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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The Best and Worst of Us
A photojournalist, during lockdown in Cape Town, documents a strange and conflicted society and discovers his own sense of morality during a time of great hardship.
Director: Jasyn Howes
Producers: Jasyn Howes and Anna Telford
2020 | 16 min
Cape Town
Language: EnglishFILMMAKER Q&A:
https://sim...
Extras
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Siona: Amazon's Protectors Under Threat
Adiela Jinet Mera Paz, a leader of the Siona people, has taken up the effort to remove mines from the tribe's ancestral land, following decades of armed conflict that has left them facing extinction.
Director: Tom Laffay
Producer: Emily Wright
2021 | 10 min | Colombia
Language: Spanish
Subtitle... -
The Red Door Project
Blue Chalk worked with The Red Door Project to create a film that showcases its unique participatory process as they work to stage a series of monologues called “Evolve,” which tackles the fraught relationships between communities of color and law enforcement. In the face of seemingly insurmounta...
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Threads
Torn from her family, her paintings, and her beloved Calcutta after the partition of India, artist Surayia Rahman finds a new life in Bangladesh teaching marginalized mothers to embroider her story-telling designs. An inspirational example of the power of art and the impact of empowering women a...
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Ashe '68 (VR/360)
Fifty years ago, amid the turmoil of 1968, there was Arthur Ashe, an athlete who parlayed his fame as the first black man to win the US Open tennis championship into a lifetime devoted to fighting injustice.The ASHE ’68 Virtual Reality Experience brings viewers into the intimate moments right bef...
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How Far Is Home
In the midst of Trump's immigration ban, a teenage refugee Ahmed and his sister Ruba find a home at a Cleveland school for immigrants. Will they be able to reach their dreams?
Director: Apo Bazidi
2020 | 21 min | USA
Language: EnglishFILMMAKER Q&A:
https://simaacademy.com/filmmaker-qa/how-far-... -
Manrique
Yoiner Machado – The founder of a dance academy in Manrique, teacher and professional in dance as well as creator of methodologies for the coexistence and peace-building through dance. For 13 years he has been dedicated to the transformation of communities and has impacted 1,500 lives. He empower...
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The Gender Line
The Gender Line is about a transgender rock star, Cidny Bullens (formerly Cindy Bullens) who once sang in Elton John’s band and had recording contracts with three major labels and two independents. Cidny is fortunate to have been both a wife and husband in the same lifetime. He reflects on his pe...
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Is Different Crazy
In Indonesia where 14 million people suffer from mental health disorders and shackling is still practised, this story is about how a man’s decade-long struggle with schizophrenia almost cost him his family and how he reclaimed his life with the help of Rumah Berdaya (meaning Home of Empowerment)....
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Grounded
In painting and dance, Marie-Hélène, a respected figure on the Canadian contemporary art scene, finds an outlet for her creativity and her resilient spirit, after losing both her legs as a child. The arrival of her daughters sparks a new sense of freedom, pushing herself to let go self-censorship...
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Green Gold?
As the global demand for the super food avocados has soared, Chile has become the world’s third largest exporter of avocados. But the community of Petorca, in northern Chile say drought and the insatiable appetite for avocados has brought desperate water shortages.
This film explores the quiet...
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Haven
Lynda, an indigenous woman whose sons died tragically, and Max, the sole survivor of a horrific car accident, are heroin users in Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside, infamous as Canada’s poorest neighborhood. As participants in a radical opioid-assisted therapy program, the first of its kind in North ...
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What Happened to Dujuan Armstrong
When a young man mysteriously dies in a Bay Area jail, his mother begins a determined quest to find out what happened to him, but quickly runs into the opaque and powerful position of American sheriffs.This intimate, fast-paced documentary follows Barbara Doss’ search to discover the details of h...
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Water is Life
On the banks of Louisiana, fierce Indigenous women are ready to fight—to stop the corporate blacksnake and preserve their way of life. They are risking everything to protect Mother Earth from the predatory fossil fuel companies that seek to poison it.
Director: Sam Vinal
24 min | USA
Languages: ... -
The Atomic Tree (VR/360)
The Atomic Tree leads you on an immersive journey through the memories held within the Yamaki pine, a 400-year-old Japanese White Pine bonsai tree that survived the Atomic blast at Hiroshima. From its birthplace in the sacred island of Miyajima and ancient cedar forests imbued with Kami spirits, ...
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LALA (VR/360)
In this 360° VR blend of animation and live-action video, Holocaust survivor Roman Kent shares his story of a dog in Nazi-occupied Poland who taught him a timeless lesson: that love is stronger than hate.
Produced by USC Shoah Foundation
Creative Director: Stephen D. Smith
Producers: Kori Street... -
Detroit Hives
Detroit Hives follows Tim Paule and Nicole Lindsey, a young couple from East Detroit, who are working hard to bring diversity to the field of beekeeping and create opportunities for young Detroit natives to overcome adversity. It is estimated that Detroit has with well over 90,000 empty housing l...
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La Casita Rosa
La Casita Rosa is a short documentary based on the humanitarian efforts of Las Patronas, a group of Mexican women determined to help feed the countless immigrants riding on top of cargo trains heading to the U.S.
Director: Elvin Herrera
Producers: Elvin Herrera
12 min | Mexico
Languages: Spanish... -
Justice on Wheels
A story about a bus that delivers legal remedies to women in rural Kyrgyzstan.
Director: Shanshan Chen, (Reporter) Adela Suliman
Producers: Shanshan Chen
4 min | Kyrgyzstan
Languages: Russian
Subtitles: EnglishFILMMAKER Q&A:
https://simaacademy.com/filmmaker-qa/justice-on-wheels/ -
Mini Moguls: Ryan's Recycling
Meet Ryan, a nine-year-old who started his own recycling company to save our earth and seas. He started recycling at just three years old – now, he's helping tons of people all over the world get inspired to do the right thing.
Director: Vanessa Quintero, In the Know
Producers: Malka Media
5 min... -
Black Girl Poem *Viewer Discretion Advised*
[Trigger Warning] In 'Black Girl Poem,' black women take a surrealist approach in confronting the power dynamic of sexual harassment and catcalling within the African American community. The three women towering above the city act as a chorus, symbolizing a heightened representation of resistance...
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Not a Pet
Every year hundreds of cheetah cubs are stolen from the wild, decimating the dwindling population of Africa's most endangered big cat. For every 5 cubs that are taken, only 1 survives. Smuggled into the Middle East to be sold as exotic pets. Investigating this illegal trade and the role social me...
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Anthropocene: Dandora (VR/360)
The Dandora Landfill is the largest of its kind in Kenya. It receives industrial, agricultural, commercial and medical waste, amounting to about 2,000 tonnes per day. It is estimated that more than a million people live in the vicinity of the landfill. Residents work informally, sorting scrap by ...
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Facing The Myths
Lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender people living in the Middle East and North Africa share their responses to myths and stereotypes about LGBT people in the region on a new video and special feature released today by the Arab Foundation for Freedoms and Equality (AFE) and Human Rights Watch....
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Words of a Change Maker
How do you make the world listen? Founder of the Danish NGO Plastic Change International Henrik Beha Pedersen was sick and tired of seeing plastic in the oceans and decided to do something about it!
Director: Katrine Elvstrøm Krause & Søren Rosenørn
2018 | 4 min
Denmark
Language: English