Skid Row

A biography of the Portuguese-born Brazilian singer Carmen Miranda, whose most distinctive feature was her tutti-frutti hat. From her arrival in the US as the "Brazilian Bombshell" to her Broadway career and Hollywood stardom in the 1940s.

Prison Dogs is a story of redemption, strength, fear, love, and dedication. In this wonderfully human tale, prison inmates, along with veterans suffering with PTSD, find a path to a second chance at life through their love and care of a puppy.

Fed up with being pushed around, a group of gay and trans teens of color form a gang and fight back on the brutal streets of Washington D.C. They call their gang ‘Check it’ and this group of one-time victims of bullying, rape and abuse have turned the tables on anyone trying to hurt them. The group formed to provide its members safety in numbers and let people know that if they jump a queer kid in D.C., they may get beaten into a coma. This raw and intimate portrait follows three childhood friends as they struggle to survive and claw their way out of gang life through an unlikely avenue: fashion.

The self-help industry is worth $11 billion dollars a year. It’s an industry that captivates those seeking happiness, release from suffering and those longing for a path and a leader to follow. James Arthur Ray for many who followed him was that leader to guide his flock. But as the story unfolds, as told by Ray himself and also by his followers, we learn that that path was fraught with danger and perhaps even greater suffering.

The controversial life story of America's greatest exotic dancer, who at 87 years old is preparing for her final and most important act: to repair her broken relationship with her daughter Patricia, who she walked away from fifty years ago.

Do you remember the last time you've talked to your parents? What did you talk about? Have you gone step further from weather forecast and daily politics? Five years after last gathering, a birthday celebration brings together an ordinary four member family. They start questioning what made them turn away from each other... Can having a conversation about buried family secrets help them eat without cramps in the stomach in the future? Can a failed birthday cake help them overcome the past? Through the ritual of family meals, the film tells how important is for us to feel accepted by our loved ones.

Once upon a time, in almost every industrial city, countless rivers flowed. We built houses along their banks. Our roads hugged their curves. And their currents fed our mills and factories. But as cities grew, we polluted rivers so much that they became conduits for deadly waterborne diseases like cholera, which was 19th century's version of the Black Plague. Our solution two centuries ago was to bury rivers underground and merge them with sewer networks. Today, under the city, they still flow, out of sight and out of mind... until now. That's because urban dwellers are on a quest to reconnect with this denigrated natural world. LOST RIVERS takes us on an adventure down below and across the globe, retracing the history of these lost urban rivers by plunging into archival maps and going underground with clandestine urban explorers.

"12 Months" (2014) - an award-winning documentary about a Los Angeles man who rents his three-bedroom home for $1 per month to help a family - he has never met - get on their feet. Told through the eyes of Felicia Dukes and her four children, the project puts a personal face on homelessness and encourages individuals to take personal responsibility for helping address societal concerns. This film has won Best Documentary at the Sunrise Film Festival in Nova Scotia, Canada, in October 2015, as well as has been screened within film festival in seven countries and 15 locations!

The Arab Spring in Egypt: From a dictator to free elections, back to a dictatorship. One comedy show united the country and tested the limits of free press. This is the story of Bassem Youssef, a cardiologist turned comedian, the Jon Stewart of Egypt, and his show "The Show".

The lives and careers of four Asian-American rappers trying to break into a world that often treats them as outsiders. Sharing dynamic live performance footage and revealing interviews, these artists will make the most skeptical critics into believers.

The House of Suh” tells the story of Andrew and his sister Catherine, and how the values, conflicts, and dysfunctions of their Korean immigrant family led to the murder of Robert O’Dubaine. Eloquently narrated by Andrew, the documentary highlights issues of assimilation and the struggle between freedom and responsibility, raising questions about guilt, innocence, and the illusive gray area in-between.

The film recounts Carlo Giuliani’s day of July 20 and, parallel to it, the July 20 of the march of the ‘disobedients’, or the ‘white overalls’, among whose ranks Carlo died. An individual’s story is told in all its absolute concreteness, the friends he meets, the snack bar he goes to for a bite, the roll of scotch tape he picks up on the street; whereas a multitude’s story is told in all its epic tragedy, the night under the rain, the colossal preparation against the march, the advance behind shields, the attack of which the multitude was victim, the defense that gets organized.

Documentary produced for the We Are Water Foundation, on the ecological disaster of the Aral Sea in Central Asia. Aral was just 50 years ago, the fourth largest lake in the world, with 66,000 square kilometers. Today is a vast desert with skeletons of boats stranded on the sand.

Whatever happened to this promising young actress from Hollywood? A search for "the woman in the car" through the never-ending suburbia of Los Angeles, where the myth of cinema reigns. A sort of thriller without a corpse.

How do you put a life into 500 words? Ask the staff obituary writers at the New York Times. OBIT is a first-ever glimpse into the daily rituals, joys and existential angst of the Times obit writers, as they chronicle life after death on the front lines of history.

There are 100,000 US citizens in solitary confinement across the country, a staggering number prompting comment from both President Obama and the Pope. Situated in rural Virginia, 300 miles from any urban center, Red Onion State Prison is one of over 40 supermax prisons across the US built to hold prisoners in eight-by-ten-foot cells for 23 hours a day. Filmed over the course of one year, this eye-opening film braids stark prison imagery, stories from correction officers, and intimate reflections from the men who are locked up in isolation. The inmates share the paths that led them to prison and their daily struggles to maintain their sanity.

In 1994, four women were accused, tried, and convicted of the heinous sexual assault of two young girls—as one newscaster puts it, “the modern version of the witchcraft trials.” Twenty years later, the four women have maintained their innocence, insisting that the accusations were entirely fabricated, and borne of homophobic prejudice and a late-’90s mania about covens, cults, and child abuse.

An art world upstart, provocative and elusive artist Maurizio Cattelan made his career on playful and subversive works that send up the artistic establishment, until a retrospective at the Guggenheim in 2011 finally solidified his place in the contemporary art canon. Axelrod's equally playful profile leaves no stone unturned in trying to figure out: who is Maurizio Cattelan?

Palavra (En)Cantada makes a journey in the history of the Brazilian songbook with a look at the relationship between poetry and music, sewing testimonials of great names of our culture, musical performances and amazing research of images.

A thought-provoking look at the subject of abortion today, told through the stories of women struggling with unplanned pregnancies, abortion providers and clinic staff and activists on both sides of this contentious debate.