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2026 FEATURE FILMS

A Place of Absence

Marialuisa Ernst // 2025 // USA, Bolivia // 86 min
Amidst organized movements across the Americas, a filmmaker examines grief shaped by unresolved loss, while unpacking her uncle’s disappearance during Argentina’s Videla dictatorship.

A Place of Absence

Marialuisa Ernst // 2025 // USA, Bolivia // 86 min
Interweaving reflections about the disappearance of her uncle Guillermo, a leading voice in the resistance against Argentina’s 1970s dictatorship, with the resilient movement of the Caravan of Central American Mothers of Missing Migrants, director Marialuisa Ernst connects shared experiences across the Americas, from Bolivia to the Mexico-U.S. border. With a warm gaze and unrelenting spirit, Ernst follows the mothers as they visit sites along the migratory trail and march in protest, denouncing human rights violations and demanding their children not be forgotten. A Place of Absence reveals what emerges when solidarity deepens and by bridging three generations of her family’s matriarchy, Ernst opens a space for healing. A focused vision leads us through a specific kind of loss—one that lives within a place in our bodies marked by complex grief, unfettered by time, slowly defined by absence. (AT)

Screenings

A: Friday, Mar 6 / 6:15 PM / Willy Wilson @ Ragtag

B: Saturday, Mar 7 / 2:45 PM / The Blue Note

C: Sunday, Mar 8 / 2:15 PM / The Globe
×

Aanikoobijigan [Ancestor / Great-grandparent / Great-grandchild]

Adam Khalil & Zachary Khalil // 2026 // USA, Denmark // 85 min
As one Michigan tribal organization works to repatriate ancestral remains, the filmmakers probe the role of cultural institutions and archival collections, while holding space for collective mourning.

Aanikoobijigan [Ancestor / Great-grandparent / Great-grandchild]

Adam Khalil & Zachary Khalil // 2026 // USA, Denmark // 85 min
In this vital record, Adam Khalil (Halpate, T/F 2021) and Zach Khalil invite us to embrace time as a spiral and contemplate the cosmovision of Indigenous peoples. Through poignant essayistic passages, sit-down interviews, animations, and spiritual meditations, the brother directing duo crafts a layered and timely document that questions the authority of museum archives. Can these institutions exist without imprisoning sacred objects and ancestral remains? Winner of Sundance’s NEXT section Audience Award, Aanikoobijigan [ancestor / great-grandparent / great-grandchild] offers a deeply affecting meditation on repatriation, lingering grief, and the restorative power of dignity as a human right—revealing the violence endured by Indigenous communities under outdated curatorial practices. (AT)

Screenings

A: Friday, Mar 6 / 10:30 AM / The Globe

B: Saturday, Mar 7 / 12 PM / Willy Wilson @ Ragtag

C: Sunday, Mar 8 / 9 AM / The Picturehouse
×

Always

Deming Chen // 2025 // USA, China, France,Taiwan // 87 min
Amidst the mountains of China’s Hunan region, a young boy finds magic in poetry and then watches it disappear with time.

Always

Deming Chen // 2025 // USA, China, France,Taiwan // 87 min
Deming Chen’s cinematography in his startling debut may make the rolling hills of China’s Hunan region seem otherworldly and fantastical, but it is here that he documents the life of his young protagonist, Gong Youbin, from age 9 to 13. It is here, among fog-covered mountains and open fields, and where his family farms, that Gong lives out his days. It is here that Gong, aching from a deep hurt, finds poetry. Without unnecessary sentimentality, Gong’s poems mingle with the beautiful flow Chen finds in the surrounding world. A meditation on a fleeting childhood and the passage of time, Always is also a portrait of the resilient and humorous adults around Gong who hold him as he falls in and out of love with words. (BC)

Screenings

A: Thursday, Mar 5 / 4:30 PM / The Picturehouse

B: Sunday, Mar 8 / 9:00 AM / Willy Wilson @ Ragtag
×

American Doctor

Poh Si Teng // 2026 // USA, State of Palestine, Malaysia, Qatar // 90 min
Vérité follows three physician friends—Palestinian, Jewish, and Zoroastrian—from a besieged Gaza hospital to the halls of Congress, fighting to save lives.

American Doctor

Poh Si Teng // 2026 // USA, State of Palestine, Malaysia, Qatar // 90 min
Since October 2023, more than 1,700 healthcare workers have been killed in Gaza, and according to the WHO, 94 percent of the territory’s hospitals have been damaged or destroyed. Poh Si Teng’s vérité feature follows three American physicians, Dr. Thaer Ahmad, a Palestinian ER specialist from Chicago, Dr. Mark Perlmutter, a Jewish orthopedic surgeon from North Carolina, and Dr. Feroze Sidhwa, a trauma surgeon and the son of Pakistani immigrants—all volunteering at Gaza’s Nasser Medical Complex, one of the enclave’s few remaining hospitals. As they operate on severely wounded children, the building itself comes under fire. What binds them is not politics but the oath they took: Do no harm. The film makes devastatingly clear how far that oath now requires them to go, from the operating rooms of a besieged hospital to the halls of Congress, fighting to hold their own government accountable for the destruction they’ve witnessed firsthand. (YF)

Screenings

A: Friday, Mar 6 / 6:30 PM / Windsor Auditorium

B: Saturday, Mar 7 / 3:00 PM / Missouri Theatre

C: Sunday, Mar 8 / 9:00 AM / The Blue Note  
×

Barbara Forever

Brydie O'Connor // 2026 // USA // 102 min
A dreamlike portrait of lesbian experimental pioneer Barbara Hammer, making use of Hammer’s own films and personal archive to explore her work, loves and legacy.

Barbara Forever

Brydie O'Connor // 2026 // USA // 102 min
Barbara Hammer came out at thirty and left her marriage on a motorcycle with a Super 8 camera. Over the next five decades, she made more than eighty films, such as Dyketactics (1974) and Nitrate Kisses (1992), an experimental feature excavating queer lives erased from history. Hammer died of ovarian cancer in 2019, at seventy-nine, having deposited her document archive at Yale’s Beinecke Library and her trove of film materials at the Academy Film Archive. Director Brydie O’Connor, who met Hammer before her death, draws on these materials to build a portrait made entirely from Hammer’s images, voice, and defiant vision. (YF)

Screenings

A: Friday, Mar 6 / 3:30 PM / Windsor Auditorium

B: Saturday, Mar 7 / 9:00 AM / The Blue Note

C: Sunday, Mar 8 / 12:15 PM Big Ragtag  
×

Broken English

Iain Forsyth & Jane Pollard // 2026 // United Kingdom // 96 min
Genre defying portrait of Marianne Faithfull, made with her full involvement and led by Tilda Swinton; celebrates six decades of fearless reinvention and enduring artistry.

