Warning: Contains extremely graphic content, including footage of an execution.
Gualtiero Jacopetti and Franco Prosperi’s widely maligned and misunderstood follow-up to Mondo Cane, Africa Addio begins with the ceremonious exit of the British government from Nairobi, Kenya, on Dec. 12, 1963, and proceeds to offer a collage of scenes from around the African continent at the moment when all but the most stubborn of European powers have begun to pull up stakes on their colonial holdings. Occasional bits of comic relief—a public slide-show teaching a new black supremacist curriculum, tribal warriors receiving government-issue boxer shorts from the Sudanese Legion of Decency, a couple of lions being interrupted in flagrante delicto by tourists honking their car horns—are few and far apart. The presiding tone of Africa Addio is one of an all-encompassing mournfulness for both the departing colonials and for their former black subjects who, as the voice-over postulates, have been left to their own devices without sufficient preparation for self-governance. (NP)
Screens for free as a part of the Neither/Nor Film Series. Neither/Nor is presented by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences.

Beautiful and messy, with characters intertwining both physically and emotionally, All These Sleepless Nights (formerly Secret Screening Tangerine) is an exhilarating plunge into the late night reveries and shenanigans of two Warsaw twenty-somethings. Nimbly photographed by T/F alum Michal Marczak (At the Edge of Russia) with a kinetic lens and full of images rich and tactile enough to feel 3D, here is a movie that perfectly understands what it means to not be just about, but of, its subjects. As relationships swirl faster than you can follow and everyday dramas come crashing like waves, you too can be a voyeur imagining or remembering this moment in time. (DW)

On the edges of Australia’s northern territory lies Ramingining, a small rural town dotted with contradictions. Actor and local Aborigine David Gulpilil, our sardonic tour guide, calmly leads us through a landscape in flux: the dusty-red sun-baked streets, vibrant green roadside flora, Aboriginal ceremonies, alien government infrastructure and a growing trash pile just outside of town. Gulpilil becomes our mediator, relating the experiences of those living in this place to those merely watching it, and pointedly demonstrating the inadequacies of one culture trying to explain another. Turning these cross-cultural challenges into a virtue, filmmaker Molly Reynolds elegantly moves amongst her subjects, a self-aware presence carefully exposing the enormity of the divide. Plays with “Everything and More” (dir. Rachel Rose, 12 min.) (DK)

JT LeRoy, gender-fluid child of a West Virginia prostitute, burned brightly like the transgressive love child of Flannery O’Connor and Truman Capote. T/F alum Feuerzeig (The Devil & Daniel Johnston) strikes gold again in the film’s central character, a literary wunderkind in the late ‘90s with an obsessive penchant for self-documentation and the ability to brilliantly exploit a complex web of alter egos. Feuerzeig builds a hyper-kinetic provocation about the meaning of persona, identity and gender, and initiates us into the strange practices of the cultural elite who, from Bono to Gus Van Sant were enchanted by an outré individual who embodied their bohemian ideal. Befitting its title, Author explores the mysterious power and (potentially destructive) impulse to concoct characters in fiction and in real life. (PS)

Inspiring mentors and idealized educators abound in fiction — from To Sir With Love to Stand and Deliver. But principal Vonda Viland of Black Rock High School in the California desert is the real deal. Directors Keith Fulton and Louis Pepe (the brilliant Lost in La Mancha) document the vibrant, highly watchable Viland as she cajoles, prods, and sometimes prevails in a series of dramas. Will new teen father Lee be able to come into his own while trying to do the right thing? Can Joey overcome his family’s legacy of drug addiction? Forthright and creatively told The Bad Kids forces us to stare between the strands of our societal safety net, balancing despair and hope as some kids fall through while others are caught. Fulton and Pepe have created a tribute to the essential work of caring adults and the ongoing difficulty of finding one’s place in the world. (PS)

