The Man Who Invented Christmas

In 1843, despite the fact that Dickens is a successful writer, the failure of his latest book puts his career at a crossroads, until the moment when, struggling with inspiration and confronting reality with his childhood memories, a new character is born in the depths of his troubled mind; an old, lonely, embittered man, so vivid, so human, that a whole world grows around him, a story so inspiring that changed the meaning of Christmas forever.

Keyboard Fantasies

As a sci-fi obsessed woman living in near isolation, Beverly Glenn-Copeland wrote and self-released Keyboard Fantasies in Huntsville, Ontario back in 1986. Recorded in an Atari-powered home-studio, the cassette featured seven tracks of a curious folk-electronica hybrid, a sound realized far before its time. Three decades on, the musician – now Glenn Copeland – began to receive emails from people across the world, thanking him for the music they’d recently discovered.

Basquiat

The brief life of Jean Michel Basquiat, a world renowned New York street artist struggling with fame, drugs and his identity.

دری سندری د بینظیر لپاره

The story of Shaista, a young man who—newly married to Benazir and living in a camp for displaced persons in Kabul—struggles to balance his dreams of being the first from his tribe to join the Afghan National Army with the responsibilities of starting a family. Even as Shaista’s love for Benazir is palpable, the choices he must make to build a life with her have profound consequences.

We Were There to Be There

On June 13, 1978, the punk bands the Cramps and the Mutants played a free show for psychiatric patients at the Napa State Hospital in California. We Were There to Be There chronicles the people, politics, and cultural currents that led to the show and its live recording.

The Ring Thing

When Sarah accidentally proposes to her girlfriend in Provincetown, the mixup turns their loving relationship into a minefield of marital exploration.

The Pixar Shorts: A Short History

The story of Pixar's early short films illuminates not only the evolution of the company but also the early days of computer animation, when a small group of artists and scientists shared a single computer in a hallway, and struggled to create emotionally compelling short films.

Silent Pioneers

Contrary to the public stereotype of a youthful homosexual community, gay men and women do grow old. Silent Pioneers presents an upbeat focus on the lives of these people today, showing them living full and diverse lives and sharing concerns on ageing, health and housing, with other senior citizens. It also considers how support networks within the gay and lesbian community have enriched and strengthened their individual lives.

Fight Church

A documentary about the confluence of Christianity and mixed martial arts, including ministries which train fighters. The film follows several pastors and popular fighters in their quest to reconcile their faith with a sport that many consider violent and barbaric. Faith is tried and questions are raised. Can you really love your neighbor as yourself and then punch him in the face?

As Long As There's Breath

An intimate video work depicting a Nepali family’s struggles for cohesion, despite everyday travails and the absence of a beloved son.

Resan

Peter Watkins' global look at the impact of military use of nuclear technology and people's perception of it, as well as a meditation on the inherent bias of the media, and documentaries themselves.

Alice Rose

A damsel in distress agrees to run away with her wealthy lover in order to escape from her abusive husband. But all is not as it seems in this 1940s film noir.

First Daughter and the Black Snake

The “Prophecy of the 7th Fire” says a “black snake” will bring destruction to the earth. For Winona LaDuke, the “black snake” is oil trains and pipelines. When she learns that Canadian-owned Enbridge plans to route a new pipeline through her tribe’s 1855 Treaty land, she and her community spring into action to save the sacred wild rice lakes and preserve their traditional indigenous way of life. Launching an annual spiritual horse ride along the proposed pipeline route, speaking at community meetings and regulatory hearings. Winona testifies that the pipeline route follows one of historical and present-day trauma. The tribe participates in the pipeline permitting process, asserting their treaty rights to protect their natural resources. LaDuke joins with her tribe and others to demand that the pipelines’ impact on tribal people’s resources be considered in the permitting process.

Las Hurdes

An exploration —manipulated and staged— of life in Las Hurdes, in the province of Cáceres, in Extremadura, Spain, as it was in 1932. Insalubrity, misery and lack of opportunities provoke the emigration of young people and the solitude of those who remain in the desolation of one of the poorest and least developed Spanish regions at that time.

Megacities

Megacities is a documentary about the slums of five different metropolitan cities.

Ed Wood

The mostly true story of the legendary "worst director of all time", who, with the help of his strange friends, filmed countless B-movies without ever becoming famous or successful.

The Future Is Rotten

A secret culture of foragers hunt the Matsutake, a coveted Japanese mushroom worth up to $1,000 a pound—although its true value lies underground as a brilliant networker and healer of ruined landscapes. The Matsutake might just be our last, best hope for an American forest system run amok.

Grbavica

A woman and her daughter struggle to make their way through the aftermath of the Balkan war.

Good Grief

Good Grief is a short stop motion animated documentary that explores the lessons we learn from dealing with grief and loss. Five real people share their true stories of losing something precious and what it has taught them about living.

Expendable Assets