Anger consumes a squad of combat vets years after they return from the front. The dozen warriors in Of Men and War come home to the United States, but their minds are stuck out on the battlefield. Like figures from a Greek tragedy, all have traumatic memories that haunt them to this day. Ghosts and echoes of the war fill their lives. Wives, children, and parents bear the brunt of their fractured spirits. At The Pathway Home, a pioneering PTSD therapy center, the protagonists resolve to end the ongoing destruction. Their therapist is a Vietnam vet himself, helping the boys forge meaning from their senseless trauma. Over years of therapy, Of Men and War explores their grueling paths to recovery, as they attempt to make peace with themselves, their past, and their families.

The Farthest tells the captivating tales of the people and events behind one of humanity’s greatest achievements in exploration: NASA’s Voyager mission, which celebrates its 40th anniversary this August. The twin spacecraft—each with less computing power than a cell phone—used slingshot trajectories to visit Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune. They sent back unprecedented images and data that revolutionized our understanding of the spectacular outer planets and their many peculiar moons. Still going strong four decades after launch, each spacecraft carries an iconic golden record with greetings, music and images from Earth—a gift for any aliens that might one day find it. Voyager 1, which left our solar system and ushered humanity into the interstellar age in 2012, is the farthest-flung object humans have ever created. A billion years from now, when our sun has flamed out and burned Earth to a cinder, the Voyagers and their golden records will still be sailing on—perhaps the only remaining evidence that humanity ever existed. [Abramorama]

Inspired by the French phenomenon of 'single-class' schools, this film charts the life of a small one-class village school over the course of one academic year, and takes a warm and serene look at primary education in the French heartlands. (New Yorker Films)

Through fictional love letters found in a cupboard at the Film and Television Institute of India, we meet L, a film student writing to her estranged lover while he is away. Gradually we’re immersed in the drastic changes taking place at the school and in the lives of young people across the country as they take to the streets to protest widespread discrimination.

The Velvet Underground created a new sound that changed the world of music, cementing its place as one of rock ’n’ roll’s most revered bands. Directed by Todd Haynes, “The Velvet Underground” shows just how the group became a cultural touchstone representing a range of contradictions: the band is both of their time, yet timeless; literary yet realistic; rooted in high art and street culture. The film features in-depth interviews with the key players of that time combined with a treasure trove of never-before-seen performances and a rich collection of recordings, Warhol films, and other experimental art that creates an immersive experience into what founding member John Cale describes as the band's creative ethos: “how to be elegant and how to be brutal.” [Apple TV+]

In one of the world’s most populated cities, two brothers — Nadeem and Saud — devote their lives to the quixotic effort of protecting the black kite, a majestic bird of prey essential to the ecosystem of New Delhi that has been falling from the sky at alarming rates. Amid environmental toxicity and social unrest, the ‘kite brothers’ spend day and night caring for the creatures in their makeshift avian basement hospital.

Survivors, observers, and expert government officials recount the 1971 uprising at the Attica Correctional Facility. The violent five-day standoff between mostly Black and Latino inmates and law enforcement gripped America then, and highlights the urgent, ongoing need for reform 50 years later.

Can You Bring It: Bill T. Jones and D-Man in the Waters is a feature documentary that traces the history and legacy of one of the most important works of art to come out of the age of AIDS - Bill T. Jones' tour de force ballet "D-Man in the Waters". In 1989, "D-Man in the Waters" gave physical manifestation to the fear, anger, grief, and hope for salvation that the Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Company felt as they were embattled by the AIDS pandemic. As a group of young dancers reconstructs the dance, they learn about this oft forgotten history and deepen their understanding of the power of art in a time of plague. Bill T. Jones is arguably the most socially, politically and emotionally compelling choreographer alive today. Thirty years ago, he embedded motifs of risk and sacrifice, love, loss and resurrection in the choreography for "D-Man in the Waters". Through an extraordinary series of interviews, archival material, and uniquely powerful cinematography of movement, this 90-minute, lyrical documentary uses the story of this dance to illustrate the triumph of the human spirit in art and in the community. Today, by learning the dance, a new generation reinvigorates the spirit of a community fighting to survive.

