Politics

Surge is about the record number of first-time female candidates who ran, won and upended politics in the historic, barrier breaking 2018 midterm elections. The film follows three candidates in Texas, Indiana and Illinois who were running in uphill battles to flip their deep red districts to blue, including Lauren Underwood, the youngest Black woman to ever be elected to Congress. Surge reflects on what drove women to disrupt the idea of what elected leaders look like and shows the importance of creating a pipeline of diverse, female candidates. Viewers see the challenges and triumphs of building grassroots campaigns and through it all Surge asks, is this a moment or a movement?

Winnie Madikizela Mandela is one of the most misunderstood and intriguingly powerful contemporary female political figures. Her rise and seeming fall from grace, bears the hallmarks of epic tragedy. For the first time, this film pieces together and properly considers her life and contribution to the struggle to bring down Apartheid from the inside, with intimate insight from those who were closest to her and with testimony from the enemies who sought to extinguish her radical capacity to shake up the order of things.

Over 65 million people around the world have been forced from their homes to escape famine, climate change and war in the greatest human displacement since World War II. Human Flow, an epic film journey led by the internationally renowned artist Ai Weiwei, gives a powerful visual expression to this massive human migration. The documentary elucidates both the staggering scale of the refugee crisis and its profoundly personal human impact, following a chain of urgent human stories that stretches across the globe in countries including Afghanistan, Bangladesh, France, Greece, Germany, Iraq, Israel, Italy, Kenya, Mexico, and Turkey.

Isis, Tomorrow follows the destiny of the surviving families of the fighters in the complexity of the post-war period, a post-war time of marginalisation and stigma, in which battle blood leaves room for daily revenge and retaliation, for violence as the only response to violence.

In Europe, 119 million people live in or with the risk of poverty and social exclusion. The reality of poor children, unemployed young adults, and working poor spread around the Union. In 2010 the “European Economic and Social Committee” launched “Europe 2020” – an agenda to heave 20 million people out of poverty by 2020. A journey through Italy, Portugal and Ireland investigating the causes of poverty, while challenging politicians and economic experts on the subject. Can Europe’s fight against poverty be successful?

A military coup d’etat in Madagascar in 2009 lands the democratically elected president in exile in South Africa. With unique access to President Ravalomanana and his advisors, the film tells the inside story about political intrigue and power play, in which France, the former colonial power, seemingly wants to prevent the president from returning home to reinstall democracy in Madagascar.

Michael Haas has played war video games since he was 5. At 19 he is employed by the US AirForce as a drone pilot.
This is the new warfare: Young gamers recruited to operate drones through their computers to kill real people 7000 miles away. This is not science fiction but today’s reality and the big investment of the future: Robot war. As technology expands at an unprecedented rate we are part of an experiment that changes our wars and possibly our world. DRONE gives crucial context and new perspectives that reveal crucial secrets of the CIA drone war and asks where we are headed.

DO NOT RESIST is an urgent and powerful exploration of the rapid militarization of the police in the United States.
Starting on the streets of Ferguson, Missouri, as the community grapples with the death of Michael Brown, DO NOT RESIST – the directorial debut of DETROPIA cinematographer Craig Atkinson – offers a stunning look at the current state of policing in America and a glimpse into the future. This Tribeca Film Festival winner for Best Documentary puts viewers in the center of the action, – from a ride-along with a South Carolina SWAT team to inside a police training seminar that teaches the importance of “righteous violence”.

The world is increasingly divided by walls, physically separating the human beings living on either side of them. Brilliant editing connects people living and working on both sides of the controversial barriers between Mexico and the U.S., Spain and Morocco, and South Africa and Zimbabwe. This cinematic investigation explores the building and maintenance of these WALLS as a growing global phenomenon.

On Black Friday 2012, four African-American teenagers stopped at a gas station to buy gum and cigarettes. One of them, Jordan Davis, argued with Michael Dunn, a white man parked beside them, over the volume of music playing in their car. The altercation turned to tragedy when Dunn fired 10 bullets at the unarmed boys, killing Davis almost instantly. The seamlessly constructed, riveting documentary film 3 1⁄2 MINUTES, TEN BULLETS explores the danger and subjectivity of Florida’s Stand Your Ground self-defense laws by weaving Dunn’s trial with a chorus of citizen and pundit opinions, alongside the wrenching experiences of Jordan Davis’ parents.

In this Academy Award Nominee for Best Documentary, director Matthew Heineman and executive producer Kathryn Bigelow (“The Hurt Locker”, “Zero Dark Thirty”) gain unprecedented, on-the-ground access to the riveting stories of two modern-day vigilante groups and their shared enemy – the murderous Mexican drug cartels.