Charismatic cleric Abdul Aziz Ghazi, an ISIS supporter and Taliban ally, is waging jihad against the Pakistani state. His dream is to impose a strict version of Shariah law throughout the country, as a model for the world. A flashpoint in Aziz's holy war took place in 2007, when the government leveled his flagship mosque to the ground, killing his mother, brother, only son and 150 students. With unprecedented access, Among the Believers follows Aziz on his very personal quest to create an Islamic utopia, during the bloodiest period in Pakistan's modern history.

The Armor of Light follows an Evangelical minister and the mother of a teenage shooting victim who ask, is it possible to be both pro-gun and pro-life?

Following one man’s personal quest to defend what he believes to be his inalienable rights, BARBERSHOP PUNK examines the critical issues surrounding the future of the American Internet and what it takes to challenge the status quo. Contemplating the future of the American Internet and the inalienable rights under review, the film features discussions with Ian MacKaye, Damian Kulash of OK Go, Henry Rollins, Janeane Garofalo, EFF’s John Perry Barlow, U.S. Congressman Chip Pickering, Congressman Marsha Blackburn, Free Form DJ Jim Ladd, Clinton White House Press Secretary Mike McCurry, Michelle Combs of the Christian Coalition, Songwriters Guild President Rick Carnes, NARAL’s Ted Miller, lobbyist Jack Burkman, and FCC Commissioner Jonathan Adelstein, among others. (Evil Twin Productions)

A look at how climate change affects our environment and what society can do prevent the demise of endangered species, ecosystems and native communities across the planet.

Bellingcat: Truth in a Post-Truth World explores the promise of open source investigation, taking viewers inside the exclusive world of the “citizen investigative journalist” collective known as Bellingcat. In cases ranging from the MH17 disaster to the poisoning of a Russian spy in the United Kingdom, the Bellingcat team’s quest for truth will shed light on the fight for journalistic integrity in the era of fake news and alternative facts.

In the summer of 1968, television news changed forever. Dead last in the ratings, ABC hired two towering public intellectuals to debate each other during the Democratic and Republican national conventions. William F. Buckley Jr. was a leading light of the new conservative movement. A Democrat and cousin to Jackie Onassis, Gore Vidal was a leftist novelist and polemicist. Armed with deep-seated distrust and enmity, Vidal and Buckley believed each other’s political ideologies were dangerous for America. Like rounds in a heavyweight battle, they pummeled out policy and personal insult—their explosive exchanges devolving into vitriolic name-calling. Live and unscripted, they kept viewers riveted. Ratings for ABC News skyrocketed. And a new era in public discourse was born. [Magnolia Pictures]

A suspenseful, riveting portrait of the lengths people will go to gain freedom, Beyond Utopia follows various families as they attempt to flee North Korea, one of the most oppressive places on Earth, a land they grew up believing was a paradise. At the film’s core is a courageous pastor, a man of God on a mission to help a mother reunite with the child she was forced to leave behind, and a family of five — including small children and an elderly grandmother — embarking on a treacherous journey into the hostile mountains of China. Leaving their homeland is fraught with unimaginable danger — yet these individuals are driven to take the risk.

In 2008, as George W. Bush tried to gift the energy and mining industries thousands of acres of pristine Utah wilderness via a widely disputed federal auction, college student Tim DeChristopher decided to monkey-wrench the process. Bidding $1.7 million, he won 22,000 acres with no intention to pay or drill. For this astonishing (and successful) act of civil disobedience he was sent to federal prison. Bidder 70 tells the story of this peaceful warrior whose patriotism and willingness to sacrifice have ignited the climate justice movement. [First Run Features]

What is a big corporation capable of doing in order to protect its brand? Recently, Swedish documentary filmmaker Fredrik Gertten experienced this personally. His previous film BANANAS!* recounts the lawsuit that 12 Nicaraguan plantation workers successfully brought against the fruit giant Dole Food Company. That film was selected for competition by the 2009 Los Angeles Film Festival. Nothing wrong so far, right? But then just before leaving Sweden to attend the Los Angeles world premiere of his film, Gertten gets a strange message: the festival has decided to remove Bananas!* from competition. Then, a scathing, controversial and misinformed article appears on the cover of the Los Angeles Business Journal about the film a week before the premiere. And subsequently, Gertten receives a letter from Dole's attorneys threatening legal action if the film is shown at this festival and to cease and desist. What follows is an unparalleled story that Gertten captured on film. He filmed this entire process of corporate bullying and media spin - from DOLE attacking the producers with a defamation lawsuit, utilizing scare tactics, to media-control and PR-spin. Big Boys Gone Bananas!* can be seen as a thriller and a cautionary tale. But, mostly this is a personal story about what happened to Gertten, as a documentary filmmaker and to his company and how the livelihood of documentary filmmakers can be easily put into jeopardy. (WG Film)

The United Nations’ World Health Organization projects that a billion people will die prematurely from smoking this century. In the next 20 years, there will be nearly 1.6 billion smokers around the world. A Billion Lives takes a critical look at the history of smoking and the corruption that's led to the current situation where safer, healthier alternatives are banned or heavily restricted in most countries, while the cigarette trade is continually protected. The film examines major conflicts of interest and corruption between governments, big pharmaceutical companies, and public health officials. It also takes a look at the history of e-cigarettes, as well as the role vapor technology and Swedish snus have played in the current health crisis.