Presented by the University of Missouri

With restrained anger, Chinese filmmaker Zhao Liang brings us on a staggering journey into a modern-day Dante’s Inferno, the pitch-black mines of Inner Mongolia. Behemoth initially possesses a terrifying, widescreen grandeur, as explosions ravage the land and sheep stream down the newly formed slopes. Then as this mesmerizing movie digs deeper into the flames, the focus shifts to the workers toiling in this merciless profession. We pull up close, studying a miner as she methodically removes soot from her skin. Zhao carefully arranges these scenes into a gripping, disturbing travelogue. “Life’s greatest sorrow,” the narrator notes, “is to live with desire yet without hope.” By the time it’s reached its startling, unforgettable finale, Behemoth has honed its fury into something every bit as powerful as its industrial-age subject. (CB)

Ornella and Teresa, 68 and 89 years old respectively, see one another every day in their small town of Rovereto, Italy. With 21 years between them, Ornella is the caretaker, Teresa the vibrant beauty who is regressing due to memory loss and mourning her fading sex appeal. When they were younger, it was Teresa who dedicated herself to Ornella, partly in an attempt to protect her from a deeply buried family scandal. Filmmaker Manu Gerosa, Ornella’s son, noticed that after a year of filming the sisters’ daily lives, his Aunt Teresa was becoming more lost and distressed, so mother and son decide to coax her secret to the surface. But the real revelation in this charming portrait, whimsical and melancholy by turns, is the unending bond of love and devotion shared between sisters. (PC)

Kirsten Johnson draws on her personal archive of remarkable footage gathered over the course of two decades as one of the most sought-after nonfiction cinematographers. Reframing and reshuffling this material, she focuses on the people and places that may not have made it into someone else’s film, but touched her in a profound way. The result is a transcendent film – part visual memoir, part journalistic exploration – seeking insights into the complexities of “truth” that live inside her frames. KJ immerses us in episodes from her globe-trotting adventures – Jasper, Texas; Kabul, Afghanistan; Sarajevo, Bosnia — and shares very personal footage of her mother, on her own journey through the last devastating stages of Alzheimer’s. After spending time with this touching, intimate, inspiring and funny film, you’ll never watch non-fiction cinema the same again. (PC) Preceded by a provocation by Geoff Dyer.

Warning: Contains graphic content
Des Morts begins with an American mortician in a crisp white lab coat grooming a dead body—the first of many visible herein—cleaning the hands with the intent efficiency of a trained manicurist. Alain Pierre’s electronic dirge scores the scene, one of the few instances of non-diegetic music in this otherwise stark, undecorated film. Operating in the globe-trotting spirit of Mondo Cane, Des Morts visits altogether six countries and three continents. We see funeral processions wending their way towards village cemeteries in Zéno’s native Wallonia and the theatrical ululation at a South Korean wake. But if the filmmakers’ initial schematic plan was to establish a binary dichotomy reiterating the Jessica Mitford/ Evelyn Waugh line of deploring the American Way of Death, it was complicated by the material they’ve gathered, and their evident empathy. (NP) Screens for free as a part of the Neither/Nor Film Series. Neither/Nor is presented by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences.

Death row inmate Nick Yarris sits in a chair, a single light brightening his face and casting starkly precise shadows. He is hyper-aware of the camera. Though this interview scene is a familiar one in documentary, what Yarris next unleashes on the audience is far from expected. While serving his time, Yarris became an autodidact, teaching himself the power of words. Putting this knowledge to full use in the film, he spins an intense soliloquy full of unbelievable fates and flourishes of philosophical beauty, blurring fact and fiction into a palpable narrative of cunning verbal acumen. Is he really innocent? Surrounded by haunting, brusque imagery and an immersive sound design, this contemporary folktale morphs into an epic, edge-of-your-seat thriller. (DK)

A faded European film icon is ready for his close-up. Helmut Berger, known for his work with Luchino Visconti, Claude Chabrol and Francis Ford Coppola invites us into his Salzburg apartment where he lives among the mementos of his fabulous past. The tiny bedroom is wallpapered with inscribed celebrity photos, the veneer furniture littered with trophy relics. Dried pepper strings hang from the kitchen ceiling next to hand-jiggered electrical wiring. The relationship between the filmmaker and his subject becomes increasingly entangled. Vodka-saturated, Berger finally, defiantly, lets his feelings be known. And, when Andreas Horvath takes a filming breather, Berger’s campaign intensifies, eventually enlisting his faithful cleaning lady. This filthy freefall into the wreckage of celebrity — John Waters’ favorite film of 2015 — is as darkly funny as it is revolting. Consider yourself warned. (AV)