Samuele is twelve and lives on an island in the Mediterranean, far away from the mainland. Like all boys of his age he does not always enjoy going to school. He would much rather climb the rocks by the shore, play with his slingshot or mooch about the port. But his home is not like other islands. For years, it has been the destination of men, women and children trying to make the crossing from Africa in boats that are far too small and decrepit. The island is Lampedusa which has become a metaphor for the flight of refugees to Europe, the hopes, hardship and fate of hundreds of thousands of emigrants. These people long for peace, freedom and happiness and yet so often only their dead bodies are pulled out of the water. Thus, every day the inhabitants of Lampedusa are bearing witness to the greatest humanitarian tragedy of our times. [Kino Lorber]

A documentary about fraud and fakery.

In his mesmerizing new film, acclaimed director Werner Herzog explores the life and death of amateur grizzly bear expert and wildlife preservationist Timothy Treadwell. [Lions Gate Films]

Receiving its first U.S. release, Chris Marker's 1997 film, Level Five, concerns Laura (Catherine Belkhodja), a computer, and an invisible interlocutor. Laura "inherits" a task: to finish writing a video game centered on the Battle of Okinawa—a tragedy practically unknown in the West that impacted the way World War II ended. [Icarus Films]

Descendant tells the story of the Clotilda - the last known ship to smuggle stolen Africans to America - the unthinkable cover-up, and the impact of that crime on generations of descendants living in Africatown. Once the past is revealed, can the future be reclaimed?

Jane is the story of how Jane Goodall became Jane Goodall – using footage shot by future husband Hugo van Lawick of her first experiences in Gombe, Tanzinia in the 1960’s. Previously thought to be lost forever, the footage was only recently discovered in a storage unit, and has been now masterfully intercut with interviews of present day Jane Goodall to provide an in-depth portrait of her life. With an enchanting score by Phillip Glass, JANE is a captivating and immersive look into how one woman can change the world through passion, dedication, and perseverance.

Rolling Thunder Revue: A Bob Dylan Story by Martin Scorsese captures the troubled spirit of America in 1975 and the joyous music that Dylan performed during the fall of that year. Part documentary, part concert film, part fever dream, Rolling Thunder is a one of a kind experience, from master filmmaker Martin Scorsese.

Naples is a city forever marked by the looming presence of Mount Vesuvius. Beneath the quiet threat of eruption, people go about their days: archaeologists unearth the past, children learn as the earth hums, firefighters wait for the next call.

Shirley Clarke interviews Jason Holliday aka Aaron Payne, house boy, would be cabaret performer, and self proclaimed hustler giving one man's gin-soaked, pill-popped view of what it was like to be coloured and gay in 1960's America.

Writer-director Bertrand Tavernier is truly one of the grand auteurs of the movies. His experience is vast, his knowledge is voluminous, his love is inexhaustible and his perspective is matched only by that of Martin Scorsese. This magnificent, epic documentary has been a lifetime in the making. Tavernier knows his native cinema inside and out, from the giants like Renoir, Godard, and Melville (for whom he worked as an assistant) to now overlooked and forgotten figures like Edmund T. Gréville and Guy Gilles, and his observations and reminiscences are never less than penetrating and always deeply personal. [Cohen Media Group]

With exclusive access to personal archive, this is the definitive Marlon Brando cinema documentary. Charting his exceptional career as an actor and extraordinary life away from the stage and screen, the film will fully explore the complexities of the man by telling the story uniquely from Marlon’s perspective. [Showtime]

Follows three young public defenders who are dedicated to working for the people society would rather forget. Long hours, low pay and staggering caseloads are so common that even the most committed often give up.