Blood on the Mountain is an investigation into the economic and environmental injustices that have resulted from industrial control in West Virginia. This feature documentary details the struggles of a hard-working, misunderstood people, who have historically faced limited choices and have never benefited fairly from the rich, natural resources of their land. Blood On The Mountain delivers a portrait of a fractured population, exploited and besieged by corporate interests, and abandoned by the powers elected to represent them. [Abramorama]

What if you could harness the power of the free market to solve the problems of poverty, hunger, and inequality? To some, it sounds impossible. But Nobel Peace Prize winner Muhammad Yunus is doing exactly that. Bonsai People celebrates Yunus’ extraordinary humanitarian work, which started by lending $27 to 42 people out of his own pocket and has now grown to helping 1 out of every 1,000 people on Earth. Yunus has created a mirror image of conventional banking—loan small not big, loan to women not men, loan rural not urban, loan to the poor not the rich. But he didn’t stop there. Whenever he sees a problem he starts a business, in a mix between business and social work, which he terms “social business.” Yunus tackles some of the world’s most vexing problems from healthcare to education to alternative energy and demonstrates to the world that complex problems sometimes do have simple solutions. A free market with a social conscience—-Microcredit is just the tip of the iceberg! (Hummingbird Pictures)

While filming a documentary in Mississippi in 1965, Frank De Felitta forever changed the life of an African-American waiter and his family. In 2011, Frank's son returns to the Delta to examine the repercussions of that fateful encounter.

The Case Against 8 takes a riveting, inside look at the groundbreaking Supreme Court case that overturned Proposition 8, California’s ban on same-sex marriage. Five years in the making, with exclusive behind-the-scenes access to the powerhouse legal team of Ted Olson and David Boies, who previously faced off as opposing counsel in Bush v. Gore, along with the four plaintiffs in the suit, the film provides a definitive account of the battle that effectively ended marriage discrimination in California.

Colliding Dreams recounts the dramatic history of one of the most controversial, and urgently relevant political ideologies of the modern era. The century-old conflict in the Middle East continues to play a central role in world politics. And yet, amidst this fierce, often-lethal controversy, the Zionist idea of a homeland for Jews in the land of ancient Israel remains little understood and its meanings often distorted. Colliding Dreams addresses that void with a gripping exploration of Zionism’s meaning, history and future.

Crime After Crime tells the dramatic story of the legal battle to free Debbie Peagler, an incarcerated survivor of domestic violence. Over 26 years in prison could not crush the spirit of this determined African-American woman, despite the wrongs she suffered, first at the hands of a duplicitous boyfriend who beat her and forced her into prostitution, and later by prosecutors who used the threat of the death penalty to corner her into a life behind bars for her connection to the murder of her abuser. Her story takes an unexpected turn two decades later when two rookie land-use attorneys step forward to take her case. Through their perseverance, they bring to light long-lost witnesses, new testimonies from the men who committed the murder, and proof of perjured evidence. Their investigation ultimately attracts global attention to victims of wrongful incarceration and abuse, and becomes a matter of life and death once more.

The Culture High tears into the very fiber of modern day marijuana prohibition to reveal the truth behind the arguments and motives governing both those who support and oppose the existing pot laws.

Damn! is the the story of Rent is 2 Damn High founder Jimmy McMillan, a Vietnam veteran, black belt Karate master, former stripper, and 70’s soul singer, who became an overnight sensation after his appearance on the 2010 New York gubernatorial debate went viral, receiving over 2 million views in 24 hours and lifting Jimmy from political obscurity into the international spotlight. In what becomes an unforgettable journey, Damn! is the only film to ever capture the rise of a viral sensation and the media fixation that follows as it all unfolds. It’s a sometimes funny and sometimes dark look into what happens when mass media, politics, and money all descend upon the life of one man. (The Disinformation Company)

Death by China, a documentary feature which pointedly confronts the most urgent problem facing Amercia today – its increasingly destructive economic trade relationship with a rapidly rising China. Since China began flooding U.S. markets with illegally subsidized products in 2001, over 50,000 American factories have disappeared, more than 25 million Americans can’t find a decent job, and America now owes more than 3 trillion dollars to the world’s largest totalitarian nation. Through compelling interviews with voices across the political spectrum, Death by China exposes that the U.S.-China relationship is broken and must be fixed if the world is going to be a place of peace and prosperity. (Area23a)