Broken English

Iain Forsyth & Jane Pollard // 2026 // United Kingdom // 96 min
For six decades the British press has belittled Marianne Faithfull as Mick Jagger’s girlfriend or the woman found naked at the Rolling Stones party. Thirty-five albums, one Grammy nomination—none of it could quite dislodge the tabloid version of Faithfull. Following their reinvention of the rock star portrait film, 20,000 Days on Earth (2014), directors Iain Forsyth and Jane Pollard take a genre-expanding approach to Faithfull’s profile. The film unfolds inside the Ministry of Not Forgetting, a fictional bureaucracy where Tilda Swinton presides as Overseer. George MacKay, as the Record Keeper, conducts a freewheeling interview with the real-world Faithfull, looking back at years of archive footage. Scripted vignettes and covers performed by the likes of Beth Orton and Courtney Love punctuate Faithfull’s unvarnished testimony. Faithfull, Nick Cave, and Warren Ellis breathe life into the film’s breathtaking ending. (YF)

Screenings

A: Thursday, Mar 5 / 9:45 PM / Big Ragtag

B: Friday, Mar 6 / 6:45 PM / The Globe

C: Saturday, Mar 7 / 9:00 PM / The Picturehouse 
×

Bucks Harbor

Pete Muller // 2026 // USA // 98 min
The fishermen of Bucks Harbor in Downeast Maine share vulnerable reflections on their harsh upbringing in this ode to lives lived on the margins.

Bucks Harbor

Pete Muller // 2026 // USA // 98 min
“Sometimes it’s easier just to forget things than to deal with them,” fisherman David Cale says as he digs into the soft sand of the shoreline to forage for clams. Much like the tenacious lobster catch they are known for, the residents of Machias, Maine, are hearty and resilient. As the harsh gray chill of winter gives way to the bright blues of summer, generations of fishermen sustain themselves through fishing and hunting, raising the next generation to follow in their footsteps.  Lobsters are toughest when their armor is hard, and most vulnerable when they are shedding it—and so it goes with the men harvesting them. Bucks Harbor is a meditative and immersive slice of life that examines the impact of long-held masculine traditions upon small-town culture and how they are reflected in those who live there. (MS)

Screenings

A: Thursday, Mar 5 / 4:30 PM / Big Ragtag

B: Saturday, Mar 7 / 9:15 PM / Windsor Auditorium

C: Sunday, Mar 8 / 9:30 AM / Big Ragtag   
×

Closure

Michał Marczak // 2026 // Poland // 108 min
After his teenage son vanishes, Daniel searches Poland’s Vistula River, suspended between fear of a fatal leap and stubborn hope his son survives.

Closure

Michał Marczak // 2026 // Poland // 108 min
Following a family’s relentless search for their missing loved one, Closure is a deeply cinematic and poignant observational portrait of a man who has left no stone unturned in his efforts to locate his missing teenage son. Deliberative and gorgeously composed, filmmaker Michał Marczak (All These Sleepless Nights, T/F 2016) shadows Daniel, a stoic and determined husband and father, as he spends nearly all his waking hours trolling the rivers surrounding Warsaw in hopes of locating his son, Chris, and uncovering the reason behind his disappearance. As the months pass, Daniel’s family members process their loss and reckon with the possibility that they may never know the full story. Yet Daniel refuses to quit trying, despite the emotional and physical toll. Closure eloquently captures the humanity found in grief and in the act of embracing it. (MS)

Screenings

A: Friday, Mar 6 / 3:45 PM / The Picturehouse

B: Saturday, Mar 7 / 8:30 PM / Willy Wilson @ Ragtag

C: Sunday, Mar 8 / 3:00 PM / Missouri Theatre
×

Cuidadoras (Care)

Martina Matzkin & Gabriela Uassouf // 2025 // Argentina // 80 min
Set in Argentina, Cuidadoras (Care) follows three transgender women caring for the elderly senior residence. Deep bonds grow and a model of empathy and connection emerges.

Cuidadoras (Care)

Martina Matzkin & Gabriela Uassouf // 2025 // Argentina // 80 min
Reaching old age is itself an act of defiance, both for the elderly still full of life and for Maia, Yenifer, and Luciana, three trans women who care for them. Set at a public nursing home in Buenos Aires province, Cuidadoras (care) unfolds over a year—an observational look at the bonds formed in this modest residence. As the women learn the ins and outs of caregiving, the residents learn about the women. Maia and 80-year-old Alicia become confidantes, Yenifer discovers her youth has more in common with 92-year-old Vicky’s than either anticipated, and Luciana and 85-year-old Beto bond over a shared appetite for adventure. The film does not capture a social experiment but a community forming: a place where acceptance and respect move in both directions, where tenderness is the common language, and something like family takes hold. (YF)

Screenings

A: Friday, Mar 6 / 4:00 PM / The Globe

B: Saturday, Mar 7 / 9:00 AM / Willy Wilson @ Ragtag

C: Sunday, Mar 8 / 6:15 PM / Big Ragtag
×

Diaries

Ed Pincus // 1976 // USA // 210 min
Filmed between 1971 and 1976, Ed Pincus’s Diaries (1971–1976) is a landmark of personal nonfiction, tracing five years of marriage with Jane Pincus, co-author of Our Bodies, Ourselves, as they test the promises and pressures of an open relationship, and let the camera hold what love, freedom, and consequence leave behind.

Diaries

Ed Pincus // 1976 // USA // 210 min
In 1971, Ed Pincus picked up a 16mm camera and began filming his own life. He would keep filming for five years. His wife Jane, co-author of Our Bodies, Ourselves; their two young children; the women with whom Ed had affairs; meals prepared, a puppy acquired, a child taken to the doctor for stitches. He shot it all, then left the footage untouched for five years before editing. The result, at over three hours, is a foundational work of personal nonfiction. Pincus, who co-founded MIT’s Film Section with Richard Leacock, was testing whether the feminist principle that the personal is political could hold up under the weight of his own domestic life. It could, and it couldn’t, and that tension is the film. Le Monde called Diaries an epic that redefines an art. Its influence runs directly through the Cambridge documentary tradition; Ross McElwee, Robb Moss, and generations of filmmakers at MIT and Harvard trace their practice back to this film. Presented by the Harvard Film Archive in a restored edition. (YF)

Screenings

Sunday, Mar 8 / 5:45 PM / Willy Wilson @ Ragtag
×

Eyes of Ghana

Ben Proudfoot // 2025 // USA, Ghana, United Kingdom // 90 min
90-year-old filmmaker, Chris Hesse, recounts his career and, through it, recovers and resurrects the history of Ghanaian cinema.

Eyes of Ghana

Ben Proudfoot // 2025 // USA, Ghana, United Kingdom // 90 min
Cinema is an art form and an inherently political one. Ghanaian filmmaker Chris Hesse, now in his nineties, knows this all too well. Hesse, who started out as the cameraperson for Ghana’s revolutionary leader Kwame Nkrumah, has always seen filming as a political act—one that must be preserved and passed down from one generation to another. When Nkumrah was overthrown in 1966, it was Hesse who managed to save 1,300 film reels from the hands of the military that wanted to burn all of Nkumrah’s records. Decades on, when young Ghanaian filmmaker Anita Afonu meets Hesse, it is a meeting of two people whose lives revolve around cinema—one who seeks to pass on his art and another who wants to inherit it and resurrect a forgotten history. (BC)

Screenings

A: Friday, Mar 6 / 10:00 AM / Missouri Theatre

B: Saturday, Mar 7 / 9:00 AM / The Globe 
×

First They Came for My College

Patrick Xavier Bresnan // 2026 // USA // 105 min
As conservatives take over the leadership of New College of Florida, a group of students join hands with their professor to resist and reclaim their alma mater. ⍟ World Premiere