The Fog of War is a 20th century fable, a story of an American dreamer, Robert S. McNamara, who rose from humble origins to the heights of political power. (Sony Pictures Classics)

For the first time, a film gives audiences a front row seat to a significant and inspiring scientific breakthrough as it happens. Particle Fever follows six brilliant scientists during the launch of the Large Hadron Collider, marking the start-up of the biggest and most expensive experiment in the history of the planet, pushing the edge of human innovation. As they seek to unravel the mysteries of the universe, 10,000 scientists from over 100 countries joined forces in pursuit of a single goal: to recreate conditions that existed just moments after the Big Bang and find the Higgs boson, potentially explaining the origin of all matter. But our heroes confront an even bigger challenge: have we reached our limit in understanding why we exist?

Jonathan Caouette's film reimagines the whole idea of what a documentary can be. He weaves a psychedelic whirlwind of snapshots, Super-8 home movies, answering machine messages, video diaries, early short films, snippets of 80s pop culture and dramatic reenactments to create an epic portrait of an American family torn apart by dysfunction and reunited through the power of love. (Wellspring Media)

A documentary on insect life in meadows and ponds.

Featuring fierce rivalry, stopwatch suspense, and larger-than-life personalities, Murderball is a film about tough, highly competitive quadriplegic rugby players. (ThinkFilm)

In 2013, we lost Roger Ebert—arguably the nation’s best-known and most influential movie critic. Based on his memoir of the same name, Life Itself recounts Ebert’s fascinating and flawed journey—from politicized school newspaperman, to Chicago Sun-Times movie critic, to Pulitzer Prize winner, to television household name, to the miracle of finding love at 50, and finally his “third act” as a major voice on the Internet when he could no longer physically speak. [Magnolia Pictures]

Digging through the vast collection of his father's home videos, a young man reconstructs the unthinkable story of his boyhood.

An old mining town on the Arizona-Mexico border finally reckons with its darkest day: the deportation of 1200 immigrant miners exactly 100 years ago. Locals collaborate to stage recreations of their controversial past.

During the summary trial that he and his wife were submitted to, Nicolae Ceausescu is reviewing his long reign of in power: 1965-1989. It is an historical tableau that in its scope resembles American film frescos such as those dedicated to the Vietnam War. (The Film Desk)

Photographer Gregory Crewdson’s 10-year quest to create a series of haunting, surreal, and stunningly elaborate portraits of small-town American life — filmed with unprecedented access as he makes perfect renderings of a disturbing, imperfect world. [Ben Shapiro Productions]

Night Is Not Eternal is a personal exploration of political activism through the eyes of Chinese American filmmaker Nanfu Wang. Over seven years, Nanfu followed activist Rosa María Payá in her fight for democratic change in Cuba. Interwoven with Rosa’s narrative are Nanfu’s poignant reflections on her Chinese upbringing and her observations of eroding democratic norms in the U.S. The film emphasizes the universal human desire for freedom and the resilience of those who fight for it. It also serves as a reminder of the fragility of democracy and the need for vigilance in protecting it.

Pat Tillman never thought of himself as a hero. His choice to leave a multimillion-dollar football contract and join the military wasn't done for any reason other than he felt it was the right thing to do. The fact that the military manipulated his tragic death in the line of duty into a propaganda tool is unfathomable and thoroughly explored in Amir Bar-Lev's riveting and enraging documentary.

Fred Hampton was the leader of the Illinois Chapter of the Black Panther Party. This film depicts his brutal murder by the Chicago police and its subsequent investigation, but also documents his activities in organizing the Chapter, his public speeches, and the programs he founded for children during the last eighteen months of his life.

A Polish van traverses the roads of Ukraine. On board, the driver-director and evacuated people, following the Russian invasion. The vehicle becomes a fragile and temporary refuge, a zone of confidences of exiles.

For twenty-five years Brenda Myers-Powell called herself Breezy and she dominated her world, or that's what she thought. It was a world that had turned her into a teenage, drug-addicted prostitute. After a violent encounter with a john, Brenda woke up in the hospital and decided to change her life. Today she is a beacon of hope and a pillar of strength for hundreds of women and girls as young as fourteen who want to change their own lives.

