The Astronauts of Feuerbach

Soon enough humankind will ascend to space. Who can join that mission? Who has to stay behind? In some places it has already started. Men and machine taking flight, leaving for the unknown future. For the endless void. That’s where they meet. The People using machines to clean machines and the people sheltered inside those machines. Destined to collide, never to engage. Welcome to Europes biggest car wash.

Adrift

"Adrift" is shot on the arctic island of Spitzbergen and in Norway. It combines time-lapse photography with stop-motion animation of the landscape. Through camera-angles and framing the film gradually dislocates the viewer from a stable base where one loses the sense of scale and grounding.

aquarium i

what was the last dream you had?

People Unite!

In the face of AAPI violence, an intergenerational coalition of Black, Indigenous, Latinx, Asian, People of Color organizers come together to organize a march across historic Washington Heights and Harlem, as a continuation of the historic and radical Black and Asian solidarity tradition.

Sparni

It’s the second semester of junior year for Pierce “Sparni” Sparnroft, a gifted jazz vibraphonist studying at Montclair State University in New Jersey. Sparni’s prospects on the vibes were rejuvenated by their new professor, the world-renowned Steve Nelson, and are to be showcased during a student-driven recital in May 2023. But all the while, Sparni must face a crisis within.

The Magic Behind 'd'ILLUSION: The Houdini Musical - The Audio Theater Experience'

A special behind-the-scenes look at the making of the audiobook edition of "d'ILLUSION: The Houdini Musical" and how it did its part in helping keep theater and the arts alive during the COVID-19 pandemic.

The Diary of a Sky

The film unfolds an atmospheric symphony of violence over Beirut, revealing the haunting fusion of incessant Israeli military flights and the hum of generators during blackouts. This 45-minute video essay plunges viewers into a chilling chronicle of daily life transformed by the weaponization of the air, where the terror of repeated incursions becomes a disconcertingly banal backdrop.

Die Hugenottenstadt Erlangen. Eine der interessantesten Städteanlagen Deutschlands

A silent documentary film about the history and the architecture of the town of Erlangen in the Middle Franconia region in Bavaria, Germany.

Interview with Robert Kramer

This last testimony of Robert Kramer (1939-1999) is a moving documentary with the independent American film director, in which he speaks of his political activism, his way of filmmaking, his relationship with Portugal and the revolutionary movements.

Angst 61

Elena

In 1937, tens of thousands of Haitians and Dominicans of Haitian descent were exterminated by the Dominican army, on the basis of anti-black racism. Fast-forward to 2013, the Dominican Republic's Supreme Court stripped the citizenship of anyone with Haitian parents, retroactive to 1929, rendering more than 200,000 people stateless. Elena, the young protagonist of the film, and her family stand to lose their legal residency in the Dominican Republic if they don't manage to get their documents in time. Negotiating a mountain of opaque bureaucratic processes and a racist, hostile society around, Elena becomes the face of the struggle to remain in a country built on the labor of her father and forefathers.

Step Into the Third Dimension

Nishika 3D cameras were the inexpensive cousins to the Nimslo 3D cameras made in the mid to late 1980's (the Nimslo cameras used glass lenses, while the Nishika ones used plastic lenses). The cameras used regular 35mm film that captured 4 simultaneous images onto 2 frames of film. These images were printed onto photo stock with a lenticular surface bonded to it which allowed 3D to be seen without glasses, like the old kids story books with the 3D covers. The basic 3D camera kit came with this VHS instructional video that was hosted by Vincent Price. It was one of the last things he did.

Style Wars

Tony Silver and Henry Chalfant's PBS documentary tracks the rise and fall of subway graffiti in New York in the late 1970s and early 1980s.

Transrapid - Von der Elbe an die Spree

Short film about the never-built 60-minute route from Hamburg to Berlin, on which the Transrapid was supposed to operate.

Truth Finds a Way

Tobias Natterer explains the motives of creating The Uncensored Library, a library containing forbidden articles from several countries around the world inside a Minecraft server. The documentary also digs further into the press freedom situation around the world and the sad truths behind it.

No Voice

She now lives many miles away from her mother, who is waiting to hear from her. It is a bittersweet, restless, nostalgic moment, and she remembers those vanished years.

This Is Not an Olive Tree

A theoretical exercise can stem from a physical one: using the camera as if it was the vibrating device placed on the olive trees for the harvest of its fruit, the final result is a series of original and intriguing images. The camera shakes, gets in and out of focus, and we don’t exactly know what is happening. At first this is a strange disorientation, but then you get used to it through the cyclical mechanical noise that joins the images. The words of a peaceful female voice allows you to frame the film: a visual exercise after all can also be free.

Iran: A Skier's Journey

They were cautioned not to travel to Iran. Too dangerous, too restrictive, too unknown. But skiers Chad Sayers and Forrest Coots went anyway. What they found: bustling bazaars, intricately adorned mosques, steamy bathhouses, powder-coated slopes and small pockets of rich ski culture. This poetic film from Jordan Manley is a meditation on a complex country that can be both welcoming and impenetrable, as seen through the eyes of skiers.

