
This is the reality of women of the same nation who live divided by the wall that has separated them for 35 years now. Exiled Sahrawi women who live in the refugee camps in Tindouf (Algeria) have a 88% representation rate in teaching and in healthcare, and 9% in government, evidence that they are the fundamental pillar of society. The ones who remained in the occupied territories of Western Sahara are part of every aspect of the struggle and activism against Moroccan occupation. They protest at the intifadas, they research the plunder of their natural resources, they paint flags, write pamphlets and they belong to the organisations that defend Sahrawi human rights in Western Sahara. These women: former prisoners, formerly missing, activists, today are tortured, harassed, followed, surveilled and violated simply for defending their legitimate right to freely express themselves in favour of Western Sahara’s independence.
2010-01-01
0
0.0This short documentary is the portrait of an 88-year-old woman who lives alone in a log cabin without running water or electricity in the Williams Lake area of British Columbia. The daughter of a Shuswap chief, Augusta lost her Indian status as the result of a marriage to a white man. She recalls past times, but lives very much in the present. Self-sufficient, dedicated to her people, she spreads warmth wherever she moves, with her songs and her harmonica.
9.0Pacific Mother journeys from Japan, to Hawaii, Tahiti, Rarotonga and Aotearoa to share interwoven stories of formidable women who live at one with the Pacific Ocean – freediving, spearfishing and paddling waka through its depths and playing with their children in its shallows – a stark contrast to fast-paced lifestyles of larger towns or cities. These women are all mothers who experienced diverse births in hospital, at home and by the sea, with and without medical assistance. Fukumoto also meets Māori and Japanese midwives who share indigenous traditions and rituals around birth that have been lost over recent generations, and are now gradually being reclaimed. Their stories demonstrate just how disconnected the global default maternity system is from the instinctive and cultural needs of mothers and families. They inspire a call to action on birthing rights, as well as a call for parents’ reconnection with their role as nurturers and protectors of their natural environment.
0.0Whether famous or anonymous, stars or prisoners, models or sex workers, women have always been at the center of Bettina Rheims' photographic work since her debut in 1978. Both subversive and glamorous, trashy and sophisticated, her photographs mark and bear witness to the upheavals of the era, which this leading photographer both anticipated and accompanied.
0.0When one thinks of the American Deep South, the image of veiled Muslim students strolling the University of Alabama campus is the last thing that comes to mind. VOICES OF MUSLIM WOMEN FROM THE US SOUTH is a documentary that explores the Muslim culture through the lens of five University of Alabama Muslim students. The film tackles how Muslim women carve a space for self-expression in the Deep South and how they negotiate their identities in a predominantly Christian society that often has unflattering views about Islam and Muslims. Through interviews with students and faculty at Alabama, this film examines representations and issues of agency by asking: How do Muslim female students carve a space in a culture that thinks of Muslims as terrorists and Muslim women as backward?
8.0Women’s voices rise to deliver testimonies of victims of sexual violence. By reconstructing a story with these fragments of experience, a societal portrait is painted throughout the documentary. Like a mosaic, the pieces stick together to build a unique story that could belong to any human.
0.0Feisty, fiercely independent and firmly rooted in place, 90 year-old Mabel Robinson broke barriers back in the 40s when she became the first woman in Hubbards, Nova Scotia, to launch her own business—a hairdressing salon where she still provides shampoo-n-sets over 70 years later. Weaving animation and archival imagery with intimate and laugh out loud moments in the salon, the film celebrates the power of friendship, doing what you love and staying active. With no desire to retire anytime soon, Mabel gives voice to a generation who are not front and center of cinema or the pop hairstyles of the day, and subtly shifts the lens on our perception of beauty and the elderly.
0.0They raised children, baked cakes... and built world-class fighter planes. Sixty years ago, thousands of women from Thunder Bay and the Prairies donned trousers, packed lunch pails and took up rivet guns to participate in the greatest industrial war effort in Canadian history. Like many other factories across the country from 1939 to 1945, the shop floor at Fort William's Canadian Car and Foundry was transformed from an all-male workforce to one with forty percent female workers.
6.2Shot over the course of 30 days at sea, filmmaker Alizé Jireh documents the group’s voyage across the North Atlantic—from moments of stillness and calm to the chaos of storms and setbacks. With an observational approach and an eye for the emotional and physical rhythms of life at sea, Jireh captures not just the external landscape, but the internal shifts that come with navigating the vast unknown.
