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An Nissaa (Women)
Shakirah (29), entrepreneur and activist, a vivid presence on social media where she fights to preserve the heritage of her home district – Bo-Kaap, Cape Town – against rampant gentrification. 50 kilometres away in Strand, Western Cape, 27-year-old Rughshana builds a second career in comedy, usin...
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Sama Bella *Viewer Discretion Advised*
Many early mornings, Bella and her brothers take a small boat from the harbor at the Sama-Bajau community in the Philippines to catch fish. The Indigenous sea nomads in maritime Southeast Asia are deeply connected to the ocean and are known as the best skin divers in the world.
The men take thei...
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Queen's Illusion
In an era of political repression and growing social conservatism in Turkey, the Istanbul drag scene thrives. This absorbing and illuminating half-hour documentary goes backstage to speak with those at its heart. Cake Mosq, Pepi IV, Ahsen Gönülce, Anna Tholia and Gia Androgeny are some of the mos...
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Little Big Dreams
This documentary tells the story of India’s only all-dwarf theater group. Many of them once worked as clowns in circuses, but through theater, they have found respect, dignity, and love. They are now building their own village, with homes made to fit their needs. It’s where they live, practice, a...
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Can I Hug You? *Viewer Discretion Advised*
In the city of Qom, the most restricted city in Iran, there are many restrictions on human rights such as mandatory hijab to assure sexual safety; Hossein (M, 30) grew up in this environment and experienced multiple sexual assaults by men, despite these measures. Due to stereotypes around masculi...
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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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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 -
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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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...
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Queer Possibilities: A Conversation on Intergenerational Solidarity
Queer Possibilities is a short film capturing a discussion between Sammie Ablaza Wills & Vince Crisostomo, two trans and queer Asian and Pacific Islander activists of different generations. In this mini-documentary, Sammie and Vince connect over the power of intergenerational solidarity, mistake-...
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Minerita
Life and survival is incredibly difficult in the bleak Cerro Rico mining district in Potosi, Bolivia. This is true for the men risking their lives going down into the mine shafts looking for silver ore, but especially so for the women, who are viewed by the men as fair game.
This powerful and br...
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Testimony of Ana
Anaben Pawar is an elderly tribal woman accused of witchcraft in rural India. Through Ana's story, we delve into a deep-rooted culture of patriarchy and examine one of the most monstrous attacks on women's bodies in modern India: the witch-hunt.
Director: Sachin Dheeraj Mudigonda
Producers: Jan... -
When God Roars
How can a real estate photography company in the U.S. help provide healthy livelihoods to trafficking survivors in the Philippines?
Called to work with those exploited and traumatized by human trafficking, Sam and Mindy started Regenesys to create living-wage jobs for survivors. In partnership...
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Kanda Bode (Don't Get Whipped)
This documentary focuses on the Hamar Tribe, a semi nomadic and rural people who live along the Omo River in Southwestern Ethiopia. Preserving the traditions of their ancestors is essential to defining Hamar life. One of the most venerated of the Hamar’s ancient traditions involves the transition...
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Authentically Us: She Flies By Her Own Wings (VR/360)
Shannon Scott driven by the military tenet of “Leave No One Behind,” pulls the levers of democracy urging freedom and justice for all be secured from the marbled halls of Washington D.C. to the hallowed ground of those who championed LGBTQ and transgender equality before her.
Directors: Jesse (J...
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Women Of Fukushima
Six Japanese women offer brutally honest views on the state of the clean-up, the cover-ups and untruths since the nuclear accident in Fukushima, and how it has affected their lives, homes and families.
Director: Paul Johannessen
2012 | 27 min | Japan
Language: Japanese -
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...
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When The Time Comes
Shot among the Samburu semi-nomadic tribe of Kenya, "When The Time Comes" portraits its relation to the ancestral and controversial practice that is female circumcision (Female Genital Cutting) and highlights the inter-generational debate that is taking place in their communities, allowing girls ...
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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... -
Vital Voices: Tep Vanny
Anyone who has worked in a developing country in the last decade will have heard a similar story. Developers seize a valuable piece of land, throw the existing community out, and after protests ebb away, a new development arises: apartments, a mall, restaurants and stores for the newly wealthy. T...
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Vital Voices: Manal Yaish Zraiq
Manal Yaish Zraiq wears many hats: businesswoman, manager, mentor, networker, and key force in one of the world’s most intriguing real estate developments. Manal is a key figure in the Rawabi project, the first planned city in Palestine and the largest private sector undertaking in Palestinian hi...
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Two Girls Against The Rain
A true story about two women struggling hard for their love. Soth Yun (57) and Sem Eang (58) met during the genocidal Khmer Rouge regime when coincidence led them to live in the same mobile unit. More than two million people died during the Khmer Rouge times, Soth and Sem survived. Today the le...