An Armenian Triptych: Retracing Our Steps

Three grandchildren of Armenian Genocide survivors respond to its haunting legacy and issues of Armenian identity. Guitarist Aram Bajakian, painter Kevork Mourad, and writer Alan Semerdjian present individual compositions in their respective disciplines that come together in this animated short film highlighting the power of artistic collaboration as a meaning-making tool in response to intergenerational trauma and the refusal of a people to be erased from history.

Lazy People

The stories of loss and persistent survival are just under the surface in the community of an all-Armenian apartment complex. When the adults are at work, seven-year old Khatchig’s disastrous attempts to impress his neighborhood crush will have far-reaching repercussions. Featuring Nora Armani SRFF Founding Artistic Director.

Blurring the Color Line

Where did the Chinese sit on the bus during segregation? Director Crystal Kwok complicates the narrative and digs deep into the roots of racism that speak to today's Afro-Asian tensions.

Erhöre uns süße Freiheit!

Hear Us Sweet Freedom!

A poetic, socio-politically relevant, anti-genre fairy tale. We're in the future. Art & culture has died out as a result of the corona pandemic. Solidarosa, Creativia & Financietta are descendants of the so-called "artists". Only with united forces they might be able to resurrect culture if the Gods of arts are gracious. The film is based on 3 classical music pieces from 3 epochs. The film should be watched on a big screen with a quality sound to unfold its highest effect.

Look Up

Today's Society is obsessed with Social Media. Look Up, highlights how much of it can lead to psychological distress through two young womens stories.

Adventures of Zizwe

Eons ago, indigenous mythical goddesses gathered around Africa's oldest and most cosmic tree, the Baobab. Their mystical granddaughters carry on that tradition with the mission to transform conflict through the spirit of Ubuntu (togetherness) by harnessing ancient wisdom, magical powers and cool indigenous music. The young goddesses unite to solve mysteries, tackle terror, eliminate poaching, divert climate change, and heal plagues, which are all too common in the world. The Zizwe series uses cultural diversity as a unifying strength.

Stoneheart: An Undying Gift

Steve Hilfiker, a heart transplant survivor and single father of four, describes his experience facing death, and how his perspective on life has forever changed following the fateful operation.

Borders

Every year thousands of migrants travel along the Balkan Route to find shelter in Europe. They constantly trying to cross the Croatia border. This is what they call The Game: Who gets to Europe wins.

Road to the Lemon Grove

A heartwarming story about an old-school Sicilian father trying to negotiate his way into heaven, where the only way in is to first go back and repair his relationship with his reluctant son, reunite his feuding family back in Sicily, and help everyone find love in places they never imagined. Starring Burt Young (Rocky), Nick Mancuso (Ticket to Heaven), Rossella Brescia (Italian TV star and Italy’s Prima Ballerina), Charley Chiarelli (Sicilian “Spalding Grey”), Loreena McKennitt (Multi-Platinum Recording Artist) and Tomaso Sanelli (Cicada 3301, Titans)

Three Little Birds

This short documentary follows three men of Jamaican descent as they come together to speak about Jamaican & American culture, and finding a way to balance the two in their lives.

ENOUGH! Lebanon's Darkest Hour

The eyes of the world were forced to turn their gaze upon Lebanon, not only because of the Beirut Port explosion that devastated this ancient city on 4th August 2020, but also because, sadly, Lebanon stands as an allegory for kleptocratic regimes that have seen a resurgence across the globe, and their catastrophic impact. Seen through the eyes of Lebanese-Australian journalist and filmmaker, Daizy Gedeon, this film is the wake-up call for all people to stand against oppression and corruption by using their voice and democratic right to VOTE FOR CHANGE! Exclusive and controversial interviews with many of the key political leaders (Prime Minister Saad Hariri, former Foreign Minister Gebran Bassil, Dr. Samir Geagea, Hezbollah Minister Mohammad Fneich, Former Justice Minister Salim Jreissati, Governor of the Central Bank, Riad Salame, among others) prior to the explosion feature in the film. These are the very men responsible for much of Lebanon's desecration.

Nomad Meets the City

Former herder Tumurbaatar works tirelessly as a garbage truck driver in the Mongolian capital of Ulaanbaatar to give his daughter a better education and compete in the modern economy. His wife, Tungaa, a doctor in the countryside, maintains her roots and helps tend the family herd. Tumurbaatar’s visits home reveal fault lines in their marriage and identities. They both speak romantically about retiring as true nomads, but his nomadic roots are already lost to the city. Torn between life in the city and his home and family in a countryside town, they cling fast to dreams for their children to lead lives they cannot while the pressures of distance and separation take their toll.