More money flows through the family courts, and into the hands of courthouse insiders, than in all other court systems in America combined - over $50 billion a year and growing. Through extensive research and interviews with the nation's top divorce lawyers, mediators, judges, politicians, litigants and journalists, this documentary uncovers how children are torn from their homes, unlicensed custody evaluators extort money, and abusive judges play god with people's lives while enriching their friends. This explosive documentary reveals the family courts as unregulated, extra-constitutional fiefdoms. Rather than assist victims of domestic crimes, these courts often precipitate them. And rather than help parents and children move on, as they are mandated to do, these courts - and their associates - drag out cases for years, sometimes decades, ultimately resulting in a rash of social ills, including home foreclosure, bankruptcy, suicide and violence. Solutions to the crisis are sought out in countries where divorce is handled in a more holistic manner.

In 2011, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Jose Antonio Vargas outed himself as an undocumented immigrant in an essay published in the New York Times Magazine. Documented chronicles his journey to America from the Philippines as a child; his journey through America as an immigration reform activist; and his journey inward as he re-connects with his mother, whom he hasn't seen in person in over 20 years.

Dreams Rewired traces the desires and anxieties of today’s hyper-connected world back more than a hundred years, when telephone, film and television were new. As revolutionary then as contemporary social media is today, early electric media sparked a fervent utopianism in the public imagination – promising total communication, the annihilation of distance, an end to war. But then, too, there were fears over the erosion of privacy, security, morality. Using rare (and often unseen) archival material from nearly 200 films to articulate the present, Dreams Rewired reveals a history of hopes to share, and betrayals to avoid.

Angus Macqueen and Guillermo Galdos set out to achieve what the combined forces of the US and Mexican governments had failed to do in thirteen years – track down Joaquin Guzman, one of the most wanted men in the world. Guzman, known as ‘El Chapo’ or ‘Shorty’ was head of the Sinaloa Cartel, the most powerful drug cartel in history. [Gravitas Ventures]

Dying to Know is an intimate portrait celebrating two very complex controversial characters in an epic friendship that shaped a generation. In the early 1960s Harvard psychology professors Timothy Leary and Richard Alpert began probing the edges of consciousness through their experiments with psychedelics. Leary became the LSD guru, asking us to think for ourselves, igniting a global counter-cultural movement and landing in prison after Nixon called him 'the most dangerous man in America'. Alpert journeyed to the East becoming Ram Dass, a spiritual teacher for an entire generation who continues in his 80s teaching service through compassion. With interviews spanning 50 years the film invites us into the future encouraging us to ponder questions about life, drugs & the biggest mystery of all: death.

There's something funny about voting in America. For starters, where is the Electoral College—and does it have a winning football team? Why does America have 13,000 voting districts, each with its own set of rules? And why are residents of our nation’s capital denied full voting rights? Electoral Dysfunction, a feature-length documentary created by a team of award-winning filmmakers, uses humor and wit to take an irreverent–but nonpartisan–look at voting in America. (Trio Pictures)

Elemental follows three outsiders who are obsessed by nature and driven by a deep desire to change the status quo. Rajendra Singh, an Indian government official gone rogue, mounts a national crusade to save the Ganges River. Activist Eriel Deranger leads a David and Goliath fight against the oil giants who are destroying her homeland in the Canadian Tar Sands. Australian inventor, Jay Harman, is attempting to halve the world's energy consumption by mimicking natural systems. Separated by continents, each character is part of a global story about water and climate change that goes beyond the issues to reveal the public triumphs and emotional scars of life on the front line.

Escape Fire tackles one of the most pressing issues of our time: what can be done to save our broken medical system? The film examines the powerful forces trying to maintain the status quo in a medical industry designed for quick fixes rather than prevention, for profit-driven care rather than patient-driven care. The film is about a way out, about saving the health of a nation. (Roadside Attractions)

Parents and health care workers are caught in the cross-hairs of violence and politics as they attempt to protect their children from Polio in Pakistan. Once on the brink of eradication, the disease has again become a global threat - with Pakistan at its epicenter. Will these everyday heroes succeed and end Polio in our lifetime, or will another young generation be at risk?

Farmageddon highlights the urgency of food freedom, encouraging farmers and consumers alike to take action to preserve individuals’ rights to access food of their choice and farmers’ rights to produce these foods safely and free from unreasonably burdensome regulations. The film serves to put policymakers and regulators on notice that there is a growing movement of people aware that their freedom to choose the foods they want is in danger, a movement that is taking action with its dollars and its voting power to protect and preserve the dwindling number of family farms that are struggling to survive. (Kristin Canty Productions)

A group of Florida farmworkers battle to defeat the $4 trillion global supermarket industry through their ingenious Fair Food program, which partners with growers and retailers to improve working conditions for farm laborers in the United States.