First They Came for My College

Patrick Xavier Bresnan // 2026 // USA // 105 min
New College of Florida was founded in the 1960s as a bastion of public liberal arts education. Once a model of academic inquiry and acceptance, it has now become a blueprint for how conservative ideologues, under Gov. Ron DeSantis’s leadership, can transform an institution: eradicate “woke” areas of study and “recapture the university.” Director Patrick Xavier Bresnan (The Rabbit Hunt, T/F 2017) closely follows students and professors, capturing tense board meetings and a graduation ceremony that feels like a funeral. “Don’t dream it, be it,” sing students at a small Rocky Horror Picture Show screening, but we fear they are doing the Time Warp on the deck of the Titanic. New College has withstood hurricanes, but none like the culture wars now seeking to take over higher education. (LK)

Screenings

A: Friday, Mar 6 / 9:30 PM / The Globe

B: Saturday, Mar 7 / 2:45 PM / Windsor Auditorium

C: Sunday, Mar 8 / 9:00 AM / Missouri Theatre
×

Hair, Paper, Water

Trương Minh Quý & Nicolas Graux // 2025 // Belgium, France, Vietnam // 71 min
In a quiet and poetic film, a grandmother imparts wisdom to her many grandchildren. Ultimately, arming them with language to understand life itself.

Hair, Paper, Water

Trương Minh Quý & Nicolas Graux // 2025 // Belgium, France, Vietnam // 71 min
Cao Thị Hậu was born in a cave in the Quảng Bình province of Vietnam, but she now lives in a village where the mist quietly settles and lifts off the lives of Hậu and her many grandchildren. Her curtains dance in the wind as she recounts and bears witness to the passing of time. Filmed using Bolex cameras, the images in the film (complete with light leaks and scratches) document Hậu’s everyday life as she tells her grandson her dreams of the cave and her grandson relays his dream back. It is all an attempt at collecting memories, and a longing for things that are becoming lost. One of the last few remaining Rục people, Hậu puts up a quiet fight against oblivion as she fills her grandson’s life with stories and words. (BC)

Screenings

A: Thursday, Mar 5 / 4:00 PM / Willy Wilson @ Ragtag

B: Sunday, Mar 8 / 6:00 PM / Windsor Auditorium
×

How to Clean a House in Ten Easy Steps

Carolina Gonzalez // 2026 // USA, Colombia, México // 80 min
A mother and daughter create a shared fantasy to explore their intertwined experiences of immigration, labor, and womanhood. ⍟ World Premiere

How to Clean a House in Ten Easy Steps

Carolina Gonzalez // 2026 // USA, Colombia, México // 80 min
In Carolina González Valencia’s fantastical directorial debut, docu-fiction, dance, and everyday routines become a space for a family and its community to reconcile and mend stories. Raised by a mother who left to work in the U.S. as the family’s sole financial provider, González Valencia brings deep understanding to the sacrifices families make to survive amid displacement and financial instability. As the filmmaker and her mother, Beatriz, face another separation, they collaborate with friends and family on a film rooted in community care. In a valiant, vulnerable, and sparkling feat, How to Clean a House in 10 Easy Steps affirms the protagonists’ refusal to be defined by their labor, making space for rest and nurturing the lives they have long envisioned—reminding us to celebrate the joy and potential within ourselves beyond the jobs we hold. (AT)

Screenings

A: Thursday, Mar 5 / 7:15 PM / The Picturehouse

B: Saturday, Mar 7 / 2:30 PM / The Globe

C: Sunday, Mar 8 / Noon / Missouri Theatre 
×

Jaripeo

Efraín Mojica & Rebecca Zweig // 2026 // México, USA, France // 67 min
Neon-lit nights and rodeos pulsing with norteño rhythms frame a complex portrait of masculinity as the filmmaker traces an intimate journey with their own identity in Michoacán.

Jaripeo

Efraín Mojica & Rebecca Zweig // 2026 // México, USA, France // 67 min
Riding in a white, rugged truck with co-directors Efraín Mojica and Rebecca Zweig through the rippling valleys of Penjamillo, Mexico, we quickly learn this story is far more than a love letter to the places that raised us. Through gripping verité scenes, Mojica and Zweig follow riders as they participate in bull wrangling, horse riding, dances, and other displays of virility in the jaripeo—or Mexican rodeo. “The kid from Morelia couldn’t cut it!” shouts the MC as bustling arena sounds and Mexican Banda beats converge. We merge with the crowds, connecting with striking characters who shape this energetic gathering. Lifelong friends Mojica and Zweig use surreal strobe-lit sequences, playful and sometimes disorienting Super 8 footage, and soul-stirring music to craft this absorbing, poetic look inside queer life thriving amongst machismo in traditionally oppressive spaces. (AT)

Screenings

A: Thursday, Mar 5 / 6:45 PM / Willy Wilson @ Ragtag

B: Friday, Mar 6 / 6:30 PM / The Blue Note

C: Sunday, Mar 8 / 11:45 PM / Willy Wilson @ Ragtag
×

Landscapes of Memory

Leah Galant // 2026 // Germany, USA // 77 min
As a Jewish American filmmaker studies her past in Berlin, she grapples with the reality of her trauma being weaponized to inflict violence on Palestinians. ⍟ World Premiere

Landscapes of Memory

Leah Galant // 2026 // Germany, USA // 77 min
How does one’s memory become part of a collective memory, which then becomes a political weapon? For filmmaker Leah Galant, daughter of a 9/11 survivor and descendant of Holocaust survivors, the idea of remembering is an object of intellectual curiosity. Whose memories are remembered and memorialized, and who, in turn, is forgotten? While studying Germany’s culture of remembrance and grappling with her father’s ALS diagnosis, Galant is arrested while trying to film a pro-Palestine protest. The film, which starts with a focus on the past, becomes an artistic inquiry into the present, where her family’s memories are systematically used to repress Palestinian realities. Landscapes of Memory braids Galant’s personal history with the perspectives of a man whose ancestors were Nazis, and a Palestinian artist living the harms of societal repression of certain memories and histories. (BC)

Screenings

A: Friday, Mar 6/9:30 PM / Windsor Auditorium /

B: Saturday, Mar 7 / 11:45 AM / The Picturehouse

C: Sunday, Mar 8 / 2:30 PM / Willy Wilson @ Ragtag
×

Mary Oliver: Saved by the Beauty of the World

Sasha Waters // 2026 // USA // 91 min
Portrait of Mary Oliver, Pulitzer-winning poet and private queer icon, whose plainspoken wonder for woods, dogs, and living reaches readers across every divide. ⍟ World Premiere

Mary Oliver: Saved by the Beauty of the World

Sasha Waters // 2026 // USA // 91 min
When Mary Oliver was a young girl, “dead poets” were her friends. Godchild of Walt Whitman and godparent to us all, Oliver led her readers to know the world and themselves better. Director Sasha Waters explores and honors Oliver’s life, giving us the chance to encounter her on her own terms. Through interviews with Provincetown friends, including John Waters, and a wealth of archival footage, a fuller portrait of Oliver emerges—as a queer woman, nature lover, dog devotee, and Pulitzer Prize-winner—is written. Stephen Colbert, Lucy Dacus, and Jason Reynolds are among those who recite her work and reflect on her significance. In the end, Mary Oliver did not simply visit this world; she changed it by showing us our connection to it—as humans, clams, and ants—and her legacy lives on. (LK)

Screenings

A: Thursday, Mar 5 / 7:00 PM / Missouri Theatre

B: Saturday, Mar 7 / 9:00 AM / The Picturehouse

C: Sunday, Mar 8 / 2:45 PM / The Blue Note
×

Nuisance Bear

Gabriela Osio Vanden & Jack Weisman // 2026 // USA, Canada, United Kingdom // 90 min
In Manitoba, we see the world through the perspective of a polar bear and question who deserves to be in the icy port town—the bears or the tourists?

