousin’s funeral.</p>
<p>A sedated young jaguar dispassionately ruminates over his latest victims as well as the object of his affection in this mesmerizing video diary.</p>
<p>Saad, a Muslim married man, gets over his depression after a space Alien is introduced into his life.</p>
<p>An existential comedy about the mother of two young children who begins to spontaneously vomit plastic toy blocks.</p>
<p>Caught in the throes of a depressive fugue, young Lynn resorts to debauchery to find joy — only to discover that happiness is a much more complicated proposition.</p>
<p>A visual exploration of progressive atrophy. A study in how microscopic changes can go unnoticed, but amass over time. Even as these changes become drastic, we sometimes fail to realize anything has happened at all.</p>
<p>A pregnant vegan struggles with her newfound craving for meat.</p>
<p>Meridian follows the last unit in a fleet of autonomous machines sent to deliver an emergency vaccine. The film shows footage transmitted by the machine before its disappearance, tracing a path that seems to stray further and further from its objective.</p> <p>Meridian is inspired by a real event that occurred in Washington, DC on July 17, 2017, where an automated security robot from the company Knightscope was found floating in a fountain at the building it patrolled. It had plunged into the water while on a routine patrol, spurring speculation about whether the machine had chosen to end its life or if this was just a glitch in an otherwise reliable new technology. Perhaps more interesting than the fate of the machine was the desire to see its death within a human context. With this story in mind, Meridian looks for parallels between automation and purgatory, depression and malfunction.</p>
<p>Three strangers confront death in a modern interpretation of a Tolstoy short story.</p>
<p>Abdellah, a young shepherd living in the mountains, is forced to brave the snow blocking him in order to get food and save this cattle. Once he gets to the village, he faces a supernatural phenomenon.</p>
<p>A teenage girl gets involved in the process of delivering a pack of cocaine to its client, and gets stuck in a weird cycle of occurrences.</p>
<p>A single mother struggles to connect with her adopted son, who she believes is gay. Her assumptions about her son’s needs and desires lead to a cascading series of calamities.</p>
<p>A collage of an American poem, exploring the universality of womanhood.</p>
<p>Insecure and balding Leo has closed himself in his apartment to try a hair growth liquid for fixing up his looks. As Leo tries to get his bodily changes under control the evening quickly turns into chaos.</p>
<p>After a woman escapes the captivity of her abusive family, a magazine invites her to a journalistic experiment: to hear music for the first time.</p>
<p>Following the death of his father, a man must survive the manifestations of his inner demons over the course of a dreary night.</p>
<p>Ren promises to keep a secret for her neighbor’s son–a secret she can share with no one on the island. Her only refuge from sleepless nights is her deceased husband.</p>
<p>A true story from the realms of high strangeness, magical thinking, and manic delusion.</p>
<p>Romance doesn’t get much more perverse or deranged than the gory mayhem that transpires throughout this absurdist mixed media animation as it unravels a riotous tale of courtly love and meat grinders.</p>
<p>Yesterday, I overheard an old rock ’n’ roll song that sounded familiar. This is probably the music that we used to listen to on my dad’s mechanical devices—the thousand-lives man, the king of the juke-box.</p>
<p>The caretaker exhausted by everything, his frustrated wife and one totally depressed deer. Their mutual despair leads them to absurd events, because… shit happens all the time.</p>
<p>Completed before Hong Kong’s pro-democracy protests of 2019, the dark turns taken in the lives of an ex-activist vegetarian cow and a three-headed rabbit show what may have caused tensions to boil over.</p>
<p>Deep in the forest, a hunter encounters a strange creature he cannot kill.</p>
<p>John Shepherd spent 30 years trying to contact extraterrestrials by broadcasting music millions of miles into space. After giving up the search, he makes a different connection here on earth.</p>
<p>At the Philadelphia abortion helpline, counselors field nonstop calls from women and teens who are seeking to end a pregnancy but can’t afford to, illustrating how economic stigma and cruel laws determine who has access to abortion in America.</p>
<p>Migrant laborers endure a precarious existence in the face of hazardous working conditions and unscrupulous employers in Hira Nabi’s docufiction portrait of the ship breaking yard in Gadani, Pakistan. In this docu-fictional work, 'Ocean Master' a container vessel is anthropomorphized, and enters into a dialogue with several workers at the Gadani yards. </p>
<p>While the space and arms races are Cold War common knowledge, few know about the United States and Soviet Union’s race to dig the deepest hole. This is particularly surprising since Hell may have been inadvertently discovered in the process.</p>
<p>The story of the 2019 Hong Kong protests, told through a series of demonstrations by local protestors that escalate into conflict when highly armed police appear on the scene.</p>
<p><strong>Available only in the United States</strong></p> <p>This stunning otherworldly short film takes a deep dive into lichen, a species that confounds scientists to this day. Shot in macro 3D, Lichen offers us a look at this remarkable life form and asks what we might learn from it. Ancient and diverse, both an individual and a community, lichens can live in the most extreme environments, including outer space. This meditative film bridges science and philosophy, and the words of lichenologist Trevor Goward illuminate the terrain in poetic and thought-provoking ways.</p>
<p>Focusing on the exercise by women of their right to bare their breasts in public, this film is an investigation into how prohibitions on female toplessness are grounded in fear of, and desire to control, the female body.</p>
<p>A young female intern at a small magazine company becomes involved with a drug-addicted lesbian photographer, both of whom seek to exploit each other for their respective careers, while slowly falling in love with each other.</p>