Driven to Save Lives (2024)

Confessions of a Good Samaritan

Director Penny Lane’s decision to become a “good Samaritan” by giving one of her kidneys to a stranger turns into a funny and moving personal quest to understand the nature of altruism. “Confessions of a Good Samaritan” is a provocative inquiry into the science, history, and ethics of organ transplantation, asking an ancient question in a whole new way: Who is your neighbor, and what do you owe them?

D Tour

Pat Spurgeon is a professional musician whose dreams of being in a successful rock 'n' roll band have come true. But just as his band, Rogue Wave, starts to take off, his kidney starts to fail. "D tour" chronicles the life of a musician with "no back-up plan" as he's faced with daily dialysis, a grueling tour, and a search for a new kidney.

God Vulture and Human

The film explores the subject of organ donation through the lens of transplant coordinators, highlighting their role in the process of organ donation, retrieval and transplantation.

Second Chance Champions

Second Chance Champions delves into the world of organ and tissue donation through an international event for transplant athletes. Emotions run high as competitors split their medals with those who have given them a second chance at life.

Donner/Recevoir

The life stories of four families who were confronted with organ donation or transplantation issues. With humility and great generosity, the characters reveal to us the suffering, feelings, happiness that have surrounded these exceptional moments.

Mine

The non-donor father in a gay relationship struggles to come to terms with being the father to a child which is not biologically his.

Monkeybone

After a car crash sends repressed cartoonist Stu into a coma, he and the mischievous Monkeybone, his hilarious alter-ego, wake up in a wacked-out waystation for lost souls. When Monkeybone takes over Stu's body and escapes to wreak havoc on the real world, Stu has to find a way to stop him before his sister pulls the plug on reality forever!

The Animal

When loser Marvin Mange is involved in a horrible car accident, he's brought back to life by a deranged scientist as half man and half animal. His newfound powers are awesome -- but their adverse side effects could take over his life. Now, Marvin must fight to control his crazy primal urges around his new squeeze, Rianna, and his rival, Sgt. Sisk, who both think he's one cool cat.

Inhale

A couple goes to dangerous lengths to find a lung donor for their daughter.

Brain Dead

In a battle of man versus machine, Martin, a top neurosurgeon who's studying brain malfunctions that cause mental illness, delves deep into his own mind to save himself from a megalomaniacal corporation.

Chrysalises

The streets of Barcelona, ​​thousands of people coinciding at the same time, eyes crossed lost in thought. Not realizing that even though it may seem unique, everyone has a story worth telling. People who live the moment that will change them forever, that will define and vindicate them. Moments in our lives where we have been, or will be, aware of a change of stage; of a before and an after. Moments when we feel like we’re dragging our backs every minute we’ve lived. Because we are all inside our chrysalis until someone breaks them and forces us to face the real world.

Tell-Tale

A man's recently transplanted heart leads him on a frantic search to find the donor's killer before a similar fate befalls him.

Friendly Persuasion

The story of a family of Quakers in Indiana in 1862. Their religious sect is strongly opposed to violence and war. It's not easy for them to meet the rules of their religion in everyday life but when Southern troops pass the area they are in real trouble. Should they fight, despite their peaceful attitude?

Guddu

When Guddu and Salina end up in a car accident, Salina loses her sight. Guddu soon finds out that he has a brain tumour, and decides to donate his eyes to Salina.

Applause

An aspiring actress, whose sugar-coated appearance belies her ruthless drive, worms herself into the life of an aging star and schemes to replace her on the stage as the star of a new play.

Stournara 288

Through the narration of a tenant of a block of flats on 288 Stournara street, we watch the everyday stories of people living in the city, their problems, their comic situations and their love affairs.

El donante

Tato Montini (Andrés Pajares), a popular radio show host and ladies man, agrees to donate his penis for a transplant after his death. He dies, goes to Heaven and discovers that even in afterlife he would have still needed his penis.

Ship of Theseus

Three stories about persons forced to think about the ethics and moral issues raised by medical advances.

Donor

Desperate for money, Lizette pursues the dark and thankless world of organ donation, hoping for a better life.

The Price We Pay

After a pawn shop robbery goes askew, two criminals take refuge at a remote farmhouse to try to let the heat die down, but find something much more menacing.

