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")
A contemporary story of love, rejection, and triumph as a young Māori girl fights to fulfill a destiny her grandfather refuses to recognize.
The armies of Fascist Italy conquered Addis Ababa, capital of Abyssinia, in May 1936, thus culminating the African colonial adventure of the ruthless dictator Benito Mussolini, by then lord of Libya, Eritrea and Somalia; a bloody and tragic story told through the naive drawings of Pietro Dall'Igna, an Italian schoolboy born in 1925.
When a Mongolian nomadic family's newest camel colt is rejected by its mother, a musician is needed for a ritual to change her mind.
Devoted teacher Anne Sullivan leads deaf, blind and mute Helen Keller out of solitude and helps integrate her into the world.
Single dad Richard meets Christine, a starving artist who moonlights as a cabbie. They awkwardly attempt to start a romance, but Richard’s divorce has left him emotionally damaged. Meanwhile, Richard’s sons—one a teenager, the other 6-years-old—take part in clumsy experiments with the opposite sex.
The little nomad girl, Nansal, finds a baby dog in the Mongolian veld, who becomes her best friend - against all rejections of her parents. A story about a Mongolian family of nomads - their traditional way of life and the rising call of the City.
A fictionalised exploration of Beethoven's life in his final days working on his Ninth Symphony. It is 1824. Beethoven is racing to finish his new symphony. However, it has been years since his last success and he is plagued by deafness, loneliness and personal trauma. A copyist is urgently needed to help the composer. A fictional character is introduced in the form of a young conservatory student and aspiring composer named Anna Holtz. The mercurial Beethoven is skeptical that a woman might become involved in his masterpiece but slowly comes to trust in Anna's assistance and in the end becomes quite fond of her. By the time the piece is performed, her presence in his life is an absolute necessity. Her deep understanding of his work is such that she even corrects mistakes he has made, while her passionate personality opens a door into his private world.
Secrets, rumors and betrayals surround the upcoming marriage between a young dissolute man and virtuous woman of the French aristocracy.
A woman employs a gay man to spend four nights at her house to watch her when she's "unwatchable".
A young woman working at a retirement home takes an elderly man living there on an excursion into the countryside, but the two wind up stranded in the titular forest.
In 1970s Iran, Marjane 'Marji' Satrapi watches events through her young eyes and her idealistic family of a long dream being fulfilled of the hated Shah's defeat in the Iranian Revolution of 1979. However as Marji grows up, she witnesses first hand how the new Iran, now ruled by Islamic fundamentalists, has become a repressive tyranny on its own.
As the heir and current marketing director for one of the nation's biggest gun manufacturers, Liberty Wallace is indifferent to the atrocities made possible through her business and her CEO husband, Victor. On her way to see her actor lover, Liberty ends up chained to a food cart full of explosives -- all at the insistence of "Joe", a sniper whose young daughter was a victim of gun violence, and who now has Liberty in his sights.
On the one hand, there’s the desert eating away at the land. The endless dry season, the lack of water. On the other there’s the threat of war. The village well has run dry. The livestock is dying. Trusting their instinct, most of the villagers leave and head south. Rahne, the only literate one, decides to head east with his three children and Mouna, his wife. A few sheep, some goats, and Chamelle, a dromedary, are their only riches. A tale of exodus, quest, hope and fatality.
A radio compere is forced to take the late shift and finds her night going places she couldn't have imagined.
A filmmaker talks about his work and love life with an unseen friend behind the camera. We also watch four of his short films.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
At the tense 1938 Munich Conference, former friends who now work for opposing governments become reluctant spies racing to expose a Nazi secret.
Young women toiling in a factory are exposed to hazardous material which takes a disastrous toll on their health.
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 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.
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.
Based on the true story of the collapse of a mine in San Jose, Chile—that left 33 miners isolated underground for 69 days.
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.
In this sprawling, fictionalized history of the Black Panthers, 1960s Oakland becomes a war zone as the Panthers battle for the right to exist.
More interested in partying and flirting with young musicians than work, veteran rock journalist Ellie Klug has one last chance to prove her value to her magazine’s editor: a no-stone-unturned search to discover what really happened to long lost rock god, Matt Smith, who also happens to be her ex-boyfriend. Teaming up with an eccentric amateur documentary filmmaker, Ellie hits the road in search of answers.
A troubled young woman becomes obsessed with her mysterious new neighbor, who bears a striking resemblance to the girl's dead mother.
Feeling awkward and isolated, an imaginative and strong-willed teenage girl runs away from home with an older punk rock drifter.
A British spy is banished to Panama after having an affair with an ambassador's mistress. Once there he makes connection with a local tailor with a nefarious past and connections to all of the top political and gangster figures in Panama. The tailor also has a wife, who works for the Panamanian president and a huge debt. The mission is to learn what the President intends to do with the Canal.
While investigating the global phenomenon of caste and its dark influence on society, a journalist faces unfathomable personal loss and uncovers the beauty of human resilience.
The warmhearted story of Polish immigrant and mathematician Stan Ulam, who moved to the U.S. in the 1930s. Stan deals with the difficult losses of family and friends all while helping to create the hydrogen bomb and the first computer.
A mother and her teenage daughter must confront Death when it arrives in the form of an astonishing talking bird.