It’s 2002 in Baghdad and all anyone can talk about is the impending U.S. invasion. One Baghdad family prepares for the worst. As their Paris-based relative Abbas Fahdel films, they dig a drinking well in the yard, bake a surplus of dried bread and tape up their windows. But the mood is not always so somber. Say, for instance, when the family’s youngest members all giggle uncontrollably after someone points out how their gas masks resemble diapers. Fahdel filmed his family for months prior to the invasion and then returned shortly after as the occupation began. One tragedy after another strikes, causing Fahdel to sit on the footage for more than a decade before recovering enough balance and perspective to craft a warm, indelible family portrait and a landmark contribution to cinema and history. (CB) Runtime includes intermission.

The singular Deborah Stratman (O’er the Land) spins an experimental counter-narrative to how the Midwest was won, from false gods to the violence of war, with stories geographically scattered across the Prairie State. Slyly shifting between locales, she touches on themes of faith, technology and transience, all the while exploring the sometimes narrow divide between the rational and the supernatural. Using every cinematic arrow in her quiver – reenactments, 16mm observational and archival footage, text and voiceover – Stratman’s tour-de-force essay singlehandedly illuminates and reframes our past. The result is a mythos located somewhere between recorded history and the soaring imagination of its author. (PC)

Compared to his overachieving siblings, James Foley grew up as a fairly ordinary boy with very little ambition. Then he discovered the satisfying accomplishment and profound sense of purpose in reporting from active war zones. From then on, Foley’s life’s path was set before him, as he became the kind of hero we all hope to have in our lives.In this fateful tale, director Brian Oakes gets under the skin of his subject thoroughly, culminating in a public execution (never shown) that caught the attention of the entire world. Oakes’ luxuriant, comprehensive narrative recounts an American son’s life and times with love and admiration from his family, friends, and the fellow journalists who were imprisoned with him during the last year of his life. Jim’s life burns brightly once again. (PC) Presented by Veterans United Home Loans

In 1974, a Sarasota, Florida newscaster Christine Chubbuck shocked morning viewers and coworkers by pulling out a gun and shooting herself in the head on the air. Forty years later, in an attempt to investigate how history has remembered her, rising film star Kate Lyn Sheil agrees to portray the journalist in a film. In order to prepare, the actress travels to Chubbuck’s hometown. Gumshoe-style, she conducts interviews with a variety of subjects, from a gun store employee to a fellow news anchor to a family friend. Created by the ever-slippery, four-time T/F veteran Robert Greene (Actress), these episodes play less as fact-gathering missions than they do soul-searching expeditions. While the on-screen participants reveal their preconceptions and deepest secrets, the many ethical quandaries surrounding the role build to a climax for the equally tormented Sheil. (CB)

Presented by the University of Missouri

Warning: Contains extremely graphic content
The Killing of America begins with a channel-surf atrocity exhibition and a tour of Los Angeles by night which encompasses helicopter views and crime scenes. Voiceover stalwart Chuck Riley, reading the narration in an impassive, clipped style, introduces the basic premise: “America is the only industrialized nation with the high murder rate of countries at civil war.” The culprit? “Guns, and more guns.” From a slo-mo replay of the then still-recent non-fatal shooting of Ronald Reagan, we move along to a reproduction of the events leading up to perhaps the most-viewed home movie in history, the Zapruder film. This, we’re informed, was “the day the American dream of freedom was wedded to the American nightmare of murder.” In its call for stricter gun laws the film is nothing if not coherent, and prescient. (NP) Screens for free as a part of the Neither/Nor Film Series. Neither/Nor is presented by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences.

