Hellman Fellows Program

The Algerian region of Tindouf is home to more than 170,000 Sahrawis, who have been living in refugee camps since 1976, when Morocco occupied the Western Sahara region. In a place of inhospitable conditions and scarcity, the Sahrawi population lives on dwindling humanitarian aid. Six percent of them face the added difficulty of coeliac disease.

Set in Manipur, India, this is a unique story of girls and horses empowering each other. It is a story about saving an endangered breed of pony and empowering women in the sport of polo at the same time.

Going into my interview with Laurel Greenfield, I thought the majority of our conversation would be about her inspiration for painting food and why she chose to pursue painting as a career. We spoke about that but ended up having a much bigger conversation about pursuing a creative career. We talked a lot about finding the balance between having a business plan and taking a leap of faith into the unknown, something anyone pursuing a creative field on their own can relate to.

A collective work created by students of Bachillerato Popular Mocha Celis in Buenos Aires, the first of its kind in the world, the place offers transvestite and transgender adults the opportunity to complete their high-school studies. The films focuses on identity, inclusion, political activism and equal access to the right to education.

This documentary short explores disappearances and murders of women in Mexican border towns.

A documentary about Captain Dale Black, a pilot who died in a famous airplane crash in Burbank, California which was covered by the LA Times. After coming back to life, Black shares his near death experience as the sole survivor of a non-survivable plane wreck.

A short documentary chronicling the personal lives and narratives of Thai "ladyboys," who are born men but present themselves as women, living openly in Thai society. The film interviews ladyboys from all walks of life-- performers, filmmakers, activists-- to learn what it's like to live in a society with visible gender fluidity, and to explore if Thailand is really as open to and accepting of sexual diversity as it seems.

Aria Dean explores the black creative labour put into memes, images defined not by their content but by how they are circulated, mutated and compressed. While all memes lack attribution, Dean illustrates a palpable link between white appropriation of memes created by black people and a deeper lineage of theft and leering fascination.

About to turn 100 years old, Santo Amaro School closed its doors in 2020, amid the pandemic, leaving former students in deep sorrow. The story of the school is now told by different generations of students, teachers, nuns and employees, who return to the school building to remember their time over there: an unreachable past, which, through memories, becomes present once again.

Interviews with Satoshi Kon, voice actors and others about the acclaimed 2003 Japanese animated film.

A look at the day-to-day running of the historic Tower of London and coping with up to 16,000 visitors each day. A stunning display of the Crown Jewels.

In this immersive documentary, Winston Stairs invites the audience on a soul-soothing expedition into the world of hiking. Winston’s adventurous spirit guides the viewer through the forests of Ontario, sharing in the enchanting beauty of nature. Through breathtaking landscapes and personal reflections, the film captures Winston's profound love for hiking as more than a mere pastime—it becomes a transformative experience that welcomes self-discovery and a strong relationship with our environment. Join Winston on this inspirational trek, where every step reflects the joys of exploring and the tranquil side of our planet.

At a mobile home park in small-town Northern California, five best friend retirees navigate their golden years with grace, humor, and wisdom, and reflect on the importance of genuine human connection.

A year in the life of one of America's most innovative classrooms where students design & build to transform their hometown community. The film follows Emily Pilloton and Matt Miller as they teach the fundamentals of design, architecture and construction to a class of high school juniors in rural North Carolina.

The film shows one day from waking up in the morning all the way to waking up again the next morning. The everyday situations that many commercials are made of, the little dramas that they create and solve through the product or service they sell, are stitched together into one day. This is a film about the everyday in (German, or Western-European) society because the commercials are part of the everyday of most people (everyone who watches television) and they depict an ideal image of society. The film abundantly uses repetition as an editing technique, in visual ways as described above, but also because commercials can be read in different ways. For instance, Brat baking foil shows up at the evening dinner sequence, when an ovendish is put on the table, and again later on in the sequence about going out to a classic concert, because the clip has classic music.

The director’s mother, Mirka Mora, avoided Auschwitz by one day. On his father’s side many perished in the Holocaust. These facts triggered three visits to Auschwitz by Mora from 2010 to 2014 in an effort to understand and remember.

Radical resistance in the postwar British Caribbean community, from the 1948 Nationality Act to the 1958 Brixton riots.

What is the difference between a story and a good story? In this short documentary, ten of the greatest screenwriters in Brazil answer this and other questions, guiding us through the universe of creative writing and all its possibilities.

This short explores the possibility that Louis XVII, son of King Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette, escaped death during the French Revolution and was raised by Indians in America.

Song of Ceylon was commissioned for the short-lived German TV-series Telekritik and broadcasted in 1975. In Telekritik documentary approaches were analysed and made available for a critique of contemporary TV, its aesthetics and modes of production. Other authors for the series include Hartmut Bitomsky, Rainer Gansera and Klaus Wildenhahn.In the 30-minute movie, Farocki shows and comments on excerpts from the film Song of Ceylon by Basil Wright (and a short segment of Eisenstein's Mexico-fragments). Farocki's voice-over describes part of the movie, focussing on details and montage. He also uses didactic and descriptive drawings and intertitles to confront the classic documentary and its stylistic approaches with contemporary TV.