Director Michael Apted revisits the same group of British-born adults after a 7 year wait. One of the most interesting film experiments ever. This time the group is 42, with eleven of the original fourteen still being documented.

During the chaotic final days of the Vietnam War, the North Vietnamese Army closes in on Saigon as South Vietnamese resistance crumbles. The United States has only a skeleton crew of diplomats and military operatives still in the country. As Communist victory becomes inevitable and the U.S. readies to withdraw, some Americans begin to consider the certain imprisonment and possible death of their South Vietnamese allies, co-workers, and friends. Meanwhile, the prospect of an official evacuation of South Vietnamese becomes terminally delayed by Congressional gridlock and the inexplicably optimistic U.S. Ambassador. With the clock ticking and the city under fire, a number of heroic Americans take matters into their own hands, engaging in unsanctioned and often makeshift operations in a desperate effort to save as many South Vietnamese lives as possible.

This meditation on cinema’s past from Decasia director Bill Morrison pieces together the bizarre true history of a long-lost collection of 533 nitrate film prints from the early 1900s. Located just south of the Arctic Circle, Dawson City was settled in 1896 and became the center of the Canadian Gold Rush that brought 100,000 prospectors to the area. It was also the final stop for a distribution chain that sent prints and newsreels to the Yukon. The films were seldom, if ever, returned. The now-famous Dawson City Collection was uncovered in 1978 when a bulldozer working its way through a parking lot dug up a horde of film cans. Morrison draws on these permafrost-protected, rare silent films and newsreels, pairing them with archival footage, interviews, historical photographs, and an enigmatic score by Sigur Rós collaborator and composer Alex Somers. Dawson City: Frozen Time depicts the unique history of this Canadian Gold Rush town by chronicling the life cycle of a singular film collection through its exile, burial, rediscovery, and salvation. [Kino Lorber]

Searing urgency is a guiding force as Welcome to Chechnya shadows a group of activists who risk unimaginable peril to confront the ongoing anti-LGBTQ+ pogrom raging in the repressive and closed Russian republic. Since 2016, Chechnya’s tyrannical leader, Ramzan Kadyrov, has waged a depraved operation to “cleanse the blood” of LGBTQ+ Chechens, overseeing a government-directed campaign to detain, torture, and execute them. With no help from the Kremlin and only faint global condemnation of the violence, a vast and secretive network of activists takes matters into its own hands.

Joaquim Pinto has been living with HIV for almost twenty years. What Now? Remind Me chronicles a year of clinical studies with experimental, toxic, mind altering drugs. It is an open and eclectic reflection on time and memory, on epidemics and globalization, on survival beyond all expectations, on dissent and absolute love.

High above a jungle in Nepal, pilgrims make an ancient journey by cable car to worship Manakamana.



For over 20,000 years, Chauvet Cave has been completely sealed off by a fallen rock face, its crystal-encrusted interior as large as a football field and strewn with the petrified remains of giant ice age mammals. In 1994, scientists discovered the caverns, and found hundreds of pristine paintings within, spectacular artwork dating back over 30,000 years (almost twice as old as any previous finds) to a time when Neanderthals still roamed the earth and cave bears, mammoths, and ice age lions were the dominant populations of Europe. Since then, only a handful of specialists have stepped foot in the cave, and the true scope of its contents had largely gone unfelt—until Werner Herzog managed to gain access. Filming in 3D, Herzog captures the wonder and beauty of one of the most awe-inspiring sites on earth, all the while musing in his inimitable fashion about its original inhabitants, the birth of art, and the curious people surrounding the caves today. (IFC Films)

In 2009, a man and two accomplices try to evict members of the Indigenous community of Chuschagasta in northern Argentina. Claiming ownership of the land and armed with guns, they kill the community’s leader, Javier Chocobar. The murder is caught on video. It takes nine years of protests before court proceedings are finally opened in 2018. During all this time, the killers remain free. The film combines the voices and photographs of the community with courtroom footage to explore the long history of colonialism and land dispossession that led to this crime.