Leben über Kreuz

Two couples who can't stand each other need to become friends. Because this is their only chance for a life-saving organ donation.

This Train

An aging rock star, Ricky "Hellcat" Heller, returns home to Indiana years after disappearing, following the tragic death of his son. Shunned by his estranged wife and much of the town, Ricky believes that he is better off dead until a kid, haunted by his own demons, shows him otherwise.

Cary Grant: A Class Apart

Documentary that explores the life and career of leading man Cary Grant through film clips and interviews. Produced as S18E03 of the long running series American Masters.

Alternate Endings: Six New Ways to Die in America

A look at the varied new ways Americans are choosing to both find meaning and celebrate life as it comes to an end.

When Women Kill

When Women Kill is a poignant documentary exploring the shocking violence that seven women fell victim to at the hands of men. The program profiles the battered women who speak frankly about the cruel abuse, threats, and fears, and the overassertive men who led them down a one-way path to death and destruction. The film features in-prison footage, including a segment depicting a confession by a follower of the notorious Charles Manson, Leslie Van Houten, who was convicted of two killing sprees and committed to life in prison.

What Sex Am I?

"What Sex Am I?" follows a group of Transgender individuals struggling to make their way in every strata of 1980s America. From finding employment to finding acceptance, the first question the world forces them to ask is always, "What Sex Am I?"

Satori Stress

Leaving Europe to look for Akiko, Jean-Noël discovers her city, the exotic Tokyo. A documentary on everyday life in Tokyo, its KABUKI theater, its nostalgic TAKENOKOZOKU dances, its thousands of suit-and-tie executives, its geishas, its Western style marriages, its tranquil green areas, its pulsating nightlife...

Neighbour Abdi

How can you understand a violent past? Somali-born Abdi is furniture designer and support worker. He reenacts his life, marked by war and criminality, with the help of his neighbor and filmmaker Douwe. By means of playful reconstructions in a special effects studio, Abdi and Douwe embark on a candid and investigative journey through a painful history, focusing on the creative process throughout.

Celebrating Hong Kong's 25th Anniversary of the Return of the Motherland

Plot unavailable

Conscientious Protectors: A Story of Rebellion Against Extinction

This is the untold story of how in April 2019 Extinction Rebellion rallied the largest civil disobedience of a generation, holding London to ransom for 10 days, forcing the government to meet and discuss their three demands to avert the climate crisis.

Venerdì Santo - Bronte

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Raccolta del pistacchio di Bronte D.O.P.

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El Mar La Mar

An immersive and enthralling journey through the Sonoran Desert on the U.S.-Mexico border, El Mar La Mar weaves together harrowing oral histories from the area with hand-processed 16mm images of flora, fauna and items left behind by travelers. Subjects speak of intense, mythic experiences in the desert: A man tells of a fifteen-foot-tall monster said to haunt the region, while a border patrolman spins a similarly bizarre tale of man versus beast. A sonically rich soundtrack adds to the eerie atmosphere as the call of birds and other nocturnal noises invisibly populate the austere landscape. Emerging from the ethos of Harvard's Sensory Ethnography Lab, J.P. Sniadecki's attentive documentary approach mixes perfectly with Joshua Bonnetta's meditations on the materiality of film. Together, they've created an experience of the border region like nothing you've seen, heard or felt before.

Casa Roshell

You’d never know this is your home away from home. The surveillance camera outside shows a drab reception area and an unremarkable street in Mexico City; inside, the lights flash, but the tables are empty. Yet preparations are soon underway and fixed categories cease to apply: stubble is removed, make-up applied and strands of hair are teased into place; the camera is trained not on the men themselves, but what they see in the mirror.

Streetscapes [Dialogue]

A film director confides in his interlocutor. He talks about the working process, about creative blocks, about artistic crises and expressive forces. At some point, the idea takes hold that this conversation could be turned into a film. And this is the very film we’re watching the two of them in.

The Prize of the Pole

Three men and their life-long attempts to reconcile the opposing cultural ties within them. The story unfolds in the tension between Robert E. Peary, the American who spent 23 years among the polar Eskimos in order to conquer the North Pole, and Minik, the sole survivor out of six Eskimos, who were put on the New York exhibition in 1897 by Peary. In the film's contemporary scenes, the young polar Eskimo Robert E. Peary II, a great-grandchild of the Arctic explorer, goes on an expedition into his ancestors' past, which takes him from Greenland to America. It changes Robert's view on himself and his family history forever.

