Cinemafile

Anchored by two trenchant performances, this exquisitely well made film from co-directors Guy Nattiv & Zar Amir about the politics of modern day Iran, TATAMI follows Iranian female judoka Leila (Arienne Mandi) and her coach Maryam (Zar Amir), who travel to the World Judo Championships, intent on bringing home Iran’s first gold medal. Midway through the Championships, they receive a chilling ultimatum from the Islamic Republic. Co-directed by Guy Nattiv (Academy Award-Winner for Skin) and Zar Amir (Cannes Film Festival Best Actress-Winner for Holy Spider), join us to talk about their collaboration behind and in front of the camera, ra...

Currently available on NETFLIX, MATTER OF TIME is a compelling documentary chronicling the fight to cure Epidermolysis Bullosa (EB), a rare and devastating genetic disease. Set against the backdrop of a powerful benefit concert organized by Pearl Jam frontman Eddie Vedder in Seattle, the film weaves together personal stories of patients and families, the scientific breakthroughs propelled by their advocacy, and the strength of a global community refusing to accept the status quo. Far more than a concert film, Matter of Time captures the emotional and physical toll of EB, the radical model of venture philanthropy driving progress, and...

Winner of the Special Jury Award for Outstanding Performance at the 2026 Sundance Film Festival, DEAD LOVER is the story of a lonely Gravedigger who reeks so strongly of corpses that she can't attract a lover. She concocts fragrant perfumes in her workshop, but nothing can save her romantic prospects from her ghastly odor... Until one day, when Gravedigger meets Lover, an aristocratic dandy in town for his sister's funeral. Lover is different: numb to the pampered palette of the aristocracy, his loins are downright aroused by Gravedigger’s morbid stank. Before long, Gravedigger and Lover begin a rapturous love af...

IMMUTABLE is a feature documentary that follows a group of students from the Washington Urban Debate League as they fight to find their voices in a world that too often tries to silence them. Against the backdrop of a city marked by inequality, these young debaters confront daily challenges that range from housing instability to neurodivergence. For some, debate is a path to college. For others, it’s a lifeline. We meet them at a summer debate camp, where their journey begins—not just to win tournaments, but to sharpen arguments that reflect their own lives. One girl, autistic and...

In 1979, David Greenberger, a recent art school grad became activities director at a Boston nursing home. David began interviewing the residents, rejecting pat questions with the unexpected: "Which do you prefer- coffee or meat?” “What is embarrassment?” and “How close can you get to a penguin?” The result was The Duplex Planet, an early ‘zine characterized by humor, warmth and sincerity. Today David’s work takes the form of spoken word shows and recordings. Beyond the Duplex Planet explores notions of aging and its intersection with art and community. It’s also a slightly ironic look at the life of an artist dev...

Joachim Trier’s Academy Award winning Best International Feature Sentimental Value, is a riveting drama that follows sisters Nora and Agnes as they reunite with their estranged father, Gustav, a once-renowned director who offers Nora a role in what he hopes will be his comeback film. Nora turns it down, but soon discovers he's given the part to an eager young Hollywood star. The two siblings must now navigate a complicated relationship with Gustav while dealing with an American actress dropped right into the middle of their complex family dynamics. Sentimental Value has been nominated for 9 2026 Oscars, including: Best Pi...

Pasha Talankin is an unlikely hero—a beloved Russian primary school teacher, known as a mentor and prankster who offers students a safe haven in his office. After Russia invades Ukraine, Pasha’s role in the school changes dramatically as he is reluctantly drawn into Putin’s propaganda machine. Forced to promote state-sanctioned messages and horrified by the transformation of his school and community, he struggles with guilt and a sense of powerlessness, leading him to become an international whistleblower. Directed by David Borenstein and co-directed by Pasha Talankin, this uniquely collaborative film is as captivating and joyful as it is...

In this moving and deeply personal feature documentary, BIRITA, a family of theater-makers on the tiny archipelago of The Faroe Islands attempts to stage Shakespeare’s King Lear, casting the mother - celebrated theater actress Birita Mohr - who is living with Alzheimer’s in the lead role. Birita’s son Búi Dam, a theater director, leads the project—a controversial endeavor driven by his belief that, even though his mother can no longer speak, she longs to return to the stage. Directing the play, Búi must grapple with justifying the project’s premise, while his father, a retired th...