In Food, Inc. 2, the sequel to the 2008 Oscar®-nominated and Emmy®-award winning documentary, Food, Inc., filmmakers Robert Kenner and Melissa Robledo reunite with investigative authors Michael Pollan (The Omnivore’s Dilemma) and Eric Schlosser (Fast Food Nation) to take a fresh look at our efficient yet vulnerable food system. Since the first film, multinational corporations have tightened their stronghold on the U.S. government. The system at large has robbed workers of a fair living wage, and profit focused corporations are proliferating a chemically formulated international health crisis by focusing on growing the market for ultra-processed foods. The film centers around innovative farmers, future-thinking food producers, workers’ rights activists and prominent legislators such as U.S Senators Cory Booker and Jon Tester, who are facing these companies head-on to inspire change and build a healthier, more sustainable future.

Fordson: Faith, Fasting, Football, an award-winning documentary, follows a predominately Arab-American high school football team from a working-class Detroit suburb as they practice for their big cross-town rivalry game during Ramadan, revealing a community holding onto its Islamic faith and the American Dream while struggling for acceptance in post 9/11 America. (AMC Independent)

A Fragile Trust tells the story of Jayson Blair, the most infamous serial plagiarist of our time, and how he unleashed the massive scandal that rocked the New York Times and the entire world of journalism.

Fresh Dressed chronicles the history of Hip-Hop | Urban fashion and its rise from southern cotton plantations to the gangs of 1970s in the South Bronx, to corporate America, and everywhere in-between. Supported by rich archival materials and in depth interviews with individuals crucial to the evolution of a way of life--and the outsiders who studied and admired them--Fresh Dressed goes to the core of where style was born on the black and brown side of town.

Gut Renovation charts the destruction of Williamsburg after the city passed a re-zoning plan in 2005 which allowed developers to build luxury condos where there were once thriving industries, working-class families, and artists.

At a popular bakery café, residents of New York’s Upper East Side get bagels and coffee served with a smile 24 hours a day. But behind the scenes, undocumented immigrant workers face sub-legal wages, dangerous machinery, and abusive managers who will fire them for calling in sick. Mild-mannered sandwich maker Mahoma López has never been interested in politics, but in January 2012, he convinces a small group of his co-workers to fight back.

For three weeks in September 2008, one person was charged with preventing the collapse of the global economy. No one understood the financial markets better than Hank Paulson, the former CEO of Goldman Sachs. In Hank: Five Years from the Brink, Paulson tells the complete story of how he persuaded banks, congress and presidential candidates to sign off on nearly $1 trillion in bailouts - even as he found the behavior that led to the crisis, and the bailouts themselves, morally reprehensible.

Harvest of Empire takes an unflinching look at the role that U.S. economic and military interests played in triggering an unprecedented wave of migration that is transforming our nation’s cultural and economic landscape. From the wars for territorial expansion that gave the U.S. control of Puerto Rico, Cuba and more than half of Mexico, to the covert operations that imposed oppressive military regimes in the Dominican Republic, Guatemala, Nicaragua and El Salvador, Harvest of Empire unveils a moving human story that is largely unknown to the great majority of citizens in the U.S. (Onyx Films)

When Herb and Dorothy Vogel, a retired postal clerk and librarian, began collecting works of contemporary art in the 1960s, they never imagined it would outgrow their one bedroom Manhattan apartment and spread throughout America. 50 years later, the collection is nearly 5,000 pieces and worth millions. Refusing to sell, the couple launches an unprecedented project to give a total of 2,500 artworks to museums in all fifty states.

Fifty years after winning the Pulitzer Prize, To Kill a Mockingbird remains a beloved bestseller and quite possibly the most influential American novel of the 20th Century. Nearly one million copies are sold each year and the novel has been translated into more than forty languages worldwide. The film version, starring Gregory Peck as Atticus Finch, won a trio of Academy Awards, and the U.S. Postal Service's new stamp honoring Peck depicts him wearing glasses, as Finch. Behind it all was a young Southern girl named Nelle Harper Lee, who once said that she wanted to be South Alabama's Jane Austen. Hey, Boo explores Lee's life and unravels some of the mysteries surrounding her, including why she never published again. Containing never-before-seen photos and letters and an exclusive interview with Lee’s sister, Alice Finch Lee, the film also brings to light the context and history of the novel's Deep South setting and the social changes it inspired after publication. (First Run Features)

When a Chinese elementary school principal who raped six of his students seems poised to receive a light sentence, famed women’s rights advocate Ye Haiyan (AKA Hooligan Sparrow) leads a group of activists in a protest – a move that could end with each participant’s arrest. As filmmaker Nanfu Wang films the demonstration and its aftermath, she becomes embroiled in the government’s effort to harass and intimidate everyone associated with the protest. After being threatened by angry mobs, chased by police, and interrogated by national security agents, Wang discovers the Chinese government’s willingness to target anyone they perceive to be a threat to their control.