A merry band of Afghani marauders — none old enough to qualify for a driver’s license — extort heroin from locals, scavenge old Russian tanks for scrap metal, swap landmines for gemstones and cheerfully argue over who gets to eat the brains and eyeballs of a roasted goat. Pieter-Jan De Pue shot this extraordinary 16mm film over the course of seven years, creating and capturing a world that is intensely emotional, at times terrifyingly immersive and always gloriously visual. Interspersed between the boys’ adventures are visits to a U.S. Army encampment carved into the side of a mountain cliff. But when the visiting armies pack up and return home, the fallout of the warfare visited upon the country becomes clear. Afghanistan has been occupied by a new breed of canny, fearless survivors who vow to rebuild what has been destroyed. (JS)

This empathetic precursor to Starless Dreams features seven Iranian juvenile inmates who spill their secrets and their passions to True Vision award winner Mehrdad Oskouei. Housed in a special wing for those younger than 15 years of age, their crimes range from pickpocketing to motorcycle theft. Some have been drug addicts since childhood. They enjoy a deep and caring camaraderie with one another — except for the occasional fist fight. When Oskouei shows up curious to hear their stories, they readily accept him as one of their own and confide about love, God, their deepest fears and their wildest dreams. And then unexpectedly, a brief trip hints at an elusive freedom. (PC)

Life, Animated is a joyous, ebullient take on parenting. But things didn’t seem that positive to Ron and Cornelia Suskind when their son Owen completely retreated from the world as a toddler. Diagnosed with severe autism, Owen kept to himself, watching Disney films in the family basement. After years of complete silence from Owen, Ron noticed something familiar in the gibberish that he overheard Owen muttering. Thus began a journey that would come to include a best-selling book and eventually be enshrined in This American Life. Oscar-winning director Roger Ross Williams moves the story to the present day, following Owen as he prepares to move out on his own. Dazzling, expertly crafted, and polished to a fine gloss, this real-life fairytale urges us to seize inspiration when it appears. (DW)

Presented by Missouri Kids Count & Family and Community Trust (FACT)

The second feature from director Chelsea McMullan (My Prairie Home), this tale deftly interweaves sex, murder and organized crime around a family story of betrayal and rediscovery. It hinges on the story of John Hanmer, a charming rogue of a man, who blithely abandoned his children Shannon and Michael. Acting like modern-day Bobbsy Twins, Shannon and Michael embark on a journey to Thailand to find out what happened to their father. This is a ripping good tale, and McMullan — never afraid to embrace the weird in an emotionally authentic way — thrillingly juggles multiple storylines. Shot with lush style, this one is loads of fun to watch. (CB) Preceded by a provocation by David Rees.

Warning: Contains graphic content
Released in 1962, Mondo Cane is a leering transcontinental tour, stitching together material shot around the globe: Knee-walking drunks in Hamburg’s Reeperbahn Strasse; a high-end restaurant in New York City where the hoi polloi gather to dine on insects; the tragic effects of atomic radiation on the wildlife of the Bikini Atoll; and the effects of the bikini on sailors on shore leave. Frequently the film takes bounding leaps from one side of the planet to the other, prompted by associative connections between the civilized and the primitive world. Rather than chastening the savage with the example of superior civilization, the cheek-and-jowl positioning of images from the industrialized and undeveloped world serves to show the continuing importance of rites and rituals in both.The purpose of this, it should be said, is not necessarily to elevate the lowly savage, but to place the civilized on the same level—that of a vast kennel, a dog’s world. (NP) Screens for free at 8:30pm Wednesday, March 2 as a part of the Neither/Nor Film Series. Preceded by 8pm reception. Neither/Nor is presented by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences.