Nuisance Bear

Gabriela Osio Vanden & Jack Weisman // 2026 // USA, Canada, United Kingdom // 90 min
Gabriela Osio Vanden and Jack Weisman (Nuisance Bear, 14 min, T/F 2022) make a bold return to the festival and take us back to Churchill, the “Polar Bear Capital of the World,” revealing a dystopian ecosystem that prioritizes tourism. Resourceful, intelligent, and fearless, the polar bear—a sacred predator—has become a spectacle while its habitat deteriorates. Climate collapse has pushed these animals to expand their range in search of food, prompting aggressive monitoring. Guided by the thoughtful, insightful narration of Mike Gibbons, an Inuit elder native to the land, we contemplate the delicate bonds between humans and one of the Arctic’s most vulnerable creatures, and reflect on the consequences of practices rooted in dominion over the natural world and over those who view themselves as part of it.

Screenings

A: Thursday, Mar 5 / 9:30 PM / Windsor Auditorium

B: Friday, Mar 6 / 1:15 PM / Missouri Theatre

C: Saturday, Mar 7 / 9:15 PM / Big Ragtag
×

Phenomena

Josef Gatti // 2026 // Australia // 86 min
Partnering with his physics teacher father, the filmmaker embarks on a fantastical journey where the universe opens up in all its glory and magic. ⍟ World Premiere

Phenomena

Josef Gatti // 2026 // Australia // 86 min
A filmmaker and his physics teacher father set out to look at our centuries-old universe in a way that’s new and awe-inspiring. Despite how improbable this sounds, he succeeds. The duo creates patterns and images that can easily be described in terms of drug-induced hallucinations and altered states, but the biggest wonder of Phenomena is that it is all true and “real.” Using stunning cinematography and music, and playing with energy, magnetism, electricity, and matter, Josef Gatti makes a cinematic experience that washes over the viewer. Through its immeasurable vastness, the film makes the audience aware of the insignificant space they occupy in this endless ocean of awe. (BC)

Screenings

A: Thursday, Mar 5 / 9:15 PM / The Blue Note

B: Friday, Mar 6 / 11:00 AM / Big Ragtag

C: Saturday, Mar 7 / 12:00 PM / Windsor Auditorium
×

Pinball

Naveen Chaubal // 2026 // USA // 86 min
In this contemplative coming of age portrait, Yosef, a spirited athlete, is becoming more aware of his family history, after being displaced from their Iraqi homeland. ⍟ World Premiere

Pinball

Naveen Chaubal // 2026 // USA // 86 min
Soon after the U.S. invaded Iraq in 2003, Yosef and his family fled their home to begin anew—first to Egypt, then gaining asylum in Louisville, Kentucky. With a nostalgic, profound score of electric piano, organ, and saxophone, and a palette of earthy hues and rusty reds, director Naveen Chaubal crafts a compelling debut about a curious and driven 19-year-old who guides us through his journey confronting cultural dissonance and seeking his place in the world. When his younger sister Azraa returns to Egypt, Yosef wonders if he should take a different path. Evocative, gentle, and intimate, Pinball brings into focus what it’s like to be young, navigating family expectations, financial pressures, and the realities of life in a diaspora that has faced displacement due to war and man-made threats. (AT)

Screenings

A: Friday, Mar 6 / 7:00 PM / Big Ragtag

B: Saturday, Mar 7 / 9:15 PM / Missouri Theatre

C: Sunday, Mar 8 / 12:15 PM / Windsor Auditorium
×

Powwow People

Sky Hopinka // 2025 // USA // 88 min
An immersive vérité portrait of contemporary Native powwow culture and a vibrant celebration of community and culture captured from inside the circle.

Powwow People

Sky Hopinka // 2025 // USA // 88 min
Sky Hopinka grew up dancing at powwows with family. Rather than filming another’s gathering, his crew organized this one, where dancers, singers, and vendors knowingly participated in the making of a film. It ran like any powwow: four sessions, contests, dance specials, and no second takes. Gina Bluebird’s setup shapes the day. MC Ruben Littlehead anchors everything, cracking jokes one moment, going quiet the next, and reminding the crowd how fast the youngest dancers will grow. Jamie John, a Two-Spirit dancer, imagines the future of traditions, while Freddie Cozad, singer and drummer, considers origins. The film culminates in a remarkable long take of a Northern Traditional dance, the camera inside the circle, not watching from outside it. What Hopinka captures is not a document of a powwow but the thing itself: dynamic, present, self-determined, and alive. (YF)

Screenings

A: Friday, Mar 6 / 4:15 PM / Big Ragtag

B: Saturday, Mar 7 / 9:00 PM / The Globe

C: Sunday, Mar 8 / 6:00 PM / Windsor Auditorium
×

Remake

Ross McElwee // 2025 // USA // 116 min
Ross McElwee assembles decades of footage of his son Adrian, confronting time, grief, and authorship; while a stalled Sherman’s March remake haunts the margins.

Remake

Ross McElwee // 2025 // USA // 116 min
Ross McElwee has filmed his life since the 1970s. Sherman’s March (1986), Time Indefinite (1993), Bright Leaves (2003)—his camera is both instrument and confession. His son, Adrian, was born into this practice, filmed from infancy, through adolescence, and into years that got harder. In 2016, Adrian died of a fentanyl overdose at 27. Drawing from decades of footage from Ross and Adrian—also a filmmaker—Remake asks questions that could only come after: What did the camera capture, what did it miss, and what did it do to the father-son relationship while both were still in the room? Threaded through is a stalled Hollywood effort to turn Sherman’s March into a fiction film, giving McElwee another angle on the distance between experience and its representation. Charleen Swansea, the unforgettable force of Sherman’s March, reappears in Remake, which won the Golden Globe Prize for Documentary. This is the film’s North American premiere. (YF)

Screenings

A: Friday, Mar 6 / 12:30 PM / The Blue Note

B: Saturday, Mar 7 / 5:45 PM / Missouri Theatre

C: Sunday, Mar 8 / 3:15 PM / Big Ragtag
×

School for Defectors

Jeremy Workman // 2026 // USA, SOUTH KOREA // 93 min
At a tiny school in Busan, defector teenagers come of age, shaped by families who risked everything to escape North Korea. ⍟ World Premiere

School for Defectors

Jeremy Workman // 2026 // USA, SOUTH KOREA // 93 min
Over 30,000 North Korean defectors live in South Korea, invisibilized and discriminated against. But for the 20 students of Busan’s tiny Jangdaehyun School, being children of defectors is what defines them: all teenagers navigating adolescence while also bearing the burden of their parents’ actions. Jeremy Workman—whose last film, Secret Mall Apartment (2024), also delved into a liminal space that challenged definitions of the inside and outside—visited South Korea as an outsider, and was pulled into the story of people whose identities are also defined by the arbitrary rulings of space and position. Filmed in extreme collaboration to ensure the safety of everyone involved, School for Defectors not only gives us access to a world that is barely spoken of but also gives us a peek into the generation that will be South Korea’s future. (BC)

Screenings

A: Thursday, Mar 5 / 9:45 PM / Windsor Auditorium

B: Friday, Mar 6 / 1:00 PM / The Picturehouse

C: Sunday, Mar 8 / 11:30 AM / The Picturehouse
×

Seized

Sharon Liese // 2026 // USA // 92 min
A newspaper in Marion, Kansas, becomes the microcosm mirroring the nation-wide fight between democracy, the free press, and repression. Presented by Kinder Institute on Constitutional Democracy.

