Grasshopper Film (Firm)
Description
To a stranger, he's a guy obsessed with toilets, but to those who know him, he's "Mr. Toilet," a crusader for global sanitation. Born in the Singapore slums, Jack Sim knows firsthand the agonies of not having a proper loo. Now he's dedicating his life to a crisis no one dares talk about: Shit. Not having a place "to go" isn't just an inconvenience; it's a problem that impacts 2.4 billion people worldwide. In India alone, 200,000 children die each...
Description
After the inconclusive death of his young niece, filmmaker Angelo Madsen Minax returns to his rural Michigan hometown, preparing to make a film about a broken criminal justice system. Instead, he pivots to excavate the depths of generational addiction, Christian fervor, and trans embodiment.
3) Il buco
Description
During the economic boom of the 1960s, Europe's highest building is being built in Italy's prosperous North. At the other end of the country, young speleologists explore Europe's deepest cave in the untouched Calabrian hinterland. The bottom of the Bifurto Abyss, 700 meters below Earth, is reached for the first time. The intruders' venture goes unnoticed by the inhabitants of a small neighboring village, but not by the old shepherd of the Pollino...
4) In my room
Description
"Lost in life and beset by a recent passing, Armin has nowhere to go and just as much to show for himself. Fate (or something like it) intervenes when Armin awakes one morning and discovers that seemingly all of humanity has disappeared, leaving him to his limited devices and opening the door for self-discovery but the gift of maximum freedom bears complications." --container
Description
A Mexican-American teenage farmworker dreams of graduating high school. When ICE raids her community, it threatens to separate her family and forces her to become her family's breadwinner. FRUITS OF LABOR is a lyrical, coming-of-age documentary feature about adolescence, nature and how ancestors paved the way. Director Emily Cohen Ibáñez documents life guided by the spirit world through her hardships and joys in modern America.
Description
Henry Glassie has made a life out of studying folk artists and the marvels they create. Over the past 50 years, the renown US scholar has travelled to five continents, conducting fieldwork with an obsessive thoroughnes. Each project Glassie undertakes requires at least a decade. Brimming with insights into the artistic impulse-and how every culture manifests its own standard of beauty and meaning-this poetic portrait of Glassie doubles as a travelogue,...
Description
His profile takes us inside the life, struggles, philosophy and humor of a man who credits his success to the deliciousness of peanut butter. Featuring delightful animated interludes and interviews from colleagues, editors and his nine children, this look at Stevenson's life - who is also a noted writer of children's books and a columnist for The New York Times - is a testament to observing the world from an original perspective.
10) Vitalina Varela
Description
"Vitalina…a cape Verdean woman who visits Lisbon to reunite with her husband following two decades of separation, only to arrive mere days after his funeral. Along in a strange, forbidding land, she perseveres and begins establishing a new life."--container.
Description
"In early 2022, the Ukrainian towns of Borodianka, Bucha, and Irpin, near the capital of Kyiv, were occupied by the Russian army. After a month of intense fighting - in houses, schools, stores - the Russian army finally withdrew. But the towns were completely destroyed. In Bucha, the streets were strewn with the corpses of dozens of killed civilians. How do people live there now, in light of such atrocities? How are the survivors coping? This powerful...
12) Hamtramck, USA
Description
Once a city that was 90% Polish, Hamtramck became the first Muslim majority city in America. Now, this new wave of immigrants aim to gain representation in city hall. HAMTRAMCK, USA follows Kamal Rahman, a Bangladeshi candidate for Mayor, Fadel al-Marsoumi, a 23 year old Iraqi immigrant running for City Council, as well as the current mayor, Karen Majewski, Hamtramck's first female mayor in the city's 100 year lineage of Polish mayors. Throughout...
Description
For 18 months Pacho Velez and Courtney Stephens traveled the US to document sections of the wall that are on display in over 75 locations, ranging from the serious (Fort Benning) to the bizarre (Main Street Station Casino in Las Vegas) and even the campus of nearby Capital University. Along the way, interviews with unusual characters who own, maintain, and interact with pieces of the wall offer a window into American culture, and through the film...
Description
"[Pictures of Ghosts] is a multidimensional journey through time, sound, architecture and filmmaking, set in the urban landscape of Recife, Brazilian coastal capital of Pernambuco: a historical and human territory, examined through the great movie theatres that served as spaces of conviviality during the 20th century. Having hosted dreams and progress, these places have also embodied a major transformation in social practices. Combining archive documentary,...
18) Kwaku Ananse
Description
Drawing upon the rich mythology of Ghana, this magical short film combines semi-autobiographical elements with local folklore to tell the story of a young American woman who returns to West Africa for her father's funeral, only to discover his hidden double identity.
Description
DEVIL PUT THE COAL IN THE GROUND is a holistic look at the suffering and devastation brought on by the coal industry and its decline, and a cautionary tale of the ravages of extractive industry and corporate power, as it has affected the people, communities and the environment of West Virginia. Consciously eschewing exploitative filmmaking around the opioid epidemic or poverty, the film focuses on its people - all linked by the love of their home...
20) Sweetgrass
Formats
Description
Lawrence Allestad and family were among the last of the traditional sheepherders of the American West. Under a public grazing permit that had been handed down in his Norwegian-American family for generations, Allestad was the final rancher to drive his herds into Montana's rugged Absaroka-Beartooth range north of Yellowstone to fatten on sweet summer grass. The family members and their hired hands conducted the drives much as their pioneer forebears...