At America's elite MIT, a Ghanaian alum follows four African students as they strive to graduate and become agents of change for their home countries Nigeria, Rwanda, Tanzania, and Zimbabwe. Over an intimate, nearly decade-long journey, all must decide how much of America to absorb, how much of Africa to hold on to, and how to reconcile teenage ideals with the truths they discover about the world and themselves.
Eight women on the margins of Israeli society are thrown together during the course of a school year at Tel Aviv's oldest beauty school. Amidst the combs and colorings, these women present a microcosm of modern-day Tel Aviv -- native Israelis and new immigrants, Asians and Africans, among them women struggling with cancer and personal loss. As they learn to create beauty without, each woman undergoes a powerful transformation within.
Documentary film version of the stage show in which actress Cynthia Gates Fujikawa explores the story of her father, actor Jerry Fujikawa, who had a long career in films and television, most often as a stereotyped Asian. The daughter, in the course of searching out her late father's history, discovers many things that she had not known, among them that her father had spent time in Manzanar, the internment camp for Japanese-Americans during World War II, that he had had a family prior to hers, and that somewhere out there was a sister she had never known existed.
Writer-actor Aaron Davidman embodies seventeen different characters in and around the sacred city of Jerusalem as he takes us on an eye-opening journey into the heart of the Israeli-Palestinian story. Exploring universal questions of identity and human connection, the film is about one man's effort to embrace a multiplicity of conflicting viewpoints, chronicling a brave exploration of the complex humanity at the heart of one of the world's most troubling conflicts.
In this documentary road movie, filmmaker Danielle Arbid tries to conjure up an image of the country that is called Israel or Palestine.
After losing her father at an early age, Tina Duran explores the rich history of her father, the story of her ancestors who migrated from Mexico to the United States, and the impact the Vietnam War had on their community.
A documentary film about the internment of Japanese Americans at Heart Mountain, Wyoming during World War II. The program, hosted by Jan Yanehiro, proceeds in part as a series of interviews. It also includes archival film footage of Heart Mountain and Japanese Americans during World War II, as well as present day footage of the Heart Mountain landscape.
From Race Track to Assembly Center documents life for San Francisco Bay Area residents of Japanese ancestry incarcerated at the Tanforan Race Track in San Mateo County after being evicted from their homes during World War II.
David Olusoga opens secret government files to show how the Windrush scandal and the ‘hostile environment’ for black British immigrants has been 70 years in the making.
2017 Oscar Nominated Short Films: Documentary
The film is about the band Stockholms Negrer, but also about what formed their music, about being Swedish but still being viewed as an outsider.
The events that took place at the beach of El Tarajal in Ceuta (Spain) in February 2014 - the killing by the border police of 15 people who were trying to reach the Spanish coast - are an example of how the police force can violate the laws of its own country and international conventions with total impunity. The worst part is that this violation of human rights is protected by the Spanish Ministry of Interior itself, which hinders any effective action by the prosecution. For this reason, the civil society plays a fundamental role in revealing the facts. This is where the figure of collective complaints (DESC Observatory and the association Coordinadora de Barrios) steps in.
Dépassements : ou annonce d'un meurtre qui n'aura jamais lieu
The Fall of the I-Hotel brings to life the battle for housing in San Francisco. The brutal eviction of the International Hotel's tenants culminated a decade of spirited resistance to the razing of Manilatown. The Fall of the I-Hotel works on several levels. It not only documents the struggle to save the I-Hotel, but also gives an overview of Filipino American history.
Gaza Fights for Freedom depicts the ongoing Great March of Return protests in the Gaza Strip, occupied Palestine, that began in 2018.
Boiling Point (original title Kiehumispiste) describes the different reactions the Finnish people had to the large immigration amounts in 2015-2016.
La seconda patria - Another Homeland
Documentary about war photographer James Nachtwey, considered by many the greatest war photographer ever.
Music provided relief during the years of the Japanese American internment throughout WWII. Mary Nomura performed in Manzanar for the three years of her incarceration, and she became known as the "Songbird of Manzanar." In this film, Mary shares old field recordings of her musical performances in Manzanar, believed to be the only surviving field recordings of music from Japanese American internment. In the conclusion of the film, Mary honors her nickname and sings one of her favorite jazz standards by George Gershwin.
“Forgetting is complicit in recidivism,” says the commentary of this film dedicated to the demonstration of October 17, 1961 in Paris and the savage repression that followed. 11,538 Algerians will be arrested, which is reminiscent of the great Vel d’hiv roundup of July 16 and 17, 1942 where 12,884 Jews were arrested. The film brings together eyewitnesses including a priest, a peacekeeper, a couple of workers sympathetic to the Algerian cause, a lawyer, Paris municipal councilors including Claude Bourdet (then one of the leaders of the PSU and journalist to France Observateur), Gérard Monatte, the future police union leader, and the editor and writer François Maspero.