Poor Kids (2011)

Land Without Bread

An exploration —manipulated and staged— of life in Las Hurdes, in the province of Cáceres, in Extremadura, Spain, as it was in 1932. Insalubrity, misery and lack of opportunities provoke the emigration of young people and the solitude of those who remain in the desolation of one of the poorest and least developed Spanish regions at that time.

Flyin' Cut Sleeves

FLYIN' CUT SLEEVES, completed in 1993, portrays street gang presidents in the Bronx. Their world was the streets, set against a backdrop of uprooted families, cultural alienation, drugs and violence. Neighborhood teenagers responded by organizing into street groups known to the members as "families", but labeled in the most alarming terms as violent gangs by the press. The documentation of these lives over a twenty-year period offers a remarkable perspective on life in the ghetto (spanning four generations), and the means that people devise to cope from the time that they are children to when they serve as parents and role models for a new generation.

The Spy Who Went Into the Cold

A documentary about Kim Philby, a British member of MI6 who was in reality a spy and defected to the U.S.S.R.

Rhino Man

RHINO MAN follows the courageous field rangers who risk their lives every day to protect South Africa's rhinos from being poached to extinction.

The Save the Children Fund Film

Director Ken Loach explores the politics of race, class and charity in a capitalist society in this documentary funded by the Save the Children foundation.

Class Divide

A look at NYC’s gentrification and growing inequality in a microcosm, Class Divide explores two distinct worlds that share the same Chelsea intersection – 10th Avenue and 26th Street. On one side of the avenue, the Chelsea-Elliot Houses have provided low-income public housing to residents for decades. Their neighbor across the avenue since 2012 is Avenues: The World School, a costly private school. What happens when kids from both of these worlds attempt to cross the divide?

American Jail

In this deeply personal film, director Roger Ross Williams sets out on a journey to understand the complex forces of racism and greed currently at work in America's prison system.

Stealing Africa

Zambia's copper resources have not made the country rich. Virtually all Zambia's copper mines are owned by corporations. In the last ten years, they've extracted copper worth $29 billion but Zambia is still ranked one of the twenty poorest countries in the world. So why hasn't copper wealth reduced poverty in Zambia? Once again it comes down to the issue of tax, or in Zambia's case, tax avoidance and the use of tax havens. Tax avoidance by corporations costs poor countries and estimated $160 billion a year, almost double what they receive in international aid. That's enough to save the lives of 350,000 children aged five or under every year. For every $1 given in aid to a poor country, $10 drains out. Vital money that could help a poor country pay for healthcare, schools, pensions and infrastructure. Money that would make them less reliant on aid.

Iran : La Stratégie du chaos

Plot unavailable

Methadonia

Shot over the course of 18 months in New York City's Lower East Side, METHADONIA sheds light on the inherent flaws of legal methadone treatments for heroin addiction by profiling eight addicts, in various stages of recovery and relapse, who attend the New York Center for Addiction Treatment Services (NYCATS).

Three Songs for Benazir

The story of Shaista, a young man who—newly married to Benazir and living in a camp for displaced persons in Kabul—struggles to balance his dreams of being the first from his tribe to join the Afghan National Army with the responsibilities of starting a family. Even as Shaista’s love for Benazir is palpable, the choices he must make to build a life with her have profound consequences.

The Spider's Web: Britain's Second Empire

At the demise of empire, City of London financial interests created a web of offshore secrecy jurisdictions that captured wealth from across the globe and hid it behind obscure financial structures in a web of offshore islands. Today, up to half of global offshore wealth may be hidden in British offshore jurisdictions and Britain and its offshore jurisdictions are the largest global players in the world of international finance. How did this come about, and what impact does it have on the world today? This is what the Spider's Web sets out to investigate.

The Corporate Coup D'État

A democracy should protect its most vulnerable citizens, but increasingly the United States is failing to do so. This investigation blends the insights of experts with the experiences of citizens of the Rust Belt in the Midwest where the steel industry once flourished, but where closures and outsourcing have left urban areas desolate. It is here where Donald Trump finds some of his most fervent supporters.

Darwin's Nightmare

Africa in the sixties. The Nile perch, a ravenous predator, is introduced into Lake Victoria as a scientific experiment, causing the extinction of many native species. Its meat is exported everywhere in exchange for weapons, creating a globalized evil alliance on the lake shores. An infernal nightmare in the real world that wipes out Darwin's Theory of Evolution.

Britain and the Blitz

Documentary looking back at a Britain during the darkest days of WWII using stunning new archived footage and interviews with people who lived through it.

Britain on Film: Black Britain

Featuring footage spanning from 1901 to 1985, this little-seen footage has been found from all across the UK. This programme allows an exploration into stories of migration, community and also the struggle against inequality, while also providing the opportunity to celebrate black British culture and life on screen. Films in the programme include: Miners Leaving Pendlebury Colliery (1901), Hull Fair (1902), For the Wounded (1915), From Trinidad to Serve the Empire (1916), Hello! West Indies (1943), Mining Review 2nd Year No. 11 (1949), To the Four Corners (1957), Black Special Constable (1964), Black Police Officers (1966), Cold Railway Workers (1964), Nigerian Wedding in Cornwall (1964), Coloured School Leavers (1965), London Line No. 373 (1971), African Student Families (1975), Liverpool 8 (1972), Blood Ah Go Run (1982), The Jah People (1981) and Grove Carnival (1981)

L'Effet Bahamas

Plot unavailable

The Police Tapes

Filmmakers Alan and Susan Raymond spent three months in 1976 riding along with patrol officers in the 44th Precinct of the South Bronx, which had the highest crime rate in New York City at that time.