0.0August 29, 1979, Talavera Bruce Penal Institute, Bangu, Rio de Janeiro. After serving eight years in prison, Inês Etienne Romeu, the only survivor of the "House of Death" in Petrópolis and the first political prisoner sentenced to life in prison in Brazil, left prison benefiting from Amnesty. Norma Bengell filmed this moment: from the prison door to her home with her family, Inês was welcomed by family, friends and members of the Brazilian Amnesty Committee, in what marked the first act of the historic denunciation that Inês would carry out against her tormentors and the Military Regime.
8.0This documentary by Léa Clermont-Dion and Guylaine Maroist plunges us into the vortex of online misogyny and documents hatred towards women. This bleak opus, reminiscent of a psychological thriller, follows four women across two continents: former President of the Italian parliament Laura Boldrini, former Democratic representative Kiah Morris, French actor and YouTuber Marion Séclin, and Donna Zuckerberg, a specialist in online violence against women and the sister of Facebook’s founder. This tour de force reveals the devastating effects such unapologetic hatred has on victims, and brings to light the singular objective of cyber-misogyny: to silence women who shine. Some targets of cyber-violence will crumble under the crystallizing force of the click. Others, proud warriors, will stand tall and refuse to be silenced.
2.0Rafaela, an 80-year-old woman, has a long conversation with her grandson, going over his path from childhood to old age. Now that she has been diagnosed with chronic breast cancer, faith is more present in her life than ever, which coexists with Rafaela's fear of death, and her grandson's fear of dying.
1.0Behind The Looking Glass is a film about the lives of women whose partners have or want to ‘transition’. While we hear a great deal of “stunning and brave” stories of men, there is a deadly silence when it comes to the stories of the wives or partners. This film will be the first of its kind in collecting such experiences of women from around the world.
8.0A state of secrets and a ruthless hunt for whistleblowers – this is the story of 25-year-old Reality Winner who disclosed a document about Russian election interference to the media and became the number one leak target of the Trump administration.
Every year, approximately 800 Sahrawi boys and girls leave the refugee camps to study in Cuba, Algeria and Libya… 15 years later, they return biologists, doctors, engineers… but when they get back to the refugee camps all they have is the desert…
Between the Lines is a visually lyrical experimental documentary about women who cut themselves. The film is about gray areas in women’s relationship to their bodies in the context of deliberate self-harm. The women in this film negotiate the fine lines between self-destructive behavior and self-preserving coping mechanisms, as well as personal marking and the record keeping of experiences that defy language.
This short documentary sifts through the pages of a woman's diary who has recently begun to write her memoir. As she looks back at her life and some of her memories, the film explores the ordinary act of writing and the value and meaning it may hold in mundane everyday life.
5.5A woman with a deep love of the land, Yolande Simard Perrault sees her life as having been shaped by a planetary upheaval in Charlevoix, Quebec, millions of years ago. As enduring as the Canadian Shield, she’s a woman of strength and spirit, a child of the crater left by the meteor’s impact. This documentary portrays a determined woman who’s the reflection of a land created on an immense scale. She was the creative and life partner of filmmaker Pierre Perrault, who gave up everything to be by her side. The film charts the influence of her unquenchable dreams and her contribution to the building of a people’s collective memory. In a stream of images and words, Simard Perrault recounts the splendours of the landscape and the people who shaped it. Generous and boundless, she embarks on a quest for identity that nurtures and perpetuates the oeuvre of the man who breathed new life into Quebec cinema.
0.0A documentary about the situation of the saharawi people in the refugee camps of Tindouf through the life and participation in the 2019 Sahara Marathon of the saharawi athlete and political refugee Amaidan Salah. An amateur documentary made using only a cellphone.
0.0In rural Nepal, Bishnumaya Gurung, 48 and Palhamu Sherpa, 66 go to primary school everyday and make space for learning in their lives as single women.
0.0Silence always surrounds the mine, first when it explodes and then when it eternally haunts its victims. The history of the silence of this fire hidden by Morocco in the sand of Western Sahara has left more than 4,000 victims in what is considered the largest minefield in the world. Daha and Fatimetu suffered the effect of the silence of the mines, their lives changed forever, like that of the Saharawi people who, after 14 years cleaning the desert of artifacts, the rupture of the ceasefire have left the future of the contamination of their territory.
8.2A love letter from a young mother to her daughter, the film tells the story of Waad al-Kateab’s life through five years of the uprising in Aleppo, Syria as she falls in love, gets married and gives birth to Sama, all while cataclysmic conflict rises around her. Her camera captures incredible stories of loss, laughter and survival as Waad wrestles with an impossible choice– whether or not to flee the city to protect her daughter’s life, when leaving means abandoning the struggle for freedom for which she has already sacrificed so much.