Seized

Sharon Liese // 2026 // USA // 92 min
Marion, Kansas: small town USA, home to the weekly newspaper, the Marion County Record, in print since the 1800s. “SEIZED… but not Silenced,” shouted the headline in summer 2023, just days after local law enforcement raided the newspaper office and the homes of the city’s vice mayor, the editor/publisher Eric Meyer, and his 98-year-old mother, Joan, a co-owner of the paper who died the next day. The attack on local news became national news. Footage from police body cams and security cameras provides unique access to the raids and their aftermath. Interviews with Meyer, townspeople, and government officials tell a complex story as director Sharon Liese examines how a “tiny and old-fashioned” hand-folded newspaper is a microcosm of threats against a free press in the U.S. (LK)

Screenings

A: Thursday, Mar 5 / 9:45 PM/ The Picturehouse

B: Friday, Mar 6 / 10:00 AM / Windsor Auditorium

C: Saturday, Mar 7 / 11:45 AM / Missouri Theatre

D: Sunday, Mar 8 / 5:30 PM / The Blue Note
×

Shorts: Dangerous Curve

Various Directors

Shorts: Dangerous Curve

Various Directors
Four films about what happens when the machinery of the state presses down on individual lives. “Escalation” (dir. AJ Schnack; 32 min.) puts more than a dozen U.S. journalists in front of the camera to recount being targeted by police while covering protests. “In Exchange for Flesh” (dirs. Corey Devon Arthur & Sandro Ramani; 15 min.) goes behind prison walls, using recorded calls, smuggled footage, and state archival material to document “strip frisk,” a violent and state-sanctioned practice that most people outside the system have never heard of. “Pass Time” (dir. Jj Measer; 16 min.) is quieter but no less unsettling, observing how news cycles seep into the rhythms of daily life, and the soundtrack is the hum of a country arguing with itself. “The Hotline” (dirs. Ricki Stern & Jesse Sweet; 36 min.) sits with the volunteers of an anonymous overdose hotline. In a country where overdose remains a leading cause of preventable death, there is something almost unbearably human in the act of simply staying on the line.

Screenings

A: Friday, Mar 6 // 9:00 PM // WillyWilson @ Ragtag

B: Saturday, Mar 7 // 5:30 PM // WillyWilson @ Ragtag
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Shorts: Proceed With Caution

Various Directors

Shorts: Proceed With Caution

Various Directors
“L’Mina” (dir. Randa Maroufi; 26 min.) is set in Jerada, Morocco, where coal mining was officially shut down in 2001 but continues clandestinely, because there’s simply no other livelihood. It’s an odd feeling, being nostalgic for a lightbulb, but that’s exactly what happens in “No Mean City” (dir. Ross McClean; 15 min.). From there, this program moves to landscapes we’re reshaping, often without noticing. “High-Rise Pigs” (dir. Ang Siew Ching; 15 min.) brings us inside an unsettling twenty-six-story pig farm in China’s Hubei province. “Buckskin” (dir. Mars Verrone; 17 min.) is something different: a film about the filmmaker’s grandfather, a U.S. Forest Service member who spent his career navigating institutions that weren’t designed to welcome him. “Endlings” (dir. María Luisa Santos; 16 min.) wanders from churches to DNA labs to ghostly archives, asking what actually endures when the things we love vanish from the earth. 

Screenings

A: Friday, Mar 6 // 10:15 AM // The Picturehouse

B: Saturday, Mar 7 // 12:30 PM // Big Ragtag
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Shorts: U-Turn

Various Directors

Shorts: U-Turn

Various Directors
Empire leaves long shadows, and this program follows four films into them. “Land of Cold” (dir. Hervé Demers; 17 min.) moves through icy Canadian landscapes alongside migrants from the Sub-Saharan African diaspora experiencing their first winter, presenting a sensory immersion in what it feels like to arrive somewhere utterly foreign. “Same Water” (dir. Martine Granby; 21 min.) digs into the forgotten history of Paradise Park, a recreation area created in 1949 as the “colored only” counterpart to Silver Springs in central Florida. “Páa’tenehu (Wait for Me)” (dir. Thiago Zanato; 11 min.) brings us to Southeast Mexico during a storm, where a family shelters in their butcher shop, listening to their grandmother tell stories and holding onto hope. Rounding things out, “An Impossible Address” (dir. Suneil Sanzgiri; 39 min.) is the product of more than four years of research into the solidarity that developed between India and Angola against the Portuguese empire. 

Screenings

A: Friday, Mar 6 // 10:00 AM // Willy Wilson @ Ragtag

B: Saturday, Mar 7 // 3:15 PM // Big Ragtag
×

Shorts: Work Area Ahead

Various Directors

Shorts: Work Area Ahead

Various Directors
The many lives of workers. “Born Secret” (dir. Riley Fitchpatrick; 19 min.) heads to Oak Ridge, Tennessee, the secret city whose invisible labor helped build the atomic bomb. In “Sole (얼)” (dir. Haneol Lee; 12 min.), a Korean American cobbler in Nashville takes such pride in his craft that it becomes something closer to a way of being. From there, we meet a filmmaker’s mother in “Sudakas” (dir. Ricardo Betancourt; 13 min.) as she works low-wage jobs while enabling her son to tell her story and his. In “One Last Order” (dirs. Lauren DeFilippo & Sam Soko; 21 min.), a beloved cashier works her final shift at a Gainesville drive-thru. Finally, in “Auto Queens” (dir. Sraiyanti Haricharan; 31 min.), Mohana and Leela Rani, drivers from Tamil Nadu’s first women-led auto rickshaw union, form a friendship that is fierce, funny, and unshakeable. 

Screenings

A: Friday, Mar 6 // 3:30 PM // Willy Wilson @ Ragtag

B: Saturday, Mar 7 // 9:30 AM // Big Ragtag
×

Sons of Detroit

Jeremy Xido // 2025 // USA // 104 min
A filmmaker looks back at the Detroit he called home and questions the social forces that made him move far away.

