Letter to the Captain

ONLY IN THEATERS, a film by actor/director Raphael Sbarge, is an intimate and moving journey taken with the Laemmle family, spanning nearly three years of challenges, losses, and personal triumphs. Laemmle Theatres, the beloved 84-year-old arthouse cinema chain 3rd generation family business in Los Angeles, is facing seismic change and financial pressure. Yet the family behind this multigenerational business – whose sole mission has been to support the art of film – is determined to survive.

What would your family reminiscences about dad sound like if he had been an early supporter of Hitler’s, a leader of the notorious SA and the Third Reich’s minister in charge of Slovakia, including its Final Solution? Executed as a war criminal in 1947, Hanns Ludin left behind a grieving widow and six young children, the youngest of whom became a filmmaker. It's a fascinating, maddening, sometimes even humorous look at what the director calls "a typical German story." (Film Forum)

Back To Africa

Out of love for Huskies, nature and cold winters Dave and Kristen Olesen moved from Minnesota to the North West Territories in Canada 25 years ago to create their own little universe on the magnificent East arm of Great Slave Lake. With their two daughters Annika 15 and Liv 12 and their 37 dogs, the Olesens enjoy a unique lifestyle in the wide open wilderness far away from civilization. One winter they all leave their self-built homestead with ten dogs on a two and a half thousand mile family expedition allowing Annika to run the Junior Iditarod in Alaska. As unexpected obstacles all along the trip culminate in three heavily injured dogs the whole endeavor is at risk. Optimism, love and loyalty prevail on this exciting epic family voyage.

RE:MEMBER is a documentary, split into three chapters, that provides insights into the topics of memory, media, and history, specifically through the lens of two millennial participants. Through their testimonies and introspections, we start to see the rift between the media they were nostalgic for and the reality we currently live in. They also consider how our current attitudes towards media have shaped our previous environments and how we can change society to better our future generations.

World-renowned Drag Queen Miz Cracker helps a Texas family that’s experiencing strange occurrences after renovating their 1892 home. As a lover of the paranormal, can Miz Cracker solve their ghost problem and help them coexist peacefully with the spirits?

Arctic Tale is a 2007 documentary film from the National Geographic Society about the life cycle of a walrus and her calf, and a polar bear and her cubs, in a similar vein to the 2005 hit production March of the Penguins, also from National Geographic.

An Oscar nominated documentary about a middle-class American family who is torn apart when the father Arnold and son Jesse are accused of sexually abusing numerous children. Director Jarecki interviews people from different sides of this tragic story and raises the question of whether they were rightfully tried when they claim they were innocent and there was never any evidence against them.

When a Mongolian nomadic family's newest camel colt is rejected by its mother, a musician is needed for a ritual to change her mind.

The documentary's title translates as "to be and to have", the two auxiliary verbs in the French language. It is about a primary school in the commune of Saint-Étienne-sur-Usson, Puy-de-Dôme, France, the population of which is just over 200. The school has one small class of mixed ages (from four to twelve years), with a dedicated teacher, Georges Lopez, who shows patience and respect for the children as we follow their story through a single school year.

Laosan, a young family man, spends all his time smoking opium. For his community, lost in the heart of the Laotian jungle, opium farming is the only way to survive. But opium is also the poison that puts men to sleep and kills their desires.

In this modern, coming of age documentary, Naomi, Jojo and Arham grapple with economic divides, gender roles, and family dynamics while competing in the fastest growing high school sport in the country: girl’s wrestling.

Chelsea Bledsoe and her husband Graig throw a surprise intervention for her old high school boyfriend, Henry, with a mismatched group of acquaintances from back in the day to fill out the guest list.

Lou Colpé has been filming her grandparents since she was 15. In the process of this intense relationship, she notices some disconcerting signs in her grandmother: Alzheimer’s is slowing her down. A new film begins, a tougher one: the story of a couple that must face a tremendous challenge. Struggling against the tide of oblivion, the task of filmmaking becomes the ultimate act of resistance. Trying to retain the last images of her grandparents, an intimate conversation begins and echoes through the songs that play on the radio, conjuring lost stories and memories.

This film is a poetic composition of recorded history and non-recorded memory. Filmmaker Rea Tajiri’s family was among the 120,000 Japanese and Japanese Americans who were imprisoned in internment camps after the attack on Pearl Harbor. And like so many who were in the camps, Tajiri’s family wrapped their memories of that experience in a shroud of silence and forgetting. This film raises questions about collective history – questions that prompt Tajiri to daringly re-imagine and re-create what has been stolen and what has been lost.

Following the death of their parents, Harriet and her siblings must unpack their childhood fears as they prepare to sell their dragon-filled Oxfordshire home. Between the clutter and the boxes, the siblings find themselves haunted by the memories of their late parents: a dragon-obsessed father and an exacting mother, and the esoteric collections of objects they left behind.

Terry Wilson is a 70-year-old lifelong resident of Meadowvale Village, Ontario's first heritage district. As development looms and begins to destroy Terry's favourite place in the world, he recreates pieces of history in his backyard, crafting an oasis where it feels like nothing has changed. A beautiful tribute to his childhood, his mother, and his town, Terry passionately fights to preserve history in a world that's too anxious for change.

Thomas Haemmerli is about to celebrate his fortieth birthday when he learns of his mother's death. A further shock follows when he and his brother Erik discover her apartment, which is filthy and full to bursting with junk. It takes the brothers an entire month to clean out the place. Among the chaos, they find films going back to the 1930s, photos and other memorabilia.

Jason Momoa's story of fatherhood, craftsmanship, and the legacy he'll leave behind.

An investigative and powerfully emotional documentary about the epidemic of rape of soldiers within the US military, the institutions that perpetuate and cover up its existence, and its profound personal and social consequences.