POV

Working alone in Iraq over eight months, filmmaker Laura Poitras (Flag Wars, POV) creates an extraordinarily intimate portrait of Iraqis living under U.S. occupation. Her principal focus is Dr. Riyadh, an Iraqi medical doctor, father of…

From a snowy, small town in northern Michigan to the mountains of Afghanistan, Where Soldiers Come From follows the four-year journey of childhood friends who join the National Guard after graduating from high school. As it chronicles the…

Fondly described as “Talladega Nights meets Catcher in the Rye,” Marshall Curry’s Racing Dreams chronicles a year in the life of three tweens who dream of becoming NASCAR drivers. Though they aren’t old enough for driver’s licenses,…

"There's nobody that's not going to get old — unless they die," says Enola Maxwell at the beginning of this engaging and refreshing film. Through the eyes of six women, aged 65-75, we are treated to a variety of new perspectives on aging,…

Rich in humor and regional color, this sometimes hilarious film uses the prism of language to reveal our attitudes about the way other people speak. From Boston Brahmins to Black Louisiana teenagers, from Texas cowboys to New York…

Based on the autobiography of Nicaraguan author Omar Cabezas, Fire From the Mountain is the lyrical, earthy, sometimes humorous account of the author's political journey from student activist to guerrilla to government official. Shaffer's…

Half comedy, half horror story, this disturbing film focuses on several spokesmen for America's survivalist movement as they reveal the way they think, the way they play, and the way they prepare for the next world war.

If Armageddon's Door is about the explosion of community, Living with AIDS is just the opposite. It's a graceful, moving film about a community that provides both compassion and care to someone with a debilitating disease, in this case a…

During the late 1970s, tens of thousands of men, women and even children were abducted by the right-wing military government in Argentina. While most of the population was terrorized by these actions, a small group of mothers of the…

Five years before the United States entered World War II, 3,200 Americans went off to Europe to fight the spread of fascism. At 18, 19 and 20 years old, they volunteered to risk their lives defending a democratically elected government in…

A lively portrait of 76-year-old Harold "Louie Bluie" Armstrong, musician, artist, raconteur and rogue.

On the surface, this is a somewhat unusual film about pet cemeteries and their owners. But then it grows much more complicated and bizarre, until in the end it is about such large issues as love, immorality, failure, and the dogged…

Hailed by many critics as a classic, Best Boy is the moving story of Philly, a 53-year-old mentally-disabled man who adapts to an independent life as he prepares to move away form his elderly parents.

Rate It X is a bitingly funny and disarming journey through the landscape of American sexism. Men only are interviewed by the two filmmakers in a witty montage of free-wheeling encounters. Pornographers, corporate executives, a funeral…

Metropolitan Avenue is an inspiring contemporary story about women who strive to combine new roles and old values in our rapidly changing society. We are introduced to a lively Brooklyn neighborhood which, like many urban areas, faces…

A heartbreaking yet hopeful portrait of three runaway girls with histories of abuse and neglect. Pinky, a Puerto Rican girl, refuses to go to school. Mars, on the streets since age 13, works as a stripper. Martha, who has lived in a dozen…

On a hot summer night in Detroit, Ronald Ebens, an autoworker, killed a young Chinese-American engineer with a baseball bat. Although he confessed, he never spent a day in jail. This gripping Academy Award-nominated film relentlessly…

The debutante tradition is alive and well. Witness the annual Debutante Cotillion in Washington, DC -- a meticulously planned ritual where networking and meeting people who can help you later are as important to today's debs as the style…

A stamp dealer from Los Angeles, a former school teacher form Miami, a born again Christian from Las Vegas, and a whiz-kid law student square off in the Jeopardy! $100,000 Tournament of Champions. Peek behind the scenes and into the…

Home movies and tape recordings collected from 60 different American families comprise a composite lifetime which moves from childhood to adulthood, from innocence to experience.

Denounced by officials and shunned by broadcasters when it was first released, this exploration of the personal and immediate impacts of the nuclear age carries a chilling thesis: The Bomb is killing ordinary Americans, even in the…

A bold and unconventional film portrait of one of America's leading Social Realist painters doing what he does best: skewering corrupt politicians, raging over social injustices, and satirizing the petty foibles of humankind.

On the streets and subways of New York, 101 itinerant performers whirl firesticks, mimic passers-by, imitate Stevie Wonder, tap dance and perform classical music. A delightful mixture of music and magic moments, celebrating some joyful…

The untold story of a handful of Jewish youth who organized an underground resistance against the Nazis in the Lithuanian ghetto of Vilna.

Moved by the growing desperation of thousands of laid-off steel workers, a group of ministers in Pittsburgh begins to confront the city's government and powerful corporations. Their passionate, controversial, and unorthodox actions lead…

Videomaker Lynn Hershman places herself center-screen for an intimate, humorous, and piercing narrative about her efforts to control her weight.

For more than a hundred years cowboys have written with feeling about the life and land they love. Several contemporary poet lariats keep that tradition alive — even on the Johnny Carson show.

The inner and outer lives of identical twins Doug and Mike Starn, whose collaborative painting and photographic work is rapidly gaining acclaim in the art world.

The lives and struggles of a group of homeless people who've been moved into an "urban campground" in Los Angeles.

An underground, high-security isolation unit at the Federal prison in Lexington, Kentucky, was built to house three female inmates convicted of politically motivated crimes. An international campaign advocates closing the controversial…

Gary, a 39 year-old successful animation artist and devout Christian, is pursuing a lifelong dream — to become a woman. A candid, non-sensational and sometimes humorous journey of nearly three years during which Gary prepares physically…

With a subway platform as his stage and a plastic can as his instrument, 14-year-old Larry Wright is a self-taught drummer with astonishing talent. A rousing tribute to the Harlem youth and the rich culture of the urban streets.

Cryonics — the freezing of human beings after death for future revival — is the focus of this off-beat film by two science buffs-turned-film-majors. Alternately deadpan and dead serious, the film features commentary from Timothy Leary, a…

In its national broadcast premiere, this bittersweet classic from pioneering filmmakers follows four door-to-door Bible salesmen as they walk the line between hype and despair. The critics used all the superlatives on this one, and it's…

Three big-city police chiefs reveal sharply differing philosophies of law enforcement. Daryl Gates introduced SWAT to Los Angeles. Anthony Bouza ruffled feathers in Minneapolis. Lee Brown recently left Houston for New York. These top…

Two poor women in India attempt to improve their lives. Kamala and Raji's resourcefulness, aspirations, and capacity for joy shatter stereotypes of Indian women as voiceless figures leading desolate lives of abject poverty. They have…

Artist Estelle Peck Ishigo went with her Japanese American husband into an internment camp during World War II, one of the few Caucasians to do so. An "outsider's" perspective on the shattering experience of relocation is vividly…

The role of art in America has been debated everywhere from the Halls of Congress to the local shopping mall. More than a portrait of the socially committed painter Leon Golub, whose massive canvases are intended to provoke viewers, this…

If a tree can grow in Brooklyn, can an eggplant flourish in the Bronx? Community gardens in New York City have helped to nourish neighborhood pride, racial tolerance, and a budding sense of hope for hundreds of enthusiastic gardeners in…

The creation of a skyscraper is transformed into a breathtaking visual experience as time-lapse photography, hard hat banter and construction worker choreography are set to a score by 15 new music composers in an urban ballet forty…

Behind the faded signs of three motels in the American Southwest lay entire worlds of passion, loyalty, adventure and fate. Veteran filmmaker Christian Blackwood winds his way into the soul of remarkable people in uniquely American…

Ossian Maclise is not an average American teenager. Born in Massachusetts, he has been living in a Tibetan Buddhist monastery since the age of four. At seven, his monastic order recognized Ossian as a tulku — a reincarnation of a high…

Founded by a Jesuit priest from St. Louis, a grassroots theatre company takes its shows on the unpaved roads of Honduras to enlighten and inspire villagers in the impoverished countryside.

