Director & Producer: Anurima Bhargava Producers: Alisa Payne, Geeta Gandbhir, Sam Pollard Teaching America is a short documentary exploring the battle around the teaching of African-American history and studies from inside the classroom, focusing on the transformative journeys of the Arkansas teachers, students and families who are part of the very first, inaugural classes of students taking Advanced Placement African-American Studies nationwide.
Director & Producer: Nmesomachi Nwokolo The high and low points surrounding the newly burgeoning culture of skateboarding in Lagos. From winning hundreds of thousands in prize money, to board seizure for "civil disobedience," the life of a skater in Lagos is anything but uneventful.
Director & Producer: Mirta Desir Michelle, a 10-year-old survivor of the 2010 Haiti earthquake, attempts to escape both her past and her new home when she learns that her new “family” is not what they seem.
Director: Alexandra Strunin Producer: Maciej Ślesicki The early days of the war in Ukraine. Ukrainian children displaced by the conflict are brought to a Russian elementary school. One of them turns out to be the long-lost nephew of Victoria, a music teacher of Ukrainian descent. Victoria awakens from the slumber of Russian propaganda and begins a desperate fight to save the boy.
Director: Kendi King Producer: Trysten Williams The first Black collegiate polo team at Morehouse College chases national USPA certification, training a rag-tag team of charismatic cowboys into pioneering polo stars.
Director & Producer: Kristal Sotomayor An immigrant mother emerges as a community leader during the historic campaign to end the sharing of the Philadelphia police database with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). Expanding Sanctuary tells a rarely told story about a Latinx immigrant community’s successful journey to change legislation and protect families.
Directors: Jankhna Sura, Esther Lim Jeffery Campbell has served 24 years of a 47 year sentence for a crime he knows he didn’t commit. Accused and charged for murder, he was incarcerated in 2001, leaving behind three young daughters and his mother. Determined to reunite with his family, he applies for two legal processes that could bring him closer to freedom.
Director: Minerva Marie Navasca Producer: Asa Kazerani A young Filipina filmmaker attempts to overwrite a painful memory of her mother with a perfect narrative.
Director & Producer: Ethan Avery A college basketball star is called to stand for social justice by an activist who is forced to work with police to alleviate racial tensions in their city.
Director & Producer: Morgan Mathews Producers: Rashad Mubarak, Aïdah Rasheed, Love Souley, Tristan Daley, Carter M. Stewart As the year concludes for Mohammed Schools of Atlanta, Principal Khalil reflects on the 90 year legacy of his great-grandmother building the first Muslim private school system in the country.
Director: Aya Bogod Producers: Marissa Koval, Skye Kupping, Alice Ye, Sarah Zhou A homeless mother faces impossible choices as she fights to protect her daughter's innocence while struggling to secure shelter and survive on New York City's unforgiving streets.
Director: Trace Pope Producers: Kate Hanson, Tola Omilana On May 21, 1990, the AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power (ACT UP) stormed the DC campus of the National Institutes of Health to protest the lack of available drugs to treat AIDS. From his office, Dr. Anthony Fauci watches as the activists march around his building, chanting and shouting for his resignation. Meanwhile, a young gay filmmaker captures the events of the protest while attempting to deliver an important package to Fauci. As tensions rise and the demonstrations threaten to upend the scientists' work, Dr. Fauci is forced to reckon with his power and privilege.
Born with a disability, a young music enthusiast is lured into a life of crime and spends a decade in jail after hanging with the wrong people. He discovers his purpose in jail: to help at-risk youth and prevent them from making the same mistakes he did.
Through the intimate lens of eight Black & Brown Trans, gender-diverse people, and masculine-presenting women, the social concept of gender is challenged.
Mississippi civil rights activist Fannie Lou Hamer gives an impassioned speech at the 1964 Democratic National Convention and a prophetic warning to America.
