Facing the Music

Franklin Shepard is a talented Broadway composer who abandons his theater career and all his friends in New York in order to produce films in Los Angeles. The story begins at the height of his Hollywood fame and moves backwards in time, showing snapshots of the most important moments in Frank’s life that shaped the man he is today.

Perfect Life, the second feature by Emily Tang (Tang Xiaobai), at first revolves around Li Yueying, a young woman in the cold north-east of China. In a world where no one is waiting for an untrained, inexperienced woman, she knows that in order to fulfil her dreams she will have to resort to her own stubbornness and selfishness. Her father deserted her mother and the money saved by the family is destined for her younger brother's studies. When she stops working for a shop making artificial limbs in order to take a job as a chambermaid, she attracts the attention of a mysterious criminal, Mongol. Then in the editing, the documentary story of Jenny from Hong Kong starts to emerge. She thought she had her life perfectly worked out, but when her marriage breaks down, she also finds herself in financial problems and has to fight for the custody of her children.

Zamilovaná

According to the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, one veteran dies by suicide in America every 80 minutes. While only 1% of Americans has served in the military, former service members account for 20% of all suicides in the U.S. Based in Canandaigua, NY and open 24 hours a day, 365 days a year, the Veterans Crisis Line receives more than 22,000 calls each month from veterans of all conflicts who are struggling or contemplating suicide. This timely documentary spotlights the traumas endured by America’s veterans, as seen through the work of the hotline’s trained responders. CRISIS HOTLINE captures extremely private moments, where the professionals, many of whom are themselves veterans or veterans’ spouses, can often interrupt the thoughts and plans of suicidal callers to steer them out of crisis.

Somewhere in a subtropical country white visitors crowd around dark-skinned plantation workers emptying their harvest baskets. They look curious, as if wanting to test the quality of the tea leaves. Everywhere tourists take out their cameras ­ whether in front of large animals in the wild or camel riders, whether in the face of decorated human bodies or daily work routines. Now and again they look into the camera themselves. For later, for when they will proudly show their 'exotic' finds at home. This posing contains a model of western travels and picture making which is over a century old. The fascinated gaze on the foreigners fixes them in pre-formed frames. Lisl Ponger follows the trail of that gaze by taking amateur found footage material and linking it together in new ways.

Another early experiment in portraiture from Tait. In filming her mother she asks the wider question of how much the camera can reveal of the person.

In a slum in Chennai, India, a young mother of two, wants to sell her kidney so she can pay off the crippling debts of her family. If she sells Hema will be the fifth member of her family to sell a kidney for an amount that represents several years' wages. Across the world in Nanaimo, Canada, forty year old single mom Sandra's kidneys are failing and she has been on a waiting list for 5 years now. Two different people. Two journeys.

Fifteen-year-old Sarah has returned to Colmar, where she has taken up high-performance figure skating and competition. The rivalry between the girls and the trainer's harsh words put her body to the test on the ice, while her adolescent desires distract her from her athletic ambitions.

A portrait of the American director Jim J. at work on the set of his latest film, Only Lovers Left Alive.

Documentary about red-bereted Jimmy Mirikitani, a feisty painter working and living on the street, near the World Trade Center, when 9/11 devastates the neighborhood. A nearby film editor, Linda Hattendorf, persuades elderly Jimmy to move in with her, while seeking a permanent home for him. The young woman delves into the California-born, Japan-raised artist's unique life which developed his resilient personality, and fuel his 2 main subjects, cats and internment camps. The editor films Jimmy's remarkable journey.

China's top drama academy stages the American musical "Fame," China's first official collaboration with Broadway, as the graduation showcase for its senior class. During the eight-month rehearsal, five students compete for roles, struggle with pressure from family and authority, and prepare to graduate into China's corrupt entertainment industry.

A descent into Eastern Europe's haunted woodlands uncovers the secrets, fairy tales, and bloody histories that shape our understanding of man's place in nature.

A documentary on the once promising American rock bands The Brian Jonestown Massacre and The Dandy Warhols. The friendship between respective founders, Anton Newcombe and Courtney Taylor, escalated into bitter rivalry as the Dandy Warhols garnered major international success while the Brian Jonestown Massacre imploded in a haze of drugs.

In the Realms of the Unreal is a documentary about the reclusive Chicago-based artist Henry Darger. Henry Darger was so reclusive that when he died his neighbors were surprised to find a 15,145-page manuscript along with hundreds of paintings depicting The Story of the Vivian Girls, in What is Known as the Realms of the Unreal, of the Glodeco-Angelinnian War Storm, Cased by the Child Slave Rebellion.

The adventures of two amiably aimless metal-head friends, Wayne and Garth. From Wayne's basement, the pair broadcast a talk-show called "Wayne's World" on local public access television. The show comes to the attention of a sleazy network executive who wants to produce a big-budget version of "Wayne's World"—and he also wants Wayne's girlfriend, a rock singer named Cassandra. Wayne and Garth have to battle the executive not only to save their show, but also Cassandra.

A look at the lives of 19th-century composers Clara and Robert Schumann.

This sweet musical takes us on a cross-country trip through Senegal, from Dakar to Saint Louis in a battered taxi, as passengers sing their stories.

Lyrical biography of the classical composer, depicted as a romantic hero, an accursed artist.

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.

Both an activist and a documentarian, Valentina Pedicini also brings her background in anthropology to this impressively captured, claustrophobic nonfiction feature. Venturing beneath sea level, From the Depths profiles the lone woman at work in the last coal mine in Sardinia, Italy.