Sons of Detroit

Jeremy Xido // 2025 // USA // 104 min
Jeremy Xido grew up in Detroit—the only white kid in his neighborhood, almost adopted by African American neighbors, growing up with his best friend and “cousin” Boo. When Xido’s family, like many white families in Detroit, moved to the suburbs, he too moved on. Decades later, when he stops by the city he once called home, he goes looking for Boo and is forced to reckon with the bedrock of racism that has defined the social fabric of Detroit and the country. He interrogates his racial privilege and questions why his parents moved. In an extremely self-aware reckoning, Xido uses this film to cut through the years of racist social forces that have shaped both his and Boo’s lives—lives that, even when starting off from the same neighborhood block, grew to inhabit starkly different realities. (BC)

Screenings

A: Thursday, Mar 5 / 9:00 PM / Willy Wilson @ Ragtag

B: Friday, Mar 6 / 1:00 PM / The Globe

C: Sunday, Mar 8 / 5:30 PM / The Globe
×

Soul Patrol

J.M. Harper // 2026 // USA // 99 min
After fifty years, the Vietnam War’s first and only Black special operations team reunites, revealing a hidden history and seeking peace through reckoning.

Soul Patrol

J.M. Harper // 2026 // USA // 99 min
In the summer of 1968, six teenagers were sent to Cu Chi, Vietnam. As the first all-Black special operations unit in the war, the 51st Infantry, other soldiers called them the Soul Patrol. Most had volunteered. Lawton Mackey Jr. forged his mother’s signature to enlist at seventeen. Ed Emanuel had never been on a plane. They barely spoke about what happened until Emanuel wrote it down in a memoir 50 years later. J.M. Harper’s film, winner of Sundance’s Directing Award for U.S. Documentary, is built around the team’s reunion. Black-and-white, close-up testimonies, paired with the soldiers’ own Super 8mm combat footage and stylized dramatic sequences. Their wives form their own conversation about what the war did to the men they married. No one properly welcomed them home. This film does. (YF)

Screenings

A: Thursday, Mar 5 / 6:30 PM / Windsor Auditorium

B: Saturday, Mar 7 / 5:00 PM / The Picturehouse

C: Sunday, Mar 8 / 11:45 AM / The Blue Note
×

TCB – The Toni Cade Bambara School of Organizing

Monica Henriquez & Louis Massiah // 2025 // USA, Canada, France, Senegal, United Kingdom // 105 min
An archival-rich biography of writer-activist Toni Cade Bambara, whose novels, essays, and filmmaking galvanized movements, illuminated by testimonies from Toni Morrison, Nikky Finney, and Haile Gerima. Presented by Renew Missouri.

TCB – The Toni Cade Bambara School of Organizing

Monica Henriquez & Louis Massiah // 2025 // USA, Canada, France, Senegal, United Kingdom // 105 min
In 1970, Toni Cade Bambara edited The Black Woman, an anthology introducing readers to Alice Walker, Audre Lorde, and Nikki Giovanni. Then came stories like Gorilla, My Love; a novel, The Salt Eaters; and documentaries, including The Bombing of Osage Avenue (1987), co-directed with Massiah. Then the teaching, the organizing, the living so freely that people still describe her aura and how she moved through a room. Massiah, Philadelphia’s Scribe Video Center founder and a director for Eyes on the Prize II, spent decades building this film. Co-directed by Monica Henriquez, TCB presents lessons on cultural organizing from those who knew her: Toni Morrison, Nikky Finney, Haile Gerima. Family, students, fellow organizers. They don’t just remember her; they describe being in her presence. The result is not a monument but a transmission: how to use art as a way of building and strengthening communities—lessons we need now more than ever. (YF)

Screenings

A: Friday, Mar 6 / 9:15 PM / The Picturehouse

B: Saturday, Mar 7 / 9:00 AM / Windsor Auditorium
×

The Bend in the River

Robb Moss // 2025 // USA // 82 min
Robb Moss completes his Riverdogs trilogy, returning to five friends in their 70s as lifelong friendship meets the sharp edges of memory, loss, and mortality.

The Bend in the River

Robb Moss // 2025 // USA // 82 min
Robb Moss, a pioneer of personal documentary and a professor in Harvard’s Department of Art, Film, and Visual Studies, has been filming the same group of friends since the late 1970s, when they were twenty-something river guides on the Colorado. Riverdogs (1982) captured the idyll; The Same River Twice (2003) found them reckoning with middle age. With The Bend in the River, executive produced by Frances McDormand and Joel Coen, Moss completes the trilogy. With protagonists now in their seventies, the film weaves nearly fifty years of footage into something that works less like a conventional documentary than a five-person cinematic mosaic. The cuts between past and present are swift and unsparing. What emerges is not nostalgia but an honest, quietly devastating reckoning with time, loss, and the unfinished project of living. (YF)

Screenings

A: Thursday, Mar 5 / 6:45 PM / The Blue Note

B: Friday, Mar 6 / 12:45 PM / Windsor Auditorium

C: Sunday, Mar 8 / 3:00 PM Windsor Auditorium
×

The Great Experiment

Stephen Maing & Eric Daniel Metzgar // 2026 // USA // 100 min
A collage of stunning black and white vignettes chronicle everyday political life from 2017 to 2020 in the United States. ⍟ World Premiere

The Great Experiment

Stephen Maing & Eric Daniel Metzgar // 2026 // USA // 100 min
What started out as a documentation of the first year of President Donald Trump’s first term, The Great Experiment became a window into American life from 2017 to 2020. In a distinct observational style, the film bears witness to the many wefts that have appeared across the social fabric of America. As numerous Americas emerge, the film documents the almost-tragicomic dimensions—the world of Gays for Trump, where white women suddenly feel empathy for Black women over wine, and where immigrants dream of building a life while a group of people fly Confederate flags. If one were to cut open a slice of the country we live in today and show us the layers that make up the whole, it’d look a lot like this film. (BC)

Screenings

A: Friday, Mar 6 / 7:00 PM / Missouri Theatre

B: Saturday, Mar 7 / 6:00 PM / Big Ragtag

C: Sunday, Mar 8 / 7:45 PM / The Picturehouse
×

The Oldest Person in the World

Sam Green // 2026 // USA // 87 min
A ten-year quest to meet the world’s oldest living people by record becomes a meditation on time and life itself. Presented by Longevity Clinic.

The Oldest Person in the World

Sam Green // 2026 // USA // 87 min
Acclaimed filmmaker Sam Green (The Measure of All Things, T/F 2015; The Weather Underground, T/F 2010) revisits his enduring fascination with Guinness World Records, shaping a constellation of unexpected reflections on mortality, humanity, and what makes life worth living. “Every time the oldest person in the world dies, it’s in every newspaper and all over the internet,” Green observes. What fuels this collective fixation? What, if anything, is the secret to longevity? These questions propel his journey, from senior centers and living rooms to the Caribbean and the Guinness World Records headquarters in London; Green travels widely to meet record holders and celebrate their lives. Refreshingly honest, disarming, and existential, The Oldest Person in the World reminds us that human connection—and a sense of possibility—are essential. (AT)

Screenings

A: Thursday, Mar 5 / 4:00 PM / The Blue Note

B: Friday, Mar 6 / 3:45 PM / The Blue Note

C: Sunday, Mar 8 / 7:30 PM / Missouri Theatre
×

The Queen and the Smokehouse

Iga Lis // 2025 // Poland // 65 min
In Łeba, Poland, Miecia, lovingly referred to as the “Queen,” serves legendary fish, revealing the quiet power of locally owned institutions.

