Films

Films

Watch award-winning films curated from 140 countries around the globe. 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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Films
  • From Sea To Rising Sea (VR/360)

    From Sea To Rising Sea is an educational musical call to action about the healing properties of the ocean and how the ocean can assist us in our mission to get to net zero carbon emissions by 2050. This VR experience (created for the Quest 2 and also mobile devices) follows a flock of synchronize...

Extras

  • (in)Visible Sound (VR/360)

    Grace has Tinnitus so the way she perceives sounds can be radically different from the average person. Yet, appearance wise, Grace’s disability is invisible. Through virtual reality, the viewer experiences the world through Grace’s eyes and ears as she narrates in voiceover. That world is a fanta...

  • Testimony (VR/360) *Viewer Discretion Advised*

    Testimony is an interactive documentary for virtual reality that shares the stories of five survivors of sexual assault and their journey to healing. Beyond just a film, Testimony is an advocacy platform to allow the public to bear witness to those who have been silenced. The Brock Turner case, B...

  • Water & Coltan (VR/360)

    Water & Coltan deals with the consequences of mining on landscape and communities in West Germany and DR Congo. While WATER sketches posthuman near-future scenarios for the former coal mining Ruhr area, COLTAN transports its audience directly to the places of exchange and work of women in artisan...

  • The Invisibles

    Over 200,000 migrant laborers, mostly from Africa, work in Italy’s fields. After being exploited for years, the global pandemic made these farmworkers “essential” overnight — but without labor rights or even access to basic sanitation, they are living and working in conditions that have been desc...

  • The Conscious Hood: Being Black is No Crime

    Being Black Is No Crime is the fourth episode of the web-series "The Conscious Hood" documenting social issues crucial to the residents of São Paulo's Heliópolis, the second largest urban slum in Latin America. Directed by videomaker Katherine Jinyi Li and filmed during her youth journalism works...

  • Meet Chuna: Empowering Women in Rural Nepal

    Chuna Devi - a mother of three in Nepal - once said that "being born as a girl is worthless." But at the age of 47, she found self-worth and changed her life by finally learning to read at a READ Center, starting a women's study group, and investing in her family's education. Today, her goal is t...

  • Into The Sea

    Into the Sea follows the family of Suleiman Hajazzi as they are relocated from a refugee camp in Greece to more permanent housing. Suleiman, his son and wife recount their journey escaping violence in Afghanistan and their hopes and dreams for their future.

    Director: Daphne Matziaraki
    2020 | 15 ...

  • #ISurvivedEbola

    Foday Gallah is training to become an anesthetist. While in school, he supervised six ambulances in Montserrado County, Liberia. Though difficult, the work bore few health risks. In June 2014, when the Ebola outbreak reached Montserrado, this changed. With too few ambulances, Ebola Treatment Unit...

  • $30 to Antarctica

    $30 To Antarctica follows the story of Ka Foon Chau, who grew up an impoverished child, and retired a renowned doctor. Raised in 1960s Hong Kong, Chau faced the bias of her elders who discouraged her interest in the academics. Through a small gesture of support she received from a teacher, Chau b...

  • (Un)divided

    Amina is an Iraqi American refugee and Muslim. Joe is a Trump supporter who was afraid of Muslims in America — until he met Amina. The widening political division and polarization of our world have become so personal, that the very idea of civil, open-minded conversation can seem unreachable, and...

  • Is this Love? | Kya Yahi Pyar Hai? (VR/360) *Viewer Discretion Advised*

    [Trigger Warning] In March 2016 Kausalya and her husband Shankar were brutally attacked on a crowded street in southern India. Shankar, who came from a lower Dalit caste, died of his injuries. Kausalya survives and accuses her parents of orchestrating an honour killing. She fights for justice thr...

  • Women In Sink

    In a little hair salon owned by a Christian Arab in Haifa, Israel, the director installs a minimalist film set over the washing-basin, where she chats with the clients she is shampooing. She thus paints an unexpected choral portrait of this space that provides temporary freedom, where Arab and Je...

  • Behind The Fence (VR/360)

    Behind the Fence is a 360 virtual reality documentary that looks inside the 5×5 square mile camp that imprisons the Rohingya Muslim minority in Myanmar, and investigates the extremist Buddhists who propagate virulent anti-Muslim sentiment across the country. Behind the Fence profiles Abul, a husb...

  • Waves

    Waves follows three young girls growing up in one of South Africa's most violent communities. The film looks at the effects that high levels of violence, rape and femicide have on the psyche of young girls growing up amongst it, and how they learn to cope.

    Director: Jessie Ayles
    4 min | South Af...

  • The Hairdresser

    Kathleen is a hairdresser. Always has been, always will be. Even at 83 she is still doing hair, just not in the way you would expect. Kathleen's work is special—for the last 31 years, she has done the hair of the terminally ill in palliative care. In this short, poetic documentary, Kathleen refle...

  • Lutaw (VR/360)

    Step into Geramy’s world, a scrappy, budding inventor, who is trying to find a better way to commute to school. Based in the Philippines, this story highlights the students that swim between the small islands in order to travel to the nearest elementary or high schools in their remote areas.

    Dir...

  • COVER/AGE

    The Affordable Care Act explicitly denies undocumented immigrants access to healthcare. While laws in California have now made healthcare available for undocumented young people, undocumented adults continue to be excluded. COVER/AGE follows an elderly caregiver and a policy advocate in the campa...

  • India's Forbidden Love *Viewer Discretion Advised*

    [Trigger Warning] In March 2016 Kausalya and her husband Shankar were brutally attacked on a crowded street in southern India. Shankar, who came from a lower Dalit caste, died of his injuries. Kausalya survives and accuses her parents of orchestrating an honour killing. She fights for justice thr...

  • Exodus

    In 2017, Myanmar carried out genocide against its own people, the Rohingya Muslims. Over one million Rohingya were forced to flee to neighbouring Bangladesh into what has become the largest refugee camp in the world. Some Rohingya documented their violent displacement and persecution on cell phon...

  • Lost World

    As Singapore dredges sand out from beneath Cambodia’s mangrove forests, an ecosystem, a communal way of life, and one woman’s relationship to her beloved home are faced with the threat of erasure. For over a decade, the government of Cambodia has granted several private companies concessions to m...

  • Rain Harvests

    Rain Harvests, exposes the harsh reality of an indigenous community in Huehuetenango, Guatemala. Climate change has caused droughts, the rainy season comes only once a year and getting water has become a daily challenge. Without fail, the women of this community must make nearly 5 trips daily to ...

  • My Beautiful Nicaragua

    12-year-old Edelsin Linette Mendez illuminates the consequences of climate change on the coffee market, her community’s traditional source of livelihood and Nicaragua’s primary agricultural product.

    Directors: Edelsin Linette Mendez
    Producers: Joyce Chopra, Sammy Chadwick, Holly Carter
    2016 | 2...

  • Cherán The Burning Hope

    Welcome to Cherán, a small Indigenous community in the state of Michoacán that took up self-rule to kick out local drug cartels.

    In 2011, Yunuen Torres was a little girl, but she remembers life before her community took their town back. Now a community radio host, Torres has made it her mission ...

  • What About Our Future?

    What About Our Future? chronicles the Sustainabiliteens, a group of young environmental activists who organized the largest strike in Vancouver's history. The film takes a unique look into the movement while the youth organize protests, pressure politicians and educate younger teens about environ...