Set Me Free

Fantasy A, autistic Seattle rapper, suffers trials and tribulations from total creeps as he attempts to become a superstar. Along the way he also finds a mattress to sleep on, after being kicked out of his group home.

Haunted by his mysterious past, a devoted high school football coach leads a scrawny team of orphans to the state championship during the Great Depression and inspires a broken nation along the way.

Cathy, 6, is taken by a social worker to a foster home in the countryside, where she slowly gets used to the strict rules imposed by her foster mother Réjeanne. Fortunately, her foster father, Reynald, is kind and gentle with the girl and patiently helps her break through her shell. Kayla, 12, is sent to a group home where she gets to know Morgane, a rebellious teenager who’s planning to run away. At about the same time, Manu is released from the system on the day she turns 18, but she finds it difficult to adjust to her solitary existence outside of the system. All four meet up at a reception honoring a foster family with whom they’ve all previously lived.

Grace, a compassionate young supervisor at a foster care facility, helps at-risk teens. But when a new charge dredges up memories of her own troubled past, Grace's tough exterior begins eroding.

Social workers dispel myths about why children are removed from their biological parents, breaking down their overwhelming workload. Lawyers uncover the harsh reality of young children navigating the legal system. Advocacy organizations try to keep children safe and away from predators. An eclectic array of interviews from foster care alumni explore their connections (or lack thereof) with social workers, the fragile bond with each foster home, how trust can fall apart, and how those unable to adapt spent time in group homes. The film concludes with alumni success stories, working to remove the stigma of foster care.

A film made by Victress Hitchcock and Ava Hamilton in 1989 on the Wind River Reservation for Wyoming Public Television.

This ground-breaking cinéma-vérité classic documents five weeks in the lives of twelve residents of a home for emotionally disturbed children. It is the first in the form that King later described as actuality drama. All the action is spontaneous and undirected, with neither interviews nor narration. The theme is the outrage of life. The children asked the filmmakers, Why is it that whenever pictures of us are put in the papers, our faces are blacked out. What is so awful about us that we cant be seen? They wanted to be filmed so that they could be seen.

When one’s sole focus is to provide for their children, the stakes are extremely high. The need for multiple jobs to make ends meet has become a common reality for many families in this country, which leads to a very important question: who looks after the children while their parents work? Through the Night examines the economic and emotional toll affecting some American families, told through the lens of a 24-hour daycare center in Westchester, New York. At the center of it all is Nunu, the primary caregiver and a hero to many families in need of a safe space to bring their children.

The film captures the daily duality of three young Palestinian women in Tel Aviv, caught between hometown tradition and big city abandon, and the price they must pay for a lifestyle that seems obvious to many: the freedom to work, party, have sex, and choose.

Two Israeli sisters delve into the dark mystery of their father’s former life in Poland during World War II.

Two illegal Burmese migrants fleeing their country’s civil war find love with each other while struggling to survive in the bustling cities of Thailand.

Santa, a peasant woman loyal to the Revolution, is sent to guard Andrés, a gay writer who is under house arrest, considered “ untrustworthy” for his ideas and sexuality by the Cuban authorities. Set in a small village in eastern Cuba during the early 1980s, this poignant political drama depicts an encounter between two deeply thoughtful souls on opposite sides of a profound cultural divide. Both have experienced deep loss, and both know the damaging effects of isolation and oppression. Even so, the cavernous ideological divide separating them — the same one that has separated Cuban friends and kin for over 50 years — has until now seemed insurmountable.

After discovering a sacred stone in the mouth of a deer he just killed, Taibei, a young lonesome Tibetan cowboy, embarks on a long and difficult mission: to bring it back to the holy mountain of Buddha’s handprint. His journey turns sour as an obstinate woman, Joan, and a psychic yet dumb elf, Pu, soon decide to join him. Not to mention the two violent brothers on his tale, who are on a revenge quest.

Mika, heiress to a Swiss chocolate company, is married to celebrated pianist André and stepmother to his son, Guillaume, whose mother died in a car wreck on his tenth birthday. Their lives are interrupted by the unexpected arrival of Jeanne, a young woman who has learned she was almost switched with Guillaume at birth.

An accident during a bar mitzvah celebration leads to a gendered rift in a devout Orthodox community in Jerusalem, in this rousing, good-hearted tale about women speaking truth to patriarchal power.

Willington's only love, Mariana, is about to get married to René, Willington's cousin. While Willington is trying to get her back, a demobilization process concerning an illegal armed group is underway in the region, and new killings, besides rumors of a thief at large, will endanger Mariana's new family.

Hans is a street fruit peddler and born-loser. His choice of career upsets his bourgeois family, causing him to turn to drinking and violence. After recovering from a debilitating heart attack, his business finally begins to take off. However the more he becomes a credit to his family, the more depressed he becomes.

Survivors tell the story of the Babyn Yar massacre from WWII, where some 100,000 people were massacred by German forces.

Le Gendre idéal

The true story of Dr. Hunter "Patch" Adams, who in the 1970s found that humor is the best medicine, and was willing to do just anything to make his patients laugh—even if it meant risking his own career.