Springdale, AR

Two filmmakers journey to Arizona's Sonoran Desert to find bufo alvarus, a psychedelic toad. TOAD TO NOWHERE is a documentary about healing, hallucinogens, and looking within to explore the unknown.

On November 4th, 2008, three states - California, Florida and Arizona - voted to amend their constitutions, denying and revoking the rights of same-sex couples to marry. On May 26, 2009, with Canadian allies, gay American families rally at a Vancouver demonstration to protest these amendments that persecute the LGBTQ community. Demonstration organizer Roger Chin relays the California Supreme Court's infamous decision on Prop 8. Subsequent speakers talk about couples living in exile. Weaving elements of public protest and intimate interviews, four families share their stories of how they met, their decision to escape to freedom in Canada, their Canadian experience and their dreams of returning to their home country, family and friends. In the end, the organizer celebrates the freedoms to marry that exists in Canada.

Documentary chronicling the government relocation of 10,000 Navajo Indians in Arizona.

Documents the cultural and ecological impacts of coal stripmining, uranium mining, and oil shale development in Utah, Colorado, New Mexico, and Arizona – homeland of the Hopi and Navajo.

“Keep Sweet” concerns the conflicts in two towns on opposite sides of a state line. The area of Hildale, Utah, and Colorado City, Ariz., was settled by members of a breakaway faction of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints that continued to practice polygamy after the church had banned it.

Après le déluge

In the Mexican state of Michoacán, Dr. Jose Mireles, a small-town physician known as "El Doctor," shepherds a citizen uprising against the Knights Templar, the violent drug cartel that has wreaked havoc on the region for years. Meanwhile, in Arizona's Altar Valley—a narrow, 52-mile-long desert corridor known as Cocaine Alley—Tim "Nailer" Foley, an American veteran, heads a small paramilitary group called Arizona Border Recon, whose goal is to halt Mexico’s drug wars from seeping across our border.

A resistance writer and pioneer of nature writing with a controversial personality, Edward Abbey wrote more than twenty books on the theme of eternal nature. A gem of counterculture, his 1975 novel The Monkey Wrench Gang inspired a generation of environmental activists and readers with rebellious souls. Portrait of a rebellious, lyrical, and rude writer.

The Grand Canyon is a breathtaking natural monument. It's one of the planet’s best-known landscapes, yet we often forget that it tells two billion years of the Earth's history. Geologists Karl Karlström and Laurie Crossey are the leading experts on this. Over the course of 8 days, they descend the Colorado river and tackle hundreds of rapids to unveil the mysteries held in the Grand Canyon, and the place that humans occupy within it.

It's the story of the effects of the Civil War on a southern family, a story of scandal, first love and lost dreams that turned a southern boy into a western legend. Join us as we go in search of the real "Doc" Holliday.

Hacking at Leaves documents artist and hazmat-suit aficionado Johannes Grenzfurthner as he attempts to come to terms with the United States' colonial past, Navajo tribal history, and the hacker movement. The story hones in on a small tinker space in Durango, Colorado, that made significant contributions to worldwide COVID relief efforts. But things go awry when Uncle Sam interferes with the film's production.

A creation myth centered around a canal in Mesa, Arizona.

Welcome to Florence, Arizona: a cowboy town with a prison problem. Just 8,500 residents call the tiny community home—but over 17,000 inmates live there, housed in nine jails spread out over a sprawling industrial prison complex. The economic fate of the town’s inhabitants is inextricably linked with the prisons—and the townspeople are not necessarily happy about it. Director Andrea B. Scott follows four colorful characters whose lives are tied up with the prisons, including the town’s aspiring mayor, a retired correctional officer and speed shooter, a barber who longs for the town’s free-spirited cowboy days, and troubled teen Marcus, whose parents met through their prison careers. “Florence, Arizona” is a richly drawn, humorous look at a singular small town whose Wild West roots are still very much alive in its outlaw identity today. -TCFF database

On the evening of February 9th, 1918 three local lawmen and one federal officer rode into the Arizona wilderness to apprehend four men on counts of draft evasion and murder. The violence that followed has been so steeped in legend, lies, and hearsay, that the facts of what occurred at that remote cabin and why were almost lost to history. Contemporary interviews with historians and family members, archival footage, and original artwork tell the story of the events leading up to and following the deadliest shootout in Arizona's history.

The parents of 9-year-old Katherine Figueroa are arrested when America’s Toughest Sheriff raids a Phoenix carwash suspected of hiring illegal workers. As young Kathy fights to save her parents from deportation, a community group succeeds in pressuring the County Board to investigate Sheriff Joe Arpaio’s spending priorities. When the sheriff retaliates against his political foes, his actions spark outrage, and a federal investigation.

A documentary about the impacts of climate change on the Republic of the Marshall Islands and its people. Most parts of the Marshall Islands are less than 5.9 feet above sea level. Forecasts predict the uninhabitability of the country by 2050.

Two journalists traverse the Grand Canyon by foot, hoping this 750-mile walk will help them better understand one of America's most revered landscapes and the threats poised to alter it forever.

Robert Stone’s Academy Award–nominated documentary reconstructs the 1946 Operation Crossroads nuclear tests at Bikini Atoll. Built largely from previously unseen U.S. government archival footage and eyewitness accounts, the film recounts the relocation of the Bikini Islanders and the experiences of American sailors who were exposed to radioactive fallout during the experiments. The documentary later aired as part of the PBS series American Experience.

Directed by Patrick Gramm, 'The Pigeon People' (2023) takes you deep into Arizona's underground pigeon racing scene as racing rivals prepare for and compete in the Grand Canyon Classic - a 350-mile pigeon race from Utah to Arizona that crosses over the Grand Canyon.

A group of African American students at the University of Arizona reveals the importance of political spaces within Universities in times of intolerance.