Augusta

This 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.

The Police Tapes

Filmmakers Alan and Susan Raymond spent three months in 1976 riding along with patrol officers in the 44th Precinct of the South Bronx, which had the highest crime rate in New York City at that time.

Coach Zoran and His African Tigers

Documentary following Serbian football coach Zoran Đorđević as he helps form South Sudan's first national football team.

Las Hurdes

An exploration —manipulated and staged— of life in Las Hurdes, in the province of Cáceres, in Extremadura, Spain, as it was in 1932. Insalubrity, misery and lack of opportunities provoke the emigration of young people and the solitude of those who remain in the desolation of one of the poorest and least developed Spanish regions at that time.

Megacities

Megacities is a documentary about the slums of five different metropolitan cities.

Las Hurdes, país de leyenda

An account of the journey that King Alfonso XIII of Spain made to the impoverished shire of Las Hurdes, in the province of Cáceres, in the region of Extremadura, in 1922.

La ventana de atrás

The Fall of the I-Hotel

The Fall of the I-Hotel brings to life the battle for housing in San Francisco. The brutal eviction of the International Hotel's tenants culminated a decade of spirited resistance to the razing of Manilatown. The Fall of the I-Hotel works on several levels. It not only documents the struggle to save the I-Hotel, but also gives an overview of Filipino American history.

Morte e Vida Severina

The story of Severino, a man who tries to escape the misery and the drought prevailing in the rural backcountry of the Northeast of Brazil. He heads for Recife, passing through desert and forest regions, expecting to find a better life.

Meth Storm

As police and DEA agents battle sophisticated cartels, rural, economically-disadvantaged users and dealers–whose addiction to ICE and lack of job opportunities have landed them in an endless cycle of poverty and incarceration–are caught in the middle.

Slums: Cities of Tomorrow

One billion people on our planet—one in six—live in shantytowns, slums or squats. Slums: Cities of Tomorrow challenges conventional thinking to propose that slums are in fact the solution, not the problem, to urban overcrowding caused by the massive migration of people to cities. (Lynne Fernie, HotDocs)

Homeland

Following four Lakota families over three years, Homeland explores what it takes for the Lakota community to build a better future in the face of tribal and government corruption, scarce housing, unemployment, and alcoholism. Intimate interviews with a spiritual leader, a grandmother, an artist, and a community activist from South Dakota’s Pine Ridge Indian Reservation reveal how each survives through family ties, cultural tradition, humor, and a palpable yearning for self-reliance and personal freedom.

どっこい！人間節 寿・自由労働者の街

After the waning of the protests in Sanrizuka, Ogawa Pro started questioning the future of the collective and looking for other subjects to film. Following the method developed in the previous films, the filmmakers moved to the slum of Kotobuchi in the port city of Yokohama, where more than 6000 people were struggling to get by without any means of survival, exposed to industrial accidents and diseases. The result is one of the most moving films produced by the collective, a series of beautifully filmed portraits, voicing the silenced stories and songs of a group of people living in this community. Credit: ICA London

Methadonia

Shot over the course of 18 months in New York City's Lower East Side, METHADONIA sheds light on the inherent flaws of legal methadone treatments for heroin addiction by profiling eight addicts, in various stages of recovery and relapse, who attend the New York Center for Addiction Treatment Services (NYCATS).

Fantasía Dubois

The intimate life of the mythical Candy Dubois, from her childhood in a correctional facility to her success with the "Blue Ballet" in the great "BIM BAM BUM".

In Spanien wird man brauner

Bettina and Frank are from Saxony, without a job and are on vacation for the first time. They go to the sunny beach, where the unemployed Bulgarians Tenscho and Radka open a boutique to earn money with the Germans.

子非魚

J and Jacky are good friends who attend the same school. J is from a single-parent family, and will be taken care by Jacky’s family whenever his mother has to return to Mainland to renew her visa; such kind of story is not an isolated case. These families have been uprooted for a “better future” in Hong Kong, but is this “future” that the children really long to have? A Chinese saying: “How does one understand the joy of fish, if one is not a fish?” Will the adults really understand what the children want?

Brasilianische Protokolle 2

Documentary film about a slum community on the outskirts of Recife, a major city in northeastern Brazil. A portrait of life in extreme poverty and lawlessness: men without work, hopeless women, hungry and sick children.

A Certain Liberation

A woman who had been raped and whose family wiped out by the collaborators of the occupying forces during the bloody "liberation war" of Bangladesh in 1971 now roams the streets, 30 years later, as a mad person.

A Decent Living

Ahmed is a simple man who lives in a village which called Beidif, 200 km from Cairo in Egypt. His job is to make up the sewer system. All houses in Beidif have cesspits to get rid of waste water. A cesspit is a large underground tank to hold sewage. They need to be emptied regularly or the household will face problems. The film shows how Ahmed does his work everyday and how this work affects his life.