Joslyn Barnes

Harvest

Over seven hallucinatory days, a village with no name, in an undefined time and place, disappears. In Tsangari’s tragicomic take on a Western, townsman-turned-farmer Walter Thirsk and befuddled lord of the manor Charles Kent are childhood friends about to face an invasion from the outside world: the trauma of modernity.

Two Strangers Trying Not to Kill Each Other

Life, death and making meaning are the heart of a beautiful and often very funny film about an aging couple who, after an accident, face the inevitability of impermanence and seek a deep peace in their relationship while they still can.

Nickel Boys

Chronicles the powerful friendship between two young Black teenagers navigating the harrowing trials of reform school together in Florida.

Pooja, Sir

When two boys are kidnapped in a border town in Nepal, Detective Inspector Pooja is sent from Kathmandu to solve the case. But when she arrives, the brewing political unrest and violent protests throw her off course, and she is forced to seek help from Mamata, a local Madhesi policewoman. By putting aside systemic discrimination and pushing through everyday misogyny, the women solve the case - but at what personal cost?

President

Zimbabwe is at a crossroads. The leader of the opposition MDC party, Nelson Chamisa, challenges the old guard ZANU-PF led by Emmerson Mnangagwa, known as “The Crocodile.” The election tests both the ruling party and the opposition – how do they interpret principles of democracy in discourse and in practice?

Eami

Eami means ‘forest’ in Ayoreo. It also means ‘world’. The story happens in the Paraguayan Chaco, the territory with the highest deforestation rate in the world. 25,000 hectares of forest are being deforested a month in this territory which would mean an average of 841 hectares a day or 35 hectares per hour. The forest barely lives and this only due to a reserve that the Totobiegosode people achieved in a legal manner. They call Chaidi this place which means ancestral land or the place where we always lived and it is part of the "Ayoreo Totobiegosode Natural and Cultural Heritage". Before this, they had to live through the traumatic situation of leaving the territory behind and surviving a war. It is the story of the Ayoreo Totobiegosode people, told from the point of view of Asoja, a bird-god with the ability to bring an omniscient- temporal gaze, who becomes the narrator of this story developed in a crossing between documentary and fiction.

Crane Lantern

Musa, a law student seeks out Davud, a man imprisoned for kidnapping four women. He soon discovers that all of his victims have no wish to press charges. On the contrary, they have the feeling of a new truth in themselves. Musa's encounter with the purported criminal becomes a journey into someone else's inner world. Are the questions he asks the correct ones? Is the law a genuine form of justice? What is the meaning of humans imposing punishment on others? Is Musa being enlightened by a superior man, or is he being lured into a world of illusion?

Memoria

One morning, Jessica Holland, a Scottish orchid farmer visiting her sister in Bogotá, is woken by a loud ‘bang’. This haunting sound dispels her sleep for days, calling into question her identity and guiding her from recording studios to secluded jungle villages in an attempt to find its source.

Prayers for the Stolen

Ana and her two best friends, Maria and Paula, navigate life in their oppressive countryside village. Whilst their families struggle in the poppy fields harvesting opium, the girls try to grow alongside the creeping terror of their cartel oppressors.

In Between Dying

The love story of Davud, a young man in search of his ‘true’ family, who completes his life cycle in a single day. When he does find Love, it's in the place he has always lived. But perhaps it is too late.

Gunda

A glimpse into the raw and simple power of nature through encounters with farm animals: the eponymous Gunda, a mother pig; two cows, and a one-legged chicken.

Easter Snap

With a baited handling of American symbolism, filmmaker RaMell Ross joins five men in the deep South, Alabama, who resurrect the homestead ritual of hog processing under the guidance of Johnny Blackmon.

Capernaum

After running away from his negligent parents, committing a violent crime and being sentenced to five years in jail, a hardened, streetwise 12-year-old Lebanese boy sues his parents in protest of the life they have given him.

Hale County This Morning, This Evening

Composed of intimate and unencumbered moments of people in a community, this film is constructed in a form that allows the viewer an emotive impression of the Historic South - trumpeting the beauty of life and consequences of the social construction of race, while simultaneously a testament to dreaming.

Angels Are Made of Light

American documentarian James Longley delivers a sweeping, profoundly compassionate group portrait of Afghan students and teachers still weathering national turbulence.