After years of witnessing firsthand the horrors of guerrilla wars, Israeli-born producer Ilan Ziv traveled to Chile, the Philippines and the West Bank to explore the development of "People Power" and to reexamine his own long-held belief…

Are college students today apathetic and self-centered? Twenty years after National Guardsmen opened fire on student antiwar demonstrators, Jim Klein, a '60s radical-turned-filmmaker (Union Maids, Seeing Red) visits the campus of Kent…

Peter Adair asks 11 people — women and men, gay and straight, from all walks of life — to share their stories about having HIV. Alternately irreverent, candid and soulful, this stirring film is not about being sick; it is about being true…

Marc Savoy knows only one way to talk about Cajun music -- with the same passion and conviction as the music itself. Legendary filmmaker Les Blank delves directly into the heart of Cajun country to portray a couple devoted to the…

Plena is in Puerto Rico what the blues are in the U.S.: a musical expression abounding with romance, daily news, and personal sagas. As the Puerto Rican community grows on the mainland, the infectious rhythms of Puerto Rico's most…

Every year 2,500 sets of twins gather in Twinsburg, Ohio for Twins Days. Most are dressed alike, many live together, and all seem to have rhyming names. Standing out amidst the lighthearted contests and games are filmmaker Sue Marcoux and…

For 99 years, the residents of Salamanca, N.Y. have rented the land under their homes for an average of $1/year from the Seneca Indians, under the terms of a lease imposed by Congress. Now, as the lease is about to expire, a century of…

A series of accidents at a West Virginia chemical plant producing the same deadly toxins that caused the disaster in Bhopal, India, has alarmed area residents. But the area's fragile economy depends on the jobs provided by the plant,…

The Exxon Valdez disaster left far more than a soiled coastline in its wake. Grief, suspicion, anger and greed oozed through the small, formerly pristine town of Valdez. The human toll of an environmental nightmare is evoked in a haunting…

A search for meaning beyond cliches and nostalgia, as a family farm is lost to speculative suburban real estate developers. The camera moves through a Minnesota corn field and finds a photograph of a suburban tract clothes-pinned to a…

Angry, funny, erotic and poetic by turns (and sometimes all at once), this exploration of what it means to be black and gay jumps from interview to confession, music video to documentary to poem.

From the Free Speech Movement to the anti-war protests to the last stand over People's Park, Berkeley, California became synonymous with a generation's quest for social, political, and cultural transformation.

A pit bull, his elderly master, and a dog trainer/philosopher form a curious love triangle. Elegantly crafted, wryly narrated by Kevin Bacon, and infused with a blend of humor and pathos, Immy Humes' dog-umentary is a quirky, off-beat gem…

Whether the subject is sex, death, madness or God, The Big Bang never lets up in its weird and wonderful search for the meaning of it all.

Maria Serrano, El Salvadoran wife, mother, and guerrilla leader, helps plan a major nationwide offensive that led to the historic peace pact of 1992. Skirting bullets and mortar attacks, recounting a childhood of poverty and abuse by…

Ten million families were separated between North and South Korea when the Korean War ended in 1953. Beginning with the story of one man's journey to reunite with his sister in North Korea, the film reveals the personal, social, and…

Romance novels comprise nearly half the paperback books sold in America. Chiffon-shrouded, jewel-laden, flower-bedecked Barbara Cartland has written hundreds of them. And filmmaker George Csicsery has given his heart to this fascinating…

Abortion has been at the center of one of the most dramatic and wrenching debates of our times, but the social forces and the changing lives behind the rhetoric are rarely explored. This film draws complex portraits of individuals on both…

No synopsis

No synopsis

No synopsis

No synopsis

No synopsis

No synopsis

No synopsis

Dream Deceivers: The Story Behind James Vance Vs. Judas Priest is a TV series.

No synopsis

No synopsis

No synopsis

No synopsis

No synopsis

No synopsis

No synopsis

No synopsis

No synopsis

No synopsis

No synopsis

No synopsis

No synopsis

No synopsis

No synopsis

Cousin Bobby is a 1992 American documentary film directed by Jonathan Demme. The film focuses on Demme's cousin, Robert W. Castle, an Episcopalian minister in Harlem, New York. It was screened in the Un Certain Regard section at the 1992…

No synopsis

No synopsis

No synopsis

No synopsis

No synopsis

No synopsis

No synopsis

Passin' It On is a 1993 documentary film directed by Jon Valadez.

No synopsis

Dialogues with Madwomen is a 1993 documentary by Allie Light focusing on mental illness in women.

No synopsis

No synopsis

No synopsis

Complaints of a Dutiful Daughter is a 1994 documentary film directed by Deborah Hoffmann, with her wife, Frances Reid, as cinematographer. It was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature. The film is about the struggle…

No synopsis

No synopsis

Satya: A Prayer for the Enemy is a 1995 short documentary film directed by Ellen Bruno.

No synopsis

No synopsis

No synopsis

Dealers Among Dealers is a 1995 documentary film directed by Gaylen Ross.

No synopsis

No synopsis

No synopsis

No synopsis

A Litany For Survival: the Life and Work of Audre Lorde is a 1995 documentary film directed by Ada Gay Griffin and Michelle Parkerson.

"Although Ny admits that it is very uncomfortable for a traditional Cambodian family to talk about its secrets publicly, Sokly “Don Bonus” Ny allows the audience access to his life during his senior year of high school in this simple, yet…

No synopsis

No synopsis

No synopsis

No synopsis

No synopsis

No synopsis

This documentary exposes the role of General Motors' in the "Great American Street Car Scandal" of the 1930s. The scandal involved the dismantling of the street car transportation system in an effort to create demand for more automobiles.

No synopsis

No synopsis

No synopsis

No synopsis

No synopsis

No synopsis

Who Is Henry Jaglom? is a 1997 documentary film directed by Henry Alex Rubin and Jeremy Workman.

Takes a critical look at the long-standing practice of 'honoring' American Indians by using their names for mascots and sports teams and delves into the accompanying issues of racism, stereotypes, minority representation, and the powerful…

No synopsis

No synopsis

Disproving the adage that there are no second acts in American life, Iran/Contra legend Oliver North re-emerged to challenge incumbent Charles Robb in a hotly contested 1994 Virginia senatorial race. R.J. Cutler and David Van Taylor weave…

No synopsis

No synopsis

No synopsis

No synopsis

No synopsis

No synopsis

No synopsis

No synopsis

No synopsis

No synopsis

No synopsis

No synopsis

No synopsis

No synopsis

Well-Founded Fear is a 2000 documentary film from directors Shari Robertson and Michael Camerini. The film takes its title from the formal definition of a refugee under the UN Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees, as a person who…

No synopsis

No synopsis

No synopsis

No synopsis

Corpus: A Home Movie about Selena is a film by filmmaker, Lourdes Portillo about Mexican American singer-songwriter Selena Quintanilla-Pérez. It places emphasis on the transformation of Selena from a popular entertainer into a modern-day…

No synopsis

The Double Life of Ernesto Gomez Gomez is a TV episode/documentary film directed by Gary Weimberg and Catherine Ryan.

Regret to Inform is a 1998 American documentary film directed by Barbara Sonneborn. It was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature. The film was made over a span of ten years. The documentary features filmmaker…

Chronicling the two-year “tree-sit” by environmental activist Julia Hill, examining the controversy over clear-cutting in old-growth Northern California forests. Hill, who took the name Butterfly, is interviewed on a platform more than…

“La Boda” (The Wedding) follows a Mexican-American migrant farmworker during the six days prior to her nuptials. Bride-to-be Elizabeth Luis, an American citizen, lives with her parents and seven siblings (six of them sisters) in Texas's…

Stranger With A Camera is a 2000 documentary film by director Elizabeth Barret investigating the circumstances surrounding the 1967 death of Hugh O'Connor. Barret, who was born and raised in the region, explores questions concerning…

Ex-white supremacist Ron Withrow, who founded the White Students Union at a California college, discusses why he became a racist and why he turned away from it in the late 1980s. Withrow is also seen in clips from “The Phil Donahue Show”…

Following Cuban expatriate Silvia Moroni Heath, the daughter of a sugar planter, as she returns to her homeland after an absence of 37 years. First stop: the house in which she grew up. It's now a bank, and the guard outside won't let her…

Gambling hits home in filmmaker Lisanne Skyler's perceptive profile of Las Vegas residents living with constant temptation. “The hardest part of living in Las Vegas is the gambling machines,” says one woman. “They're everywhere.” Adds Lou…

Exploring the secretive and largely unassimilated Romani culture as it follows one Spokane, Wash., Gypsy family. That family, the Markses, had a score to settle with the city of Spokane, which had their house raided in 1986 in search of…

A heartfelt history of KFPA, the nation's oldest alternative radio station, the Pacifica Foundation's eclectic flagship, based in Berkeley, Cal. Since KPFA signed on in 1949, it has broadcast everything from Soviet-press reviews to bird…

Following abortion politics as they played out during the 1990s in one U.S. town, Bedford, N.H. It focuses on OB/GYN Wayne Goldner, who performs abortions. Not surprisingly, Goldner is a lightning rod for pro-life protesters, and he's…

A Korean-American adoptee tries to forge relationships with her biological family as she sorts out her feelings toward her adoptive one in “First Person Plural,” an intensely introspective film by Deann Borshay Liem, who was born amid the…

No synopsis

No synopsis

No synopsis

No synopsis

No synopsis

No synopsis

A beautifully rendered account of the struggles of the Lakota in the Black Hills, the Hopi in Arizona and the Wintu in California to protect their sacred sites.

