Directed by Rajee Samarasinghe • 2022 • Sri Lanka, United States

“This footage was shot shortly after the civil war in Sri Lanka on the occasion of my mother’s long-delayed reunion with Kamala, the aunt she lived with as a child. Kamala was living a life of solitude at this point and has now sin...

Directed by blackANDwhite • 2007 • United States
Starring David Lynch

This 2007 feature-length film by blackANDwhite, the makers of DAVID LYNCH: THE ART LIFE, was made over the course of two years during the filming of INLAND EMPIRE.

Directed by Younes Ben Slimane • 2021 • France, Tunisia

At night, a stranger digs graves, buries the dead, and watches over them. In the dark, he reveals the personal belongings of the deceased to us. These objects, separated from their owners, bear their scars and story, while others melt until...

Directed by Karthik Pandian and Andros Zins-Browne • 2022 • United States
Starring Zakaria Almoutlak

A portrait of Zakaria Almoutlak, a sculptor and media activist from Homs, Syria, who fled the civil war in 2015.

Directed by Deepa Dhanraj • 1986 • India

This pioneering work takes communal violence between Hindus and Muslims in 1984 as its starting point, gaining immense political force through its complexity. The film’s historical perspective is provided by a thorough commentary, illuminating the ways in...

Directed by Yugantar • 1982 • India

In the spirit of mobilizing for the leftist labor and women’s movements, the Yugantar collective spent four months with female tobacco factory workers in Nipani, Karnataka, listening to their accounts of exploitative working conditions, discussing strategies f...

Directed by Eva Vitija • 2022 • Germany, Switzerland
Starring Gwendoline Christie, Annina Butterworth, Marijane Meaker

The life and work of celebrated American writer Patricia Highsmith are revealed through her diaries and notebooks and the intimate reflections of her lovers, friends, and family...

Directed by Deepa Dhanraj • 1991 • India

SOMETHING LIKE A WAR is a chilling examination of India’s family-planning program from the point of view of the women who are its primary targets. It traces the history of the family-planning program and exposes the cynicism, corruption, and brutality of ...

Directed by Deepa Dhanraj • 2011 • India

In Southern India, many family disputes are settled by Jamaats—all-male bodies that apply Islamic Sharia law to cases without allowing women to be present, even to defend themselves. Recognizing this fundamental inequity, a group of women in 2004 establis...

Directed by Deepa Dhanraj • 2006 • India

LOVE IN THE TIME OF AIDS follows a group of kothis (gay men who identify as femme) in Belgaum, a small city in Karnataka, and traces their stories of love, desire, and ostracization, as well as their work with an NGO that promotes safe-sex practices.

Directed by Yugantar • 1981 • India

This portrait of female solidarity in action exposes the oppressive working conditions of hundreds of maidservants in Pune, India, and reveals how the women came together to form an organization to fight for their rights.

Directed by Lemohang Jeremiah Mosese • 2019 • Germany, Lesotho

Part poetic essay, part documentary, this rapturous film by director Lemohang Jeremiah Mosese (THIS IS NOT A BURIAL, IT’S A RESURRECTION) analyzes the complexities of his relationship to his native country of Lesotho from his new hom...

Directed by Yugantar • 1983 • India

The Yugantar Film Collective’s most successful and widely seen film sheds light on the issue of domestic violence in Indian society. Created in collaboration with the feminist activist collective Stree Shakhti Sanghatana, this short, improvised narrative film ...

Directed by Yugantar • 1983 • India

SUDESHA tells the story of a woman who is a village activist in the Chipko Forest Conservation Movement in the foothills of the Himalayas. In this area, people depend entirely on the forest for their daily needs of firewood, food, and water. But the forests ha...

Directed by Bill Morrison • 2021 • United States
Starring Gísli Fannar Gylfason, Erlendur Sveinsson, Peter Bagrov

During the summer of 2016, a fishing boat off the shores of Iceland made a most curious catch: four reels of 35 mm film, seemingly of Soviet provenance. Unlike the film find explored...

Directed by Abbas Kiarostami • 2001 • Iran
Starring Abbas Kiarostami, Seifollah Samadian

In 2000, Abbas Kiarostami traveled to Africa at the request of the United Nations to document a humanitarian crisis unfolding in Uganda, where 1.5 million children had been orphaned by civil war and AIDS. Wo...

Directed by Shivendra Singh Dungarpur • 2012 • India
Starring P. K. Nair, Krzysztof Zanussi, Lester James Peries

An engaging, heartfelt look at one man’s battle to preserve his nation’s cinematic heritage, CELLULOID MAN is an intimate portrait of legendary Indian archivist P. K. Nair, who founde...

Directed by Joyce Chopra • 2008 • United States

GRAMERCY STORIES is an inspiring look inside a unique residence in Manhattan that provides a safe home for twenty-five gay and transgender teenagers who have experienced violence at home and on the streets. Told from their candid, often witty persp...

Directed by Shivendra Singh Dungarpur • 2018 • India
Starring Jiří Menzel, Antonín Máša, Dušan Hanák

This epic, indispensable work of cinema scholarship from archivist and filmmaker Shivendra Singh Dungarpur is a remarkable, in-depth portrait of director Jiří Menzel (CLOSELY WATCHED TRAINS) and ...

Directed by Nathaniel Kahn • 2003 • United States

Louis I. Kahn, who died in 1974, was one of the greatest architects of the twentieth century, but he left behind an illegitimate son, Nathaniel, and a personal life of secrets and broken promises. MY ARCHITECT takes us on a heartbreaking yet humo...

Directed by Jake Meginsky with Neil Young • 2018 • United States
Starring Milford Graves

This portrait of renowned percussionist and founding pioneer of avant-garde jazz Milford Graves finds him exploring his kaleidoscopic creativity and relentless curiosity. The film draws the viewer through th...

Directed by Edward Bland • 1959 • United States
Starring George Waller, Dorothea Horton, Melinda Dillon

Featuring music by Sun Ra and his Arkestra, this landmark semi-documentary explores—via a heated conversation between a group of Black and white jazz aficionados—the relationship between jazz ...

Directed by Joyce Chopra • 1980 • United States
Starring Félix Blaska, Martha Clarke, Philip Grausman

Joyce Chopra traces one year in the artistic evolution of celebrated choreographer Martha Clarke, offering an intimate window into Clarke’s creative process as she sets out to redefine the bound...

Directed by Ed Lachman • 1990 • United Kingdom, United States
Starring Lou Reed, John Cale

Newly restored, this elegiac concert documentary captures the extraordinary 1990 reunion of estranged Velvet Underground bandmates Lou Reed and John Cale. The occasion for this landmark event was a live pe...