Between Mount Vesuvius and the Gulf of Naples, the ground shakes periodically and the fumaroles of the Phlegraean Fields taint the air. From the traces of history, memories of the subterranean world, and the concerns of the present, in black and white, a lesser-known Naples emerges and fills with voices, with lives. Below the clouds lies a territory crisscrossed by locals, worshippers, tourists, and archaeologists excavating a past that in museums will give new life and meaning to statues, fragments, and ruins. The train that rings Vesuvius makes its rounds as racehorses train along the shore. A teacher runs...

Ten-year-old Cassius Daniels (Cassie Devyn McDowell) knows exactly who she is—a mermaid princess. But trapped in a body her father refuses to understand, bullied at school, and battling gender dysphoria, life feels like one long chokehold. Desperate and unraveling, Cass fills a backpack with rocks and walks into the lake. Enter Pepper (Pepper Arturo Luíz Soria) —a sharp-tongued, emotionally wrecked drag queen just having left a late-night show. Hungover and haunted by her own demons, Pepper spots Cass at the lake before it’s too late. Their first encounter is awkward, fiery, and unforgettable. Cass is resistant. Pepper’...

In her latest documentary film, Emmy Award–winning director Geeta Gandbhir confronts viewers with the stark realities of “stand your ground” laws. Now streaming on Netflix, The Perfect Neighbor explores a tight-knit community experiencing relentless harassment by a neighbor whose hostility escalates into a fatal crime. Using police bodycam footage to reveal in-the-moment conversations between law enforcement and neighbors, the film illustrates the impact of these controversial yet widely common laws. The Perfect Neighbor made its world premiere at the 2025 Sundance Film Festival, where it was awarded the Directing Award: U.S. Documentary. It is a finalist for the 2026 Academ...

When a group of suburban moms discovers their public schools are under attack by a powerful network of religious extremists, they form a secret resistance to protect LGBTQ+ kids and defend free public education. Armed with Open Source Intelligence (OSINT) research, infiltration tactics, and a nationwide alliance of badass moms, they wage a high-stakes battle to expose the conspiracy and reclaim their communities. Co-directors Miranda Winters and Rocky Romano join us for a conversation on why every American should care about the health and well-being of our public school system.

About the filmmakers - Miranda Winters and...

A real psychoanalyst and eight actors… GROUP: THE SCHOPENHAUER EFFECT drop us into the center of a weekly group run by Dr. Elliot Zeisel, a real New York psychoanalyst with more than 50 years of experience. Dr. Zeisel intervened and reacted in real time as he would in his actual daily practice. His presence intentionally blurs the line between performance and reality, creating live tension where fiction feeds reality and reality feeds fiction. When newcomer Alexis (Thomas Sadoski) joins a Manhattan therapy group and reveals he wants to write a TV series based on their sessions, it threatens the group’s ba...

GUNFIGHTER PARADISE is a dark comedy centered around Christian Fundamentalism and the rising tide of Christo-Fascism in the United States. Set in the very unfortunate here and now of the southern United States, where neighbors have become the “other,” this satire blends comedy and horror to explore the cultural Frankenstein of irreconcilable American ideologies. A hunter returns home to North Carolina with a mysterious green case. Following the death of his mother, he settles back into the family home where his mind begins to disintegrate. Stalked by divine voices and unholy visions, guided by disquiet, his mother’s hand writte...

WINNER of Best Documentary, 2025 Tribeca Festival, Suzannah Herbert's jaw-dropping NATCHEZ captures an unsettling clash between history and memory in a small Mississippi town; a layered mosaic of people contending with the weight of the past in a place where it is always present. Equal parts amusing and disturbing, we journey through an antebellum tourist destination at a crossroads as it grapples with a deeply troubled history that is so thoroughly ingrained in its present, we’re left to wonder if it’s actually past at all.

About the filmmaker - Suzannah Herbert is a documentary director and edit...

A psychedelic odyssey into the fabric of the universe, guided by a filmmaker and his immersive practical experiments that blur the lines between art and science to reveal nature’s inner workings. Captured entirely by camera with no visual effects or artifice, the unfolding awe-inspiring hyper-real imagery is elevated by music from legendary Nils Frahm and an ethereal electronic original score by Rival Consoles, transforming curious observation into a hypnotic audio-visual adventure spanning from the subatomic to cosmological scales. Tracing the forces and elements shaping the natural world, PHENOMENA is a kinetic sensory experience, exploring the wonders of the un...