Life and Debt is an unapologetic look at the "new world order," from the point of view of Jamaican workers, farmers, government and policy officials who see the reality of globalization from the ground up.

No synopsis

No synopsis

No synopsis

Milford Beeghly discusses his company Beeghly's Best Hybrids.

It is America of the 1950s and 1960s, when a woman's most important contribution to society is generally considered to be her ability to raise happy, well-adjusted children. But for the mother whose child is diagnosed with autism, her…

How black and white populations in Norco, La., have responded to links between a refinery's activities and people's illnesses.

Sweet Old Song is a 2002 documentary film directed by Leah Mahan.

A high school girl leaves Hanoi and comes to Mississippi.

Circumstances surrounding the discovery of the remains of more than 200 murdered girls in the desert around Juarez, Mexico.

A Mexican-American migrant teenager's freshman year in high school and how she handled work, education and family life.

Surgeon Gino Strada and coordinator Kate Rowlands try to provide medical and humanitarian support to civilian victims of war in Afghanistan. (Dari, Italian and English with English subtitles)

No synopsis

Brother Outsider: The Life of Bayard Rustin is a 2003 documentary film written by Marc Weiss and directed by Nancy D. Kates and Bennett Singer.

Two film crews document the aftermath of the murder of a black man by three white men in 1998 and the trials of the men charged with the crime.

A black community in Columbus, Ohio, struggles with cultural and legal conflicts while experiencing urban renewal.

A farmer in Lockney, Texas, makes headlines after he refuses the school permission to test his son for drugs during random testing.

Massacre survivor Denese Becker returns to her Guatemalan village on a journey of self-discovery and to find her roots.

What are the chances that a former prostitute could be elected a Member of the Parliament of New Zealand by a conservative, rural district? What if that person were also a transsexual? The odds may seem daunting, but Georgina Beyer did it.

Musician Arn Chorn-Pond, a survivor of the Khmer Rouge regime, travels to his native Cambodia to face his past.

90 Miles is a 2001 documentary film written and directed by Juan Carlos Zaldívar. The film is a recounting of the events that lead Zaldívar to become a Marielito and leave Cuba for a better life in Miami. It premiered in 2003 on PBS as…

Few American icons are as well known for their popular kitsch as the hula dance. From old Hollywood movies to entertainment for tourists, the hip-swaying girls in grass skirts and colorful lei have long masked an ancient cultural…

West 47th Street is a documentary film produced by Bill Lichtenstein and June Peoples of the Peabody Award-winning Lichtenstein Creative Media. "West 47th Street" is an intimate cinéma vérité portrait of four people with serious mental…

Three Christian families who have gay children campaign against gay rights.

The experiences of Mexican-Americans participating in the Vietnam War.

State of Denial is a 2003 documentary film about AIDS in Africa, produced and directed by Elaine Epstein. The film highlights the errors of President Mbeki's government, which insists that there isn't enough evidence to show that HIV…

Eve Ensler conducts a writing workshop for female inmates at a state prison in New York.

No synopsis

Filmmaker Richard Kassebaum chronicles his brother Bill's run for the Kansas House of Representatives.

Flag Wars is a poignant account of the politics and pain of gentrification. Working-class black residents in Columbus, Ohio fight to hold on to their homes. Realtors and gay home-buyers see fixer-uppers. The clashes expose prejudice and…

"In the current frigid national climate facing economic migrants, Carlos Sandoval and Catherine Tambini enter the traumatized world of Farmingville, a previously unassuming Long Island suburb that witnessed the beating and attempted…

War Feels Like War is a 2004 British documentary film. It was broadcast in the United States as part of the P.O.V. series. For three months, Spanish filmmaker Esteban Manzanares Uyarra followed five reporters and photographers from…

Global corporations who buy up local water supplies and sell for profit, including a look at tensions in Bolivia, India and Stockton, Calif.

What is old is often new again. Most funerals today are part of a multimillion-dollar industry run by professionals. This increased reliance on mortuaries has alienated Americans from life's only inevitability — death. A Family…

The movement to take the end of life process out of corporate funeral parlours and put it back into the family's hands.

A profile of demolition-derby driver Ed "Speedo" Jager.

Three New York mothers unite to seek justice for police brutality.

Freedom Machines is a 2004 PBS/P.O.V. documentary that looks at disability in the age of technology, presenting intimate stories of people ages 8-93, whose talents and independence are being unleashed by access to modern, enabling…

Pete O'Neal, a former leader of the Black Panthers, lives in exile in Tanzania.

Shirley Chisholm's 1972 presidential bid.

Teenager Shelby Knox advocates sex education in the high schools of her hometown, Lubbock, Texas.

Physical and emotional challenges faced by the dwarfs profiled in the 1982 film "Little People."

Lost Boys of Sudan is a feature-length documentary that follows two Sudanese refugees on an extraordinary journey from Africa to America.

Wattstax is a 1973 documentary film by Mel Stuart that focused on the 1972 Wattstax music festival and the African American community of Watts in Los Angeles, California. The film was nominated for a Golden Globe award for Best…

No synopsis

No synopsis

Chisholm `72: Unbought Unbossed is a PBS P.O.V. documentary about Shirley Chisholm.

The Education of Shelby Knox is 2005 documentary film that tells the coming-of-age story of public speaker and feminist Shelby Knox, a teenager who joins a campaign for comprehensive sex education in the high schools of Lubbock, Texas.…

A follow-up to the 1982 Emmy-nominated film Little People, Big Enough is a 2004 documentary film about Anu Trombino, Karla and John Lizzo, Len and Lenette Sawisch, and Sharon and Ron Roskamp, who are all typical Americans in every…

No synopsis

No synopsis

No synopsis

No synopsis

In the Realms of the Unreal is a 2004 documentary about outsider artist Henry Darger. An obscure janitor during his life, Darger is known for the posthumous discovery of his elaborate 15,143-page fantasy manuscript entitled The Story of…

Hardwood is a 2005 short documentary film about Canadian director Hubert Davis' relationship to his father, former Harlem Globetrotters member Mel Davis. Through interviews with his mother, his father's wife, his half-brother, and Mel…

Bright Leaves is a 2003 documentary film by independent filmmaker Ross McElwee about the association his family had with the tobacco industry. Bright Leaf is the name of a strain of tobacco. It was also the name of a 1949 novel and 1950…

Hiding and Seeking: Faith and Tolerance After the Holocaust is 2004 documentary film about Menachem Daum, an Orthodox Jew and son of German Nazi Holocaust survivors who has spent his life interviewing survivors about the impact of the…

The Hobart Shakespeareans of Hobart Boulevard Elementary School is a 2005 documentary film that tells the story of the inspirational inner-city Los Angeles school teacher Rafe Esquith whose rigorous fifth-grade curriculum includes…

No synopsis

No synopsis

No synopsis

No synopsis

A story of love, revolution and betrayal, No More Tears Sister explores the price of truth in times of war. Set during the violent ethnic conflict that has enveloped Sri Lanka over decades, the film recreates the courageous and vibrant…

In Japan, baseball is not a pastime — it's a national obsession. And for many of the country's youth, the sport has become a rite of passage, epitomized by the national high school baseball tournament known simply as "Koshien." Four…

Why do the comic-strip Adventures of Tintin, about an intrepid boy reporter, continue to fascinate us decades after their publication? "Tintin and I" highlights the potent social and political underpinnings that give Tintin's world such…

In 1990, an unknown candidate named Alberto Fujimori rode a wave of popular support to become the president of Peru. He fought an allout war on terror against the guerilla organization Shining Path, and won. Ten years later, accused of…

Global Recordings Network (GRN), founded in Los Angeles in 1939, has produced audio versions of Bible stories in over 5,500 languages, and aims to record in every language on earth. They distribute the recordings, along with…

The proud Mexican tradition of corrido music—captured in the performances of Mexican band Los Tigres del Norte and the late Chalino Sanchez—provides both heartbeat and backbone to this rich examination of songs, drugs and dreams along the…

Alan Lomax was "the song hunter." He devoted his life to recording the world's folk tunes before they would permanently disappear with the rise of the modern music industry. In Lomax the Songhunter, filmmaker Rogier Kappers seeks to tell…

The term "working poor" should be an oxymoron. If you work full time, you should not be poor, but more than 30 million Americans — one in four workers — are stuck in jobs that do not pay the basics for a decent life. Waging a Living…

Devon, Montrey, Richard, and Romesh are just at that age — 12 and 13 years old — when boys start to become men. But in their hometown of Baltimore, one of the country’s most poverty-stricken cities for inner-city residents,…

In the wake of his stepfather’s death, Thomas Allen Harris embarks on a journey of reconciliation with the man who raised him as a son but whom he could never call "father." As part of the first wave of black South African exiles,…

"My name is Steven, and I am a dwarf..." So begins No Bigger than a Minute, a stylishly eclectic documentary film that introduces viewers to four-foot-tall filmmaker, Steven Delano. For forty years Steven lived his life as a reluctant…

Just over the border in Mexico is an area peppered with maquiladoras: massive factories often owned by the world's largest multinational corporations. Carmen and Lourdes work at maquiladoras in Tijuana, where each day they confront labor…

My Country, My Country is a 2006 documentary film about Iraq under U.S. occupation by the filmmaker Laura Poitras.

