Films
Watch over 200 films curated from 140 countries around the globe, and featuring over 40 languages. SIMA Academy offers you unprecedented access on any device to authentic global perspectives and visually engaging current affairs media. Plus a constantly refreshed selection of international productions from independent distributors.
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Radio Dadaab
Dadaab, the world’s second largest refugee camp, faces a new influx of refugees. Fardowsa, a stateless journalist born and raised in the camp, becomes a voice for the voiceless through the camp’s radio station, amplifying stories of climate, migration, and hope.
Director and Producer: Environmen...
Extras
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Ocean's Harbor House
Since 1988, Ocean’s Harbor House in New Jersey has offered refuge, aid, and intervention for vulnerable youth and families. Through their transitional living program, one determined young woman found solace, leading to a transformative journey from hardship to newfound strength. Her experience ig...
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Grey Power
Meet some of Tasmania's retired professionals who are making some noise about issues close to their hearts; proving that getting older doesn't always mean staying safe or slipping into invisibility. In fact, sometimes, it can bring with it great power.
Directors: Lara van Raay
Producer: Lara van... -
Empowerment In Action: The Eco Spanish School Story
This documentary will take you on an inspiring journey through the lives of Maria and Benedicto, two extraordinary individuals whose determination, resilience, and dedication have turned adversity into opportunity. Their Eco Spanish School, once a humble dream, has blossomed into a thriving succe...
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Colorful Souls
Colorful Souls spotlights Alma de Colores, a unique restaurant and store that predominantly employs individuals with disabilities, providing them with a sense of dignity and community through the opportunity to work. At the center of the narrative is Marta, a deaf cook at Alma de Colores. Through...
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Waking Up In Silence
Ukrainian children are confronted with their past as they explore their new home in Germany: a former Wehrmacht military barracks.
Directors and Producers: Mila Zhluktenko and Daniel Asadi Faezi
2023 | 18 min
Ukraine | Germany
Languages: Ukrainian, German
Subtitles: EnglishFILMMAKER Q&A:
h... -
Jack and Sam
Jack and Sam is poignant documentary about two Holocaust survivors miraculously reunited after 80 years. Now in their late 90s, they are spending the precious time they have left rekindling their friendship and educating others about the dangers of hatred.
Director: Jordan Matthew Horowitz
Produ... -
Into The Blue
12-year-old Tatheer embarks on a week-long Police boot camp for girls from a social housing estate in Copenhagen. Far from home, deep in the woods, she navigates grueling rituals, elusive social dynamics, and personal setbacks to find her place in this tender and revealing coming-of-age story.
D...
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Between Earth and Sky *Viewer Discretion Advised*
For her entire professional life, renowned ecologist Nalini Nadkarni pioneered climbing techniques to study "what grows back” after an ecological disturbance in the rainforest canopy. Now, after surviving a life-threatening fall from a tree, she must turn her research question onto herself in ord...
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Ifine (Beauty)
Set in the Kono district of Sierra Leone, this documentary film captures the beauty of blackness through the lens of the youth coming of age amid a skin-bleaching epidemic.
Director: Adisa Septuri, Ebony Gilbert
Producer: Adisa Septuri, Ebony Gilbert
2022 | 30 min
Sierra Leone
Languages: Sier... -
The Ruth Brinker Story
The life of legendary AIDS activist Ruth Brinker and her legacy of healing people through meals with love in San Francisco.
Director: Apo Bazidi
Producer: Burn A Light Productions
2022 | 23 min
USA
Languages: English
Subtitles: English, Spanish -
Taking Flight
In an area where traditional education fails students, one Mayan woman starts her own school in order to rebuild her community from the ground up. Through her integral education, which includes meals for students and workshops for their parents, Ingrid Villaseñor strengthens her home of Panajache...