The Queen and the Smokehouse

Iga Lis // 2025 // Poland // 65 min
Every summer the sunny seaside beach destination of Łeba, Poland, receives around 800,000 visitors. Many make a point to stop at Mieci’s Smokehouse, a smoked fish stand owned and operated for the past 40 years by Miecia, the hard-working and diligent “Queen of Łeba.” Director Iga Lis’ charming feature debut follows Miecia as she devotes herself to running the stand and managing her small, tight-knit group of employees while pondering her life and legacy. This witty observational portrait captures a woman doing her best to balance the roles of entrepreneur, mother, grandmother, friend, and mentor while also striving to look after her business and personal needs. (MS)

Screenings

A: Thursday, Mar 5 / 4:00 PM / Windsor Auditorium

B: Friday, Mar 6 / 1:45 PM / Big Ragtag

C: Sunday, Mar 8 / 9:00 PM / Windsor Auditorium
×

Time and Water

Sara Dosa // 2026 // Iceland, USA // 90 min
Illuminating a family’s shared memories with Iceland’s first melted glacier caused by climate change, Time and Water portrays a writer trying to preserve his connection to the natural world.

Time and Water

Sara Dosa // 2026 // Iceland, USA // 90 min
“How do you say goodbye to what you thought you could never lose?” A person’s lifetime is finite; one can mourn and celebrate a life. But when the obituary is for a glacier, whose life ended due to humans, there is no comfort. Icelandic writer Andri Snær Magnason narrates this film, based on his 2019 book On Time and Water. He weaves Icelandic history and folklore with his autobiographical ties to Iceland’s glaciers, inviting us into his life with footage from Iceland’s national archives and his home videos. Landscape is genealogy, and too many ancestors are dying. The glaciers groan. Academy Award-nominated director Sara Dosa follows Fire of Love (T/F 2022) with this examination of family, ice, and water—and holding on to what we love while considering what we let melt. (LK)

Screenings

A: Friday, Mar 6 / 10:00 PM / Missouri Theatre

B: Saturday, Mar 7 / 6:00 PM /  The Blue Note

C: Sunday, Mar 8 / 5:00 PM / The Picturehouse
×

To Hold a Mountain

Biljana Tutorov & Petar Glomazić // 2026 // Serbia, France, Montenegro, Slovenia, Croatia // 105 min
In Montenegro’s remote highlands, shepherd Gara and her daughter Nada defend their ancestral mountain from a NATO training ground, driven by love for their land and way of life.

To Hold a Mountain

Biljana Tutorov & Petar Glomazić // 2026 // Serbia, France, Montenegro, Slovenia, Croatia // 105 min
Enraptured in the majestic mountainous valleys, deep in Montenegro’s Sinjajevina plateau, Gara and her daughter Nada carry forward their herding tradition, standing in quiet resistance to protect their village and the breathtaking pastures of the Balkan highlands. As cliffs and mountain walls slowly awaken, directors Biljana Tutorov and Petar Glomazić lend voice to this sacred terrain, revealing its caretakers as living extensions of the vast land itself. Gara devotes her days to raising Nada and tending their animals, moving in rhythm with the mountain that has shaped generations before her. Woven through her labor are memories held in the wind—of lives lived, seasons endured, and an ancestral bond to a landscape that is not merely inhabited, but deeply, enduringly loved. (AT)

Screenings

A: Friday, Mar 6 / 9:30 PM / Big Ragtag

B: Saturday, Mar 7 / 5:15 PM / The Globe

C: Sunday, Mar 8 / 9:00 AM / Windsor Auditorium
×

Tropical Park

Hansel Porras Garcia // 2025 // USA // 85 min
In one single take, a pair of siblings talk about racism, transphobia, past lives and, somehow, also fit in a driving lesson.

Tropical Park

Hansel Porras Garcia // 2025 // USA // 85 min
Cuban immigrant Frank and his sister Fanny reunite in Miami after living apart for 20 years. They head to a nearby park, where Frank teaches Fanny how to drive. Over the course of the afternoon, they spend time together and reflect on their years apart. In this experimental film shot in a single take, filmmaker Hansel Porras Garcia creates a poignant and riveting work that explores memory and empathy from the viewpoint of those who have sacrificed family, love, and connection trying to build a life for themselves in the U.S. The pair debate politics, gender identity, religion, relationships, family, and loss—sharing uncomfortable truths and displaying extraordinary vulnerability. Tropical Park serves as a testament to the peace found in acceptance. (MS)

Screenings

A: Friday, Mar 6 / 12:45 PM / Willy Wilson @ Ragtag

B: Saturday, Mar 7 / 12:00 PM / The Globe

C: Sunday, Mar 8 / 9:00 PM / The Globe 
×

True North

Michèle Stephenson // 2025 // USA, Canada // 96 min
A deep archival dig tells us about 1969’s Black student protests at Montreal’s Concordia University. In teaching us history, it teaches us about our presents.

True North

Michèle Stephenson // 2025 // USA, Canada // 96 min
Canada has long been sought out by Black diasporas when looking to rebuild their post-colonial lives. As did a group of young Haitians escaping the brutal regime of President François Duvalier and attending Montreal’s Sir George Williams University in the 1960s. When the land that promised to be a refuge showed itself to be a seat of extreme racism, the students demanded rightful equality and mounted a protest in 1969. The students faced police violence, demonization by the media, and even deportations. Michele Stephenson’s True North has the protest at its core, but she places it within the larger wave of resistance led by the Black diaspora in the 1960s. She sees the students as civil rights activists who compel us to think about today’s USA, where protesters continue to be attacked for demanding their rights. (BC)

Screenings

A: Saturday, Mar 7 / 12:00 PM / The Blue Note

B: Sunday, Mar 8 / 9:00 PM / Big Ragtag
×

What Comes from Sitting in Silence?

Sophie Schrago // 2026 // France, South Korea, Switzerland, USA // 76 min
Within the quiet confines of a small courtroom—the first women’s Islamic-law court in Mumbai—Judge Khatoon and her team guide families and empower women to speak out against violence. ⍟ World Premiere

What Comes from Sitting in Silence?

Sophie Schrago // 2026 // France, South Korea, Switzerland, USA // 76 min
A small building bears a blue sign: “Indian Muslim Women’s Organization.” Inside is a legal aid office, where a fan whirs tirelessly, and Judge Khatoon waits for her next client. With a patient and understanding camera, Shrago builds an intimate bond with Khatoon, who founded the first women’s Islamic court, defying entrenched conservative power structures alongside a resolute, woman-led team. In her feature debut, Shrago’s steadfast vision immerses us in the lived rhythm of the courtroom: couples locked in domestic disputes, women arriving in search of counsel and clarity, and Khatoon deftly navigating layers of tradition and complex dynamics to shape a space rooted in safety, dialogue, and care. Schrago lingers on these revelatory exchanges, asking us not just to watch, but to sit with the cases, sit with the women, and listen—deeply. (AT)

Screenings

A: Thursday, Mar 5 / 7:15 PM / Big Ragtag

B: Saturday, Mar 7 / 2:45 PM / Windsor Auditorium

C: Sunday, Mar 8 / 2:30 PM / The Picturehouse
×

Who Moves America

Yael Bridge // 2026 // USA // 87 min
Across America, UPS workers come together to demand better working conditions as they go about criss-crossing the world, delivering packages and connecting lives. ⍟ World Premiere