No synopsis

How do you measure the distance from an African village to an American city? What does it mean to be a refugee in today's "global village?" Rain in a Dry Land provides eye-opening answers as it chronicles the fortunes of two Somali Bantu…

If the refugee is today’s tragic icon of a war-torn world, then Sierra Leone’s Refugee All Stars, a reggae-inflected band born in the camps of West Africa, represents a real-life story of survival and hope. The six-member Refugee All…

What does a family have to endure to create a future for itself? In April 2000, Alex White Plume and his Lakota family planted industrial hemp on the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota after other crops had failed. They put their…

Revolution ’67 is an illuminating account of events too often relegated to footnotes in U.S. history – the black urban rebellions of the 1960s. Focusing on the six-day Newark, N.J., outbreak in mid-July, Revolution ’67 reveals how the…

A decade ago, after an epiphany at a New York restaurant, Richard Ogust began dedicating his time and resources to rescuing endangered turtles – confiscating hundreds bound for Southeast Asian food markets. When the filmmakers catch up…

In the 1990s, at the height of the prison-building boom, a prison opened in rural America every 15 days. Prison Town, USA tells the story of Susanville, California, one small town that tries to resuscitate its economy by building a prison…

Thirty years after making a celebrated student short about a four-year-old child of free spirits living in San Francisco’s Haight-Ashbury district at the height of the 1960s, Ralph Arlyck attempts the kind of revelation only documentary…

In Arctic Son, the clash of tradition and modernity puts a Native father and son at odds in the village of Old Crow, 80 miles above the Arctic Circle. Stanley, Jr., raised in Seattle, is drifting deeper into drinking and partying.…

Nestled below the rugged peaks of the Northern Rockies in Montana—as iconic a representation of America’s “purple mountain majesties” as one can find—lies the worst case of community-wide exposure to a toxic substance in U.S. history. In…

Los Angeles is now the country’s center for apparel manufacturing, but many of its factories bear an eerie resemblance to New York’s early 20th century sweatshops. Made in L.A. follows the remarkable journey of three Latina immigrants…

How far would you go to stop a war? The Camden 28 recalls a 1971 raid on a Camden, N.J., draft board office by “Catholic Left” activists protesting the Vietnam War and its effects on urban America. Arrested on site in a clearly planned…

The agonies of present-day Africa are deeply etched in the bodies of women. In eastern Congo on the Rwanda border, vying militias, armies and bandits use rape as a weapon of terror. Lumo Sinai was just over 20 when marauding soldiers…

In one of documentary cinema’s more remarkable enterprises, 49 Up makes its U.S. broadcast premiere as the seventh in a series of films that has profiled a group of English children every seven years, beginning in 1964. Renowned director…

Tony Kushner, whose epochal Angels in America won a Pulitzer Prize and Tony Award, has emerged as one of the country’s leading playwrights – and one of its fiercest moral critics. In the film Wrestling With Angels: Playwright Tony…

The 21st-season opener features "Traces of the Trade: A Story From the Deep North," an exploration of filmmaker Katrina Brown's slave-trading ancestors, the Rhode Island DeWolfs. She and nine relatives (including Tom DeWolf, author of…

Forget the pie charts, color-coded maps and hyperventilating pundits. What's the street-level experience of voters in today's America? In a triumph of documentary storytelling, Election Day combines 11 stories — shot simultaneously on…

In 1997, U.S. Marines patrolling the Texas-Mexico border as part of the War on Drugs shot and killed Esequiel Hernández Jr. Mistaken for a drug runner, the 18-year-old was, in fact, a U.S. citizen tending his family's goats with a .22…

Renowned sculptor John Houser has a dream: to build the world's tallest bronze equestrian statue for the city of El Paso, Texas. He envisions a stunning monument to Spanish conquistador Juan de Oñate that will honor the contributions…

A group of young Palestinian men work illegally as construction laborers in the Israeli city of Modi'in. Caught between Israeli security laws and a Palestinian Authority they see as having failed them, they work for Israeli contractors by…

This is democracy — Japanese style. Campaign provides a startling insider's view of Japanese electoral politics in this portrait of a man plucked from obscurity by the ruling Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) to run for a critical seat on a…

In this classic 1969 documentary, the Man in Black is captured at his peak, the first of many in a looming roller-coaster career. Fresh on the heels of his Folsom Prison album, Cash reveals the dark intensity and raw talent that made him…

Belarus has been called "Europe's last dictatorship." Since 1994, Alexander Lukashenko has ruled the ex-Soviet republic with a despotic hand, jailing the opposition, shutting down the press and refusing to investigate the assassinations…

When in 1998 Chilean judge Juan Guzmán was assigned the first criminal cases against the country's ex-dictator, General Augusto Pinochet, no one expected much. Guzmán had supported Pinochet's 1973 coup — waged as an anti-Communist crusade…

When brothers Armando and Carlos Peña set off to carry their mother's ashes to south Texas, their road trip turns into a quest for answers about a strangely veiled past. As they reunite with five other brothers, the two men try to piece…

What happens if you fall sick and are one of 47 million people in America without health insurance? Critical Condition by Roger Weisberg (Waging a Living, POV 2006) puts a human face on the nation's growing health care crisis by capturing…

How much would you sacrifice to survive? When Chicago filmmaker Joanna Rudnick tested positive for the "breast cancer gene" at age 27, she knew the information could save her life. And she knew she was not only confronting mortality at an…

Nearing completion, China's massive Three Gorges Dam is altering the landscape and the lives of people living along the fabled Yangtze River. Countless ancient villages and historic locales will be submerged, and 2 million people will…

When is it right to kill? In the midst of war, is it right to refuse? Eight U.S. soldiers today, some who killed and some who said no, reveal their inner moral dilemmas in Soldiers of Conscience. Made with official permission of the U.S.…

Imagine watching Schindler's List and knowing the sadistic Nazi camp commandant played by Ralph Fiennes was your father. Inheritance is the story of Monika Hertwig, the daughter of mass murderer Amon Goeth. Hertwig has spent her life in…

Puerto Rican-American rapper Hamza Pérez pulled himself out of drug dealing and street life 12 years ago and became a Muslim. Now he's moved to Pittsburgh's tough North Side to start a new religious community, rebuild his shattered family…

In September 2002, three skinheads were roaming a park in Rheims, France, looking to "do an Arab," when they settled for a gay man instead. Twenty-nine-year-old François Chenu fought back fiercely, but he was beaten unconscious and thrown…

In 2004, Jason Crigler's life was taking off. He was one of New York's hottest young guitarists, his new CD was due for release and his wife, Monica, was pregnant with their first child. Then, at a gig in Manhattan, Jason suffered a…

The International Criminal Court is the first permanent court to prosecute perpetrators of crimes against humanity, war crimes and genocide.