How To Survive A Plague is the untold story of the efforts that turned AIDS into a mostly manageable condition – and the improbable group of young men and women who, with no scientific training, infiltrated government agencies and the pharmaceutical industry, and helped identify promising new compounds, moving them through trials and into drugstores in record time. These drugs saved their lives and ended the darkest days of the epidemic, while virtually emptying AIDS wards in American hospitals. (IFC Films)

Coral reefs are the nursery for all life in the oceans, a remarkable ecosystem that sustains us. Yet with carbon emissions warming the seas, a phenomenon called “coral bleaching”—a sign of mass coral death—has been accelerating around the world, and the public has no idea of the scale or implication of the catastrophe silently raging underwater. [Sundance]

Sixteen years after Hurricane Katrina devastated New Orleans, an entire generation still grapples with the lifelong impact of having their childhood redefined by tragedy. New Orleans filmmaker Edward Buckles Jr., who was 13 years old during Katrina and its initial aftermath, spent seven years documenting the stories of his peers who survived the storm as children, using his community’s tradition of oral storytelling to open a door for healing and to capture the strength and spirit of his city.

Baz Luhrmann’s account of Elvis Presley’s 1970s residency in Las Vegas features never-before-seen footage and recordings.

Centers on families of the victims of the 2012 Sandy Hook shooting. They take Alex Jones, a conspiracy theorist, to court for spreading lies about the event being a hoax.

A reflection on art, life and the movies, The Beaches of Agnes is a magnificent new film from the great Agnes Varda, a richly cinematic self portrait that touches on everything from the feminist movement and the black panthers to the films of husband Jacques Demy and the birth of the French New Wave. (Cinema Guild)

This controversial documentary is the story of Father Oliver O'Grady, the most notorious pedophile in the history of the modern Catholic Church.

Maidan chronicles the civil uprising that toppled the government of Ukrainian president Victor Yanukovich and has since developed into an international crisis between Russia and the West. Filmed in stunning long takes, sans commentary, Maidan is a record of a momentous historical event and an extraordinary study of the popular uprising as a social, cultural and philosophical phenomenon. [Cinema Guild]

This film tells the story of the unstoppable rise of the skyscrapers. Starting in 1869, in New York and Chicago, elevators, steel, and electricity combined to create a frenzy of tall and taller buildings. Tall traces the experiments of the early skyscraper architects, especially Louis Sullivan, the Chicago architect (and mentor of Frank Lloyd Wright) who pioneered a new skyscraper form. His credo was that "form ever follows function." His elegant buildings, some still standing and featured in the film, bear out his reputation as the father of the skyscraper. Fierce rivals, led by Daniel Burnham, builder of the Flatiron Building, competed with him for favor, money, and power. The progressive designs of the 1880s and 90s once again reverted to historical styles, culminating in the "Cathedral of Commerce," the gothic Woolworth Tower of 1912. Tall pits the struggle for artistic integrity against the demands of fashion and the client's bottom line. It documents the showdown between Louis Sullivan and Daniel Burnham. The outcome changed the future, shaping the modern skyline throughout the world. [Cinema Guild]

Cover-Up is a political thriller that traces the explosive career of Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative reporter Seymour Hersh. Urgent and deeply reported, Cover-Up is both a portrait of a relentless journalist and an indictment of institutional violence — revealing a cycle of impunity in the U.S. military and intelligence agencies. Drawing on exclusive access to Hersh’s notes, and interweaving primary documents and archival footage, Cover-Up captures the power and process of investigative journalism.