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)

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From the makers of The Invisible War comes a startling expose of rape crimes on US campuses, their institutional cover-ups, and the devastating toll they take on students and their families. Weaving together verite footage and first person testimonies, the film follows the lives of several undergraduate assault survivors as they attempt to pursue - despite incredible push back, harassment and traumatic aftermath - both their education and justice.

In December 2005, Daniel McGowan was arrested by Federal agents in a nationwide sweep of radical environmentalists involved with the Earth Liberation Front-- a group the FBI has called America’s “number one domestic terrorism threat.” For years, the ELF—operating in separate anonymous cells without any central leadership—had launched spectacular arsons against dozens of businesses they accused of destroying the environment: timber companies, SUV dealerships, wild horse slaughterhouses, and a $12 million ski lodge at Vail, Colorado. With the arrest of Daniel and thirteen others, the government had cracked what was probably the largest ELF cell in America and brought down the group responsible for the very first ELF arsons in this country. If a Tree Falls: A Story of the Earth Liberation Front tells the remarkable story of the rise and fall of this ELF cell, by focusing on the transformation and radicalization of one of its members. Part coming-of-age tale, part cops-and-robbers thriller, the film interweaves a verite chronicle of Daniel on house arrest as he faces life in prison, with a dramatic recounting of the events that led to his involvement with the group. And along the way it asks hard questions about environmentalism, activism, and the way we define terrorism. Drawing from striking archival footage -- much of it never before seen -- and intimate interviews with ELF members, and with the prosecutor and detective who were chasing them, If a Tree Falls explores the tumultuous period from 1995 until early 2001 when environmentalists were clashing with timber companies and law enforcement, and the word “terrorism” had not yet been altered by 9/11. (Oscilloscope Laboratories)

In Transit journeys into the hearts and minds of everyday passengers aboard Amtrak's Empire Builder, the busiest long-distance train route in America. Captured in the tradition of Direct Cinema, the film unfolds as a series of interconnected vignettes, ranging from overheard conversations to moments of deep intimacy, in which passengers share their fears, hopes and dreams. In the space between stations, where 'real life' is suspended, we are swept into a fleeting community that transcends normal barriers, and where a peculiar atmosphere of contemplation and community develops. To some passengers, the train is flight and salvation, to others it is reckoning and loss. But for all, it is a place for personal reflection and connecting with others they may otherwise never know.

India's Daughter is the story of of the short life, and brutal gang rape and murder in Delhi in December 2012 of an exceptionally inspiring young woman. The rape and death of the 23 year old medical student, sparked unprecedented protests throughout India and led to the first glimmers of a change of mindset. Interwoven into the storyline are the lives, values and mindsets of the rapists whom the filmmakers have had exclusive access to interview before they hang. The film examines the society and values which spawn such violent acts, and makes an optimistic and impassioned plea for change.

Indian Point Nuclear Power Plant looms just 35 miles from Times Square. With over 50 million people living in close proximity to the aging facility, its continued operation has the support of the plant's operators and the NRC -- Nuclear Regulatory Commission -- yet has stoked a great deal of controversy in the surrounding community, including a vocal anti-nuclear contingent concerned that what happened at Japan's Fukushima nuclear plant could happen here. In the brewing fight for clean energy and the catastrophic possibilities of government complacency, director Ivy Meeropol presents a balanced argument about the issues surrounding nuclear energy and offers a startling reality check for our uncertain nuclear future.

The story of programming prodigy and information activist Aaron Swartz. From Swartz's help in the development of the basic internet protocol RSS to his co-founding of Reddit, his fingerprints are all over the internet. But it was Swartz's groundbreaking work in social justice and political organizing combined with his aggressive approach to information access that ensnared him in a two year legal nightmare. It was a battle that ended with the taking of his own life at the age of 26. Aaron's story touched a nerve with people far beyond the online communities in which he was a celebrity. This film is a personal story about what we lose when we are tone deaf about technology and its relationship to our civil liberties.

As tuition rates spiral beyond reach and student loan debt passes $1 trillion (more than credit card debt), Ivory Tower asks: Is college worth the cost? From the halls of Harvard, to public colleges in financial crisis, to Silicon Valley, filmmaker Andrew Rossi assembles an urgent portrait of a great American institution at the breaking point.

