Marcela, Anabella and Estrella are three trans women who have defied the lifespan expected for a trans person. Through their recollections, one explores the memory’s strength, resistance and love for life of these three women.
Social & External
The people behind it
Estrella Ríos
Marcela Tobaldi
Anabella Blanco
Brayden Olson has spent his life wondering about the father he never knew. Armed with only a name, a faded photograph, and an improbable lead, he sets out across continents to uncover the mystery of Carlos. But as each revelation brings him closer to the truth, Brayden risks unraveling the life he’s always known — especially the bond with the mother who raised him alone. Raw, intimate, and deeply human, Finding Carlos explores identity, family, and the silent epidemic of fatherlessness.
The film follows five people who lost their sight in armed conflicts, gathering fragments of their present-day lives. Through an enveloping sound composition, veiled archival material, footage shot by the protagonists themselves, and a sensitive visual approach, the film explores memory, perception, and our relationship to the visible. Steering away from spectacle, it invites us to hear what often goes unheard, and to feel differently. In an age saturated with images, this documentary offers a sensory experience where listening becomes a gesture of resistance and human reconnection.
Part travelogue and part sensitive investigation, the movie tells the universal story of people who refuse to be erased, reminding us that defending the Earth means defending life.
Olivia Martin McGuire (China Love) parallels a grandfather’s journey to safety during the Cultural Revolution with his granddaughter’s fight for freedom in Hong Kong today. Interweaving unflinching testimony of the elder’s exodus from the Chinese mainland, exquisitely animated recreations of the perilous escape to Hong Kong through land and sea, and vivid, evocative archival footage of both mid-20th-century China and the Hong Kong protests today, Freedom Swimmer emerges as a gripping and timely account of the struggle for survival across generations.
Actress and filmmaker Robyn Adams discusses her experiences with autism, gender identity, and learning to embrace her flaws. Also, she's Frankenstein's Monster now.
Zalman Shoshi, born in Haifa to Holocaust survivors, grew up in a home marked by violence and trauma. As a teenager, Zalman ran away from home and survived by working as a sex worker. Later, Zalman reinvented himself as Shoshi, Israel's first transgender celebrity, who was both revered and feared. Their path also led to Berlin: a divided city where Holocaust survivors reopened bars, brothels, and peep shows, and where Israeli trans women found both refuge and danger.
Shows four different women who use wigs to hide and transform their repressed identities in Türkiye in the 1990s.
In the Briançonnais mountains, in France, men and women on the roads of exile find the courage to cross the passes on foot, risking their lives. Arrived at the end of a long journey, exhausted, they do not know if they could settle down somewhere to start their life over. It is this transitional time that "The Adventure" tells. Ossoul, the Sudanese poet, Mamadou, survivor of an icy night at the Col de l'Échelle, Charlotte, Mother Courage and others are gradually getting back on their feet and settling to embark on a new life. Filmed over three years, "L'Aventure" is a story of resilience, friendships and revealed emotions. The portraits are drawn and deepened until everyone can recognize themselves in the other, put themselves in their place and understand them.
Fragmentary perspectives on Human Rights and transgender (trans*) People in Turkey. What remains at the place where a murder happened? What constitutes trans* life? How to cope with daily violence and hatred? We begin to search for traces. We follow the tracks of resistance and survival. We are collectors of the expelled. We gather fragments of trans* lives inspired by texts of Nazim Hikmet, Foucault, Benjamin and Zeki Müren. Trans*BUT is a documental research study driven by the question: “What keeps you going when all else falls away?”
A partnership between the Government of Mali and an American agricultural investor may see 200-square kilometers of Malian land transformed into a large-scale sugar cane plantation. Land Rush documents the hopes, fears, wishes, and demands of small-scale subsistence farmers in the region who look to benefit, or lose out, from the deal.
Shuja’iyah: Land of the Brave represents one filmmaker’s personal reflection on the meaning of “crimes against humanity” in the context of Israel’s ‘Operation Protective Edge’ waged in the Gaza Strip in 2014, using footage of her family filmed in the summer of 2013 juxtaposed against audio from the summer of 2014. Assali posed the question, when we say ‘crimes against humanity’, what ‘humanity’ are we talking about?”
How are biographies charted? How is identity constructed? Can we relive our past, reinvent it, rearrange or recycle it? Can we really know who we are if we ignore where do we come from?
Since the late 1990s, more people have died in war-torn Congo than in any conflict since World War II. In addition to the dead, hundreds of thousands of woman and girls have been raped. Rape, explains a British colonel, is a weapon of war, part of a destabilization covering the theft of valuable minerals. Rape victims are traumatized, injured, abandoned by husbands, pregnant, and ravaged by disease.