Filmed over 23 years, The Betrayal is the Academy Award-nominated directorial debut of renowned cinematographer Ellen Kuras in a unique collaboration with the film's subject and co-director, Thavisouk ("Thavi") Phrasavath. After the U.S.…

One of Britain's leading documentary filmmakers takes a vérité look at Oxford's Mulberry Bush School for emotionally disturbed children. Mulberry's heroically forbearing staff greets extreme, sometimes violent behavior with only…

A collection of short documentaries, including "Utopia, Part 3: The World's Largest Shopping Mall," about the 7-million-square-foot South China Mall, which was built in 2005 and is virtually empty; "Nutkin's Last Stand," about the attempt…

This is a story about a wall - the separations it's meant to enforce, and the unintended ones it creates. The security wall being constructed by Israel on the West Bank has divided Palestinian families and communities. It has also…

For Spaniards — and for the world — nothing has expressed their country's traditionally rigid gender roles more powerfully than the image of the male matador. So sacred was the bullfighter's masculinity to Spanish identity that a 1908 law…

What is it like to have power over life and death, and yet to struggle with your own humanity? This is the story of acclaimed British neurosurgeon Henry Marsh, who has traveled to Ukraine for 15 years to treat patients who have been left…

Two stories that paint a dramatic portrait of the challenges facing America's public schools — and of the great difference a dedicated principal can make. Tresa Dunbar is a second-year principal at Chicago's Nash Elementary, where 98% of…

Rocky Otoo is the Bronx-bred teenage daughter of Ghanaian parents, and she's no pushover. She is a sassy high-achiever bound for college. With freedom in sight, Rocky rebels against her mother's rules. When their relationship reaches a…

On call 24 hours a day for the past five years, a group of senior citizens has made history by greeting over 900,000 American troops at a tiny airport in Bangor, Maine. The Emmy-nominated film, The Way We Get By, is an intimate look at…

Take a remarkable plunge into the life, art, memories and philosophical reflections of the legendary rocker, poet and artist.

How much do we know about the food we buy at our local supermarkets and serve to our families? Though our food appears the same as ever — a tomato still looks like a tomato — it has been radically transformed. In the Academy…

William Kunstler: Disturbing the Universe examines the life of this radical attorney from a surprising angle. Kunstler’s two daughters from his second marriage grew up lionizing a man already famous for his historic civil rights and…

The Beaches of Agnès is a 2008 French documentary film directed by Agnès Varda. The film is an autobiographical essay where Varda revisits places from her past, reminisces about life and celebrates her 80th birthday on camera. She has…

Though apartheid ended in South Africa in 1994, economic injustices between blacks and whites remain unresolved. As revealed in Yoruba Richen’s incisive Promised Land, the most potentially explosive issue is land. The film follows two…

Good Fortune is a provocative exploration of how massive international efforts to alleviate poverty in Africa may be undermining the very communities they aim to benefit. In Kenya’s rural countryside, Jackson’s farm is being flooded by an…

Past and present collide as award-winning filmmaker Natalia Almada (Al Otro Lado, POV 2006) brings to life audio recordings she inherited from her grandmother, daughter of Plutarco Elias Calles, a revolutionary general who became Mexico’s…

Imagine being picked up off the street, told you have committed a murder you know nothing about and then finding yourself sentenced to 20 years in jail. In December 2005 this happened to Toño Zúñiga in Mexico City and, like thousands of…

In his search for “somewhere I could point my camera into pure space,” award-winning photographer Murray Fredericks began making annual solo camping trips to remote Lake Eyre and its salt flats in South Australia. These trips have yielded…

Scottish filmmaker Amy Hardie has built a career making science documentaries that reflect her rational temperament. When she dreamed one night that her horse was dying, only to wake and find the horse dead, she dismissed the incident as…

What is it like to be torn from your Chinese foster family, put on a plane with strangers and wake up in a new country, family and culture? Wo Ai Ni (I Love You) Mommy is the story of Fang Sui Yong, an 8-year-old orphan, and the…

Off and Running is the story of Brooklyn teenager Avery, a track star with a bright future. She is the adopted African-American child of white Jewish lesbians. Her two brothers are black and Puerto Rican and Korean. Though it may not look…

Her passport said she was Cha Jung Hee. She knew she was not. So began a 40-year deception for a Korean adoptee who came to the United States in 1966. Told to keep her true identity secret from her new American family, the 8-year-old girl…

Filmed in Yemen and Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, The Oath interweaves the stories of Abu Jandal, Osama bin Laden’s former bodyguard, and Salim Hamdan, a prisoner at Guantanamo facing war crimes charges. Directed by Laura Poitras (Flag Wars, POV…

The Most Dangerous Man in America: Daniel Ellsberg and the Pentagon Papers is a 2009 documentary film directed by Judith Ehrlich and Rick Goldsmith. The film follows Daniel Ellsberg and explores the events leading up to the publication of…

When Chris Hegedus and D A Pennebaker, award-winning filmmakers of The War Room, Startup.com and Don’t Look Back, turn their sights on the competition for the Meilleurs Ouvriers de France awards, the country’s Nobel Prize for pastry,…

My Perestroika is an intimate look at the last generation of Soviet children. Five classmates go from living sheltered childhoods to experiencing the hopes of Gorbachev’s reforms and the confusion of the USSR’s dissolution, to searching…

Sweetgrass presents a riveting and poetic portrait of the American West just as one of its traditional ways of life dies out. Shot amidst the grandeur of Montana’s Absaroka-Beartooth Wilderness, the film follows the last modern day…

The Khmer Rouge slaughtered nearly two million people in the late 1970s. Yet the “killing fields” of Cambodia have remained largely unexplained. Until now, in Enemies of the People. Enter Thet Sambath, an unassuming, yet cunning,…

The Donkey Library is the story of a librarian — and a library — like no other. A decade ago, Colombian teacher Luis Soriano was inspired to spend his weekends bringing a modest collection of precious books, via two hard-working donkeys,…

Mugabe and the White African, much of which was filmed clandestinely, tells an alarming story from one of the world’s most troubled nations. In Zimbabwe, de facto dictator Robert Mugabe has unleashed a “land reform” program aimed at…

From a land of long, dark winters comes Steam of Life, a moody, comic and moving study of Finnish men as framed by the national obsession with the sauna. There, they come together to sweat out not only the grime of contemporary life, but…

A one-hour collection of documentary shorts by established and emerging filmmakers, including: Big Birding Day – David Wilson offers a glimpse into the world of competitive birdwatching, as three friends attempt to see as many species…

In 2009, Janus Metz and cameraman Lars Skree accompanied a platoon of Danish soldiers to Armadillo, a combat operations base in southern Afghanistan. For six months, often while under fire, they captured the lives of the young soldiers…

The story of Bradley Crowder and David McKay, who were accused of intending to firebomb the 2008 Republican National Convention, is a dramatic tale of idealism, loyalty, crime and betrayal. Better This World follows the radicalization of…

If a Tree Falls: A Story of the Earth Liberation Front explores two of America’s most pressing issues — environmentalism and terrorism — by lifting the veil on a radical environmental group the FBI calls America’s “number one domestic…

One hundred years ago, American teachers established the English-speaking public school system of the Philippines. Now, in a striking turnabout, American schools are recruiting Filipino teachers. The Learning is the story of four Filipino…

Every spring, China’s cities are plunged into chaos as 130 million migrant workers journey to their home villages for the New Year in the world’s largest human migration. Last Train Home takes viewers on a heart-stopping journey with the…

From a small town in northern Michigan to the mountains of Afghanistan, "Where Soldiers Come From" follows the journey of childhood friends who join the National Guard after graduating from high school. It chronicles the young men's…

'Racing Dreams' chronicles a year in the life of three "tweens" who dream of becoming NASCAR drivers. Though they aren't old enough for driver's licenses, Brandon, Josh, and Annabeth race extreme go-karts at speeds of up to 70 miles per…

No synopsis

There are over one million Gypsies living in America today, and most people don’t know anything about them. It is one man’s obsessive pursuit of justice and dignity that led filmmaker Jasmine Dellal into their hidden thousand-year-old…

High Tibetan Buddhist Master Chögyal Namkhal Norbu teaches in the West, while his son, Yeshi, breaks from tradition and embraces the modern world.

In a stunning milestone for justice in Central America, a Guatemalan court recently charged former dictator Efraín Rios Montt with genocide for his brutal war in the 1980s — and Pamela Yates’ 1983 documentary, When the Mountains Tremble,…

Is darkness becoming extinct? A meditation on the human relationship to the stars.

Every four seconds a romance novel published by Harlequin or its British counterpart, Mills & Boon, is sold somewhere in the world. Julie Moggan’s 'Guilty Pleasures' takes an amusing and touching look at this global phenomenon. Ironies…

Houda al-Habash, a conservative Muslim preacher, founded a Qur’an school for girls in Damascus, Syria, 30 years ago. Every summer, her students immerse themselves in a rigorous study of Islam. A surprising cultural shift is underway -…

Up Heartbreak Hill chronicles the lives of three high school seniors living on the Navajo Nation and struggling to shape their identities as both Native American and modern American. They must decide whether to stay in their community - a…

Five shorts, including "The Barber of Birmingham: Foot Soldier of the Civil Rights Movement," about an octogenarian Alabama barber and WWII veteran who carried the American flag across the bridge on the first Selma to Montgomery march of…

Jonathan Demme’s portrait of post-Katrina New Orleans tells the story of Carolyn Parker, a lifelong resident of the Lower Ninth Ward, who is fighting for the right to rebuild her home and community.