This cinematic reflection on the nature of work pivots almost continuously from mode to mode, approaching its subject from a myriad of directions. Filmed in factories and workshops, it’s composed in turn of theatrical monologues, poetic musings, immaculately composed documentation, and the whisper of a narrative. Its constantly shifting form triggers a reckoning with the concept of manual labor – and with the daily routines and inner lives of the factory workers who populate the film – which breaks free of the rhetoric that typically goes with the territory. [Anthology Film Archives]

Kids For Cash is a riveting look behind the notorious judicial scandal that rocked the nation. Beyond the millions paid and high stakes corruption, Kids For Cash exposes a shocking American secret. In the wake of the shootings at Columbine, a small town celebrates a charismatic judge who is hell-bent on keeping kids in line...until one parent dares to question the motives behind his brand of justice. This real life thriller reveals the untold stories of the masterminds at the center of the scandal and the chilling aftermath of lives destroyed in the process - a stunning emotional roller coaster.

Korengal picks up where Restrepo left off; the same men, the same valley, the same commanders, but a very different look at the experience of war.

The 2008 Presidential Campaign was an extraordinary moment in U.S. history—not only because of the race and gender of the candidates, but also because of the passions they inspired. Millions of Americans and hundreds of organizations became actively engaged in the democratic process of choosing the next president. Labor Day, a new feature documentary directed by two-time Oscar Nominee, Glenn Silber, tells the inspiring, largely unknown story of one of them, the Service Employees International Union (SEIU), the nation’s fastest-growing labor union with more than two million members. Labor Day is a chronicle of this union’s mobilization to ensure a Democratic victory in 2008. For Labor, the Presidential campaign was mission critical. After eight years of Republican policies, the SEIU felt an incredible sense of urgency to change the direction of the economy and the country. [River Lights Pictures]

Prominently displayed outside the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA), land artist Michael Heizer’s Levitated Mass gained worldwide recognition during its installation in 2012. Over 10 nights, a 340-ton solid granite boulder crawled through Southern California neighborhoods on a 294-foot-long, 206-wheeled trailer. Thousands of people came out to watch it travel through their communities. It is one of the only pieces of art in recent history to inspire such a reaction in pop culture. The film masterfully interweaves this artist's biography, the dreams of a major museum, and the uniting of a city, examining the perennial question: what is art? [First Run Features]

Saturday Night Live has been reflecting and influencing the American Story for 40 years. Live From New York! explores the show’s early years, an experiment from a young Lorne Michaels and his cast of unknowns, and follows its evolution into a comedy institution. The film looks at SNL as a living time capsule, encompassing decades of American politics, media, tragedy, and popular culture with an irreverent edge.

In a country where 58% of African American 4th graders are functionally illiterate, The Lottery uncovers the failures of the traditional public school system and reveals that hundreds of thousands of parents attempt to flee the system every year. The Lottery follows four of these families from Harlem and the Bronx who have entered their children in a charter school lottery. Out of thousands of hopefuls, only a small minority will win the chance of a better future. (Variance Film)

Mala Mala is a feature-length documentary about the power of transformation told through the eyes of 9 trans-identifying individuals in Puerto Rico.

After his ingenious escape from a Turkish prison in 1975, Billy Hayes arrived home to a hero’s welcome, instant celebrity and within a week had a book and movie deal for his story. From the moment it stunned the world at the Cannes Film Festival in 1978, Midnight Express cemented its place in film history as an artistic and financial success, before becoming an indelible part of pop culture. But its lasting impact has been on Turkish people worldwide who still condemn the film as racist and blame Billy Hayes for defaming them and their country. Despite warnings from family and friends, Billy returns to Turkey and faces a nation still haunted by the film and his own demons.

Mitt provides a candid look at the private and public moments of a presidential candidate and his family.

Nearly 100 years after its creation, the power of the U.S. Federal Reserve has never been greater. Markets and governments around the world hold their breath in anticipation of the Fed Chairman's every word. Yet the average person knows very little about the most powerful - and least understood - financial institution on earth. Narrated by Liev Schreiber, Money For Nothing is the first film to take viewers inside the Fed and reveal the impact of Fed policies - past, present, and future - on our lives. Join current and former Fed officials as they debate the critics, and each other, about the decisions that helped lead the global financial system to the brink of collapse in 2008. And why we might be headed there again.

Nicholas Vreeland walked away from a worldly life of privilege to become a Tibetan Buddhist monk in 1972. Grandson of legendary Vogue editor, Diana Vreeland, and trained by Irving Penn to become a photographer, Nicholas' life changed drastically upon meeting a Tibetan master, one of the teachers of the Dalai Lama. Soon thereafter, he gave up his glamorous life to live in a monastery in India, where he studied Buddhism for fourteen years. In an ironic twist of fate, Nicholas went back to photography to help his fellow monks rebuild their monastery. Recently, the Dalai Lama appointed Nicholas as Abbot of the monastery, making him the first Westerner in Tibetan Buddhist history to attain such a highly regarded position. Monk With a Camera chronicles Nicky's journey from playboy to monk to artist. [Kino Lorber]

With his execution just 48 hours away, Anthony Porter’s life was saved by a Northwestern University journalism class. Their re-investigation of the crime for which he was convicted—a double homicide in a Chicago park—led to the discovery of the real killer, Alstory Simon, whose confession exonerated Porter. If it all sounds too good to be true, it’s because, as compellingly argued here, Porter actually is guilty, Simon is an innocent man and both are just pawns in a much larger plan.