Part film, part baptism, in Black Mother director Khalik Allah brings us on a spiritual journey through Jamaica. Soaking up its bustling metropolises and tranquil countryside, Allah introduces us to a succession of vividly rendered souls who call this island home. Their candid testimonies create a polyphonic symphony, set against a visual prayer of indelible portraiture. Thoroughly immersed between the sacred and profane, Black Mother channels rebellion and reverence into a deeply personal ode informed by Jamaica’s turbulent history but existing in the urgent present. [Grasshopper Film]

This documentary aims to show the industrial production of food as a reflection of our society's values: plenty of everything, made as quickly and as efficiently as modern technology permits. (First Run/Icarus)

Silvia Del Carmen Castaños & Estefanía “Beba” Contreras tell their own coming-of-age story in Hummingbirds, a punk-rock portrait of the last summer of their youth on the Texas-Mexico border. Together they transform their hometown of Laredo into a cinematic wonderland of creative expression and activist hijinx.

One day, without warning, a revolution exploded. It was the event that master documentarian Patricio Guzmán had been waiting for all his life: a million and a half people in the streets of Santiago, Chile, demanding justice, education, health care, and a new constitution to replace the strident rules imposed on the country during the Pinochet military dictatorship. Urgent and inspired, My Imaginary Country features harrowing front-line protest footage and interviews with dynamic activist leaders and powerfully connects Chile's complex, bloody history to contemporary revolutionary social movements and the election of a new president. [Icarus Films]

More people are imprisoned in the United States at this moment than in any other time or place in history, yet the prison itself has never felt further away or more out of sight. The Prison in Twelve Landscapes is a film about the prison in which we never see a penitentiary. Instead, the film unfolds as a cinematic journey through a series of landscapes across the USA where prisons do work and affect lives, from a California mountainside where female prisoners fight raging wildfires, to a Bronx warehouse full of goods destined for the state correctional system, to an Appalachian coal town betting its future on the promise of prison jobs.

This documentary examines how Los Angeles has been portrayed by Hollywood and the impact of the movie industry on the city.

City of Ghosts follows the journey of “Raqqa is Being Slaughtered Silently”— a handful of anonymous activists who banded together after their homeland was taken over by ISIS in 2014. With astonishing, deeply personal access, this is the story of a brave group of citizen journalists as they face the realities of life undercover, on the run, and in exile, risking their lives to stand up against one of the greatest evils in the world today.

In April 1992, on Long Island NY, William Jr., the Ford's eldest child, a black 24 year-old teacher, was killed by Mark Reilly, a white 19 year-old mechanic. Although Ford was unarmed, he became the prime suspect in his own murder. Director Yance Ford chronicles the arc of his family across history, geography and tragedy - from the racial segregation of the Jim Crow South to the promise of New York City; from the presumed safety of middle class suburbs, to the maelstrom of an unexpected, violent death. It is the story of the Ford family: Barbara Dunmore, William Ford and their three children and how their lives were shaped by the enduring shadow of racism in America.

The Interrupters tells the moving and surprising stories of three Violence Interrupters who try to protect their Chicago communities from the violence they once employed. Shot over the course of a year, The Interrupters captures a period in Chicago when it became a national symbol for the violence in our cities. During that period, the city was besieged by high-profile incidents, most notably the brutal beating of Derrion Albert, a Chicago High School student, whose death was caught on videotape. (Kartemquin Films)

In post-industrial Ohio, a Chinese billionaire opens a new factory in the husk of an abandoned General Motors plant, hiring two thousand blue-collar Americans. Early days of hope and optimism give way to setbacks as high-tech China clashes with working-class America.