Mira

Follows the journey of a spirited Nepali village girl on her pursuit to being a world-recognized mountain runner. Growing up in a remote mountain village in Nepal, Mira always dreamed of being successful in sport despite all the challenges that she & other Nepali girls face. After running away from home, Mira joined the Maoist army until as a young adult, she traveled the long distance to Kathmandu to try her luck. Out of money, she was about to return home to her village, when by chance on a morning run, she meets another runner who tells her about a long running race in the local hills. She wins it and soon begins to realize her tough mountain village upbringing has prepared her perfectly for this sport.

Doing it Scared

British climber – now resident of Tasmania – Paul Pritchard, was one of the leading climbers and mountaineers of the 1980s and 1990s, renowned for his hard and extremely bold first ascents. In 1998 Paul was abseiling in to climb the Totem Pole in Tasmania when he dislodged a rock with his rope that hit him on the head, leaving him with a severe head injury that he was lucky to survive. The aftermath of the accident left him with hemiplegia, which means he has little feeling or movement in the right side of this body. Despite this disability, Paul’s continued to live a life filled with adventure. Eighteen years later Paul returns to the Totem Pole to find out if he has recovered enough to finish the climb.

Maternal Instinct

Police pull over a woman who claims she just gave birth. But the baby — and the blood — aren't hers. Twisted lies unravel in this true-crime documentary.

13th

An in-depth look at the prison system in the United States and how it reveals the nation's history of racial inequality.

Evil Influencer: The Jodi Hildebrandt Story

Unravel the case of Utah therapist Jodi Hildebrandt, whose child abuse arrest with parenting YouTuber Ruby Franke exposed a twisted tale of manipulation.

The Alabama Solution

Incarcerated men defy the odds to expose a cover-up in one of America’s deadliest prison systems.

Exit Through the Gift Shop

Banksy is a graffiti artist with a global reputation whose work can be seen on walls from post-hurricane New Orleans to the separation barrier on the Palestinian West Bank. Fiercely guarding his anonymity to avoid prosecution, Banksy has so far resisted all attempts to be captured on film. Exit Through the Gift Shop tells the incredible true story of how an eccentric French shop keeper turned documentary maker attempted to locate and befriend Banksy, only to have the artist turn the camera back on its owner.

John Candy: I Like Me

Those who knew iconic funnyman John Candy best share his story, in their own words, through never-before-seen archival footage, imagery, and interviews.

My Mom Jayne

Through deeply personal interviews with her siblings and an examination of the photographs, letters, and belongings left behind, Mariska assembles a new portrait of her mother Jayne Mansfield, an extraordinary and complex woman.

O.J.: Made in America

A chronicle of the rise and fall of O.J. Simpson, whose high-profile murder trial exposed the extent of American racial tensions, revealing a fractured and divided nation.

God Grew Tired of Us

Filmmaker Christopher Quinn observes the ordeal of three Sudanese refugees -- Jon Bul Dau, Daniel Abul Pach and Panther Bior -- as they try to come to terms with the horrors they experienced in their homeland, while adjusting to their new lives in the United States.

Long Shot

When Juan Catalan is arrested for a murder he insists he didn't commit, he builds his case for innocence around unexpected raw footage.

Voyeur

Legendary journalist Gay Talese unmasks a motel owner who spied on his guests for decades. But his bombshell story soon becomes a scandal of its own.

Dawg Fight

In a crime-plagued neighborhood near Miami, brutal, bare-knuckled backyard fights give young men a chance to earn money -- and self-respect.

In the Realms of the Unreal

In the Realms of the Unreal is a documentary about the reclusive Chicago-based artist Henry Darger. Henry Darger was so reclusive that when he died his neighbors were surprised to find a 15,145-page manuscript along with hundreds of paintings depicting The Story of the Vivian Girls, in What is Known as the Realms of the Unreal, of the Glodeco-Angelinnian War Storm, Cased by the Child Slave Rebellion.

A Toxic Love Story

A string of threatening emails escalates into a revenge plot involving a newly married US marshal and his ex-girlfriend.

The Menendez Brothers

Serving life in prison for murdering their parents, Lyle and Erik Menendez speak out in this documentary explaining the shocking crime and ensuing trials.

LA 92

Twenty-five years after the verdict in the Rodney King trial sparked several days of protests, violence and looting in Los Angeles, LA 92 immerses viewers in that tumultuous period through stunning and rarely seen archival footage.

Narco Cultura

To a growing number of Mexicans and Latinos in the Americas, narco-traffickers have become iconic outlaws and the new models of fame and success. They represent a pathway out of the ghetto, nurturing a new American dream fueled by the war on drugs. Narco Cultura looks at this explosive phenomenon from within, exposing cycles of addiction to money, drugs, and violence that are rapidly gaining strength on both sides of the U.S.-Mexico border

Naqoyqatsi

A visual montage portrait of our contemporary world dominated by globalized technology and violence.

Baraka

A paralysingly beautiful documentary with a global vision—an odyssey through landscape and time—that attempts to capture the essence of life.

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.