Colonization Road

In towns throughout Ontario, there are startling reminders of the colonization of Indigenous territories and the displacement of First Nations people. Anishinaabe comedian and activist Ryan McMahon takes us to his hometown of Fort Frances and down its main drag, which is called Colonization Road. Similar streets have similar names in towns and cities across the province, direct reminders of the Public Lands Act of 1853 and its severe impact on First Nations, their treaties and their land in the name of “Canadian settlement.” On his journey through Ontario, McMahon explores the history of these roads, meets with settlers in solidarity and raises significant questions about “reconciliation” and what it means to “decolonize.”

Inmates

In a confined section of a psychiatric ward in Northeast China, patients of schizophrenia, mania, depression, compulsive sexual behaviour and alcohol addition receive the mandatory treatment. As soon as their heads are cleared, they try to break free but always fail. Under the control of drugs and unquestionable discipline, they begin to reflect on their souls, will, desire and thoughts.

Rustlers

Albertina Carri wants to make a film about Isidro Velázquez, an almost mythical outlaw figure from northern Argentina who was shot dead by police in 1967. She’s not the only one interested in him: her sociologist father Roberto Carri wrote a book on him called “Pre-Revolutionary Forms of Violence” and a film was made about his story, although both father and film disappeared during the Dirty War. Legends, families, political alignments, cinema: none offer a stable foothold and Carri’s passage through them is like wandering a garden of forking paths, only to arrive at a landscape of cracked earth and thorns.

Woman on Fire

Woman on Fire follows Brooke Guinan, the first openly transgender firefighter in New York City. A character-driven documentary, the film follows Brooke as she sets out to challenge perceptions of what it means to be transgender in America today.

Convictions

Four stories of young men's encounters with army recruitment commissions. Ardent pacifist Roman is sent through a series of humiliating court trials. Losha and Viktor endure long and condescending deliberations that undermine their personalities. Finally, LGBT movement veteran, Johnny is bluntly rebuked and handcuffed. All are put to test by a bureaucratic machine that doesn't sympathize with those who dispute the purposiveness of military service. The conscript enters a room packed with officials. The officials have to listen to his convictions that go in conflict with the idea of military service. It's for the officials to decide whether the conscript leaves the room as a soldier or as a civilian.

Seeds of Change

An organic farmer in Maine sets out to transform the prison food system. Seeds of Change captures the intersecting stories of life-long farmer Mark McBrine and several incarcerated men as they harvest their own meals from a five-acre prison garden unlike any other.

The Blimp-Maker

For the past forty years, Igor Pasternak has pursued a lighter-than-air vision: to build gigantic airships that haul cargo to otherwise inaccessible parts of the planet. In high school, in Ukraine, Pasternak formed an airship club; at Lviv National University, where he studied civil engineering, he established an airship-design bureau. Eventually, he settled in southern California and started Aeros, which builds blimps for surveillance and other purposes. His prototype cargo airship, the two-hundred-and-sixty-foot-long Dragon Dream, was destroyed in 2013 when its hangar collapsed on it. Unfazed, Pasternak now aims to produce a fleet of “Aeroscraft” cargo airships, the largest of which will be more than nine hundred feet long and able to carry five hundred tons. Pasternak spoke recently with the director and producer Gabe Polsky. Polsky’s documentary, “Red Army,” played at the 2014 Cannes, Telluride, Toronto, and New York Film Festivals, and was released in theatres in 2015.

It's Been Three Years

The main character of the film, Alexander Strizhenova, became famous in talk shows and tabloid media as the daughter of a Soviet actress, Natalya Strizhenova, who grew up without a father - but this is not mentioned in the film by Rastorguev. Sasha, beaten by life, when we meet her, lives in a cluttered and untidy village house somewhere in the Moscow Region with her husband, with whom they swear dirtyly in the presence of their young son Ilya. Sasha smokes, drinks and endlessly suffers from a lack of love and from the fact that no one can understand it. Three years later, the viewer again sees her life - in another place, with another man and with a new child, but in about the same circumstances.

Uncovered: The McMartin Family Trials

A look at how a child abuse case engulfed a California beach community in 1983 and became a modern-day witch hunt.