6.3Poignant stories of homelessness on the West Coast of the US frame this cinematic portrait of a surging humanitarian crisis.
7.5In 1977, a book of photographs captured an awakening - women shedding the cultural restrictions of their childhoods and embracing their full humanity. This documentary revisits those photos, those women and those times and takes aim at our culture today that alarmingly shows the need for continued change.
7.6When Allied forces liberated the Nazi concentration camps in 1944-45, their terrible discoveries were recorded by army and newsreel cameramen, revealing for the first time the full horror of what had happened. Making use of British, Soviet and American footage, the Ministry of Information’s Sidney Bernstein (later founder of Granada Television) aimed to create a documentary that would provide lasting, undeniable evidence of the Nazis’ unspeakable crimes. He commissioned a wealth of British talent, including editor Stewart McAllister, writer and future cabinet minister Richard Crossman – and, as treatment advisor, his friend Alfred Hitchcock. Yet, despite initial support from the British and US Governments, the film was shelved, and only now, 70 years on, has it been restored and completed by Imperial War Museums under its original title "German Concentration Camps Factual Survey".
7.2Over seven decades, actor and activist George Takei journeyed from a World War II internment camp to the helm of the Starship Enterprise, and then to the daily news feeds of five million Facebook fans. Join George and his husband, Brad, on a wacky and profound trek for life, liberty, and love.
6.7A behind the scenes look into George Romero's groundbreaking horror classic Night of the Living Dead.
6.6Using the book 'Fragments', which collects Marilyn Monroe's poems, notes and letters, and with participation from the Arthur Miller and Truman Capote estates who have contributed more material, each of the actresses will embody the legend at various stages in her life.
7.4Animals Are Beautiful People (also called Beautiful People) is a 1974 South African nature documentary written, produced, directed, filmed and edited by Jamie Uys, about the wildlife in Southern Africa, presented with comedic elements. It was filmed in the Namib Desert, the Kalahari Desert and at the Okavango River and Okavango Delta. It was the recipient of the 1974 Golden Globe Award for Best Documentary Film. The film, a critical and commercial success, was independently made by Uys, also known for his later African comedy The Gods Must Be Crazy (1980).
6.9Global superstar Jennifer Lopez reflects on her multifaceted career and the pressure of life in the spotlight in this intimate documentary.
7.4A documentary that resurrects the buried history of the outrageous, often brilliant women who founded the modern women's movement from 1966 to 1971.
7.2Deep beneath the surface in the Syrian province of Ghouta, a group of female doctors have established an underground field hospital. Under the supervision of paediatrician Dr. Amani and her staff of doctors and nurses, hope is restored for some of the thousands of children and civilian victims of the ruthless Syrian civil war.
6.7A documentary on the life of John Lennon, with a focus on the time in his life when he transformed from a musician into an antiwar activist.
7.6Years spent recording footage of creatures from every corner of the globe is bound to produce a bit of drama. Here's a behind-the-scenes look.
7.1In the Realms of the Unreal is a documentary about the reclusive Chicago-based artist Henry Darger. Henry Darger was so reclusive that when he died his neighbors were surprised to find a 15,145-page manuscript along with hundreds of paintings depicting The Story of the Vivian Girls, in What is Known as the Realms of the Unreal, of the Glodeco-Angelinnian War Storm, Cased by the Child Slave Rebellion.
7.4This revealing documentary honors the legendary Sidney Poitier—iconic actor, filmmaker, and civil rights activist. Featuring interviews with Denzel Washington, Spike Lee, Halle Berry, and more.
6.8BBC Arena's documentary on the Dames of British Theatre and film featuring Maggie Smith, Eileen Atkins, Judi Dench and Joan Plowright on screen together for the first time as they reminisce over a long summer weekend in a house Joan once shared with Sir Laurence Olivier.
7.1A detailing of the rise to prominence and global sporting superstardom of six supremely talented young Manchester United football players (David Beckham, Nicky Butt, Ryan Giggs, Paul Scholes, Phil and Gary Neville). The film covers the period 1992-1999, culminating in Manchester United's European Cup triumph.
7.1An unprecedented and intimate look at the life, work and enduring legacy of British actress Audrey Hepburn (1929-1993).
7.3Alex Gibney explores the charged issue of pedophilia in the Catholic Church, following a trail from the first known protest against clerical sexual abuse in the United States and all way to the Vatican.