True/False favorite Morgan Neville (20 Feet from Stardom) returns, documenting a uniquely charming musical adventure. Back in 1998, acclaimed cellist Yo-Yo Ma turned away from his classical upbringing to create a freewheeling All-Star team of global musicians, with virtuosos on instruments as varied as the Japanese Shakuhachi flute, the Mongolian horsehead fiddle, and the Armenian aduduk. He called this hand-picked group the Silk Road Ensemble. Since then, the merry band has brought its nomadic party everywhere, creating incredibly beautiful music together. Neville treats us to the group’s marvelous talents, rich stories and outsized personalities. An uplifting mission to connect disparate parts of the world, The Music of Strangers is a feast for the eyes, ears and spirit. (DW)

Presented by the Sinquefield Charitable Foundation

Three established filmmakers and a nine-year-old demonstrate right and wrong approaches to depicting on-screen violence. In “Riot” (dir. Nathan Silver, 4 min.), a power-hungry child is inspired to try his hand at filmmaking after watching footage of the Los Angeles riots. “Bring Me the Head of Tim Horton” (dirs. Guy Maddin, Evan Johnson, Galen Johnson, 31 min.) sees the iconoclastic filmmaker Guy Maddin infiltrating the set of an Afghanistan war drama directed by “the great Canadian populist,” Paul Gross, and exposing its rotten core. “My Aleppo” (dir. Melissa Langer, 18 min.) is set in South Africa, where a young family of Syrian refugees huddle around a laptop in their one-bedroom apartment, awaiting news from home. Finally, “Impression of a War” (dir. Camilo Restrepo, 26 min.) offers a chilling, unrelenting tour of Colombian violence that ricochets from dye-stained rivers to fruit carts to underground punk shows.

It is no exaggeration to say that Norman Lear’s sitcom empire revolutionized American culture in the 1970s, from the controversial All in the Family to the feminist Maude and groundbreaking African-American show The Jeffersons. Heidi Ewing & Rachel Grady (Detropia, 12th & Delaware) put a fresh spin on the celebrity bio-pic, focusing mostly on Lear’s salad days while nimbly gliding through other sections of Lear’s life, including his early days with Lewis & Martin and later political work with People for the American Way. A jazzy collage of a uniquely creative life, the film is rich with visual tricks and a percussive Birdman-esque soundtrack. Of course, Lear isn’t a flawless hero: Good Times star Esther Rolle and others reveal Lear’s very human complexities. But in this era of cheap, profit-obsessed corporate storytelling, Lear’s career provides a powerful reminder of the potential of progressive media. (PS) Preceded by a provocation by Jae Rhim Lee.

Filming over one summer at an all-female family gathering in an old house in Argentina, Julia Pesce invites us inside a secret society. Unfolding with literary quietude, the film opens hidden doorways into the hearts and minds of each individual woman — the pastoral beauty of the setting reverberating with the natural rhythms of the women’s own bodies. We encounter these women in some of their most intimate moments, gently exploring the pains and joys of mind, body, and spirit. Maintaining a frank and loving gaze, Pesce celebrates what it is to be female in a family of lavish and exuberant women. (PC)

Sergio and his father Simão haven’t seen one another for more than 20 years. As the 2014 World Cup is about to begin, the filmmaker returns from Madrid to his hometown of São Paulo hoping to spend the month watching games with his dad. But as the days go by, it seems less and less likely that they’ll find themselves inside a stadium. Instead, they watch the games in packed bars or observe the commotion from Simão’s rickety car. Things take a turn, making Sergio’s decision to reunite with his estranged father feel uncanny in its timeliness. Using mere fragments of a deeply suppressed and stoic father/son relationship against the peripheral euphoria of the football matches, the film forgoes the superficial pleasures of sport for something altogether richer. (PC)

Director Roberto Minervini takes us deep into the harsh, lush backwoods of Louisiana to meet its denizens in their most ordinary and their most intimate moments. Mark gets down on his knees in a pond, tenderly pleading for his girlfriend Lisa to be his bitch for life. Later, his sister wraps a comforter around him as he stands, frozen and heroin-fried, outside of her house. Jim pumps up his gun-toting militia trainees with a devastating critique of U.S. intervention in the Middle East and spray paints anti-Obama obscenities on a car husk before killing it off with machine-gun fire. There is so much ugly on display here — addiction, bigotry, zealotry — but it never overwhelms the deep (though sometimes deeply twisted) love of family, of nature and of country. (AV)