My Brooklyn is a documentary about Director Kelly Anderson’s personal journey, as a Brooklyn “gentrifier,” to understand the forces reshaping her neighborhood along lines of race and class.

My Perestroika follows five ordinary Russians living in extraordinary times — from their sheltered Soviet childhood, to the collapse of the Soviet Union during their teenage years, to the constantly shifting political landscape of post-Soviet Russia. Together, these childhood classmates paint a complex picture of the dreams and disillusionment of those raised behind the Iron Curtain. (Red Square Productions)

To a growing number of Mexicans and Latinos in the Americas, narco traffickers have become iconic outlaws and the new models of fame and success. They represent a pathway out of the ghetto - a new form of the American Dream, fueled by the war on drugs. Narco Cultura looks at this explosive phenomenon from within; cycles of addiction to money, drugs and violence that are rapidly gaining strength on both sides of the US/Mexican border.

The Network is a documentary set behind the scenes at TOLO TV, the largest television network in one of the most unstable and dangerous places on earth, Afghanistan.

The New Black is a documentary that tells the story of how the African-American community is grappling with the gay rights issue in light of the recent gay marriage movement and the fight over civil rights. The film documents activists, families and clergy on both sides of the campaign to legalize gay marriage and examines homophobia in the black community's institutional pillar-the black church and reveals the Christian right wing's strategy of exploiting this phenomenon in order to pursue an anti-gay political agenda. The New Black takes viewers into the pews and onto the streets and provides a seat at the kitchen table as it tells the story of the historic fight to win marriage equality in Maryland and charts the evolution of this divisive issue within the black community.

Doctors today are liberally writing prescriptions for psychotropic drugs such as Adderall, Ambien, Zoloft, and Prozac (to name a very few). Often these drugs are combined in polypharmacy cocktails or are given out for unapproved or untested indications, leading to abuse, dangerous side effects, and heavy dependence. Off Label examines our runaway pharma-culture by weaving together the stories of drug-testing subjects, Big Pharma representatives, and many others touched by the rampant use of pharmaceuticals. Together, they create a poetic, sometimes amusing and frequently heartbreaking emotional road trip through an overmedicated, misdiagnosed, and drug-addled America. [Oscilloscope Pictures]

Dub Lawrence is a man obsessed. As a young rookie cop, he used his savvy investigation skills to help break the Ted Bundy case. His obsession with turning around the systemic failings he saw as a young police officer led to a successful bid to become Sheriff of Davis County, Utah at a young age in 1974. Committed to the highest standards of peace officers serving the public good, he once wrote himself a parking ticket when a citizen called him out for his patrol car's violation. After years in public service, today Dub works in semi-retirement as a private investigator, with projects fueled mostly by income from his water and sewage pump repair service. When he's not wading through raw sewage, his remaining free time is spent investigating the shooting death of his son-in-law Brian Wood.

"Portrait of Wally”, Egon Schiele’s tender picture of his mistress, Walburga (“Wally”) Neuzil, is the pride of the Leopold Museum in Vienna. But for 13 years the painting was locked up in New York, caught in a legal battle between the Austrian museum and the Jewish family from whom the Nazis seized the painting in 1939. Portrait of Wally traces the history of this iconic image – from Schiele’s gesture of affection toward his young lover, to the theft of the painting from Lea Bondi, a Jewish art dealer fleeing Vienna for her life, to the post-war confusion and subterfuge that evoke "The Third Man", to the surprise resurfacing of “Wally” on loan to the Museum of Modern Art in Manhattan in 1997. (7th Art Releasing)

It began as a housing marvel. Built in 1956, Pruitt-Igoe was heralded as the model public housing project of the future, "the poor man's penthouse." Two decades later, it ended in rubble - its razing an iconic event that the architectural theorist Charles Jencks famously called the death of modernism. The footage and images of its implosion have helped to perpetuate a myth of failure, a failure that has been used to critique Modernist architecture, attack public assistance programs, and stigmatize public housing residents. The Pruitt-Igoe Myth seeks to set the historical record straight. To examine the interests involved in Pruitt-Igoe's creation. To re-evaluate the rumors and the stigma. To implode the myth. (First Run Features)

Three young women face seven years in a Russian prison for a satirical performance in a Moscow cathedral. But who is really on trial - three young artists or the society they live in?