Sollers Point

Keith, a small-time drug dealer, is under house arrest at the home of his father in Baltimore. He re-enters a community scarred by unemployment, neglect and deeply entrenched segregation. There, he pushes back against his surrounding limitations as he tries to find a way out of his own internal prison.

This Is Congo

An unfiltered look in to the lives of 3 characters surviving amongst the most recent cycle of conflict in the Democratic Republic of Congo, otherwise known as the M23 rebellion.

That Summer

Albert and David Maysles' classic GREY GARDENS immortalized the estate of Edith and Little Edie Beale, relatives of Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy, who lived in alarmingly poor conditions. But there is more to the story: it was Lee Radziwill and Peter Beard who first brought the Maysles to the Beales, when the two set out to make a film about Radziwill's childhood. The reels of that first contact were shelved for 45 years. This documentary recovers the lost footage. Anchored in Beard's recollections and artistic vision, we are returned to "that summer" in 1972, a seductive dream world and collage of radically unconventional creative personalities—Warhol, Bacon, Jagger, Capote—practicing the art of living amidst oppressive forces of class expectation and prejudice.

Strong Island

Examining the violent death of the filmmaker’s brother and the judicial system that allowed his killer to go free, this documentary interrogates murderous fear and racialized perception, and re-imagines the wreckage in catastrophe’s wake, challenging us to change.

Shadow World

A detailed investigation into the political and economic interests that, since the beginning of the 20th century, have pulled the strings of the arms trade, hidden in the shadows, feeding the shameful corruption of politicians and government officials and promoting a state of permanent war throughout the world, while they cynically asked for a lasting and universal peace.

Cameraperson

As a visually radical memoir, CAMERAPERSON draws on the remarkable footage that filmmaker Kirsten Johnson has shot and reframes it in ways that illuminate moments and situations that have personally affected her. What emerges is an elegant meditation on the relationship between truth and the camera frame, as Johnson transforms scenes that have been presented on Festival screens as one kind of truth into another kind of story—one about personal journey, craft, and direct human connection.

White Sun

Young Pooja lives with her mother in a village in Nepal. Though saddened by the death of her grandfather, she is secretly thrilled at the prospect of meeting the man she hopes may be her father — Chandra, a former Maoist guerrilla who is returning home after a decade-long civil conflict.

This Changes Everything

Based on Naomi Klein's book This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs. the Climate, a look at how people in various communities around the world play a role in the ongoing climate change debate and how they're affecting change in trying to prevent the environmental destruction of our planet.

Cemetery of Splendor

In a hospital, ten soldiers are being treated for a mysterious sleeping sickness. In a story in which dreams can be experienced by others, and in which goddesses can sit casually with mortals, a nurse learns the reason why the patients will never be cured, and forms a telepathic bond with one of them.

The Strange Eyes of Dr. Myes

Dr. Sheri Myes survives the bombing of her home by protesters, but is changed forever by this traumatic experience. Isolated by her obsessions, she functions in a reality of her own creation. She is on the verge of a scientific breakthrough, grafting animal senses to her brain to regain the profundity of her near-death experience. Just when Dr. Myes is poised to succeed, she loses everything and must climb back up from the bottom using unconventional means. This hybrid of animation, songs, and live-action narrative follows the research of Dr. Sheri Myes and her attempts to expand human consciousness.

The Narrow Frame of Midnight

The intersecting destinies of three people — a Moroccan-Iraqi writer searching for his brother, the lover whom he left behind, and a young orphan on the run — create an incisive and unsettling portrait of a land riven by violence and fundamentalism.

Concerning Violence

Concerning Violence is based on newly discovered, powerful archival material documenting the most daring moments in the struggle for liberation in the Third World, accompanied by classic text from The Wretched of the Earth by Frantz Fanon.

For Those Who Can Tell No Tales

Kym, an Australian tourist, decides to travel to Bosnia. Her guidebook leads her to Višegrad, a small town steeped in history, on the border of Bosnia and Serbia. After a night of insomnia in the 'romantic' Hotel Vilina Vlas, Kym discovers what happened there during the war. She can no longer be an ordinary tourist and her life will never be the same again.