The Disappeared

Observers are the frontline conversationists of the sea. 9 have turned up missing in the line of duty in 7 years, trying to keep track of the multi million dollar tuna industry.

HER

A Trilogy that explores the backgrounds of women who have a meaningful impact on their communities or countries, the film shows perspectives on the work and turning point in their lives to give up everything they had to empower others. We follow the footsteps of women leader on each continent, women with various backgrounds, culture and religions who made a difference in their communities and around the world.

Mute

In a world where words cost money, a woman saves up for her first word in the hope of standing up to her abuser.

Invisible Imprints

A troupe of 9 dancers and 3 poets tour from Jackson, MS to Chicago, dialoguing with audiences and Civil Rights veterans about the power of telling the truth and love as a way to enlighten and uplift.

Applebaum

A dying man and his nurse have one last conversation. It changes her life forever.

The Desire To Live

Stories of the indigenous people of Artsakh, after the 44-day war with Azerbaijan in 2020, and the suffering resulting form the devastating loss of lives and land. The Desire to Live is about the right of the people of Artsakh to live on their own indigenous lands and their right to protection from the threat of war, genocide and crimes against their humanity.

Disconnected

Kathy receives a text from her daughter that there is a shooter at her school, then the line goes dark. Kathy will spend the next few hours desperately trying to contact her daughter, or she may never see her again.

Alone for Solo Violin, Live EFX, & Electronica

Directed by Douglas Muller & composed by John Wineglass, commissioned by the Monterey Symphony for Concertmaster Christina Mok, the film is dedicated to the many victims of the COVID-19 Pandemic.

Eine Handvoll Wasser

A Handful of Water

KONRAD (85) has plenty of reasons for being grumpy. His wife died recently and now his only daughter is planning to adopt her girlfriend's kids to Konrad's disapproval.​ THURBA (12) has a very different set of problems. In order to avoid deportation she must jump from the second floor and run away during an investigation. Konrad hears something from the basement in the middle of the night and arming himself with a nail gun fires into the dark, wounding little Thurba. Somehow this girl touches long lost feelings from his own past. Thurba proposes a deal...

Messy

Lee's marriage is failing. She and her husband decide to call it quits, but they're too broke to live separately. Join Lee as she juggles motherhood, civility with her new ex, and the introduction to online dating where the men come to life as though they were having an in person conversation, and see how that works out.

Surfaces

A brutal portrayal of coercion, violence, loss and hope, set during lockdown, this film explores whether we can ever trust the surface of things. Starring Maxine Peake and Lex Shrapnel.

Do you remember me?

Sara, a young muslim woman from Switzerland, finds her christian circumciser after 20 years in an Ethiopian village and decides to become an activist against Female Genital Mutilation. This is a story about FGM, pain and anger. But also about hope, trust and empowerment. Or to say it in Saras words: “It doesn’t matter what happened to you in the past. There is a way to be happy again.” Award-winning composer Marcel Vaid has created the film music. Associates: Unicef, Amnesty International and Menschen für Menschen.

Pieces of Us

An intimate look at the personal journeys of LGBTQ+ hate crime survivors who, by choosing to take their recovery public, inspire the survivor in all of us. The film juxtaposes the inspirational stories of recovery each of the film’s subjects (including transgender activist and Stonewall Riots survivor Victoria Cruz, and Prince Manvendra Singh Gohil of India) have experienced with the powerful connections their public actions have produced. Their stories take us to New York City, Denver and India to witness how intersectionality and speaking your truth can build a support community and even spark global change.

To Wade or Row

While staying overnight, Jane visits a small-town motel’s covert clinic. But when her boyfriend wakes up to find her gone a police officer’s arrival threatens to expose their underground operation.

STATE OF REST

Sahrawis have been sending to Europe their children, the so-called "Little Peace Ambassadors", for decades, to show the world the injustice they suffer. A 2700 km long mined wall across the desert, and there's no mention of it even in UN resolutions on Western Sahara. This former Spanish colony, just in front of Canary Islands, is occupied by Morocco since 1975. In 2011 I spent 5 weeks in the Sahrawi refugee camps near Tindouf, outer south-west of Algeria. This is where the Sahrawi's escape from their war-devastated land stopped, though none of them imagined they would stay there so long. Western Sahara has been occupied by Morocco and plundered by many others for over 40 years.