RABBIT À LA BERLIN is the 2010 Academy Award-nominated story of thousands of wild rabbits which lived in the Death Zone of the Berlin Wall. This is the first film showing the story of the Wall and the reunification of Germany seen from such an unusual perspective – from the rabbits' point of view. As if the green belt between the two walls was designed for those animals - full of untouched grass, the predators stayed behind the wall and the guards made sure no one disturbed the rabbits. They had been living there for 28 years, enclosed but safe. With the fall of the Wall in 1989, the rabbits had to look for another place to live. (Icarus Films)

The great wineries of Bordeaux struggle to accommodate the voracious appetite for their rare, expensive wines, which have become a powerful status symbol in booming China.

In Austin, Texas, fifteen people influence what is taught to the next generation of American children. Once every decade, the highly politicized Texas State Board of Education rewrites the teaching and textbook standards for its nearly 5 million schoolchildren. And when it comes to textbooks, what happens in Texas affects the nation as a whole. Don McLeroy, a dentist, Sunday school teacher, and avowed young-earth creationist, leads the Religious Right charge. After briefly serving on his local school board, McLeroy was elected to the Texas State Board of Education and later appointed chairman. During his time on the board, McLeroy has overseen the adoption of new science and history curriculum standards, drawing national attention and placing Texas on the front line of the so-called "culture wars." n his last term, McLeroy, aided by Cynthia Dunbar, an attorney from Houston and professor of Law at Jerry Falwell's Liberty University, finds himself not only fighting to change what Americans are taught, but also fighting to retain his seat on the board. Challenged by Kathy Miller, president of the Texas Freedom Network, and Ron Wetherington, an anthropology professor from Southern Methodist University in Texas, McLeroy faces his toughest term yet. THE REVISIONARIES follows the rise and fall of some of the most controversial figures in American education through some of their most tumultuous intellectual battles. (Kino Lorber)

Continuing his adventurous journey around the world, filmmaker Rob Stewart brings us Revolution, a full length feature film that is inspiring humans to change the world and save our planet. Along with world renowned experts, he learns that past evolutions can help solve some of our current and future environmental problems.

In 2014, recreational marijuana sales began in Colorado. With all eyes on ground zero of the green rush, The Denver Post appointed the world's first marijuana editor. Pot is legal and The Cannabist is covering it as it unfolds.

Fedor Alexandrovich is a radioactive man. He was four years old in 1986, when he was exposed to the toxic effects of the Chernobyl nuclear meltdown and forced to leave his home. Now 33, he is an artist in Ukraine, with radioactive strontium in his bones and a singular obsession with Chernobyl, and with the giant, mysterious steel pyramid now rotting away 2 miles from the disaster site: a hulking Cold War weapon known as the Duga and nicknamed the "Russian Woodpecker" for the constant clicking radio frequencies that it emits. In Gracia's documentary/conspiracy thriller, Alexandrovich returns to the ghost towns in the radioactive Exclusion Zone to try to find answers - and to decide whether to risk his life by revealing them, amid growing clouds of Ukraine's emerging revolution and war.

After the India of Varanasi's boatmen, the American desert of the dropouts, and the Mexico of the narco-assassin, Gianfranco Rosi've Decided to tell the tale of a part of his own country, roaming and filming for over two years in a minivan on Rome's giant ring road, the GRA, or GRA-to discover the invisible worlds and possible futures harbored in this area of constant turmoil. Elusive characters and fleeting apparitions emerge from the background of this winding zone.

Saving Banksy is the story of one misguided art collectors attempts to save a Banksy painting from destruction and the auction block.

Julian Perez, the most powerful man in Mexico, must embark on a mission given to him by the only authority he respects... his mother. Joined by a colorful band of infamous criminals, Julian must risk his life to fulfill his mother’s wish & rescue his brother from the war-ridden bowels of the most treacherous land in the world, Iraq. (Pantelion)

A perfect storm is brewing as agriculture pioneer Cary Fowler races against time to protect the future of our food. Seed banks around the world are crumbling, crop failures are producing starvation and rioting, and the accelerating effects of climate change are affecting farmers globally. Communities of indigenous Peruvian farmers are already suffering those effects, as they try desperately to save over 1,500 varieties of native potato in their fields. But with little time to waste, both Fowler and the farmers embark on passionate and personal journeys that may save the one resource we cannot live without: our seeds.

From neuroscience labs to church pews, A Sexplanation follows a grown man on his journey to unlearn the sexual shame from his all-American sex education. The documentary features provocative conversations with psychologists, sex researchers—and even a Jesuit priest. With humor and grit, Alex Liu takes audiences on a playful, heartfelt journey from a shame-filled past to a happier, healthier future.

Showrunners is the first ever feature length documentary film to explore the world of US television showrunners and the creative forces aligned around them. These are the people responsible for creating, writing and overseeing every element of production on one of the United State’s biggest exports – television drama and comedy series. Often described as the most complex job in the entertainment business, a showrunner is the chief writer / producer on a TV series and, in most instances, the show’s creator. Battling daily between art and commerce, showrunners manage every aspect of a TV show’s development and production: creative, financial and logistical. [Gravitas Ventures]