Shenandoah

An epic feature documentary about a coal mining town with a fiery immigrant heritage, once pivotal in fueling America’s industrial revolution and today in decline and struggling to survive and retain its identity, soul and values – all of which were dramatically challenged when four of the town’s white, star football players were charged in the beating death of an undocumented Mexican immigrant named Luis Ramirez. Pulitzer Prize-winning photographer David Turnley’s most personal work, SHENANDOAH creates a deeply felt portrait of a working class community, and the American Dream on trial.

Highway

Five different relationship stories become connected during an ill-fated bus journey from eastern Nepal to the capital, Kathmandu.

Dum Maaro Dum

ACP Vishnu is sent on a mission to investigate and clean the underbelly of Goa. During his investigation, he uncovers a huge racket and discovers the involvement of various politicians.

The Black Power Mixtape 1967-1975

Examines the evolution of the Black Power Movement in US society from 1967 to 1975. It features footage of the movement shot by Swedish journalists in the United States during that period and includes the appearances of Angela Davis, Bobby Seale, Huey P. Newton, Eldridge Cleaver, and other activists, artists, and leaders central to the movement.

The Disappearance of McKinley Nolan

Private McKinley Nolan vanished 40 years ago in Vietnam on the Cambodian frontier. Some say he was captured, some say he was a traitor, some even say he was an American operative. The US Army officially claims he was radicalized and went native, joining the Viet Cong and later encountering the Khmer Rouge. In 2006, retired US Army Lt. Dan Smith, revisiting the battlefields of his youth, may have encountered the elusive McKinley, alive. So began a journey into the heart of darkness.

Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives

Suffering from acute kidney failure, Boonmee has chosen to spend his final days surrounded by his loved ones in the countryside. Surprisingly, the ghost of his deceased wife appears to care for him, and his long lost son returns home in a non-human form. Contemplating the reasons for his illness, Boonmee treks through the jungle with his family to a mysterious hilltop cave—the birthplace of his first life.

The Time That Remains

An examination of the creation of the state of Israel in 1948 through to the present day. A semi-biographic film, in four chapters, about a family spanning from 1948 until recent times. Combined with intimate memories of each member, the film attempts to portray the daily life of those Palestinians who remained in their land and were labelled "Israeli-Arabs," living as a minority in their own homeland.

Soundtrack for a Revolution

Tells the story of the American civil rights movement through its powerful music - the freedom songs protesters sang on picket lines, in mass meetings, and in jail cells as they fought for justice and equality. Features new performances of the freedom songs by top artists; archival footage; and interviews with civil rights foot soldiers and leaders. Freedom songs evolved from slave chants, from the labor movement, and especially from the black church. Music enabled blacks to sing words they could not say, and it was crucial in helping the protesters as they faced down brutal aggression with dignity and non-violence. The infectious energy of the songs swept people up and empowered them to fight for their rights. This film celebrates the vitality of this music.

Salt of This Sea

Born in Brooklyn to Palestinian refugee parents, Soraya decides to journey to the country of her ancestry when she discovers that her grandfather's savings have been frozen in a Jaffa bank account since his 1948 exile. However, she soon finds that her simple plan is a complicated undertaking — one that takes her further from her comfort zone than she'd imagined.

Trouble the Water

"Trouble the Water" takes you inside Hurricane Katrina in a way never before seen on screen. The film opens the day before the storm makes landfall--just blocks away from the French Quarter but far from the New Orleans that most tourists knew. Kimberly Rivers Roberts, an aspiring rap artist, is turning her new video camera on herself and her Ninth Ward neighbors trapped in the city. Weaving an insider's view of Katrina with a mix of verité and in-your-face filmmaking, it is a redemptive tale of self-described street hustlers who become heroes--two unforgettable people who survive the storm and then seize a chance for a new beginning.

Bamako

Caught in the stranglehold of debt and structural adjustment, Africa is fighting for its survival. In the face of disaster, representatives of African society bring an action against international financial institutions. The trial takes place in Bamako, in the yard of a house, among its inhabitants.

Bàttu

The star-stubbed cast includes Issac de Bankolè as Saar, a blind beggar, and Danny Glover as a corrupt president. In this often hilarious mix of politics and superstition, the beggars hamper the tourist industry yet play a necessary role opposite the lives of devout and wealthy Muslims. The agitated Minister of Public Health and Sanitation imposes a novel way of eliminating the problem.