An explosive video goes viral, showing a white school resource officer in South Carolina pull a Black teenager from her school desk and throw her across the floor. An outraged nation divides over who is at fault and what role race played in the incident. Healer-Activist Vivian Anderson uproots her life in NYC and moves to South Carolina to help the girl and dismantle the system behind the “Assault at Spring Valley,” including facing the police officer.

To contextualize this incident, geographer Janae Davis treks the surrounding swamps to unearth the overgrown and neglected homes of formerly enslaved people of African descent, drawing a throughline connecting trauma from the past to the present. Against the backdrop of racial reckoning and its deep historical roots, one incident illuminates a persistent American power structure.

Much like the nation at large, the arresting officer and the girl thrown from the desk have starkly different perspectives of what happened. Through intimate verité footage and extensive interviews with both, a hidden truth is unearthed about what actually happened that day. Throughout the film, select scholars, historians, and experts provide further context to the story, as well as an examination of race, school discipline, and police accountability.

2016 Festival Flashback!! Five years ago we invited this thought-provoking documentary to our festival. With the situation in the Middle East still far from resolution, this film speaks volumes about the hurdles people face to live in peace.

ALMOST FRIENDS is a documentary about two Israeli girls—an Arab and a Jew—who live only 40 miles away but in many ways live worlds apart. Participating in an online program that fosters educational exchange and friendship, the two girls correspond with caution and eventually meet face-to-face. The experience is profoundly moving for them, their families, and the audiences who see this touching film. But when conflict spans generations, change is slow and “almost” anything might be a start…

 

This documentary offers an extraordinary and tender examination of family life in ways that feel both personal and universal. When their mother is imprisoned, Ale and his sister Rocio’s relationship is faced with the greatest challenge possible: they must work together to parent their two young siblings.They promise to help each other and keep their family together until their mother is released, but as undocumented Honduran immigrants, living, working and studying in Mexico is difficult. Soon the prison wall that keeps their mother away gives rise to other emotional barriers that prevent the brother and sister from understanding each other. Just as they start to lose hope the family’s life takes an unexpected twist.

Important note from the director:

In 2014 I worked for a non-profit organization which helps convicted women, overseeing their cases and helping their re-introduction to society. I met Rocío and Alejandro’s mother on one of my visits to prison, and I was immediately struck by her energy and clear-headedness in such a terrible environment. The other inmates had a great respect for her.

The moment I pointed my camera at them and conducted my first interview I felt drawn to them, and I was particularly intrigued by the way they were handling the situation. The whole thing seemed to me like an extremely difficult predicament, but here I saw two courageous individuals with a great sense of humor who were willing to keep fighting. And I deeply admired them.

I later found out more about their story. Their life had been full of ups and downs from an early age, but the family had stayed together and remained strong through all of it. That history had turned them into very unique individuals; they were a great, tight-knit family and their ties were deep and complex.

How do children born into poverty find hope? This documentary follows the lives of a garbage picker, a music teacher and a group of children from Cateura, Paraguay. In this slum, they create musical instruments entirely out of garbage: first out of necessity, but the project became so much more. LANDFILL HARMONIC brings us on their journey from local village orchestra to world traveling (internet fueled) troupe whose trajectory of success is enhanced by their trash-into-music message.

Winner of the 2015 Audience Choice Award SXSW
Winner of the 2015 Audience Choice Award AFI

Thanks to the Hitler-Stalin non-aggression pact, Poltava, Ukraine, in 1941 was still a place where the fruits of civilization—in the case of Wunderkinder, music—flourished. Of course, all that changed when the Nazis invaded, and Marcus O. Rosenmüller’s achievement is to evoke those pre- and post-invasion times through the eyes of three children, all of them gifted musicians.

Pianist Larissa (Imogen Burell) and violinists Abrascha (Elin Kolev) and Hanna (Mathilda Adamik) share a great love of music and a friendship based on the joy they take from constant discovery—all three dream of playing Carnegie Hall one day. When the Nazis invade, the three of them—Larissa and Abrascha are Jewish, Hanna is German—find their friendship torn apart and their worlds collapsing through no fault of their own.

Lovingly directed as a poem to lost innocence, Wunderkinder is not a “children’s film.” It is a film from a child’s perspective that may help some families talk about the loss and destruction of World War II and the horror of the Holocaust.

A true-to-life film about fulfilling potential and overcoming destiny, “I am Kalam” has touched hearts across India and worldwide. Chhotu, a bright yet impoverished Rajasthani boy, dreams of gaining an education while he works at a roadside cafe. When he hears an inspirational message from President Kalam, he changes his name to Kalam and commits to studying independently whenever he can. He befriends a local prince, but the two must fraternize in secret. Through their forbidden friendship and a case of misjudged intentions, Kalam struggles to find his place and tries to meet the president. A heartwarming narrative, “I Am Kalam” speaks not only to the dreams of many uneducated children in India but to anyone who has dared to seek a better life for himself.

The Blue Gnomes that live in a mountain are in charge of the “magic silver” that brings sunlight to every day. The Red Gnomes are farm Gnomes with low opinions of those uppity Blues. After the magic silver is stolen by a gnome , the theft brings out the best between the two gnome groups to restore the daylight. With gnome hats to die for and a sleigh chase Tarantino would envy, this is the film that broke opening-day box-office records in Norway.

Abila, 14, lives in the violent slum jungle of Kibera, in Nairobi, Kenya. He is a Luo – one of the many Kenyan tribes. He is smitten with Shiku, who is the same age, but she is a Kikuyu, and that is the problem. Boys and girls from different tribes are not encouraged to mix. But Abila has another problem. At the start of the film, he finds his father in a disturbing state. His mother says it’s a hangover, but Abila has a feeling there’s more going on. He finds out that his father’s soul has been stolen by a Nyawawa, a female spirit. Despite the hostility of the surroundings, Abila and Shiku set off together to save the soul of Abila’s father.

You could say that the location is the real protagonist of this film. Shot in 13 days, this film was made in Kibera, where more than one million people live and battle for survival. Its residents acted the film’s parts.

This film emerged from a workshop and benefited from production support by the famous German director Tom Tykwer. Above all, the camera work is of a level that is seldom seen in African pictures. The authentic background in combination with the outside support turned “Soul Boy” into a sparkling – and surprisingly professional-looking — short film.

Over the course of a year, this witty documentary follows two urban, multiracial 11-year-olds as they explore their place in the food chain. Sadie and Safiyah talk to storekeepers, farmers, food activists, farmers to learn more about the origin of the food they eat, how it’s cultivated and how far it travels from farm to fork. The girls formulate sophisticated and compassionate opinions about urban sustainability, and by doing so inspire hope and active engagement.

Once dubbed “the most famous man in the world,” Charlie Chaplin has long been recognized as one of the preeminent icons of both comedy and cinema. From 1914 until 1967, Chaplin wrote, directed, produced and starred in more than 80 films, quickly advancing from basic slapstick to a unique comic style: immaculately constructed, deeply human, and always hilarious. “Modern Times” is one of his most acclaimed works that can make a child (or the child in us) laugh with abandon while truly empathizing with his iconic character, the down-and-out Tramp.

Because of its cultural significance, “Modern Times” was selected by the Library of Congress in 1989 for preservation in the National Film Registry.