MISTAKE is a nuanced, historical drama about an intersex child born in 1941 who is forced to grow up as a man named Larry in the deep South of the 1970’s. As he struggles with self-loathing over his unique and socially forbidden identity, he desperately seeks to find family and friends who will understand and support him. A surprise discovery of love and friendship with Lily, another town outsider, brings him joy and acceptance, while he must also deal with the heartbreaking violence and uncompromising bigotry of his small-town rural life. Lauren’s feature film is, above all, a standout love...

In October 1985, Santa Ana, California was shaken by a brazen act of political violence when Palestinian American Alex Odeh, a beloved teacher and community leader, was killed by a tripwire bomb planted in his office. Despite substantial evidence and identified suspects, the case was never solved. Who Killed Alex Odeh? reopens the mystery, tracking a renewed investigation in real time as new leads emerge, long-buried records come to light, and the forces behind a political assassination are finally confronted. Unfolding like a detective thriller, the film weaves archival footage, firsthand testimony, and new reporting to expose the violent fundamentalist...

Kallia and Ram are at their wits' end with their sleepless baby when they realize Kallia’s Greek mother is on a secret mission to exorcise the family from the evil eye. Trapped between the pressures of new age parenting, old world superstitions, and meddling in-laws, they fight to hold onto their dreams. Inspired by the cultural clash that took place after moving into the same Manhattan apartment building as Shaw’s parents shortly before their son’s birth, filmmakers Shaw and Kamalakanthan turn the lens on themselves as new parents Kallia and Ram—roles that they originated in their aw...

Nearly a decade before Jimmy Kimmel and Stephen Colbert came under attack for their political humor, an unknown comedian from Ohio finds himself in even more serious trouble for making fun of the government. Crime & Parody follows the story of Anthony Novak, an amateur comedian who creates a parody Facebook page mocking his local police department. The page is satire, but the police take it very seriously. They raid Anthony’s home, throw him in county jail, and charge him with a felony punishable by up to 18 months in prison. Soon national headlines mushroom and The Onion head writer Mi...

The Other Roe uncovers the powerful, long-overlooked story behind Doe v. Bolton, the historic Supreme Court case that was decided on the same day as Roe v. Wade yet has been largely erased from public memory. While Roe became a national symbol, Doe quietly provided the broader legal framework that shaped reproductive rights for generations. The film centers on Margie Pitts Hames, a trailblazing civil rights attorney whose courage and brilliance were essential to the modern fight for bodily autonomy. Through archival footage, intimate interviews, and contemporary reflections, THE OTHER ROE traces Hames’s journey as she takes on a...

SMILE…the Worst is Yet to Come tells the story of Elder Millenial’s, BEN and BIRDIE, who are feeling the pressure of time. After closing his bar and suffering a heart attack-ish incident, Ben is struggling to find his purpose. Birdie put her photography ambitions on hold to be the financially “stable one” as a nurse, but is secretly exploring creative pursuits. Several failed IVF attempts have driven a wedge between them. They retreat to Big Bear Lake to reignite romantic sparks, but their efforts fail every time. Things get further upended when they meet JANUARY and JEREK, early-20...

Currently available on HBO, director Jan Czarlewski’s riveting documentary film 33 PHOTOS FROM THE GHETTO tells the story of the only known photographs from inside the Warsaw Ghetto during the April 1943 uprising and its brutal repression that were not taken by German forces. The images, taken secretly by 23-year-old Polish firefighter Leszek Grzywaczewski, who witnessed the devastating response to the uprising as a member of the Warsaw Fire Service, present a rare civilian account of one of World War II’s darkest moments. The film traces two families, one of which is Jewish, who preserved the images for decades but...

Award-winning director Kim A. Snyder’s THE LIBRARIANS is four-alarm siren alerting us to nationwide campaign, funded by shadowy network of special interests to censor and deny Americans access to many of the most consequential books and historical information from world celebrated and renown authors, scientists and historians. THE LIBRARIANS highlights a concerted effort in Texas to restrict, ban and censor books and the so-called “Krause List”, a list of 850 books focused on race and LGBTQIA+ stories. After a Texas House Representative issued a list of these books to be removed from school libraries, Librarians across the state found themse...

