In Born Into Brothels, directors Zana Briski and Ross Kauffman chronicle the amazing transformation of the children they come to know in the red light district of Calcutta. Briski, a professional photographer, gives them lessons and cameras, igniting the latent spark of artistic creativity within them.
Filmmaker Ross Kauffman present (tbc)
In 2007, Burma became headline news across the globe when peaceful Buddhist monks led a massive rebellion. More than 100,000 people took to the streets protesting the cruel dictatorship that has held the country hostage for more than 40 years. Foreign news crews were banned, the internet was shut down, and Burma was closed to the outside world. Enter the Democratic Voice of Burma, aka the Burma VJs.
Three years in the making, this riveting new documentary from acclaimed filmmaker Joe Berlinger (Brother's Keeper, Paradise Lost, Metallica: Some Kind of Monster) tells the epic story of one of the largest and most controversial legal cases on the planet.
As in The Odyssey, the Aegean Sea is the setting where our hero, Elias, sets out on his adventures. On the same waters, under the same sun and the same sky as the dawn of civilization.
In this epic film based on real-life events, Pete Travis (OMAGH) drops us into South Africa in the late 1980s. The African National Congress wages an armed struggle against apartheid and President P.W. Botha clings to the last threads of power. It turns out that Consolidated Goldfields, a British mining company, has initiated covert, unofficial talks between the opposing sides.
FIRAAQ begins in 2002 in the Indian state of Gujarat, where three thousand Muslims died in communal riots. When Muslims Hanif and Muneera return to the modest home they had fled during the violence, they find it ransacked. With their lives shattered not simply by vandalism but by betrayal from their neighbours, Hanif seeks revenge. Elsewhere, middle-class Hindus Sanjay and Arati were untouched by the hostilities, but are met with new moral challenges.
Director Hany Abu-Assad follows cab driver Rajai and his passengers through Ramallah and Jerusalem, as they detour around roadblocks and speed through short cuts. Rajai's passengers form a heterogeneous group of ordinary people and local celebrities who, with humor and sincerity, express divergent opinions about the situation in the Occupied Palestinian Territories and Israel.
Are international efforts to alleviate poverty in Africa undermining the very communities they aim to benefit? Good Fortune presents a unique perspective on human rights abuses and environmental destruction carried out in the name of progress in Kenya.
Garry Kasparov has just been detained for hours at an airport on his way to a demonstration. Why? The chess master has started a second life, in politics. Foreign photographers repeatedly portray him in a chess pose, head in hands, staring at a fictitious chessboard. But the game is unfair, because now his opponent is Vladimir Putin. The Kremlin systematically sabotages the activities of Kasparov and his party, The Other Russia. The film is a must-see for anyone who wants to know what Russia looks like today.
Presented in association with The Harriman Institute, www.harrimaninstitute.org
Culled from 300 hours of footage taken over a two-year period, filmmaker James Longley's documentary feature shadows ordinary Iraqi citizens in three crucial yet fractured regions
In this beautifully produced look at Afghanistan, a new hospital tries to help war victims, while knowing that every day brings the same calamities. Patients arrive one after the other and the situation is nowhere near ending.
Filmmaker Fabrizio Lazzaretti present
Filmmaker Naftaly Gliksberg sets out to investigate what anti-Semitism looks like today, crossing two continents to see how people react to direct questions about their attitudes toward Jews, Israel, and the notion that there is such a thing as anti-Semitism. It is a startling personal journey of painful discoveries as he explores representations and impressions of Jews and Israelis around the world.
Two American friends from opposite sides of the divide investigate the war in Kashmir and find their friendship tested over deeply rooted political, cultural and religious biases they never had to face in the United States. PROJECT KASHMIR explores war between countries and war within oneself by delving into the fraught lives of young people caught in the social/political conflict of one of the most beautiful, and most deadly, places on earth
In 1968, on her 24th birthday, Barbara Sonneborn received word that her husband, Jeff, had been killed in Vietnam while trying to rescue his wounded radio operator during a mortar attack. "We regret to inform you," the telegram began. Twenty years later, Sonneborn, a photographer and visual artist, embarked on a journey in search of the truth about war and its legacy. Framed as an odyssey through Vietnam to Que Son, where Jeff was killed, Sonneborn weaves together the stories of widows from all sides of the American-Vietnam war.
In the 2006 war between Hezbollah and Israel, one million cluster bomb munitions rained down upon the fields and orchards of south Lebanon. An estimated 35 percent failed to detonate. One year later, teams of locally recruited and trained deminers race to clear the land before more civilians are injured or killed. Remnants of a War takes an intimate look into the lives of these brave women and men. They work shoulder to shoulder to make their land safe again, while their country endures the worst political and economic crisis in 15 years.
Bosnia, 1997. Four women, two old ladies, four girls, an old man, and a boy live in the remote war-torn village of Slavno. Their families have been killed and the bodies never found. To go on living with their loved ones missing, the women have created a very special world
The Age of Stupid is the new documentary-drama-animation hybrid from Director Franny Armstrong and Oscar-winning Producer John Battsek. Oscar-nominated actor Pete Postlethwaite stars as the founder of The Global Archive in the devastated world of 2055. The archive is located in the (now melted) Arctic, preserving all of humanity's achievements in the hope that the planet, ravaged by runaway climate change, might one day be habitable again. He watches
The International Criminal Court represents the most ambitious attempt ever to apply the rule of law on a global scale and to protect the most basic human rights. The Reckoning follows ICC prosecutor Luis Moreno-Ocampo for three years across four continents as he and his team tirelessly issue arrest warrants for Lord