Kelet is a twentysomething black trans woman, whose greatest dream is to be on the cover of Vogue magazine. For the Finnish-born and Manchester-raised Kelet, such models as Naomi Campbell and Iman served as role models giving her strength – and during the darkest times, kept her alive. After coming out, then 19-year-old Kelet was cut off from her family and she moved back to Finland on her own.
Julie Wyman’s quest to find her place within the little people (LP) community at a moment when dwarf identity is poised to radically change. As Julie unpacks the rumors of “partial dwarfism” in her family she finds that hers is the last of a body type she has inherited. She joins forces with a group of dwarf artists to confront the legacy of being tokenized and put on display.
The world's largest island has been part of Denmark since 1721, but a significant majority of the 56.000 inhabitants now want independence. They feel their culture and language is threatened and is the main reason for the many suicides among young people. But the Danish speaking Greenlanders feel discriminated and want to keep the ties to Denmark. The film follows four strong young Greenlanders, who each in their own way insist on taking responsibility for the future of their country. The documentary explores the difficult balance between the right to self-determination and xenophobic nationalism. Between traditional culture and globalization.
An investigation of how Hollywood's fabled stories have deeply influenced how Americans feel about transgender people, and how transgender people have been taught to feel about themselves.
The film follows adventurer Jeff Johnson as he retraces the epic 1968 journey of his heroes Yvon Chouinard and Doug Tompkins to Patagonia.
When a feminist filmmaker sets out to document the mysterious and polarizing world of the Men’s Rights Movement, she begins to question her own beliefs. Chronicling Cassie Jaye’s journey exploring an alternate perspective on gender equality, power and privilege.
Police pull over a woman who claims she just gave birth. But the baby — and the blood — aren't hers. Twisted lies unravel in this true-crime documentary.
Ranjit, a farmer in India, takes on the fight of his life when he demands justice for his 13-year-old daughter, the victim of a brutal gang rape. His decision to support his daughter is virtually unheard of, and his journey unprecedented.
Lyrical and powerfully personal essay film that reflects on the deaths of her husband Lou Reed, her mother, her beloved dog, and such diverse subjects as family memories, surveillance, and Buddhist teachings.
An investigative look and analysis of gender disparity in Hollywood, featuring accounts from well-known actors, executives and artists in the Industry.
As a visually radical memoir, CAMERAPERSON draws on the remarkable footage that filmmaker Kirsten Johnson has shot and reframes it in ways that illuminate moments and situations that have personally affected her. What emerges is an elegant meditation on the relationship between truth and the camera frame, as Johnson transforms scenes that have been presented on Festival screens as one kind of truth into another kind of story—one about personal journey, craft, and direct human connection.
A documentary on the modeling industry's 'supply chain' between Siberia, Japan, and the U.S., told through the experiences of the scouts, agencies, and a 13-year-old model.
A paralysingly beautiful documentary with a global vision—an odyssey through landscape and time—that attempts to capture the essence of life.
Matt Walsh's controversial doc challenges radical gender ideology through provocative interviews and humor.
Nine filmmakers each profile a young girl from a different part of the world to weave a global tapestry of youth in the 21st century.
14-year-old Laura Dekker sets out on a two-year voyage in pursuit of her dream to become the youngest person ever to sail around the world alone.
This special explores the return of Obi-Wan Kenobi and Anakin Skywalker to the screen, as well as Ewan McGregor and Hayden Christensen to their classic roles. Director Deborah Chow leads the cast and crew as they create new heroes and villains that live alongside new incarnations of beloved Star Wars characters, and an epic story that dramatically bridges the saga films.
The Amazon rain forest, 1979. The crew of Fitzcarraldo (1982), a film directed by German director Werner Herzog, soon finds itself with problems related to casting, tribal struggles and accidents, among many other setbacks; but nothing compared to dragging a huge steamboat up a mountain, while Herzog embraces the path of a certain madness to make his vision come true.
Just two years away from turning 30, participants in Michael Apted's documentary series are facing serious questions of identity and purpose, wondering whether they've found their place in the world.
This raucous journey into the heart of democracy captures an unusual rite of passage: 1,100 teenage boys from across Texas coming together to build a representative government from the ground up.
Daniel Craig candidly reflects on his 15 year adventure as James Bond. Including never-before-seen archival footage from Casino Royale to the upcoming 25th film No Time To Die, Craig shares his personal memories in conversation with 007 producers, Michael G Wilson and Barbara Broccoli.
This 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.
A documentary about the life and films of director John Ford.