Land of the Free: In the shadows

A groundbreaking documentary containing never-before-seen subversive facts, blowing the lid off secrets behind the big business of LEGALLY killing endangered species for pride, pleasure and profit. It contains attributable contributions from Sir Roger Gale MP (UK), Tippi Hedren (Los Angeles), Priscilla Presley (Los Angeles) Queen Elizabeth II (House of Lords, London) 2019 Albert Schweitzer Award winner John Thompson (Washington DC) , former NCA covert operative Reg Dickason (Brisbane Australia) , John Mitchell-Adams of Destinations Africa (Sydney Australia) Derek Joubert (South Africa) and the unsung hero of the piece who saved thousands of animals on the front lines in Africa, Meryl Harrison (Zimbabwe). The film, narrated by Stargate’s Cliff Simon (who passed in a sudden tragic accident shortly after filming the narration), is dedicated to Cliff’s memory. The musical score has been composed specially by the incredible Mzansi Youth Choir of Soweto, whom Cliff called “The soul of Africa”.

Ghost Dance for America, 1890

Ghost Dance for America, 1890 is about the birth of America, the violent history of the 1800’s and how it presages today’s political climate in the United States. The Ghost Dance was a religious movement of the Native Americans in response to the U.S. government’s westward expansion and terrorism against them. The Ghost Dance died out in 1890 after the bloody Battle of Wounded Knee.

A Manhattan Spring Chronicle

The untold story of COVID-19. The city that never sleeps wakes up to a new reality. A visual documentary of Manhattan during the pandemic.

Joyful

We live in a hectic and chaotic world that relentlessly stresses our planet, humans and animals alike. joyful is a unique audio-visual exploration of finding joy in all the turmoil that surrounds us. This short film uses videos, timelapses, hyperlapses, drone shots, slow motion, astrophotography and satellite images from around the world with dramatic sound design and music overlay to depict life as we know it and simple moments of joy and calm that provides us respite in all the chaos…

The Chemical Factory

A short animated documentary featuring a Chinese immigrant mother recounting her life growing up during the tumultuous 1950’s communist China to her American son during the COVID-19 pandemic. Faded memories of the Chinese Cultural Revolution are brilliantly rendered using groundbreaking technology, while drawing striking connections to the spate of violence towards the Asian community in America.

Chez Eux

This French road movie presents 12 improvising musicians who welcome us into in their homes. Each duo revolves around a theme and an improvisation between Norbert Aboudarham's accordina (a small wind accordion) and another instrument (Guitare, harp, violin, snake...). We meet Marcel Dreux, Ludovic Beier, Dan Gharibian (Bratch), Théo Girard, Bruno Girard, Michel Godard, Olivier Manoury, Isabelle Olivier, Max Robin, Antoine Boyer, Laurent Zeller and a "surprise guest"... This musical track is accompanied by an interview about the life of jazz musicians, their artistic choices, their way of life and the transmission of their art.

Glimpses

Glimpses is a shared collection of intimate thoughts and experiences from a man dying of a rare and aggressive neurological disease Multiple System Atrophy (MSA). He can no longer communicate these thoughts verbally but framed by the narration of his own writing, we discover his mind that is still very much alive.

Les libres

The Free Ones

Les Libres is a full-length documentary feature which shows us how four detainees are dealing with the end of their prison sentence, in a sawmill. Can a factory job help them to make the necessary transformation and become free men? Hidden from society’s view and through meetings with their instructors, psychotherapists and other participants, we accompany Samuel, Pierrot, Fred and Steve talk about their hopes and fears during this six-month transition period.

Off the Beat

Vaughn is a street performer. On the way home, he gets stopped and frisked by two undercover police officers, one of whom throws him down the ground. Ray is curios to what know what happened.

Defense Contract

A US marine wounded in combat returns from Afghanistan to confront the defense contractor who manufactured the weapon that disfigured him.

Bird's Eye View Final

Bird’s Eye View is an art-science exploration of interspecies friendship between young people and birds for a survivable future that is looking up. This film integrates their embodied movement with science, words, puppets, and music from the imaginations of our Boulder City’s youth and is filmed on Boulder’s majestic Open Space Mountain Park trails.