Set against the hyper-masculine culture of Pacific Northwest logging towns, The Pearl sensitively follows four middle-aged transgender women as they struggle to find recognition, refuge, and love. Krystal and Jodie were brothers who kept their identities secret from one another for years until an explosive argument culminated in cathartic confessions. After attending a training camp, Krystal wholeheartedly embraces life as a woman while Jodie continues to struggle with a career on the road where she only feels safe as a man. Nina wrestles with how to tell her wife of nearly 40 years. And Amy prepares for surgery while trying to mother her younger roommates in a shambly group home. Gorgeous and gentle, The Pearl offers both sadness and joy, and, always, love. (IK)

Peter Dunning is a wrecked man, but he’s not looking for your pity. An almost Biblical character, this Vermont-based “back-to-the-lander” is a foul-mouthed, spellbinding raconteur whose Mile Hill Farm is both a private paradise and a personal hell of his own making. Together, he and director Tony Stone create a modern-day rural tragedy, tracing Mile Hill’s gradual downfall. Finding themselves functioning as farmhands, counselors, supporters and enablers, the filmmakers punctuate Peter’s tales with evocative, marvelously photographed images of farm life. The unfolding of this nuanced story mixes naked honesty and mythmaking as Peter performs and re-performs his life for the camera. (PC)

Amid goofy cat videos, makeup tutorials and other assorted detritus, YouTube is swarming with unknown singer-songwriters just waiting to be discovered. New Orleans resident Samantha “Princess Shaw” Montgomery is one of the thousands participating in this low-odds lottery. When she’s not working as a caregiver in a nursing home, Princess uploads stunning original a capella songs and vulnerable video diaries. No one seems to take notice; her videos never garner more than a few dozen views. But what if one of those anonymous souls could somehow make a difference? Uplifting and clear-sighted, the ingeniously conceived Presenting Princess Shaw is a bracing look at a massive talent waiting to be unleashed if only the world would stop and give her a chance. (CB) Preceded by a provocation from Dr. Mehret Mandefro.

In Appalachia, the disappearance of the mining industry leads to a community hungry for employment, which it finds in prisons. In the Bronx, an ex-con breaks down the system’s backwards rules for care packages. Closer to home in St. Louis County, Black residents are caught up in a ludicrous maelstrom of endless tickets for trivial offenses. Brett Story’s stunning essay film travels around the United States, teasing out our country’s unhealthy addiction to mass incarceration, with some heartbreaking results (in one scene, a woman describes how an unsecured trash can lid led to a night in jail). Infuriating and surreal, The Prison in Twelve Landscapes lucidly reveals the prison-industrial complex as an alluring drug that America just can’t quit. (IK)

Tolstoy said happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way. In these stunning shorts, we learn about three of those ways. It’s been five years since Lulú lost her eight-year-old son and husband in a kidnapping incident. All that was left was her husband’s shoe. With tremendous poise and her daughter by her side, she continues to search in the haunting Mexican short “Ausencias” (dir. Tatiana Huezo, 29 min.). The tender, masterfully directed “Varicella” (dir. Victor Kossakovsky, 27 min.) brings us to a ballet school in Saint Petersburg, where two young sisters are pushed to their limits. The personal odyssey and ghost story “32 + 4” (dir. Chan Hau Chun, 32 min.) finds a young Hong Kong filmmaker autopsying a complex web of family secrets.

In this imaginative autobiography, the director draws from a dusty cargo of video tapes to reflect on his peculiar upbringing. As a young boy, he experiences massive upheaval and finds himself part of an eclectic, makeshift community. While his grown-up neighbors partake in political shouting matches, our protagonist searches for love and finds it in an elusive classmate. Full of unforgettable characters, SS Aqua celebrates the ways in which memory can help heal childhood wounds and how sometimes life imitates the stories we tell ourselves. Plays with “Girls and Boys” (dir. Tomasz Gubernat, 14 min.) (PC)

This blood-boiling, prophetic essay explores the unintended consequences of free gifts. It also introduces us to modern-day highwaymen seemingly immune from the rules. Pivoting from bedrooms to backrooms, the director connects the dots furiously, like a detective working against the clock. The tone is both understated yet fiercely indignant. Against the backdrop of grand anxieties — “the wolf is at the door” says one influential speaker — and the elixirs prescribed to quell them, SS Navy shows us careening heedlessly into a future not of our own making. (PS)