PAYING FOR IT is a live-action adaptation of acclaimed alternative-cartoonist Chester Brown’s best-selling graphic novel. In the late 90s, Chester and Sonny are a long-term, committed, romantic couple. When Sonny wants to redefine their relationship, Chester, an introverted cartoonist, starts sleeping with sex workers and discovers a new kind of intimacy in the process. PAYING FOR IT is about love, sex and non-monogamy for adults. It deals with the complicated subject of the exchange for sex-work versus the complications of romantic love. The movie celebrates the vibrant underground comic and zine era through the experiences of cartoonist Chester Br...

Getting its World Premiere at the 2026 Sundance Film Festival, JOYBUBBLES begins in the 1950s, recounting the unbelievable story of Joybubbles, (the legal name of the former Joe Engressia since 1991) as he discovers he can control the global telephone system simply by whistling a magic tone. Born blind and hungry for connection, his early obsession with the telephone sparks a subculture that shapes the future of hacking and modern technology in the 20th century. Told through vivid archival footage and Joybubbles’ own voice recordings, the film celebrates a visionary who redefined connection and challenged assumptions about disability, identity, and imagination. JO...

Middle-aged and erratic, Oscar is a failed writer who has given up on life. Unemployed and living with family, he wanders the streets of Medellín in a drunken stupor, lamenting the state of literature in his home country, where he has succumbed to the cliché of the tortured artist. However, the opportunity to mentor a young student offers a chance at redemption, if he doesn’t screw it up first. In a performance marked by darkly comic pathos, first-time actor Ubeimar Rios stars in Simón Mesa Soto’s Un Certain Regard Jury Prize-winner A POET, a raw and rio...

Director Praise Odigie Paige's beautiful narrative short Birdie's will have its World Premiere at the 2026 Sundance Film Festival, BIRDIE is a narrative short set in 1970’s Virginia, following a young Nigerian refugee trying to keep her family together in the aftermath of the Biafran War. Director Praise Odigie Paige BIRDIE is a coming-of-age film told through the eyes of 16-year-old English, the younger daughter of a Nigerian family living in a Catholic charity home in rural Virginia. As the war ends, the arrival of a new refugee unsettles their fragile balance and drives a wedge between English and her si...

Director Brittany Shyne’s Oscar Shortlisted Feature Documentary seamlessly weaves together the stories of three Black generational farmers to create a collective and intimate portrait of farming today, SEEDS is a moving and powerful exploration of their lives, joys and struggles as well as the fragility of legacy and owning land. With remarkable intimacy, the film documents their everyday lives - cotton harvesting, chasing cows, dealing with broken machinery and financial precarities. The camera relishes simple moments - conversations through car windows, candy from grandma’s purse as it captures moments of warmth, joy and fulfillment - turning them into...

Michael Apted’s The Long Way Home, a revealing, rollicking portrait of the Soviet underground rock legend Boris Grebenshchikov, who became the first to record in the West during the early, optimistic days of Glasnost—not quite believing he would collaborate with Dave Stewart, Annie Lennox, Chrissie Hynde, and Ray Cooper—was released to critical acclaim after its broadcast in the UK and premiere at Sundance, but has largely disappeared these past 30 years. Thanks to Steven Lawrence, the film’s producer, THE LONG WAY HOME: REMASTERED AND EXPANDED (2026) will now have a second life in this newly remastered edition. In addit...

Mickey (Zelda Adams) faces a deadly diagnosis, but she isn’t ready to die yet. Heading into the woods with her father (John Adams), she seeks dark magic at the hands of mysterious recluse, Solveig (Toby Poser) , who has an intimate relationship with death and roots that go deep in the land. For three days, Mickey endures Solveig’s extreme rituals of death magic. But every cure has its cost, and every curse is another’s gift. As buried secrets claw their way to the surface, the veil between the living and the dead begins to unravel, and Mickey finds...

Follow director Adam Bhala Lough as he sets out to better understand the technology and people at the center of the AI boom. His quest sends him on a path towards the father of AI, OpenAI CEO, Sam Altman. When he isn’t able to sit down with Altman himself, Adam travels to India to create an AI version of him to interview instead. DEEPFAKING SAM ALTMAN is a verité documentary with a sci-fi comedic twist, the film becomes a sharp, surprisingly moving exploration of how we’re all trying to navigate the chaotic new world of artificial intelligence, and w...

