Closed Circuit

Two men in suits shoot at a frightened crowd in a Tel Aviv café. All caught on security cameras, Closed Circuit deconstructs this event to give insight into the complex Israeli reality and the lasting trauma caused to those involved.

Dreaming Walls: Inside the Chelsea Hotel

Of the Chelsea Hotel’s glorious, bohemian, scandalous past, mostly memories remain, and the aging residents who refuse to leave despite the renovations are holding on to those memories for dear life. At the heart of Manhattan, amid scaffolding and dust, they are a tiny island of eccentric creativity that refuses to die.

Eat Your Catfish

Kathryn, who has ALS and only communicates by blinking at a letter board that generates a mechanical-sounding voice, is getting ready for her daughter’s wedding. Filmed from her point of view, the film creates a layered and sober family portrait, heart-melting and sincere, showing the pain, but also love and laughter.

Figure-Ground

A compilation of YouTube material brings together two parallel worlds—the beach of Tel Aviv and the hills of the West Bank—in a raw, associatively edited, unorthodox portrayal of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Fire of Love

Katia and Maurice Krafft were in love—obsessively so—with volcanoes. Their research led them into perilous adventures between clouds of ash and rivers of lava. Their story is accompanied by the breathtaking, otherworldly footage they left behind after their deaths in the eruption of Japan’s Mount Unzen.

Kurt Vonnegut: Unstuck in Time

When Robert Weide started making a film about Kurt Vonnegut, he was just a young fan. In 40 years of working together, the two became close friends, and their relationship sheds a new, personal, and fascinating light on the literary master’s tumultuous life story.

Midwives

Hla and Nyo Nyo, a Buddhist and a Muslim, run a small, makeshift women's health clinic in Myanmar, where the Muslim minority is violently persecuted. In five years of personal and political upheaval, the two women’s unique relationship is often put to the test.

Mini DV

Four LGBTQ adults re-encounter the home video footage they shot of themselves as youths: Shauly explored his homosexuality; Tom faced his gender identity; Betty filmed her friends and lovers; Rumia discovered her roots in drag.

My Old School

The new transfer student in the posh Glasgow high school seemed weird but had a charming backstory, and slowly won everyone over. Director Jono McLeod uses animations and interviews to reconstruct the unbelievable story that happened in his old school.

Nothing Lasts Forever

The advent of synthetic diamonds threatens to dethrone their natural counterparts. Jason Kohn’s funny and clever film shows the tricks that made us assign meaning and sentimental value to the sparkling gemstones, and wonders whether they are about to become just another mundane raw material.

Songs for Drella (1990)

Lou Reed and John Cale’s touching and intimate farewell concert to the late Andy Warhol, who managed the Velvet Underground, remains as relevant as ever, even 33 years later. The superb digital restoration makes this classic (and Ed Lachman’s masterful cinematography) even more delightful.

Tantura

The story of the 1948 war and the silencing of graduate student Teddy Katz who exposed an alleged massacre that took place in the village of Tantura. A portrait of Israeli society and its inability to confront its founding myths.

The Artist's Daughter, Oil on Canvas

She visits the self-portrait exhibition of a famous painter. She is the artist’s daughter, but only few people know that. As she stares at her father's images, she feels a great sense of absence. How does one film absence?

The Baby Daddy

Ari Nagel, is a serial sperm donor and a father to more than a 100 children. Ari’s actions turn into a concerning habit, jeopardizing his relationship with his eldest son and his Jewish religious family.

The Camera of Doctor Morris

Everyone in Eilat, Israel's southernmost city, knows Dr. Morris and the crocodile Clarence who grew up in his garden. It turns out he left his wife and children hours of personal documentation in 8 mm, which re-tells the family's bittersweet story.

The Seven Years of Absalon

The story of Meir Eshel, who reinvented himself as an artist named "Absalon", quickly rising to art-scene stardom. Years after his tragic death at the age of 28, Absalon's younger brother Dani is tasked with selling his final work.

The Velvet Queen

Traversing the barren snowy cliffs of the Tibetan plateau is very challenging, but these travelers burning passion for finding the rare snow leopard propels them forward. Wildlife photographer Vincent Munier and novelist and researcher Sylvain Tesson blend into the inhospitable terrain in hopes of meeting this magnificent big cat.

Trenches

Even when, on paper, the ceasefire was still in effect, Donbas in Ukraine was anything but quiet. The camera gets to know the soldiers, young men and one woman, up close and personal. In the trenches, between bursts of shelling, their conversations are intimate and open, and the tension is almost palpable.

Unseen Skies

Trevor Paglen is determined to expose the invisible: sophisticated mass surveillance systems that deconstruct us all into bits of data. The acclaimed artist-activist’s attempts to launch an artwork into space as a satellite reveal his unique creative process and ideology.

We Feed People

At the height of his career, Chef José Andrés decided to swap his high-end kitchen for the world’s most dangerous disaster zones—from Haiti to Ukraine—to cook for and feed the hungry. Director Ron Howard follows him into the field on his mission, now a major humanitarian aid organization.

We Met in Virtual Reality

The pandemic forced them into lockdown, but in the virtual world, they could keep meeting and even fall in love. Filmed entirely in an animated virtual universe, this vérité documentary follows couples who discovered that make-believe avatars could help them find a rare kind of intimacy.

What’s Happening to Me Lately?

Israeli cultural icon Rivka Michaeli travels to America. Between the US where her family put down roots and the homeland she loves and hurts for – Rivka is walking a thin line, trying to find balance and hope within.