In this intimate, free-floating glimpse into the lives of a frank and self-aware cohort, an endearing cast runs rampant through a city, dancing on rooftops, making out in the park, and fighting to the death for cigarettes and hip flasks. This is immersive visual storytelling at its finest — eye-level intrigue propelled by kinetic camerawork with a depth of field that belies the characters’ inner turmoil. (DW) Preceded by a provocation by Jillian Mayer

Since Sir Edmund Hillary became the first Westerner to ascend Mount Everest (Chomolungma to the locals), others have followed with hopes of standing atop the world’s highest peak. In recent years, seasoned alpinists have gradually been replaced by pay-to-summit tourists. The Sherpa, indigenous people of the Himalayas, have served as guides and porters for years, doing the heavy work of helping these expeditions reach the top. But, as the profile of those who visit Everest shifts, they have been asked to do increasingly dangerous tasks. And, in the 2014 climbing season, disaster struck. With breathtaking cinematography, director Peedom deftly weaves high-altitude adventure with an equally high-stakes labor struggle. Amidst tragedy, the Sherpa push back against the overreaching Westerners. What results is a penetrating portrait of culture clash set against a vertiginous backdrop. (DW)

Closing night screening presented by Columbia Daily Tribune.

The 14-year-old Sonita dreams of another life. An Afghan refugee in Iran who works as a cleaner at the refugee center that doubles as a school, she imagines herself a rapper — the spiritual daughter of Michael Jackson and Rihanna. Not exactly your typical refugee. So when her mother summons her home to sell her as a bride, Sonita looks for any way out of a future she dreads. Enter Rokhsareh Ghaemmagami, an intrepid filmmaker torn between documenting Sonita’s struggle and her protective desire to help. This tension elevates the film by calling into question many assumptions about the making of documentary films, producing in their journey together one of the most joyful, inspiring stories ever to play at True/False. (DW)

Presented by The Crossing

This patriotic program includes potent explorations of gentrification, gun violence and marginalized communities, before culminating in a good, old-fashioned country song. In “Good White People” (dirs. Erick Stoll and Jarrod Welling-Cann, 15 min.), we visit an historically Black neighborhood of Cincinnati, where a family closes shop as new residents roll in on their Segways and craft beer carts. “Bisonhead” (dir. Elizabeth Lo, 9 min.) takes place in Yellowstone, where a family of Ponderai Native Americans attempts to preserve their treaty hunting rights. Harrowing police scanner audios are played over tranquil landscapes in “Speaking is Difficult” (dir. AJ Schnack, 14 min.), an urgent treatise on America’s gun epidemic. In “Nothing Human” (dir. Tom Rosenberg, 17 min.), private investigator Louis Akin walks us through a life-size reconstruction of an American military base shooting. Finally, “These C*cksucking Tears” (dir. Dan Taberski, 16 min.) introduces us to gay country singer Patrick Haggerty whose landmark album Lavender Country was released forty years ago.

In this emotionally charged masterpiece, Iranian director and True Vision honoree Mehrdad Oskouei works his singular magic once again. Here he embeds himself at a detention center in the city of Tehran with a community of young women under the age of eighteen. All of them are serving time for profoundly serious crimes — including drug trafficking, stealing and manslaughter. In vividly raw encounters, they relate their lives outside the prison walls. Even though they are fed up with being incarcerated, most feel conflicted about leaving the relative safety of their confinement where they have found community, and stepping back out into society, into rough circumstances. But the approach of the New Year celebration day sparks dreams of reunions with what they have left behind. (PC)

Presented by Restoration Eye Care

Abou and his friends stand on a sparse Moroccan hillside looking out at the tiny Spanish enclave of Melilla. All that stands between them and their El Dorado are three towering fences. German filmmakers Moritz Siebert and Estephan Wagner entrusted Abou with a camera to film life in the makeshift camp the men call home. Forget the headlines, the statistics, and the politics of global migration: Through Abou’s lens, the desperation of tens of thousands of refugees to reach Europe becomes tangible. From the inside, Abou casually captures the danger and the camaraderie, the boredom and the hope, the quasi-normality and the extraordinary singularity of life in this limbo land. Along the way, against all odds, Those Who Jump scales great heights to become one of 2016’s most engrossing pieces of nonfiction. (JH)