From dusk to dawn, 'El Velador' accompanies Martin, a guard who watches over the extravagant mausoleums of some of Mexico’s most notorious drug lords. In the labyrinth of the cemetery, this film about violence without violence reminds us…

Exposing shocking corruption within the judicial system of the Philippines in one of the most sensational trials in the country’s history. Two grieving mothers, entangled in a case that ends a nation’s use of capital punishment but fails…

When a Navajo couple uncovers a hidden link between their children’s rare genetic disorder and the American government’s conquest of their tribe, their lives are changed forever.

Patricio Guzmán's Nostalgia for the Light is a remarkable meditation on memory, history and eternity. Chile’s remote Atacama Desert, 10,000 feet above sea level, provides stunningly clear views of the heavens for astronomers. But it also…

A veteran reporter and his colleagues at an independent newsweekly defy powerful drug cartels and corrupt officials to continue publishing the news in Mexico.

A lyrical exploration of youth, beauty and ambition, seen through the eyes of a conflicted American scout and a 13-year-old she discovers.

Season 26 opens with "Homegoings," which profiles Harlem funeral director Isaiah Owens, the son of a South Carolina sharecropper whose fascination with burials began as a boy, while also examining the traditions of African-American…

Special Flight is a dramatic account of the plight of undocumented foreigners at the Frambois detention center in Geneva, Switzerland, and of the wardens who struggle to reconcile humane values with the harsh realities of a strict…

Herman Wallace has spent more than 40 years in a 6’ x 9’ prison cell. He works with artist Jackie Sumell to imagine his "dream home," questioning justice and punishment in America.

Three teens in a Southern California town wrestle with questions of love and friendship along with adult realities of financial uncertainty.

The modern-day love story of a guy from small-town Illinois who reaches out to a beautiful New York City art student from Korea. They meet in the only place that such different people might ever find each other—online.

High Tech, Low Life follows two of China’s first citizen-reporters, bloggers who are fighting censorship to document the underside of the country’s rapid economic development.

A 4-year-old, a teenager and an adult, all on the autism spectrum and at pivotal moments in their lives, work with their perceptual and behavioral differences in a "neurotypical" world.

For the first time, Israeli military and legal professionals who devised the legal framework behind the occupation are interviewed about this system, which mirrors the country’s toughest moral quandaries.

Oscar®nominee 5 Broken Cameras depicts life in a West Bank village where a security fence is being built. The film was shot by a Palestinian and co-directed by an Israeli.

Seven players with 620 years between them compete in the Over 80 World Table Tennis Championships. Ping Pong is a meditation on mortality and a joyous tribute to the human spirit.

The World Before Her is a tale of two Indias: In one, a small-town girl competes in the Miss India pageant. In the other, a militant woman leads a fundamentalist Hindu camp for girls.

A Newark, N.J. public high school teacher races against the clock to find a place in the world for her students with autism before they graduate and "age out" of a unique and caring support system.

Brooklyn public school I.S. 318, serving mostly minority students from working-class families, has won more than 30 national chess championships, the country’s best record.

In 1964 a group of 7-year-old children were interviewed for the groundbreaking documentary Seven Up. Michael Apted has been back to film them every seven years since. Now they are 56.

Celebrate the transformative power of listening with this animated special from the oral history project StoryCorps, which captures intimate conversations among everyday people.

American Promise spans 13 years as Joe Brewster and Michèle Stephenson, middle-class African-American parents in Brooklyn, N.Y., turn their cameras on their son, Idris, and his best friend, Seun, who make their way through one of the most…

The Season 27 premiere features Jason DaSilva's "When I Walk," in which the filmmaker chronicles his life for five years after being diagnosed with multiple sclerosis at age 25. By happenstance, a family member records the moment when the…

A profile of 98-year-old Grace Lee Boggs, a Chinese-American social activist in Detroit who has spent much of her adult life fighting for civil rights and female equality.

Filmmaker Niko von Glasow profiles participants at the 2012 Paralympic Games in London, including a one-handed Norwegian table tennis player, the Rwandan sitting volleyball team, an American archer who uses his feet and a Greek paraplegic…

The changed realities of post-Katrina New Orleans, including a population that is less African-American and less poor than before the storm, are examined in this documentary, which focuses on the 2010 re-election campaign of city…

The world of professional ballroom dancing in Denmark, where participants often look beyond the country's borders for the perfect partner, is examined. The documentary follows Egor, a 15 year old from Russia, as he adjusts to life in…

After Beichuan, China was destroyed in an earthquake, buildings are rebuilt more quickly than the community. Official Selection of Sundance 2013.

The story of a 15-year old sentenced to four life sentences. Does society benefit from incarcerating young teens to a lifetime in prison?

A family's experience living in a Lebanese refugee camp for multiple generations. Love and family are tinged with desperation. Official Selection of the 2013 Berlin International Film Festival.

Explorers the world of backroom negotiations and deal making in Ghana's oil business.

The story of the four abortion doctors that remained in Wichita, Kansas after the assassination of George Tiller in 2009.

Pam White and her family struggle to retain her memories and life by recording their interactions in the face of an Alzheimer diagnoses.

The mayor of New York City from 1978 to 1989, Ed Koch fought crime and financial difficulties during a difficult period for the City of New York.

Joshua Oppenheimer visits men accused of playing a key role in the killing of over one-million Indonesians in 1965. Initially, the men explain their actions as patriotic and necessary. But over time, some question their actions. 2013…

Season 28 opens with "Out in the Night," about four African-American lesbian friends who became embroiled in a melee with a man who had verbally and physically attacked them in 2006 NYC. He was stabbed; and they were eventually convicted…

"The Overnighters," about the North Dakota oil boom, details the goings-on at a Williston church whose pastor turned it into a makeshift dorm for folks unable to find housing. The emigres moved to the region in hopes of finding work. Some…

A single dad in Seattle and a mother of two in NYC navigate the child welfare system in hopes of regaining custody of their children, who were removed from their care due to neglect. Patrick lost his daughter after he alerted CPS about…

A look at Internet addiction in China via the experiences of teens at Daxing Boot Camp in Beijing, one of some 400 rehabilitation centers created by the government to treat the disorder. Patients, who are kept under constant surveillance,…

The transformation of a one-time goalie for the Syrian national soccer team from peaceful protester to armed opponent of Syrian president Bashar al-Assad's regime is chronicled. In 2011, when the documentary begins, 19-year-old Abdul…

Five Chilean women meet each month for tea and pastries, a tradition they've maintained for 60 years. Through the decades, they've experienced many personal and societal changes; and weathered disagreements amongst themselves.

A look at life along the Sudan-South Sudan border, where many who fought to create South Sudan found themselves on the wrong side of the border once it was established in 2011. They harvest crops, raise cattle, try to avoid air raids—and…

Meet the young migrants in a Swiss integration class, who have made long and arduous journeys for a new life. Separated from their families, they struggle to learn a new language, prepare for employment and reveal their innermost hopes…

Ride shotgun with Matt VanDyke, who films his self-transformation from a timid 26-year-old to a motorcycle-driving rebel, fighting in the Libyan revolution. Two-time Oscar nominee Marshall Curry tells his amazing story.

More than half a million Cambodians work abroad, and a staggering third of those become slaves. Many are young women, held prisoner and forced to work in horrific conditions, sometimes as prostitutes. French-Cambodian filmmaker Guillaume…

An Oscar-nominated reflection on love, sacrifice and the creative spirit, this candid New York tale explores the chaotic 40-year marriage of famed “boxing” painter Ushio Shinohara and artist Noriko Shinohara.

In a community where silence is seen as necessary for survival, immigrant activist Angy Rivera joins a generation of Dreamers ready to push for change in the only home she’s ever known — the United States.

A cat-and-mouse caper told with humor and compassion, Art and Craft uncovers the universal in one man's search for connection and respect.

How the government's attempts to silence Ai Weiwei have turned him into China's most powerful artist and an irrepressible voice for free speech and human rights around the globe.

An unprecedented reform to California's "Three Strikes" law seen through the eyes of those on the front lines – prisoners suddenly freed, families turned upside down, reentry providers helping navigate complex transitions, and attorneys…

At a first-of-its-kind PTSD treatment center in California, follow Iraq and Afghanistan veterans and their families on their paths to recovery as they attempt to make peace with their pasts, their loved ones and themselves.