For 18 months, Courtney Stephens and Pacho Velez (Manakamana, The Reagan Show) traveled the US to document sections of the wall that are on display in over 75 locations, ranging from the serious (Fort Benning) to the bizarre (Main Street Station Casino in Las Vegas) and even the campus of nearby Capital University. Along the way, interviews with unusual characters who own, maintain, and interact with pieces of the wall offer a window into American culture, and through the film these Cold War relics become a catalyst for exploring today’s timely issues. [Grasshopper Film]

Armed with just a mobile phone and a gun, Mahmud, Ziyad and other volunteers from the Yazidi Home Center risk their lives trying to save Yazidi women and girls being held by ISIS members as sabaya (sex slaves) in the most dangerous refugee camp in the Middle East, Al-Hol in Syria. Often accompanied by burka-clad female infiltrators and working mostly at night, they must act quickly to avoid potential violence. In this visceral, often edge-of-your-seat film, we experience both the tense situation in the camp and the comfort of daily life at home, where Mahmud’s wife, Siham, and his mother, Zahra, lovingly help the traumatized girls shed off the black garments of an ideology that tolerates nothing but itself.

On May 13, 1985, a longtime feud between the city of Philadelphia and controversial radical urban group MOVE came to a deadly climax. By order of local authorities, police dropped military-grade explosives onto a MOVE-occupied rowhouse. TV cameras captured the conflagration that quickly escalatedâ

Every spring, China’s cities are plunged into chaos as 130 million migrant workers journey to their home villages for the New Year’s holiday. This mass exodus is the world’s largest human migration—an epic spectacle that reveals a country tragically caught between its rural past and industrial future. Working over several years in classic verité style Chinese-Canadian filmmaker Lixin Fan (with the producers of the award-winning hit documentary Up the Yangtze) travels with one couple who have embarked on this annual trek for almost two decades. Like so many of China’s rural poor, Zhang Changhua and Chen Suqin left behind their two infant children for grueling factory jobs. Their daughter Qin—now a restless and rebellious teenager—both bitterly resents their absence and longs for her own freedom away from school, much to the utter devastation of her parents. Emotionally engaging and starkly beautiful, Last Train Home’s intimate observation of one fractured family sheds light on the human cost of China’s ascendance as an economic superpower. (Zeitgeist Films)

Down the road from Woodstock, a revolution blossomed at a ramshackle summer camp for teenagers with disabilities, transforming their lives and igniting a landmark movement.

Ric Burns's 4-hour, epic Andy Warhol: A Documentary Film, is a portrait of one of the 20th century's most influential, controversial, and paradoxically mystifying artists. (FilmForum)

An intimate, picaresque inquiry into French life, as lived by the country's poor and its provident, as well as by the film's own director, Agnès Varda. The aesthetic, political and finally moral point of departure for Varda are gleaners, those individuals who pick at already-reaped fields for the odd potato, the leftover turnip, and in previous generations were immortalized by the likes of Millet and Van Gogh. (Zeitgeist Films)

With exclusive access inside one of New York’s hardest hit hospital systems during the terrifying first four months of the pandemic, The First Wave spotlights the everyday heroes at the epicenter of COVID-19 as they come together to fight one of the greatest threats the world has ever encountered.

On May 5, 1993, the bodies of three eight-year-old boys were found next to a muddy creek in the wooded Robin Hood Hills area of West Memphis, Arkansas. A month later, three teenagers, Jason Baldwin, Damien Echols and Jessie Misskelley, were arrested, accused and convicted of brutally raping, mutilating and killing the boys. Following trials fraught with innuendoes of satanic worship, emotionally charged statements and allegations of coerced confessions, the defendants were convicted, despite a lack of physical evidence linking them to the crime. (HBO Documentary Films)

What happens when four legends of British stage and screen get together? Dame Maggie Smith, Dame Judi Dench, Dame Eileen Atkins, and Dame Joan Plowright are among the most celebrated actresses of our time, with scores of iconic performances, decades of wisdom, and innumerable Oscars, Tonys, Emmys, and BAFTAs between them. They are also longtime friends who hereby invite you to join them for a weekend in the country as they catch up with one another, reminisce, and share their candid, delightfully irreverent thoughts on everything from art to aging to love to a life lived in the spotlight. Bursting with devilish wit and whip-smart insights, Tea With The Dames is a remarkable opportunity to spend time in the company of four all-time greats—up close and unfiltered. [Sundance Selects]

In Athlete A, filmmakers Bonni Cohen and Jon Shenk delve into the unchecked abuse inside the world of elite competitive gymnastics. Equal parts devastating and inspiring, the film follows the IndyStar reporters as they reveal the extensive cover-up and culture of cruelty that was allowed to thrive within elite gymnastics, the attorney fighting the institutions, and most importantly, the brave whistle-blowers who refuse to be silenced. [Netflix]

This political documentary focuses on homeless children living in the subway tunnels of Bucharest, Romania.

