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Suicide: The Ripple Effect

2018 · ★ 6

Survivor and mental wellness advocate Kevin Hines explores the lasting effects of suicide focusing on breaking stigma, advocacy, and mental wellness.

Quando a noite ainda não existia

2023

During the COVID-19 pandemic, a trans body dreams of the birth of night.

32 Pills: My Sister's Suicide

2017 · ★ 8.7

Traces the life and mental illness of New York artist and photographer Ruth Litoff, and her sister's struggle to come to terms with her tragic suicide.

火藥, burn my eyes

In 1967, Beulah struck Reynosa. Family survives through images from memory circling the wreck. Rituals of celebration and violence like hurricane, shift between dancing, cyanotypes, blue fire and lost family archive. We have come to see the damage that was done and the treasures that prevail. Thus invent colors that burn the eyelid like 火藥.

The Beksińskis. A Sound and Picture Album

2017 · ★ 7

Painter Zdzisław Beksiński, his wife Zofia and their son Tomasz, a well-known radio journalist and translator, were a typical and unconventional family, both at the same time. One of the father’s obsessions was filming himself and his family members. Using archival footage only, shot primarily by Zdzisław, as well many other materials, which have not been presented anywhere so far, the film tells a tragic story of the Beksińskis that has never ceased to fascinate Polish filmmakers.

Wal-Mart: The High Cost of Low Price

2005 · ★ 6.3

This documentary takes the viewer on a deeply personal journey into the everyday lives of families struggling to fight Goliath. From a family business owner in the Midwest to a preacher in California, from workers in Florida to a poet in Mexico, dozens of film crews on three continents bring the intensely personal stories of an assault on families and American values.

Lumière, Le Cinéma!

2024 · ★ 7

In one of those wonderful coincidences of history, lumière, the French word for “light,” was also the last name of brothers Auguste and Louis, whose brilliant invention, the cinematograph, helped to inaugurate the most beloved art form of the last 130 years. Institute Lumière director Thierry Frémaux uses Lumière, Le Cinema! to guide the viewer through over a hundred shorts—some famous, some forgotten, some never before seen—directed by Lumière and company. In the process, Frémaux illuminates how the brothers employed the camera as a creative instrument as they (and their operators) mastered framing, staging, and subject selection for quotidian and exotic microdocumentaries as well as the first ever fictional motion pictures. The result is not only a glorious re(telling) of the genesis of cinema but a profound meditation on the beautiful world captured—and the mysterious world imagined—by the Lumières.

The Afterlife

2023

A young adult's first-hand account of "accidentally becoming human again" after, and with, trauma induced depression. Lo-fi, vulnerable, and uniquely youthful, "The Afterlife" is a melancholic affirmation of life after death.

Valldaura: A Quarantine Cabin

2022 · ★ 6

A group of young architects, confined to a forest in Barcelona during the COVID crisis, explore the problems generated by the ambition of wanting to be completely self-sufficient.

The Last Chapter

2025

A documentary film that follows the lives of first-generation retired immigrants living in Finland.

Music Palace

2005

Previously a central part of communal life, the movie palaces of New York’s Chinatown are now extinct. This documentary short takes us inside the title theater located on the Bowery, as it’s about to close its doors, with its caretakers ruefully looking back at the life that once was. Eric Lin’s poignant first film serves as a glimpse into the usually private—and, according to the Music Palace’s projectionist, “lonely”—operations of a theater, and mourns the loss of a once-vital movie-going locale.

Blood and Water

2007

When the 2004 tsunami hit the coast of Sri Lanka, 65-year-old Anton Ambrose's wife and daughter were killed. "In five minutes," he says, "I lost everything." A year later, Anton returns to Sri Lanka. With him is his nephew, award-winning filmmaker Rohan Fernando. A Tamil, Anton moved to California in the 1970s and became a very successful gynecologist. His daughter, Orlantha, made the opposite journey, returning to Sri Lanka where she ran a non-profit group that gave underprivileged children free violin lessons. Blood and Water is the story of one man's search for meaning in the face of overwhelming loss, but it is also filled with improbable characters, unintentional comedy and situational ironies.