An optometrist identifies the men who killed his brother in the horrific 1965 Indonesian genocide. He confronts them while testing their eyesight and demands they accept responsibility.

Florida Justice Transitions trailer park is home to 120 sex offenders, all battling their own demons as they work toward rejoining society. This film considers how the destructive cycle of sexual abuse - and the silence surrounding it -…

Iris pairs the late documentarian Albert Maysles, then 87, with Iris Apfel, the quick-witted, flamboyantly dressed 93-year-old style maven who has had an outsized presence on the New York fashion scene for decades.

An escape from the doomsday thinking that is ruining our collective imaginations. An experience for smartphones composed of a suite of interconnected nonfiction stories, EXIT dares users to entertain a shocking possibility: that mankind…

Go behind the scenes at Japan's Yoshida Brewery, where a brotherhood of artisans, ranging from 20 to 70, spend six months in nearly monastic isolation as they follow an age-old process to create saké, the nation's revered rice wine.

The largely invisible and often crushing struggles of young African-American men come vividly--and heroically--to life in All the Difference, which traces the paths of two teens from the South Side of Chicago who dream of graduating from…

Emmy®-nominated filmmaker Bernardo Ruiz takes an unflinching look at the hard choices and destructive consequences of the U.S.-Mexico drug war. Witness the human side of the conflict through the eyes of a U.S. drug enforcement agent, an…

When director Sharon Shattuck's father came out as transgender, Sharon was in the awkward throes of middle school. As the Shattucks reunite to plan Sharon's wedding, she seeks a deeper understanding of how her parents' marriage, and their…

The danger is palpable as intrepid young filmmaker Nanfu Wang follows maverick activist Ye Haiyan (aka Hooligan Sparrow) and her band of colleagues to southern China as they seek justice in the case of six elementary school girls…

When Ryan Green, a video game programmer, learns that his young son Joel has cancer, he and his wife begin documenting their emotional journey with a poetic video game. Follow Ryan and his family over two years creating "That Dragon,…

Inside the very first girls' school in a small Afghan village, education goes far beyond the classroom as the students discover the differences between the lives they were born into and the lives they dream of leading.

The nuanced story of a family displaced by the Syrian conflict and remaking themselves after the parents separate. Effervescent teen Dalya goes to Catholic high school and her mother Rudayana enrolls in college as they both walk the line…

Daphne Matziaraki follows a day in the life of Kyriakos Papadopoulos, a captain in the Greek Coast Guard who is caught in the middle of the biggest refugee crisis since WWII. Despite limited resources, the captain and his crew attempt to…

Radio host Obaidah Zytoon captures the fate of Syria through the intimate lens of a small circle of friends and journalists. Beginning with peaceful Arab Spring protests 2011, The War Show offers a four-year, ground-level look at how the…

After five years of war in Syria, the remaining citizens of Aleppo are getting ready for a siege. Through the eyes of volunteer rescue workers called the White Helmets, Last Men in Aleppo allows viewers to experience the daily life,…

Samantha Montgomery placed her dreams on YouTube. Then they became a reality. Presenting Princess Shaw is the extraordinary story of an aspiring musician, down on her luck, who inspired internationally famous musician, composer and video…

In Shalom Italia, three Italian Jewish brothers set off on a journey through Tuscany, in search of a cave where they hid as children to escape the Nazis. Their quest, full of humor, food and Tuscan landscapes, straddles the boundary…

A donated musical instrument forges an improbable friendship. 91-year-old Holocaust survivor Joe Feingold and 12-year-old Bronx school girl Brianna Perez show how the power of music can bring light in the darkest of times, and how a small…

Filmmaker Cecilia Aldarondo suspected that there was something ugly in her family's past. Memories of a Penitent Heart excavates a buried conflict around her uncle Miguel's death at a time when having AIDS was synonymous with sin. As she…

Two Native American judges reach back to traditional concepts of justice in order to reduce incarceration rates, foster greater safety for their communities, and create a more positive future for their youth. By addressing the root causes…

An intimate portrait of three African American boys as they face a precarious coming of age in rural Bertie County, North Carolina. Like many rural areas, Bertie County struggles with a dwindling economy, a declining population, and a…

In a school for individuals with Down Syndrome, four middle-aged friends yearn for a life of greater autonomy in a society that marginalizes them as disabled. The Grown Ups is a humorous and at times sad and uncomfortable look at the…

The Rainey family are an African-American family living in Philadelphia.

Bill Nye advocates the importance of science, research and discovery.

Jae-Chang Kim, a Korean opera singer who runs a children's choir in India, trains parents and their children for a joint concert.

The town of Tultepec in south-central Mexico becomes famous for its manufacturing of fireworks.

African and Asian migrant workers building the facilities for the 2022 World Cup in Qatar participate in a football tournament for laborers.

A juror deals with guilt and regret after she and 11 others hand down the death penalty to a Mississippi man convicted of a double homicide.

Maria Toorpakai represents Pakistan as an internationally competitive squash player.

An account of the Ferguson uprising as told by the people who lived it.

Yu Xiuhua, a 39-year-old woman who has cerebral palsy, deals with fame when her book of poetry becomes a best-seller in China.

Male nurse Nori Sharif and his family experience many changes as conflicts continue with Iraqi militias and the Islamic State group in central Iraq's "triangle of death."

A Cuban mother of four longs for escape and a chance to build a better life.

Hasidic women in Borough Park, Brooklyn, create the first all-female volunteer ambulance corps in New York.

Two health care workers in Sierra Leone face the Ebola epidemic in their country.

A journalist in Montana investigates the impacts of the U.S. Supreme Court's Citizens United decision.

Former comfort women who were forced into sexual slavery during World War II fight for justice and reconciliation.

Three young men bond through skateboarding to escape their volatile family life in their Rust Belt home town.

Two siblings undertake an archaeological excavation of their late grandmother's house.

At a 2012 pre-season high-school football party in Steubenville, Ohio, a young woman was raped by members of the beloved high school football team.

Faith, love and civil rights collide on voting day in a small Southern town that hosts a famous performance of the last days of Christ and an infamous gospel drag show.

When Jennifer Laude, a Filipina trans woman, is brutally murdered by a U.S. Marine, three women intimately invested in the case - an activist attorney, a transgender journalist and Jennifer’s mother)–galvanize a political uprising,…

Residents of Bisbee, Ariz., commemorate the 100th anniversary of the Bisbee Deportation when 1,200 immigrant miners were taken from their homes, shipped to the desert and left to die.

Nadia Murad, a 23-year-old Yazidi, survived genocide and sexual slavery committed by ISIS. Repeating her story to politicians and media, this ordinary girl finds herself thrust onto the world stage as the voice of her people. Away from…

Take a journey with young minds from around the globe as they prepare their projects for the largest convening of high school scientists in the world, the Intel International Science and Engineering Fair (ISEF). Watch these passionate…

Hnutove, Donbass, eastern Ukraine, 2015. Young Oleg lives in a war zone where anti-aircraft gunshots and missile attacks often resonate dangerously near. Although many inhabitants have already left this dangerous area, he remains with his…

Every summer on Mondello Beach in Palermo, more than a thousand cabins are erected to house the same number of groups of bathers who will spend the season in them.

Clear-eyed and intimate, Farmsteaders follows Nick Nolan and his young family on a journey to resurrect his late grandfather’s dairy farm as agriculture moves toward large-scale farming. A study of place and persistence, Farmsteaders…

A teenager recruits her neighbours to fight against a multinational natural gas drilling company allegedly responsible for displacing 60,000 people in an Indonesian village that was submerged in mud.

Victims and survivors of Gen. Francisco Franco's dictatorship in Spain continue to seek justice 40 years later.

When a man and his brothers return to their hometown of Colima, Mexico, to care for their grandmother, they clash over money, communication and caregiving.

Journalist Assia Boundaoui uncovers FBI documents about "Operation Vulgar Betrayal," a pre-9/11 counterterrorist probe conducted in Illinois.

The challenges facing a group of women determined to change the way women arrested for prostitution are prosecuted.

The dangers facing refugees seeking asylum come to light as Afghan director Hassan Fazili documents his family's journey from Afghanistan to Germany.

Two children recover from enslavement to fishermen in a rehabilitation shelter in Ghana.

