Five shorts spanning a century on lives impacted by the Panama Canal. Men, women and children who are influenced by the existence of the "Canal", the event that changed the history of not only a country but the world.
Social & External
The people behind it
Lakisha May
Clarice Thompson (segment "1913") / Clarice Jones (segment "2013")
Andre Morris
Phillip (segment "1913")
Charlie Goldstein
Jake Wright (segment "1950") (as Carlos Eduardo Goldstein Alemán)
Kathleen Wise
Patsy Wright (segment "1950")
Hannah Schöbitz
Lucy (segment "1964")
Luis Manuel Barrios
Silverio (segment "1977")
José Angel Murillo
Leonidas (segment "1977")
Meredith Carley
Aunt Perla (segment "2013")
Henry Twohy
Jeremiah (segment "1913")
Earl Patrick Watson
Pastor Thompson (segment "1913")
The 12-year old Dolores, a feisty preteen desperate to be seen as a grown-up in 1976 suburbia is on her humiliating, hilarious journey from girlhood to growing up. She fantasizes about sex, womanhood, work... and Freddie Prinze. The girl thinks she's got the lowdown on being a woman, but when her overworked single mom Janice hires Cleo to babysit her world collides with the super cool black 16-year old's, each learns painful truths about what it really means to grow up.
Mark and Mary's meet-cute happens at a neighborhood drug store, where she is busy buying a pregnancy test, and he has to make an effort to remind her they met in college. After asking her out, he accompanies her as she takes the test, and upon it showing negative, she agrees to a date. One year later, they have fallen deeply, passionately, head over heels in love, and their whirlwind romance leads to marriage. So when Mary suddenly requests they open their relationship to “ethical non-monogamy”, Mark is taken by surprise, but agrees to try it. And that's where this story really begins.
A young college student reluctantly meets with her estranged father only to discover the truth about the events of the wild summer of '75 that drove them apart.
The story of Elly Beinhorn, the first German aviator ever to fly around the world which made her a national hero in the 1930s.
This first feature by Amy Greenfield brings to the screen the story of the daughter of Oedipus in an emotionally relentless, visually stunning New Music Film Opera which challenges the conventions of narrative cinema to create a genre of its own. The 2500-year-old drama of the woman who defied the state to bury her brother is transformed through stark, ceaseless movement, haunting sounds and music (including themes from Glen Branca, David Van Tieghem, Elliot Sharp and Diamanda Galas) and words of outcry against our own world's injustice.
A radio compere is forced to take the late shift and finds her night going places she couldn't have imagined.
Amanda struggles to keep something inside as she spends the day taking pictures of her best friend.
Four years after a military coup overthrew the Brazilian government in 1964, all civil rights were suspended and torture became a systematic practice. Using a mix of fiction and documentary this extraordinary film is a searing record of personal memory, political repression and the will to survive. Interviews with eight women who were political prisoners during the military dictatorship are framed by the fantasies and imaginings of an anonymous character, portrayed by actress Irene Ravache.
A tragic comedy of a sweet little girl, who grows up to be a crazy old cat lady.
A filmmaker talks about his work and love life with an unseen friend behind the camera. We also watch four of his short films.
Reluctantly, a sulky adolescent returns to her parents' house for yet another boring summer vacation, dabbling in desire and the art of desirability, eventually mixing reality with vision, caged fantasies with the fierce female sexuality.
Three minutes. The time to leave a message. To pass the baton and run 1600 meters. To cook an egg. The time to make a decision that can change your life.
A retelling of the story of France’s iconic but ill-fated queen, Marie Antoinette - from her betrothal and marriage to Louis XVI at fifteen to her reign as queen at nineteen and ultimately the fall of Versailles.
Starting his new job as an instructor at a New England school for the deaf, James Leeds meets Sarah Norman, a young deaf woman who works at the school as a member of the custodial staff. In spite of Sarah's withdrawn emotional state, a romance slowly develops between the pair.
A huge wave is about to destroy the city. Many people leave in panic, only a few remain in the lonely streets. Among them are SEBASTIAN, a skeptical and irresolute young loner; ANA, a woman who seeks in others the passion she can’t live; and an apocalyptic GIRL. They turn the city into a games board where the stakes are love and the end of the world.
Laura is a lawyer, she’s beautiful and has a nice boyfriend. But 15 years ago she was fat, bullied and without friends. Now she has come to terms with her bulimia. She is celebrating her first year abstinence.
Camargue, France - Nejma trains hard to win the local bullfighting competition. When she is mauled after a celebration, she starts to notice disturbing changes. News of a rogue bull on the loose terrifies the community, killing young men.
On a hot summer day in Oslo, the dead mysteriously awaken, and three families are thrown into chaos when their deceased loved ones come back to them. Who are they, and what do they want?