While documenting the birth of his niece, Director William Jenkins leads a series of intimate conversations with his father and half-brother — both named Ronald — as he confronts the impacts of Ronald’s incarceration on family dynamics.
Amidst the gentrified remnants of Chicago's Cabrini Green, For Those That Lived There captures the haunting displacement of Black legacies and the emergence of migrant narratives, offering an evocative exploration of a community in metamorphosis.
Alex is an activist who moved from Hong Kong to the US in fear of political persecution. As he is trying to rebuild his life, his ex-boyfriend Brandon unexpectedly visits him, rekindling unresolved desires.
An energetic, young, white chick blurs the lines of black culture appreciation with appropriation, now she must avoid losing her dream job and her dignity.
Mon Afrique is an experimental student short, shot on film, that explores the experience of diaspora and longing through the journey of a hand-carved traditional African mask.
Directors: Espie Randolph When a Black teen is pulled over by an angry cop, he must use his father’s advice to navigate the struggle and quiet his own rage in order to survive the traffic stop that threatens to put an end to his night and possibly his life.
Directors: Cameron Joy Gray “On Language” is an essay film that combines archival footage, video, and on-screen text to discuss the intersections of language and culture and race in everyday life.
Directors: Majiye Uchibeke A poetic tribute to writer, poet and environmental activist, Ken Saro-Wiwa, who was executed alongside eight other activists for opposing the environmental damage done in their oil-rich homeland, Ogoni.
Directors: Maddox Chen The life of Francis Uyemastu, a Japanese immigrant, told through the words of Mary Uyematsu Kao, his granddaughter, and Chuck Currier, a local historian and former teacher. Francis Uyematsu created a successful flower nursery, owning over 130 acres of land, until the Japanese Internment during World War 2, where he was forced to sell his land. Entire neighborhoods now sit on his former land, filled with hundreds of homes and high schools, and the flowers he created are no longer his.
Directors: James Anthony Eleven-year-old Meskerem, with the help of her immigrant Ethiopian family, finds the courage to act bravely when confronted with cultural bias.
Directors: Cecilia Romo Samantha is the strong-willed first-generation Latina daughter of an immigrant who is passionate about alternative punk rock music. Much to her mother's disapproval, she has a band performing at the local Battle of the Bands. Rosa is a stoic immigrant mother who has held various labor jobs in her lifetime and holds traditional Mexican values. Will Rosa ultimately accept and support her daughter's journey?
Directors: Joe Juanyao Zheng July 2020, at the peak of the pandemic in the city of Los Angeles, misunderstandings and conflicts between a Chinese immigrant father, a white restaurant owner, and a young black man escalate into a tumultuous climax...
Directors: Marquise Mays The Black String Triage Ensemble, an all-African American string orchestra in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, performs on the scene in the immediate aftermath of incidents of gun violence, altering the notion of “first responders.” In a city with such a troubled relationship with violence, can this ensemble transform the traumatized public space into a place of recovery, healing and hope?
Directors: Jeremy Workman, Robert Lyons Over 50 years ago, New York State assemblyman George Michaels cast a single vote that changed the course of American history but destroyed his political career in the process. For the first time, Deciding Vote shares the story of how Michaels defied his conservative constituents by casting the critical tie-breaking vote on a bill which legalized abortion in the state of New York, laying the groundwork for Roe v Wade. The film is a moving tribute to a now-forgotten act of political courage.
Directors: Sydnie Heslop Troubled Waters is an experimental short that examines the relationship between the black community and water, how it has both been weaponized against us, and employed by us, to empower and resist oppression.
Director: Alexandra Strunin Producer: Maciej Ślesicki The early days of the war in Ukraine. Ukrainian children displaced by the conflict are brought to a Russian elementary school. One of them turns out to be the long-lost nephew of Victoria, a music teacher of Ukrainian descent. Victoria awakens from the slumber of Russian propaganda and begins a desperate fight to save the boy.