Afternoons of Solitude is a spellbinding documentary that turns its gaze on the ceremonial splendor and devastating brutality of bullfighting in Spain. With quiet intensity, Serra follows famed matador Andrés Roca Rey, from the solitude of his hotel room and the meticulousness of his preparations to the charged spectacle of the arena. Through his immersive and unhurried lens, Serra reveals Rey’s profound physical, spiritual, and aesthetic commitment to a centuries-old ritual—one that demands he take part in a timeless duel between man and beast.

The journey of 26 plundered royal treasures from the Kingdom of Dahomey exhibited in Paris, now being returned to Benin. Diop artistically voices a new generation's demands.

Amy tells the story of six-time Grammy-winner Amy Winehouse – in her own words. A once-in-a-generation talent, Amy Winehouse was a musician that captured the world’s attention. A pure jazz artist in the most authentic sense – she wrote and sung from the heart using her musical gifts to analyze her own problems. The combination of her raw honesty and supreme talent resulted in some of the most unique and adored songs of the modern era. Her huge success, however, resulted in relentless and invasive media attention which coupled with Amy’s troubled relationships and precarious lifestyle saw her life tragically begin to unravel. Amy Winehouse died from alcohol poisoning in July 2011 at the age of 27. [A24]

In September 1919, Italian poet Gabriele D'Annunzio led a force of irregulars in an invasion of the town of Fiume, in what is today Croatia. Was he an egotist with dreams of heading his own state? A utopian with a strong nationalist bent? Or a fascist who cared little for the locals and helped pave the way for Mussolini’s rule?

Called the greatest rock film ever made, this landmark documentary follows the Rolling Stones on their notorious 1969 U.S. tour. When three hundred thousand members of the Love Generation collided with a few dozen Hells Angels at San Francisco’s Altamont Speedway, Direct Cinema pioneers David and Albert Maysles and Charlotte Zwerin were there to immortalize on film the bloody slash that transformed a decade's dreams into disillusionment.

This documentary tells the story of the survival of British explorer Sir Ernest Shackleton and the crew of his vessel 'The Endurance,' which shipwrecked in the ice floes and frigid ocean of the Antarctic in 1914.

Bridegroom tells the emotional journey of Shane and Tom, two young men in a loving and committed relationship that was cut tragically short by a misstep off the side of a roof. The story of what happened after this accidental death - of how people without the legal protections of marriage can find themselves completely shut out and ostracized - is poignant, enraging and opens a window onto the issue of marriage equality and human rights like no speech or lecture ever will.

Researchers discover film footage from World War II that turns out to be a lost documentary shot by Alfred Hitchcock and Sidney Bernstein in 1945 about German concentration camps.

When Chinese filmmaker Nanfu Wang first comes to America, Florida seems like an exotic frontier full of theme parks, prehistoric swamp creatures, and sunburned denizens. As she travels wide-eyed from one city to another, she encounters Dylan, a charismatic young drifter who left a comfortable home and loving family for a life of intentional homelessness. Fascinated by his choice and rejection of society's rules, Nanfu follows Dylan with her camera on a journey that takes her across America and explores the meaning of freedom - and its limits. [SXSW]

Mali's music defines the country's cultural identity. Radical Islamists are threatening the musicians. Together with the stars of Malian Global Pop - Fatoumata Diawara, Bassekou Kouyaté Master Soumy and Ahmed Ag Kaedi - we embark on a musical journey to Mali's agitated heart. Can their music reconcile the country?