Los posibles

Santiago Mitre co-directs his first movement following The Student together with choreographer Onofri Barbato. Although it would have been more accurate to say “his first film-story-adventure-movie-great movie following The Student”, the word movement fits perfectly in Los posibles, the most overwhelmingly kinetic work Argentine cinema has delivered in many, many years. The film deals with the adaptation of a dance show directed by Onofri together with a group of teenagers who came to Casa La Salle, a center of social integration located in González Catán, trying to find some refuge from hardship. Already entitled Los posibles, the piece opened in the La Plata Tacec and was later staged in the AB Hall of the San Martín Cultural Center. Now, it dazzles audiences out of a film screen, with extraordinary muscles and a huge heart: Los posibles is a rhapsody of roughen bodies and torn emotions. Precise and exciting, it’s our own delayed, necessary, and incandescent West Side Story.

Bangla Surf Girls

Three working-class teenage girls in a port city in Bangladesh escape daily hardships and stifling family lives by riding waves on their surfboards and grabbing hold of the fleeting and thrilling sense of freedom that brings.

The Journey

Peter Watkins' global look at the impact of military use of nuclear technology and people's perception of it, as well as a meditation on the inherent bias of the media, and documentaries themselves.

School for Hope

Animari and Zlatko's mission is to help children from disadvantaged backgrounds get the best possible care and education. Will they manage to find funding to welcome more children and to start a high school?

Laissez-faire

A historical perspective to understand Neoliberalism and to understand why this ideology today so profoundly influences the choices of our governments and our lives.

Britain's Favourite Foods - Are They Good for You?

Professor Alice Roberts discovers which are Britain's most popular fresh foods and uses the latest science to uncover the surprising health benefits of our favourite foods.

The Mouth of the Wolf

Upon his release from prison, an ex-convict returns to his beloved city of Genoa, and to his lover.

Meth Storm

As police and DEA agents battle sophisticated cartels, rural, economically-disadvantaged users and dealers–whose addiction to ICE and lack of job opportunities have landed them in an endless cycle of poverty and incarceration–are caught in the middle.

Video Nasties: Moral Panic, Censorship & Videotape

A documentary analyzing the furore which so-called "video nasties" caused in Britain during the 1980s.

Tightrope: Americans Reaching for Hope

Pulitzer Prize-winning journalists Nicholas Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn explore the causes and costs of addiction, poverty and incarceration plaguing America, from the inner city to small towns like Kristof's hometown of Yamhill, Oregon. While pockets of empathy and aid exist, are they enough to rescue the thousands of Americans in despair, for whom the American Dream of self-reliance is impossibly out of reach?

Childhood 2.0

For the first time in history, mental illness and suicide have become one of the greatest threats to school-aged children. Many parents still view dangers as primarily physical and external, but they’re missing the real danger: kids spending more time online and less time engaging in real life, free play, and autonomy. What are the effects on the next generation's mental, physical, and spiritual health? Childhood was more or less unchanged for millennia, but this is Childhood 2.0.

The Divided Soul of America

Under the Trump administration, USA is a deeply divided country. One side feeds populism and religious rectitude in a monochromatic landscape, painted white, lamenting for a past that never will return. The other side fuels diversity and multiculturalism, a biased vision of a progressive future, quite unlikely. Both sides are constantly confronted, without listening to each other. Only a few reasonable people gather to change this potentially dangerous situation.

Scheme Birds

As her adolescence gives way to the obligations of motherhood, troubled Gemma matures in Motherwell, her Scottish hometown, heavily dependent on the steel industry. Unfortunately for her, her hedonistic way of understanding the world does not fit in with the philosophy of the rest of the villagers, so trouble soon follows.

Salvation

This documentary portrays the front-line street workers who serve the needy under the umbrella of the Salvation Army. Shot in Toronto at Christmastime, the film chronicles the small hopes and tiny victories of life lived below the poverty line and the daily rewards for those who work to serve others.

Attack! The Battle for New Britain

Actual footage by the United States Signal Corps of the landing and attack on Arawe Beach, Cape Glouster, New Britain island in 1943 in the South Pacific theatre of World War Two, and the handicaps of the wild jungle in addition to the Japanese snipers and pill-box emplacements.

La Soufrière: Waiting for an Inevitable Catastrophe

Werner Herzog takes a film crew to the island of Guadeloupe when he hears that the volcano on the island is going to erupt. Everyone has left, except for one old man who refuses to leave.

Dangerous Games: Roblox and the Metaverse Exposed

Follow Alex, Janae, and Katie as they investigate the hidden threats inside online worlds designed for children. After Katie is harassed by a predator on Roblox, the trio uncovers a disturbing network of extremists, predators, and illicit content. As their investigation gains traction, real-world tragedies — including a kidnapping and a mass shooting — underscore the devastating consequences of a system failing to protect its most vulnerable users. Through expert interviews and gripping verité storytelling, the film exposes the gaps in platform regulations and the dangers that continue to slip through the cracks. Blending investigative journalism with compelling visuals, Dangerous Games delivers a wake-up call on the urgent need for accountability in the evolving digital world.

Two Sisters

Violeta and Vyollca Dukay live in the south of Kosovo, close to the border with Albania. Faced with a very high unemployment in their country since the end of the war, they became deminers. They’ve been going to the minefields every day for six years now. The unique and very strong relationship that exists between the two sisters helps them to overcome their fear and to keep hoping in spite of the precariousness of their situation and the risks they run each day to earn their living.