From behind the closed doors of women's washrooms, The Powder Room reveals women sharing intimacies in the privacy of each other's company. Originating from the director's observation that women trade secrets with friends and strangers in public washrooms, this innovative and candid documentary takes us to high school bathrooms, seniors centres' powder roooms, Newfoundland dance halls, New York nightclubs, a sauna in Copenhagen, a Casablanca hamman and country-and-western bars in Texas. In each location, as women are filmed in verité sequences, they confess their joys, their frustrations and their pain about love, sex, relationships with men and friendships with each other.
A full-length documentary about a controversial evangelical movement that purports to convert gay people into heterosexuals. The film brings us inside this unusual Christian subculture and follows the lives of several young people whose homosexuality is at odds with their religious beliefs.
Tahani Rached’s powerful documentary enters the doors of an AIDS clinic in Montreal. We meet a group of dedicated doctors struggling to provide health care to their patients. This 1994 film explores legal and ethical problems surrounding HIV/AIDS and the struggle against fear, rumours and prejudice. It is still relevant today.
Soraïda is a Palestinian woman living in Ramallah, in the occupied territories. In this city under siege and a strict curfew, she fights her own battle: despite the military occupation, violence and oppression, she is determined not to lose her humanity.
Tapestries of Hope is the story of filmmaker Michealene Cristini Risley who traveled to Zimbabwe to document the work of Betty Makoni and the Girl Child Network. The film exposes an issue that continues to be ignored: the rape and abuse of thousands of young girls in Zimbabwe by men who believe it will cure their HIV/AIDS.
There is a cultural revolution going on in Canada and Faith Nolan and Grace Channer are on the leading edge. These two African-Canadian lesbian artists give back to art its most urgent meanings--commitment and passion. Grace Channer's large and sensuous canvasses and musician Faith Nolan's gritty and joyous blues propel this documentary into the spheres of poetry and dance. Long Time Comin' captures their work, their urgency, and their friendship in intimate conversations with both artists.
I'll Find a Way is a 1977 short documentary directed by Beverly Shaffer. It is about nine-year-old Nadia DeFranco who has spina bifida. The film won an Oscar for Best Live Action Short Film.
Fox Rich, indomitable matriarch and modern-day abolitionist, strives to keep her family together while fighting for the release of her incarcerated husband. An intimate, epic, and unconventional love story, filmed over two decades.
Set in Kumba in South West Cameroon Sisters in Law follows Adultery, Rape and Abuse cases led by a Female Judge.
From a small town in northern Michigan to the mountains of Afghanistan, "Where Soldiers Come From" follows the journey of childhood friends who join the National Guard after graduating from high school. It chronicles the young men's transformation from teenagers to soldiers to 23-year-old combat veterans. The film offers an intimate look at the young men who fight our wars.
Seen through the eyes of Asun Casasola, mother of Nagore Laffage, we take a look at the woman's life since her daughter was murdered. The crime, committed during Pamplona's San Fermin celebrations in 2008 by a psychiatric intern, shook society and hit the media headlines as never before. The trial took place in November 2009, with the defendant being convicted of manslaughter. Asun, her family, and all those who support them, continue their struggle to see justice done and have the culprit sentenced for murder with intent. This documentary talks about Nagore's murder, converting it into an emblematic story representing the countless similar cases taking place throughout today's society.
Belgian filmmaker Chantal Akerman lives in New York. Filmed images of the City accompany texts of Akerman's loving mother back home in Brussels. The City comes more and more to the front while the words of the mother, read by Akerman herself, gradually fade away.
Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg now 84, and still inspired by the lawyers who defended free speech during the Red Scare, Ginsburg refuses to relinquish her passionate duty, steadily fighting for equal rights for all citizens under the law. Through intimate interviews and unprecedented access to Ginsburg’s life outside the court, RBG tells the electric story of Ginsburg’s consuming love affairs with both the Constitution and her beloved husband Marty—and of a life’s work that led her to become an icon of justice in the highest court in the land.
A funny, intimate and heartbreaking portrait of one of the world’s most beloved and inventive comedians, Robin Williams, told largely through his own words. Celebrates what he brought to comedy and to the culture at large, from the wild days of late-1970s L.A. to his death in 2014.
A group of Israelis and Palestinians come together in Oslo for unsanctioned peace talks during the 1990s in order to bring peace to the Middle East.
A cat eats its methodical way through a polymorphous fish.
IDFA and Canadian filmmaker Peter Wintonick had a close relationship for decades. He was a hard worker and often far from home, visiting festivals around the world. In 2013, he died after a short illness. His daughter Mira was left behind with a whole lot of questions, and a box full of videotapes that Wintonick shot for his Utopia project. She resolved to investigate what sort of film he envisaged, and to complete it for him.
A portrait of the last surviving vinyl record shop in Teesside, North East England, at a time when independent record shops were closing in the UK at a rate of one every three days. A distinctive, funny and intimate film about men, the North and the irreplaceable role music plays in our lives. High Fidelity with a Northern Accent.
Hundreds of excerpts from 60 French films produced by the NFB over the course of 50 years are assembled to offer a look at the evolution of how women have been portrayed on film.
The film explores the turbulent lives of homeless persons in Cologne, Germany. Through their personal belongings the homeless share with the viewer their memories and emotions, and provide insight into the secrets of survival on the street.