Programming Hope

Black Mold Exposure explores the bizarre illnesses associated with exposure to toxic mold and the film participants' difficult task of regaining their health and lives in an atmosphere of political and social intolerance and disbelief. Black Mold Exposure is a first-ever look into the lives of those claiming to be ill from mold and the controversial and volatile climate surrounding it.

Through testimonies and images, the crude reality of human rights in Argentina in democracy is portrayed and the role of the hegemonic means of communication to make causes and protests invisible ...

MOLE MAN follows RON, a 66-year-old autistic man who has spent the last five decades building a 50-room structure in his parents' backyard. Using no nails or mortar, Ron instead creates perfectly balanced structures from scavenged materials he finds in the woods outside his Western Pennsylvania home. When Ron's father passes away, leaving him living alone with his 90-year-old mother, Ron's siblings are left to figure out what's best for Ron - who has never been officially diagnosed with autism - when his mother can no longer care for him. In an effort to find the money to keep Ron in his home, his friends team up in search of a mythical mansion Ron insists lays abandoned in the forest. But will they be able to find it? And, more importantly, does it even exist? This is the story of an extraordinary life, a family, and the beauty of thinking differently.

A genre-bending documentary using dance and physicality to explore themes of youthfulness, fear, regret and aging. The star of the show is New York. The perspectives of elderly citizens of NYC are interpreted physically by a younger generation. The words come from real-life interviews recorded with a diverse selection of aging New Yorkers.

Somber tells the story of three depressed young people, all three in a different phase of the disease. What does depression do to a person? What does it actually mean? And above all, is there a way out?

Since the enactment of the Anti-Boryokudan Act and Yakuza exclusion ordinances, the number of Yakuza members reduced to less than 60,000. In the past 3 years, about 20,000 members have left from Yakuza organizations. However, just numbers can’t tell you the reality. What are they thinking, how are they living now? The camera zooms in on the Yakuza world. Are there basic human rights for them?

Shot in various villages throughout Yugoslavia, this is a disturbing document of a time when people were stabbing each other with knives without any real reason. Murderers, people who witness these murders and the families of victims all talk about the senseless violence and the human condition.

OUTREMONT AND THE HASIDIM reveals the challenges of accommodating the “Hasidim” – or ultra-Orthodox Jews – in the affluent Montréal borough of Outremont.​Some 7,000 Hasidim live in or near this choice neighbourhood of Québec’s Francophone elite. After settling there more than 70 years ago, the Hasidim are a rapidly growing minority group which today represents about 23% of Outremont’s population.​Thanks to unprecedented access to this self-isolated community, the film lifts the veil on its practices, traditions, music and life as they had never before been seen on Canadian television, without ignoring the community’s expectations, fears. and hopes.

A documentary exploring autism through the eyes of Welsh actor Richard Mylan and his 11 year old son, who is on the autism spectrum.

A group of elders spends their weekdays in a retirement home in Sandim, in the north of Portugal, where they talk, do arts and crafts, practice yoga and pray. We follow them between October 2012 and March 2013, when an economic crisis overshadowed Portuguese society and unemployment rates reached record levels. Meanwhile, arrangements are made for the Carnival ball. Will they bring the first place home this time?

Paddy McGuinness and his wife Christine have three children who have been diagnosed with autism. In this documentary, they meet other parents, experts and people on the autism spectrum.

When filmmaker Yoshifumi Tsubota learns about his slightly autistic uncle who lives alone, he decides to visit him. Drawn to his uncle’s unique personality, he begins to roll his camera as he visits him over the years. Tsubota himself had been diagnosed with a developmental disability and so understanding his uncle is also an act of understanding himself. Through intimate and personal footage, this charming film is gem of a documentary that also highlights contemporary social issues surrounding aging and social care for the disabled.

A documentary on the events of the Gama strike. A contractor operating in Ireland was paying its Turkish employees exploitative wages far below trade union rates. This is the story of how these workers fought back.

10 May 2007 - China's staggering economic growth has overshadowed a more subtle shift in Chinese society. In domestic life, many women are now ignore the advice of their mothers and grandmothers, turning instead to counselling hotlines and, increasingly, divorce.

Introduction to autism that aims to raise awareness among young non-autistic audiences, to stimulate understanding and acceptance in future generations.

Margarita

Every year, thousands of German citizens travel to India, hoping to have a spiritual awakening of their own. In turn, they end up taking bits and pieces of Indian culture back home with them, creating a distorted version of Indian religion that’s practiced widely across Europe. The number of yoga institutes, ashrams, and Sanskrit institutes in Germany indicates that younger generations are far from giving up on this trend. Some are so enamored by this version of Indian culture that they travel thousands of kilometres to meet their spiritual advisors in tents, attend yoga sessions at 5 in the morning, and, in some cases, even adopt Indian names and clothes to try and connect more with this Eastern way of living. But exactly how prevalent is this trend?

Follows five autistic children as they work together to create and perform a live musical production.

Hermanovce, Slovak Republic. A Romani village located deep down in the valley, with old shacks and newer concrete ones. Four Romani women tell us about their day-to-day life through ancient habits, along with words that travel near borders with different worlds...

In the 1920s, former coal miner Harry Hoxsey claimed to have an herbal cure for cancer. Although scoffed at and ultimately banned by the medical establishment, by the 1950s, Hoxsey's formula had been used to treat thousands of patients, who testified to its efficacy. Was Hoxsey's recipe the work of a snake-oil charlatan or a legitimate treatment? Ken Ausubel directs this keen look into the forces that shape the policies of organized medicine.