No synopsis

The story of a defiant movement of women of color, transforming politics from the ground up by fighting for a truly reflective democracy. Filmed during the historic 2018 midterm elections, the documentary features organizers and…

The story of a defiant movement of women of color, transforming politics from the ground up by fighting for a truly reflective democracy. Filmed during the historic 2018 midterm elections, the documentary features organizers and…

Meet the Radical Monarchs, a group of young girls of color on the frontlines of social justice. Follow the group as they earn badges for completing units on such subjects as being an LGBTQ ally, preserving the environment and disability…

Meet Israeli lawyer Lea Tsemel, a political firebrand who is known by her opponents as "the devil's advocate" for her decades-long defense of Palestinians who have been accused of resisting the occupation, both violently and non-violently.

In this captivating documentary filmed in a single tiny room, viewers step inside an underground hair salon with its charismatic proprietor, a Cameroonian immigrant named Sabine. Here, she and her employees style extensions and glue on…

Three generations of the Phadke family live together in their home in Mumbai. When the youngest daughter turns the camera towards her family, the personal becomes political as power structures within the family become visible, and…

Photographs taken by Kentucky schoolchildren in the 1970s, their lives since then, and the linkage of personal memory to the passage of time.

A young couple flees Iran with their son, Mani, seeking asylum in Turkey so they can start a new life.

Ten-year-old Aboriginal Dujuan is a child-healer, a good hunter and speaks three languages.Yet Dujuan is ‘failing’ in school and facing increasing scrutiny from welfare and the police. As he travels perilously close to incarceration, his…

When artist Maleonn realizes that his father suffers from Alzheimer’s disease, he creates “Papa’s Time Machine,” a magical, autobiographical stage performance featuring life-size mechanical puppets. Through the production of this play,…

Two young immigrants, members of a group of radical Dreamers, are arrested by Border Patrol and put in a for-profit detention centre.

Political activist Boniface "Softie" Mwangi runs for office in a regional Kenyan election, but learns that conducting a clean campaign against corrupt opponents is increasingly harder to combat with idealism alone.

An investigator poses as a new resident in a retirement home after a family grows concerned for their mother's well-being.

The stories of two working mothers and a child care provider whose lives intersect at a 24-hour day care in New Rochelle, N.Y.

No synopsis

No synopsis

No synopsis

No synopsis

No synopsis

No synopsis

In California, a Mexican-American teen goes to work when ICE raids threaten her family.

No synopsis

No synopsis

No synopsis

No synopsis

No synopsis

No synopsis

Exploring the early days of COVID-19 when Chinese citizens and frontline health care workers in Wuhan grappled with a mysterious virus.

Japanese Americans incarcerated at the Manzanar World War II concentration camp; Native Americans forced from their land; ranchers bought out by the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power.

Greenland reckons with its Danish colonial past and the promised future by a U.S. company building a smelting plant.

Christine works to ensure dignified lives for herself and her brother, Peter.

A new leader takes on the corrupt ruling party in Zimbabwe's 2018 presidential election.

A look at khat, a euphoria-inducing plant, and the lives of harvesters of the crop in Harar, Ethiopia.

A multigenerational love story focuses on a daughter who cares for her terminally ill mother and adopts a baby in her 50s.

Locals on an island paradise risk death to save the Philippines' last ecological frontier.

Three Cuban baseball players risk exile to chase their dream of playing in the US major leagues.

A prep school in Louisiana that sends 100% of its grads to college is rocked by scandal.

The past 30 years of American history through the perspective of Muslims across the U.S. who have lived it.

Two women in a region beset by violent ethnic divisions run a makeshift medical clinic.

An academic beacon for Black children on Chicago's South Side battles gentrification.

A disabled filmmaker ruminates on the corrosive legacy of the Freak Show.

A poetic quest in coastal South Carolina unearths Black inheritance amidst a violent past.

A burial site containing thousands of once enslaved Africans is discovered on St. Helena.

Immigrant dreams and generational divides collide against LA's complex racial landscape.

By the frontlines in Eastern Ukraine, social workers create a sanctuary for kids in limbo.

A woman's battle with late-stage Lou Gehrig's disease (ALS) leaves her paralyzed and pushes her family to the breaking point.

A 13-year-old Hmong girl is caught between tradition and modernity in rural northwest Vietnam.

In a world of fake news, journalist Ravish Kumar stands his ground. Will his show survive?

An undocumented family decides to return home after 20 years of living in the U.S.

Uýra shares ancestral knowledge with Indigenous youth in the Amazon.

Black Muslim mother Movita Johnson-Harrell transforms from a victim of violent trauma to a fierce advocate against gun violence in Black communities.

At 14, Aurora Mardiganian survives the Armenian Genocide and escapes to New York, finding fame in "Auction of Souls."

Nursing home residents use poetry and art to describe the danger and imprisonment they feel during COVID-19's lockdown.

A film blending humour and sadness focuses on a mother and daughter confronting the reality of wisdom "gone wild" in the shadows of dementia.

A series of vignettes provide insight into Chinese tourists who travel to the U.S. to give birth in order to obtain citizenship for their babies.

At MIT, a Ghanaian alum follows four African students striving to become agents of positive change for their home countries.

A blind, undocumented immigrant faces uncertainty to obtain his college degree.

The complex history and future of the coal industry.

Bordertown besties make magic of one last summer together as they face uncertain futures.

Born with a rare disability, filmmaker Ella Glendining finds others who have had the same experience.

The friendship between two Koli fishermen in Bombay is fractured by the weight of a changing world and a sea threatened by climate change.

An old shepherd and his flock live alongside a high-tech laboratory for animal experimentation on the outskirts of Barcelona.

A deaf Kurdish boy's transformative journey to communicate through learning sign language.

Revolutionary at 21. Lawmaker at 23. Most Wanted at 26. Nathan Law's fight for freedom.

A volunteer aid van operates as a shelter, waiting room, hospital and confessional for passengers fleeing Ukraine for Poland.

Inuit lawyer and activist Aaju Peter defends the rights of Indigenous peoples.

Filmmaker Taku Aoyagi's daily bike rides as an Uber Eats worker in Tokyo.

Baltimore Mayor Brandon Scott employs his plan to stop chronic violence in his first year in office.

Two South African friends born intersex change what we think about being male or female.

A hypnotically cinematic love letter that untangles a family's painful unspoken past.

Legend of Zelda streamer Narcissa Wright breaks records and finds love in the digital age.

Up against one of the most powerful companies on the planet, a group of Amazon workers embark on an unprecedented campaign to unionize their warehouse in Staten Island, New York. Documenting the struggle in intimate cinéma vérité,…

Black activist Francia Márquez rises from rural Colombia to launch a historic presidential campaign that defies the political establishment. By espousing a different way of doing politics and championing equality, she inspires a…

Inside Ethiopia's largest Chinese-run industrial park, three women stand at the crossroads of rapid development. A Chinese director drives ambitious expansion, while a local farmer and factory worker grapple with promises of prosperity…

Turning 21, Samuel wants his independence. Yet every rite of passage is fraught with challenges and social barriers. Seizures and uncontrollable movements. Inaccessible housing. Degrading ableist encounters. "No one tells you how to be an…

Residents of Sunset Park, Brooklyn face rising rents, a legacy of environmental racism and the loss of the industrial jobs that once sustained their community. When a global developer purchases a massive industrial complex on the…

On a small farm in a Norwegian forest, the Paynes live a purposefully isolated life, striving to be wild and free. But when tragedy strikes, their idyllic world is shattered, forcing them to navigate the expectations of modern society.…

After losing everything, Desiree Wood takes a second lease on life as a long-haul trucker. Alongside an irreverent group of women drivers, she fights for a life on the road. In a rapidly changing labor landscape, Desiree and her…

When three children die of leukemia in a rural Mexican community, two mothers partner with a scientist to investigate their water supply. Their discovery of dangerous radioactivity leads to community backlash and government denial,…

In a remote Siberian coal town, homemaker-turned-journalist Natalia Zubkova investigates an abandoned mine fire releasing toxic gas into residential homes. When her reporting goes viral, government officials launch an aggressive cover-up…

When attorney Paul Farrell Jr. takes on pharmaceutical giants to help his opioid-ravaged West Virginia hometown, his innovative legal strategy catches fire. As his local battle transforms into the largest civil litigation in U.S. history,…

As war ravages their homeland, three artists choose to stay in their native Ukraine, armed with their art, their cameras, and for the first time in their lives, their guns. A stunning tribute to the resilience of the human spirit,…

In a powerful story of healing and forgiveness, Jamaican-American poet and LGBTQ+ activist Staceyann Chin re-imagines mothering after being abandoned by her own. In a journey to seek out her elusive mother, Staceyanne travels across…

When a queer Korean adoptee reunites with her birth mother in Seoul, long-buried cultural misunderstandings and unspoken regrets surface. With tenderness, humor, and determination, both mother and daughter navigate the heart-wrenching…