A chamber piece par excellence, Thy Father’s Chair is undoubtedly messy on the surface, but bubbling underneath is an uncommon grace. We begin with the Orthodox twins Abraham and Shraga, forced by their upstairs neighbors to open their derelict Brooklyn apartment. Enter a professional cleaning service. But they are no working schmucks. These are counselors of a higher order. Their rescue mission cuts to one of the deepest questions known to humanity: how best to effect change in those around us? And incidentally, what to do with their father’s chair? A chair so sacred it has only known one tuchus. Both wry and warm-hearted, Thy Father’s Chair has a Talmudic appreciation for life’s contradictions. Plays with “Bacon and God’s Wrath” (dir. Sol Friedman, 9 min.) (JG) Preceded by a provocation by Sam Green.

New Zealand’s journalist-of-the-weird David Farrier sets off to do a quick story about a fringe sport known as “competitive endurance tickling.” But his innocent queries are first met with escalating threats, and then with a visit from edgy American attorneys. To a journalist like Farrier, this is the waving of the red cape. More bemused than intimidated, Farrier and co-director Dylan Reeve head to the U.S. to try and meet the shadowy figures behind the sport, only to find themselves immersed in a twisty tale of obsession, exploitation, sex, blackmail and psychosis. Mixing Raymond Chandler with Michael Moore, the edge-of-seat Tickled is a sharp detective tale that attempts to sweep away the cobwebs from one of the endless, bizarre corners of the Internet. (JS)

WORK-IN-PROGRESS Ramona Diaz, known for her riveting cinematic stories, reaches new heights, as she takes us to the Philippines’ largest maternity ward. Using her expansive field of vision and open ears, Diaz immerses us: up and down the narrow rows, bed upon bed; revealing the soggy heat and constant discomfort; celebrating the quiet joy of a newborn being laid on her mother’s chest. Then she adds a dash of wit and surrealism, including an on-duty head nurse announcing her daily hygiene lesson over the floor’s loudspeaker. Diaz captures the heart and soul of a culture grappling with the stressors of an exploding population. And yet, our heroes, the harried but dedicated nurses, provide the newborns an unexpectedly warm welcome into the world. (PC)

Politicians these days do not have it easy — they must expect to sacrifice all privacy once they enter the brutal political arena. But the tragicomedy of disgraced congressman Anthony Weiner went well beyond that, as his outsized ambition met other outsized appetites that begat one self-inflicted fiasco after another. Filmmakers Steinberg and Kriegman were uncommonly well-positioned — insiders during Weiner’s New York City mayoral battle — capturing an epic political meltdown of historic proportions. With uncanny access to the candidate, his wife Huma Abedin (Hillary Clinton’s closest aide), and his wobbly campaign team, Weiner plays out like a ripping, rollicking farce. (PC) [Note: Extended Q&A with the directors and AJ Schnack after 37c]

Presented by The Law Firm of Holder Susan Slusher Oxenhandler

Governments fight mosquitoes, monkeys and each other, while their citizens search for love. What’s the use in trying? Our delightful yet hopeless program opens with “In Defense of the Rocket” (dir. Martin Ginestie, 5 min.), in which the Palestinian-Israeli peace talks take the shape of a symphony. The negotiation niceties grind to a halt in “Territory” (dir. Eleanor Mortimer, 17 min.), a transfixing, up-close look at the monkeys of Gibraltar as they dodge government peashooters. Then to Krakow, where in “Love, Love” (dir. Grzegorz Zariczny, 22 min.), an aspiring hairdresser chats with her elusive online lover. In “Chekhov” (dir. Jack Dunphy, 4 min.), a brother-sister conversation takes an unexpected turn. We end with “El Enemigo” (dir. Aldemar Matias, 28 min.), an absurdist look at Cuban bureaucracy starring Mayelín, who roams Havana’s streets, handing out citation after citation.