Persona Non Grata

Punk rock, B-movies, and Jehovah’s Witnesses unite in this heartfelt documentary. As members of Jehovah’s Witness start to explore culture outside of their religion, they have to wrestle with the possibility of being excommunicated from friends and family. Featuring in-depth interviews and extensive home video footage, Witness Underground tells the story of punk rocker Witnesses pushing against the highly controlling Jehovah’s Witnesses religion as they build their own community through music and art. This prolific community of Witness musicians create their own record label, Nuclear Gopher, and become early adopters of promoting their music through the internet, including what may have been the first album to ever be livestreamed. This community’s history is well documented through archival footage of their home movies and self-produced music videos, all with a very charming energy.

Anaben Pawar is an elderly tribal woman accused of witchcraft in rural India. Through Ana's story, we delve into a deep-rooted culture of patriarchy and examine one of the most monstrous attacks on women's bodies in modern India: the witch-hunt.

"Ni Coupables, ni victimes" ("Not Guilty, Not Victims") is a polyphonic conversation gathering the words of some of the protagonists at the European Conference on Sex Work, Human Rights, Labour and Migration, Brussels (2005). They speak of the complexity and nuances of the sex industry and their lives: the challenges and the struggles of being a sex worker in Europe today, the repressive policies affecting their lives, and the strategies of resistance enabling them to do their work, build their desires and plan their futures.

The citizens of Tijuana show their annoyance, what they call Central American invaders that ran out of their countries, fleeing violence, poverty, now installed and waiting to cross the wall to the United States.

On the brink of social collapse, the city of Los Angeles California is full of protests in favor of immigrants and against deportations under the administration of Trump. On the border with Mexico, thousands of people try to cross every day.

The film revolves around four female friends (Amina, Safynaz, Shahenda and Wedad) from Egypt with opposing religious, social, and political views in modern day Egypt. The four women listen to one another's views and argue openly, without ever breaking the bond that unites them.

To the Least of My Brothers and Sisters is a new documentary on the life of Jerome Lejeune, the Father of Modern Genetics that was made to celebrate the 20th anniversary of his death. Filmed on two continents, it contains numerous interviews with former colleagues, families, current medical researchers, and others, all who express the importance of Jerome Lejeune in both the history of medicine and the defense of the dignity of human life.

The film tells the compelling and moving stories of two remarkable young women living in Gaza and the struggle of Gazans trying to maintain their humanity and humor while hoping to find some sense of normality in a world that is anything but normal.

Flor Brilhante e as Cicatrizes da Pedra

L'envers d'Amazon

The story of Muhammad Iqbal, a turn of the century poet/philosopher from South Asia. Through Iqbal's work we open a dialog between the East and West, refute the notion of a class of civilizations and discover our shared humanity.

Benjamin Woolley presents the gripping story of Nicholas Culpeper, the 17th century radical pharmacist who took on the establishment in order to bring medicine to the masses. Culpeper lived during one of the most tumultuous periods in British history. When the country was ravaged by famine and civil war, he took part in the revolution that culminated in the execution of King Charles I. But it is Culpeper's achievements in health care that made him famous. By practicing (often illegally) as a herbalist and publishing the first English-language texts explaining how to treat common ailments, he helped to break the monopoly of a medical establishment that had abandoned the poor and needy. His book The English Physician became the most successful non-religious English book of all time, remaining in print continuously for more than 350 years.

Bubu is a poet who has been committed to state institutions for the insane twelve times. He challenges the meaning of hospital-jails, hybrid institutions which sentence the insane to life imprisonment. The poem "The House of the Dead" was written during the filming of the documentary and reveals the forgotten deaths that occur in these judicial asylums. There are three stories in three acts of death. Jaime, Antonio, and Almerindo are anonymous men, considered dangers to society, whose punishment is the tragedy of suicide, the unending cycle of being committed to the asylum, or surviving life imprisonment in the house of the dead. Bubu is the narrator of his own life and also of his own destiny-death in the asylum.

Growing up in times of conflict - 13-year old Palestinian girls Wafaa and Raneen from two different Westbank villages are faced with the option of going on a one-day trip to the beach in Israel. Although they live only a few kilometers away, they have both never been to the sea. Israeli peace activists organize a day at the beach in Tel Aviv for Palestinian women and children, to let them exchange the view on the Wall against the horizon. One summer morning, Wafaa is preparing for the journey and imagining pretty people in Israel, while Raneen is playing freedom fighter with her friends. Her village is in constant conflict with the Israeli soldiers and for her and her parents it is out of the question to spend a beach day with the "others". Is the day by the sea a one-day utopia? Or a possible future?

Desperate, broken men chase their dreams and run from their demons in the North Dakota oil fields. A local Pastor's decision to help them has extraordinary and unexpected consequences.

Quien dice patria dice muerte

Award-winning documentary, Sitting Bull: A Stone in My Heart, makes extensive use of Sitting Bull’s own words, giving the viewer an intimate portrait of one of America’s legendary figures in all his complexities as a leader of the great Sioux Nation: warrior, spiritual leader and skilled diplomat. Sitting Bull’s words, as portrayed by Adam Fortunate Eagle, dominate this story. Augmented by a narrator’s historical perspective, over six-hundred historical photographs and images, and a compelling original music score, the film brings to life the little-known human side of Sitting Bull as well as the story of a great man’s struggle to maintain his people’s way of life against an ever-expanding westward movement of white settlers. It is a powerful cinematic journey into the life and spirit of a legendary figure of whom people have often heard but don’t really know.

"Here is a family of average French people in front of their television. Elsewhere, they are Palestinian fighters filmed before the massacres of Black September." (JLG, 1976). "We came here to study this: to learn, to learn lessons, if possible to record these lessons, to then broadcast them here, or elsewhere in the world. Almost a year ago, two of us came to investigate the Democratic Front. Then another went to Fath. We read the texts and programs. As French Maoists, we decided to make the film with Fath whose title is Until Victory. We let the Palestinians , during the film, themselves say the word: "Revolution". But the true title of the film is Methods of Thought and Work of the Palestinian Liberation Movement." (JLG, Manifesto, July 1970)

An extraordinary love story of Irena and Avguštin Maučec from Turnišče, a village in the region of Prekmurje, Slovenia. In the 1990s, soon after their wedding Irena and Avguštin had a bad car accident that left Irena with a serious brain injury. Failing to wake up, she was given up on by the doctors to die a slow death. Avguštin would not agree: he took her home and has since been giving her selfless care. After years of battling the healthcare system, he decided at the age of 40 to study law. He is now about to take his bar exams, and find a job to be able to take proper care of Irena.

Olivia Martin McGuire (China Love) parallels a grandfather’s journey to safety during the Cultural Revolution with his granddaughter’s fight for freedom in Hong Kong today. Interweaving unflinching testimony of the elder’s exodus from the Chinese mainland, exquisitely animated recreations of the perilous escape to Hong Kong through land and sea, and vivid, evocative archival footage of both mid-20th-century China and the Hong Kong protests today, Freedom Swimmer emerges as a gripping and timely account of the struggle for survival across generations.