Screening the works of emerging talents alongside contemporary masters—and orbiting issues ranging from religious transformation to extremism, early cinema to capitalism, marginalization to the embrace of intimacy—Docs in Focus showcases some of the most innovative filmmakers working nonfiction today, including works from Palestine, Syria, Iran, Romania, Israel, and the United States.
Guy Davidi and Emad Burnat • 2011 • Palestine-Israel
A personal portrait of life in the occupied West Bank––a Palestinian farmer turned filmmaker documents life in his West Bank village as Israeli settlements grow closer and closer.
A testament to the notion that the personal is inherently poli...
David Mueller and Lynn Salt • USA • 2010
At the age of 5, Dennis Banks was taken from his grandparents and relocated to a federal boarding school, where the prime objective was to rid American Indian children of their culture, traditions, and heritage. Experiencing the ripple effects of his co...
Alex Mar • USA • 2010
Chuck lives in the South Dakota badlands. While he and his wife struggle to make ends meet, they find meaning in their Lakota Sioux heritage, making great effort to preserve their rituals, such as sundancing. In Northern California, Morpheus, a pagan priestess, cultivate...
Canada • Jennifer Baichwal, Nicholas de Pencier & Edward Burtynsky • 2018
Humanity's damage to ecological systems becomes poignantly clear.
Gianfranco Rosi • Italy • 2008
Roughly 200 miles southeast of Los Angeles, in the wild desert of Southern California, is ad hoc town without electricity or running water. Some denizens are just passing through, others are here to stay. While disparate circumstances have brought them here, all...
Richard Press • 2010 • USA
Richard Press' gentle and moving portrait of the celebrated street-fashion photographer doubles as a study on the changing city itself.
Tania Cypriano • USA • 2020
New York's Mount Sinai Hospital houses the groundbreaking Center for Transgender Medicine and Surgery, a mecca for quality gender-affirming care. Here Dr. Jess Ting works with transgender and non-binary patients to navigate their own particular journeys—Cashmere, lon...
Göran Hugo Olsson • 2016 • Finland
Narrated by Lauryn Hill, Concerning Violence boldly interrogates legacies of colonialism, imperialism, and racism in arguments against the African liberation movement, while dismantling facile dichotomies regarding Fanon's political thought.
Göran Hugo Olsson'...
Directed by Bill Morrison • 2016 • USA
Bill Morrison's documentary transports us to a landscape where early cinema intersected with the peak of the Canadian Gold Rush.
Benedetta, an iconic fashion model from the 60s, wants to disappear. Her son documents her final act.
Gereon Wetzel • 2011 • Germany
Chronicling the process behind El Bulli's last season as a team of chefs embark on an exhilarating journey toward creating the perfect menu.
Directed by Gianfranco Rosi • 2016 • Italy
Winner of the Golden Bear at the Berlinale, Fire at Sea weaves a rich tapestry of Lampedusa, the nexus of the European refugee crisis.
Lars von Trier • 2003 • Denmark-Switzerland-Belgium-France
Documents the re-making of Jørgen Leth's classic short film The Perfect Human through a maddening maze of obstacles imposed by his former student Lars von Trier.
Peter Nicks • 2017 • USA
Oakland Police Department. Sean Whent is hired as the department's chief, with the mandate to come in and clean up shop. He arrives with the best intentions, but soon learns that repairing the trust between the community, and those charged to protect them, will be no ea...
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Annie Sprinkle & Beth Stephens • USA • 2014
An ecosexual love story.
Beth Stephens and Annie Sprinkle have returned to the former's home state of West Virginia. Mountain-top removal, a form of surface mining that destroys local peaks to get at veins of cheap coal below, has dev...
Michael Palmieri and Donal Mosher • USA • 2019
Eureka, Arkansas is a one-of-a-kind oasis in the traditionally conservative bastion of the Ozarks. Alongside a devout Christian population is a thriving queer community, whose epicenter is a local gay bar run by Lee and Walter. The proudly out hus...
Hieronymus Bosch, Touched by the Devil is a fascinating dive into the life and work of the highly controversial fifteenth century painter.
Jerry Rothwell • Canada • 2015
Filmmaker Jerry Rothwell examines the early days of Greenpeace.
A prison in São Paulo, Brazil. Researching criminals for a documentary, two Brazilian directors happen upon Christopher Kirk, an unassuming American with a secret to tell. As they dive deeper into his history, however, Kirk hijacks their narrative, intent on recounting a love affair he had with a...
The Campanarios de Azaba Nature Reserve in Spain is one of the largest remaining tracts of wild nature in western Europe. Over the past centuries, it has fallen victim to exploitation—in the forms of hunting and farming—and neglect. Today it is the site of an ambitious rewilding project that se...
Rahul Jain • India • 2016
Located on the northwest coast of India, Gujarat is a region known for textile production. Inside an enormous factory, set to the constant buzz and whirr of machines, workers labor for 12 hour days in order to eke out a meager living and send money to their families ba...
Photographer Edward Burtynsky has won international accolades for his large-scale photographs of 'manufactured landscapes'—sites of industrial waste and ruin. In an ethically ambivalent fashion, his work seeks to find beauty in quarries, recycling yards, factories, mines, and dams, sites of huma...
Directed by Guido Santi & Tina Mascara • 2014 • France
The tale of Nicholas Vreeland’s transformation from Manhattanite to devout Buddhist.