MT RUSH - is the present as a near-future science fiction, chronicling the day-to-day activities of a lesbian Mt. Rushmore Park Ranger as she navigates an onslaught of interactive fundraising emails that appear on a transparent interface, leading up to the 2016 Presidential election. The narrative arc of the movie is based on the urgent, alarmist, and oddly personalized campaign and fundraising emails from the Democrats and Republicans (i.e. Hillary Has Been Emailing You… or WE QUIT: but we don’t want to quit). Serving as both narrator and foil to the ranger, the emails perform the pervasive political rhetoric in today’s systems of governance; while acting as a meditation on the National Park Service and politics.
Or shoulders a lot: she's 17 or 18, a student, works evenings at a restaurant, recycles cans and bottles for cash, and tries to keep her mother Ruthie from returning to streetwalking in Tel Aviv. Ruthie calls Or "my treasure," but Ruthie is a burden. She's just out of hospital, weak, and Or has found her a job as a house cleaner. The call of the quick money on the street is tough for Ruthie to ignore. Or's emotions roil further when the mother of the youth she's in love with comes to the flat to warn her off. With love fading and Ruthie perhaps beyond help, Or's choices narrow.
In a remote South American colony in the late 18th century, officer Zama of the Spanish crown waits in vain for a transfer to a more prestigious location. He suffers small humiliations and petty politicking as he increasingly succumbs to lust and paranoia.
María Margarita is the youngest of four siblings in a family living in a mining town in the Atacama Desert (Chile). The most special time of the week for this family is Sunday, when they all go to the movies to enjoy stories that let them escape their everyday lives by transporting them to other worlds. The girl’s parents soon realise that the little girl has a very special gift: an almost uncanny ability to recount movies. The girl’s extraordinary talent will spread throughout the village, changing the fortunes of her family as the country is transformed forever.
A psychotherapist helps a law student cope with schizophrenia in one of five interconnected tales dealing with mental illness.
In a suburban landscape, the lives of several families interlace with loss, despair and personal crisis. Esther Gold has lost focus on all but caring for her comatose son, Paul, and neglects her daughter and husband. Lawyer Jim Train is devoted to his career, not his family. Helen Christianson wants to find a new spark in life, while Annette Jennings tries to rebuild hers.
Based on true events about the foot soldiers of the early feminist movement, women who were forced underground to pursue a dangerous game of cat and mouse with an increasingly brutal State.
Young women toiling in a factory are exposed to hazardous material which takes a disastrous toll on their health.
At the tense 1938 Munich Conference, former friends who now work for opposing governments become reluctant spies racing to expose a Nazi secret.
Tells the parallel stories of nine-year-old Carlitos and his mother, Rosario. In the hopes of providing a better life for her son, Rosario works illegally in the U.S. while her mother cares for Carlitos back in Mexico.
A seamstress recalls events leading to her act of peaceful defiance that prompted the 1955 bus boycott in Montgomery, Alabama.
In 1575, the young soldier Miguel de Cervantes is captured on the high seas by Barbary pirates and taken to Algiers as a hostage. Aware that a cruel death awaits him if his family does not pay his ransom soon, he finds refuge in his passion for storytelling.
The story of Margaret Humphreys, a social worker from Nottingham, who uncovers one of the most significant social scandals in recent times – the forced migration of children from the United Kingdom to Australia and other Commonwealth countries. Almost singlehandedly, Margaret reunited thousands of families, brought authorities to account and worldwide attention to an extraordinary miscarriage of justice.
In the polarized and violent Medellín (Colombia's 'City of Eternal Spring') of the 1970s, doctor Héctor Abad Gómez is concerned about both his children and children from less favored classes. After a devastating loss in the family, Héctor gives himself to the greater cause of public health programs for the poor in Medellín to the consternation of the city's authorities.
Defiant young activists take the women's suffrage movement by storm, putting their lives at risk to help American women win the right to vote.
At the behest of an old and dear friend, playwright Lillian Hellman undertakes a dangerous mission to smuggle funds into Nazi Germany.
Feeling awkward and isolated, an imaginative and strong-willed teenage girl runs away from home with an older punk rock drifter.
A drama set in the American South, where a precocious, troubled girl finds a safe haven in the music and movement of Elvis Presley.
The inspiring true story of Richard Montañez, the Frito Lay janitor who channeled his Mexican American heritage and upbringing to turn the iconic Flamin' Hot Cheetos into a snack that disrupted the food industry and became a global pop culture phenomenon.
Patagonia, 1960. A German doctor meets an Argentinean family and follows them to a town where the family will be starting a new life. The family welcomes the doctor into their home and entrust their young daughter to his care, not knowing that he is one of the most dangerous criminals in the world.
A troubled young woman becomes obsessed with her mysterious new neighbor, who bears a striking resemblance to the girl's dead mother.
In New York City, the lives of a lawyer, an actuary, a house-cleaner, a professor, and the people around them intersect as they ponder order and happiness in the face of life's cold unpredictability.