Lapinlahti - Tyttären Äiti

Hospital - Daughter's Mother

Helsinki, spring 1975: Author Jeanette Aspen arrives at the Lapinlahti hospital, one of the oldest mental hospitals in the world, to meet her only child, psychiatrist Karin Aspen, 36 years after sending her to Sweden as a war child at the start of the Winter War in 1939 while she herself travelled to Spain to begin a new life. The encounter sparks the drama between mother and daughter, now complete strangers to each other. The architectural beauty of the mental hospital serves as an eye-witness to the events where long locked up emotions between the women splash out.

Leader

Donnie, lives on his own in a very remote area by the sea. He creates sculptures from ocean waste in his makeshift workshop, until one day the tide changes and he inspires a “New Normal”.

Don't Despair

A man struggling with addiction and isolation finds hope in a kindred spirit.

They Call Me Dax

Fifteen-year-old Dorothy struggles to survive as a high school student and ballet dancer. Fondly called Dax by her friends, she lives by herself in a poor district in Quezon City, Philippines, a sprawling urban space of three million people.

Shoah Ambassadors

Through their own personal expressions of music and sculpture, two ambassadors bridge the chasm between the generation that endured the nightmare of World War II and today’s bright-eyed, tech-savvy young people who have only a limited grasp of what happened just decades before they were born.

SanDance! A Journey to the Heart of San Culture

Set in the transcendent dance culture of Africa’s San First Peoples, SanDance! celebrates and regenerates humanity’s original essence of dance. SanDance! explores the ancient trance-healing dance at the heart of San culture, then follows San dancers from rehearsals in remote Kalahari villages to electrifying performances at Botswana's Kuru Dance Festival.

My name is.

A short documentary into experiences of individuals with non-western first names, its link to their identity, and how it correlates to pressures of conforming to westernized English norms.

The River You Step In

When a young First Nations client dies after being committed to police custody, social worker Stevie struggles to keep the troubled people she encounters away from the system she no longer trusts. Opening her East End Toronto home as a safe haven for 'at risk' people. They are George, an ex-con and chronic gambler, Tracy, a down and out musician, and Mina, a battered wife. Stevie tries to mend some broken lives, but she masks her own issues by burying herself in theirs. “I’d say get a life,” says her paramedic boyfriend Ben, “but you already have more than one!” When she defends Mina against her abusive husband Karl, Stevie is confronted with the real dangers of crossing professional boundaries.

Asylum

A woman risks everything to try and protect an asylum seeker in a totalitarian society in which all borders are militarized.

بؤّوسي

Peek-A-Boom

Surrounded by her loving family on her birthday, an event occurs that shapes Mira's life forever.

Absolutely Must Go

From 1967 to 1973, in the midst of the Cold War, the Bancoult family and nearly 2,000 other Chagossians were taken from their archipelago, in the Indian Ocean, by Great Britain and the United States. The latter set up one of their most important military bases on the main island, Diego Garcia. It is from Diego Garcia that the B52s leave for the Middle East. Uprooted, but not resigned, Rita Bancoult, the matriarch, and her children Olivier, Ivo and Mimose have chosen to fight against this injustice and the drama that is affecting their people. This is their story.

Gray Area

Kate Gray struggles with a full-time career as a therapist, raising four young children, past personal traumas, and marriage. She spirals down through the “gray area” of addiction and anxiety.

Raise Your Hand

Gia and her best friend Lila survived a rough childhood in a neighborhood where every kid has a sad story to tell. Now, as teenagers, Gia struggles to use her gift of writing to reclaim what the world has brutally taken away.

The load

Women are increasingly choosing to not have children. Not because they can’t. They simply choose to do other things instead. Denatality is making one town disappear. The Government is setting pressing measures, not just psychological ones. Bianca and Vittoria are at the opposite ends of their fertility cycle. Their acquaintance forces them to choose, in an instant, the direction of their future: any choice will result in a radical change of their destiny.

Puhuva katse

Eyes Can Tell

Despite losing speech and mobility years ago Kati leads an active life. Learning to communicate again saved her and now she helps others do the same.

Smudge

Two Indigenous generations, the past and future. The strength of tradition, the isolation of the contemporary world. Joined by blood, joined by Earth. Can this connection overcome the emptiness?

STORGETNYA

March 2020, Yerevan, capital of Armenia. 230 meters underground, in the Avan salt mine, men and women walk to breathe easier. Physical activities and medical consultations set the rhythm of the timeless world of this underground clinic, where lives intersect and stories are told.

He Runs

It's an afternoon like any other when a man leaves home for a short jog through his neighborhood. Little does he know that his jog will become a race for his life.