1. Higher Grounds
Panama is reimagining coffee, and driving new standards for both quality and economics. Explores variety, farming practice, and processing innovation—notions traditionally associated only with winemaking. Through collaborative competition, Panamanian growers are banding together to raise the bar for coffee worldwide. Featuring interviews with award-winning coffee producers in Panama and global coffee celebrities, as well as stunning footage of Panama’s breathtaking highlands, Higher Grounds concludes with a hard look at the sustainability of specialty coffee, the implications for developing-region producers, and how Panama offers a model for the rest of the world.
2. Burned: Are Trees the New Coal?
The little-known story of the accelerating destruction of our forests for fuel - the policy loopholes, huge subsidies, and blatant green washing of the burgeoning biomass electric power industry.
3. Xapiri (Xapiri)
Xapiri is a Yanomami term that characterizes the shamans, male spirits and also auxiliary spirits . Xapiri is an experimental film about Yanomami shamanism that was filmed during a meeting of 37 shamans at the Watoriki Reserve, Roraima, in March of 2011. The film was designed to take into account two different notions of image: those of the Yanomami and ours. Therefore, it does not set out to explain shamanism, its methods or procedures, but to allow different cultures to visualize and feel the way in which the shamans “embody” the spirits, their bodies and voices.
4. Trapper
This beautiful short film captures the quiet dignity of a day in the life of a Northern trapper, without use of any dialogue.
5. Immersion
Immersion is a short conceptual film featuring wonder kid Axel Rosenblad. It is a sensorial journey into his surfing.
6. Spirit of the Reindeer (Mjandasj - renarnas rådare)
The third and final part of a trilogy based on Arctic creation myths. The film is a multifaceted tissue weave of myths and traditions reflected in the symbiosis between reindeer, human and landscape.
7. When the Mountains Tremble (When the Mountains Tremble)
A documentary on the war between the Guatemalan military and the Mayan population, with first hand accounts by Nobel Peace Prize winner Rigoberta Menchú.
It has an average vote of 9.5 on TMDB.
8. Chernobyl Heart
This Academy Award-winning documentary takes a look at children born after the 1986 Chernobyl nuclear plant disaster who have been born with a deteriorated heart condition.
It has an average vote of 7.1 on TMDB.
9. King Coal
The cultural roots of coal continue to permeate the rituals of daily life in Appalachia even as its economic power wanes. The journey of a coal miner’s daughter exploring the region’s dreams and myths, untangling the pain and beauty, as her community sits on the brink of massive change.
10. Still We Rise
50 years on, the Aboriginal Tent Embassy is the oldest continuing protest occupation site in the world. Taking a fresh lens this is a bold dive into a year of protest and revolutionary change for First Nations people.
11. Closeness to the Land
In 2020, just as the pandemic was beginning, Gazala purchased land in western Ohio, on which sits a disused school building. This site allowed her to explore her complex relationship with “the land.” As the daughter of displaced indigenous Palestinians, she attempts to form a proxy bond with the earth, on ground that was stolen from the displaced indigenous Shawnee people. Closeness to the Land is video footage of hand-painted text signs that translate the word الأرض into six English words, displayed performatively in multiple locations to capture the now-invisible nature of indigenous culture in Ohio. These signs were installed on the old schoolhouse in early 2021.
12. Against the Tide (Against the Tide)
Two friends, both Indigenous fishermen, are driven to desperation by a dying sea. Their friendship begins to fracture as they take very different paths to provide for their struggling families.
It has an average vote of 6.5 on TMDB.
13. Plagues and Pleasures on the Salton Sea
The Salton Sea: An inland ocean of massive fish kills, rotting resorts, and 120 degree nights located just minutes from urban Southern California. This film details the rise and fall of the Salton Sea, from its heyday as the "California Riviera" where boaters and Beach Boys mingled in paradise to its present state of decaying, forgotten ecological disaster.
It has an average vote of 7.1 on TMDB.
14. No Māori Allowed
When an academic unearths a forgotten history, residents of the small township of Pukekohe, including kaumātua who have never told their personal stories before, confront its deep and dark racist past.
It has an average vote of 8 on TMDB.
15. White Earth
An oil boom has drawn thousands to America’s Northern Plains in search of work. Against the backdrop of a cruel North Dakota winter, the stories of three children and an immigrant mother intertwine among themes of innocence, home, and the American Dream.
It has an average vote of 6.4 on TMDB.
16. Apocalypse, Man
Most people were first exposed to Michael C. Ruppert through the 2009 documentary, Collapse, directed by Chris Smith. Apocalypse, Man is an intimate portrait of a man convinced of the imminent collapse of the world, but with answers to how the human spirit can survive the impending apocalypse.
It has an average vote of 7.2 on TMDB.
17. Fast Horse
The Blackfoot bareback horse-racing tradition returns in the astonishingly dangerous Indian Relay. Siksika horseman Allison Red Crow struggles with secondhand horses and a new jockey on his way to challenging the best riders in the Blackfoot Confederacy.
It has an average vote of 7 on TMDB.
18. Death and Taxes
Twenty-eight people offer their motivations for and methods of resisting the war machine with their tax money. This tightly-paced short film introduces viewers to war tax refusal and redirecting tax dollars to peace, with music by Sharon Jones and the Dap-Kings, Antibalas, Rude Mechanical Orchestra, and First Strike Theatre’s version of “Don’t Pay Taxes” by Charlie King.
19. Angry Inuk
With "sealfies" and social media, a new tech-savvy generation of Inuit is wading into the world of activism, using humour and reason to confront aggressive animal rights vitriol and defend their traditional hunting practices. Director Alethea Arnaquq-Baril joins her fellow Inuit activists as they challenge outdated perceptions of Inuit and present themselves to the world as a modern people in dire need of a sustainable economy.
It has an average vote of 7.4 on TMDB.
20. Territorios Extraordinarios (Territorios Extraordinarios)
Territorios extraordinarios is a documentary that delves into the heart of Northern Neuquén. Crossing the peaks and valleys of the imposing Cordillera del Viento, we will get to know some of its ancient settlers, breeders and gold prospectors. Marcelina Aguilera, Ananías Retamal, Felipe Méndez and Conradino Contreras will accompany us on an exploratory journey where, in their stories and experiences, we will see reflected some of the landmarks, myths and rites of these lands.