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Free Motherhood - The impact of incarceration on early childhood
In a Brazilian prison, the lives of five incarcerated mothers intertwine as they navigate the heart-wrenching reality of being separated from their babies. Currently, 63% of women in prison in the country are black and only 34% of them have completed primary school. The vast majority, 64%, are co...
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Earthrise
Earthrise tells the story of the first image captured of the Earth from space in 1968. Told solely by the Apollo 8 astronauts, the film recounts their experiences and memories and explores the beauty, awe, and grandeur of the Earth against the blackness of space. This iconic image had a powerful ...
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They Carry Us With Them: Richard Silliboy
This film profiles Richard Silliboy, a tribal elder and vice chief of the Aroostook Band of Mi’kmaqs, and a black ash basketmaker. As he weaves a potato basket at his home in Littleton, Maine, Richard contemplates the arrival of the emerald ash borer and the tenuous future of this ancient art.
D...
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Horizons
This film is a tribute to the life and work of Barry Lopez, a celebrated author who detailed moral and natural landscapes in our imagination for decades. Through archival footage and an interview conducted shortly before his death, Barry shares what drove him toward new horizons so that he might ...
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Paperboy Love Prince Runs for Mayor
Paperboy Love Prince is a far cry from your typical New York City mayoral candidate. They can often be found in Washington Square Park standing on top of a bedazzled school bus rapping about social issues. When they announced their run for mayor, many laughed them off as a joke candidate.
Howeve...
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Abundance: The Farmlink Story
During the largest food crisis in a century, a group of college students step up to help those facing hunger. Their small local effort inspires hope nationally and motivates 600+ students to drop everything to feed millions of families.
Within months, the project scales larger than anyone could ...
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Recording Kawaiisu
Following a century of loss, the Kawaiisu people of Central California have held on to their language, one of the few aspects of their culture that remain intact. Now, with only two fluent speakers remaining, Julie Girado Turner has spent the last 16 years documenting the language that lives with...
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The Church Forests of Ethiopia
Over the past century, nearly all of Ethiopia’s native forests have been cleared for farming and grazing. Now it is up to the Orthodox Churches—who for centuries have safeguarded pockets of primary forest that grow around them—to preserve Ethiopia’s quickly shrinking biodiversity and teach people...
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Last Chance for Justice *Viewer Discretion Advised*
[Trigger Warning] Human rights activist Azimjan Askarov was imprisoned in Kyrgyzstan in 2010 for a crime he says he did not commit. Ever since then, his wife Hadicha has campaigned tirelessly for his release. Now she sees one last chance for justice, in an appeal hearing at the country's supreme ...
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The Dream of Karabakh
In The Dream of Karabakh, refugee and mother-of-five Shushan is living in Armenia after losing her home in the disputed Nagorno-Karabakh region during a war with Azerbaijan. She is grieving a double loss: her husband died in a car accident six months prior to the conflict.
Shushan reminisces abo...
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The Soul of a Teacher (Jiwa Pendidik)
How does a veteran teacher help prepare the first batch of pandemic online-learning students to sit for the SPM exams (Malaysian Certificate of Education) in the under resourced Perimbun Secondary School? Teacher Rusmiyana and other veteran teachers find strength to learn and teach virtually, and...
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Vida: Love, Hope and Justice in Exile
In August 2021, a trial began in Stockholm, accusing an Iranian national, Hamid Nouri of murder and war crimes. Nouri was an Assistant Prosecutor at Gohardasht Prison in 1988 in Iran, a year when thousands of prisoners were killed for their political beliefs.
Among those killed was Vida Rostamal...
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Utapata Mwingine (You Will Get Another One) *Viewer Discretion Advised*
[Trigger Warning] Utapata Mwingine (You Will Get Another One) is a documentary about the impact of stigma and silence surrounding Pregnancy and Infant Child Loss (PAIL) in Kenya. The film follows the founder of Empower Mama, Vivian Gaiko, a young Kenyan woman who lost her two-week old daughter af...