In the wake of the opioid epidemic, insurance companies were now required to cover addiction and mental health treatment at the same reimbursement rate as other medical conditions, but without any of the regulations, a move that effectively monetized the 40 million Americans struggling with these issues. Shot over the course of three years, Shuffle follows three individuals trapped by the insurance-fueled cycle of treatment fraud spreading across the country. whose future depend not on getting into treatment, but on getting out alive. A journey of discovery and transformation, these personal stories provide the framework for a more public investigation...

Shortlisted for this year’s Best Feature Documentary Oscar, Director Brandon Kramer’s deeply empathetic story begins with the despicable attack that took place on the morning of October 7, 2023, while Israeli-American Liat Atzili and her husband Aviv were at home when Hamas attacked their kibbutz. By nightfall, Liat and Aviv are captives in Gaza along with 250 other people - 12 of whom, like Liat, are American citizens. Caught between international diplomacy and a rapidly escalating war, their family must face their own uncertainty and conflicting perspectives in the pursuit of Liat and Aviv's release. This agonizing process, and the ultimate fate...

In the heart of the Mississippi Delta, the village of Glendora may seem quiet and remote. But beneath its stillness lies a vibrant, tightly knit African-American community whose strength, resilience, and creativity thrive despite chronic scarcity. GLENDORA is the result of five years of close collaboration between filmmaker and townspeople—an intimate portrait of life where economic fragility meets profound cultural wealth. GLENDORA is a film made with—and by—the people who live there. It amplifies voices too often unheard, offering a powerful story of culture, resilience, creativity, and collective memory from a town long overlooked—but not easily f...

In co-directors Michael Mabbott and Lucah Rosenberg-Lee's Peabody Award winning documentary portrait, ANY OTHER WAY: THE JACKIE SHANE STORY a star is reborn. With an outsize stage presence that eclipsed R&B greats like Etta James and Little Richard, Black trans soul singer Jackie Shane was the real deal. After mysteriously vanishing from public view for almost 40 years, this little-known icon is finally given her ultimate due. In an era when voices like hers were silenced and marginalized, Jackie blazed an incandescent trail from her native Nashville to the top of the charts in 1960s Toronto, where she ruled...

In pre-internet 1987, Conor and his dog Sandy live a life of seclusion, lost in the slow-rendering graphics of early Macs and televisions aglow with late night horror movie marathons. But when he begins playing OBEX, a new and mysterious, state-of-the-art computer game, he finds himself trapped in a low-tech, but high-stakes analog hellscape as the line between reality and game blurs. Audacious and uncanny, writer-director Albert Birney's OBEX is a delightfully skewed lo-fi fantasy. Shot in striking black and white, this surreally nostalgic nightmare revisits the dawn of personal computing to reflect on the loneliness of our always-online present...

Ripped from today's headlines, MEN OF WAR is an insider account of the failed 2020 coup in Venezuela as told by former US Army Green Beret Jordan Goudreau, a three-time Bronze Star recipient who organized the ill-fated mission. A harrowing look into the realpolitik world of exiled leaders, private armies and shadowy intelligence operatives and what made one man believe he could change the course of a nation's history. MEN OF WAR chronicles the astonishing true story of Operation Gideon—the failed 2020 coup attempt in Venezuela—and the covert network of ex-generals, mercenaries, and political operatives behind it. Co-Directors Jen Gati...

A deeply moving, multigenerational drama, ALL THAT’S LEFT OF YOU follows a Palestinian teenager who gets swept into a protest in the Occupied West Bank and experiences a moment of violence that rocks his family. The film unfolds as his mother recounts the political and emotional threads that led to that fateful moment. Spanning seven decades, the film traces the hopes and heartaches of one uprooted family, bearing witness to the scars of dispossession and the enduring legacy of survival. Recently submitted as Jordan’s entry for Academy Award consideration in the Best International Feature category ALL THAT’S LEFT...

HOMEGROWN follows three conservative activists—a newly politicized father-to-be in New Jersey, an Air Force veteran organizing conservatives in New York City, and an activist from Texas—crisscrossing the country in the summer of 2020 campaigning for Donald Trump. When they become convinced that the election is stolen, they take their fight to the streets. The result is a chilling portrait of the growing unrest pushing American democracy to the brink. Shot across battleground communities and key flashpoints of national tension, the documentary reveals the lived experiences of people whose determination to turn their beliefs into action places them on the...