Who Moves America

Yael Bridge // 2026 // USA // 87 min
Following up on The Big Scary “S” Word (2020)  and When We Fight (2022), Yael Bridge continues her study of organized labor in the U.S. Starting in 2022, the film travels across the country, shadowing members of the UPS Teamsters union as 340,000 workers prepare to strike with their contract set to expire. They demand safety, better pay, humane hours, and job security. With the looming threat of a mobilization that could bring the country to a halt, the film examines the precarity of workers’ lives at the intersection of capitalism, climate change, and racism. It is a document of how the UPS Teamsters, the largest single bargaining unit in all of North America, organize and join forces to reclaim the power that, truly, keeps America moving. (BC)

Screenings

A: Friday, Mar 6 / 6:45 PM / The Picturehouse

B: Saturday, Mar 7 / 9:00 AM / Missouri Theatre

C: Sunday, Mar 8 / 8:15 PM / The Blue Note
×

SHORT FILMS

An Impossible Address

Suneil Sanzgiri // 2025 // USA, India, Angola // 38 min
An essay on Afro-Asian solidarity highlights the importance of interconnectedness in a rapidly changing world, through digital animation, 3D scanning and archival material. (Plays in U-Turn)

Ancestral Knowledge

Ruby Chasi // 2025 // Ecuador // 18 min
We accompany Napuruna midwives in the Ecuadorian Amazon as they assist a birth. (Plays before Hair, Paper, Water)

Auto Queens

Sraiyanti Haricharan // 2025 // India // 31 min
In Chennai, India we follow a tender and intimate friendship between two drivers from their state’s first women-led rickshaw union. (Plays in Work Area Ahead)

Born Secret

Riley Fitchpatrick // 2025 // USA // 19 min
Having grown up in Oak Ridge, Tennessee, a filmmaker digs into the legacy of a town founded on the prospect of nuclear war. (Plays in Work Area Ahead)

Buckskin

Mars Verrone // 2025 // USA // 17 min
A filmmaker looks to their grandfather, a forester inside academia and the U.S. Forest Service, asking how one life resists, survives, and protects community within institutions that reject you. (Plays in Proceed With Caution) ⍟ World Premiere 

Division

Paul Dallas // 2025 // USA // 14 min
Spring, 2025. Brooklyn, New York. One chapter closes and another begins. (Plays before Cuidadoras (Care)) ⍟ World Premiere

Endlings

María Luisa Santos // 2025 // USA // 16 min
A filmmaker wanders churches, DNA labs, and ghostly archives, asking what endures when what we love is vanishing. (Plays in Proceed With Caution) ⍟ World Premiere

Escalation

AJ Schnack // 2026 // USA // 36 min
Over a dozen U.S. journalists recount being targeted by police while covering protests, revealing escalating state efforts to suppress a free press. (Plays in Dangerous Curve) ⍟ World Premiere

Fred’s Basement Bijou

Michael T. Vollmann // 2025 // USA // 13 min
In Racine, Wisconsin, a former insurance agent builds a surreal and alternate reality in his home’s basement—a fully functioning 1920s movie palace. (Plays before The Queen and the Smokehouse) ⍟ World Premiere

Gatorville

Freddie Gluck // 2025 // USA // 19 min
As young siblings grow older, they contemplate a future that lies beyond the limits of their home—a tilapia farm turned into an alligator sanctuary. (Plays before Nuisance Bear)

High-Rise Pigs

Ang Siew Ching // 2025 // Finland // 15 min
In a massive pig farm in China, a dystopia unfolds; not in blood and gore but in a quiet and disarming way. (Plays in Proceed With Caution)

In Exchange for Flesh

Sandro Ramani & Corey Devon Arthur // 2025 // USA // 15 min
Through recorded calls, smuggled footage, and state archival, this unflinching record exposes a violent state-sanctioned prison practice known as “strip frisk”. (Plays in Dangerous Curve)

Jism (Body)

Husain Qaizar & Saad Zuberi // 2025 // Pakistan // 13 min
When aspiring male models get photographed in Pakistan, they end up pushing the limits of socially-decreed gender roles and taboos. (Plays before Jaripeo)

L’mina

Randa Maroufi // 2025 // France, Morocco, Qatar // 26 min
In Jerada, Morocco, retired miners pose for a portrait, then reenact the dangerous underground work that still continues—clandestinely—because no other livelihood exists. (Plays in Proceed With Caution)

Land of Cold

Hervé Demers // 2025 // Canada // 17 min
Immigrants from Sub-Saharan Africa have chosen to start their lives over north of the 49th parallel. Here, in the vast expanses of Northern Canada, they reflect on the challenges and splendors of a season they’ve never yet experienced: winter. (Plays in U-Turn) ⍟ World Premiere

No Mean City

Ross McClean // 2025 // United Kingdom // 15 min
The switch from sodium-vapor street lights to LED street lights reveals an Irish community holding onto tradition while technology changes daily life. (Plays in Proceed With Caution)

One Last Order

Lauren DeFilippo & Sam Soko // 2025 // USA // 21 min
On her final shift at a Gainesville drive-thru, a beloved cashier is surprised with the day’s earnings, as a town lines up to say goodbye. (Plays in Work Area Ahead) ⍟ World Premiere

Páa’tenehu (Wait for Me)

Thiago Zanato // 2025 // México // 11 min
As a storm batters Southeast México, a family shelters in their butcher shop, listening to their grandmother tell stories, and clinging to hope for their missing father. (Plays in U-Turn) ⍟ World Premiere

Pass Time

Jj Measer // 2025 // USA // 16 min
Set against one of the most contentious U.S. elections, PASS TIME reflects on how news and political rhetoric seep quietly into everyday life. (Plays in Dangerous Curve) ⍟ World Premiere

Same Water

Martine Granby // 2025 // USA // 21 min
Archival footage and research come together to resurrect the memory of Florida’s Paradise Park, a waterpark that was a site for Black middle class leisure in Jim Crow America. (Plays in U-Turn) ⍟ World Premiere

Sole (얼)

Haneol Lee // 2025 // USA // 12 min
An observational portrait of a Korean American cobbler in Nashville, revealing how pride in craft becomes a way of being. (Plays in Work Area Ahead) ⍟ World Premiere

Sudakas

Ricardo Betancourt // 2025 // USA // 13 min
Ricardo shares the realities of working a low-wage job in the U.S. through the lived experiences of his mother, a college-educated immigrant from Venezuela. (Plays in Work Area Ahead)

The Boys and the Bees

Arielle Knight // 2025 // USA // 19 min
A farm in Georgia paints a picture of pastoral idyll as little boys learn lessons in life and love from their beekeeping parents. (Plays before Eyes of Ghana)

The Hotline

Ricki Stern & Jesse Sweet // 2026 // USA // 36 min
Portrait of an anonymous overdose hotline where people call before using, and volunteers stay on the line, racing against time, forging collective hope amid addiction. (Plays in Dangerous Curve)

You Do Not Exist

Dwayne LeBlanc // 2026 // USA // 8 min
As planes fill and empty the sky above, a man lies in his garden letting his mind wander and collect memories. (Plays before TCB: The Toni Cade Bambara School of Organizing)

Program Archives:

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