Ruurdt (2024)

Motel

As Niagara Falls transformed from honeymoon capital of the world to Las Vegas North, corporate hotel chains and casinos cast a long shadow over the independent motels that once populated the town. The Continental survived the transition by converting its rooms into affordable housing units, becoming a home for those with few places to go. The night manager, Brian, once a freelance photographer who survived the horrors of war in Vietnam, shares his duties with his colleague Linda. Together they manage both the Continental and the individual struggles of its tenants, providing more than a roof over the heads of those who live under their supervision. Bringing a fresh focus to one of the most photographed places on Earth, director and cinematographer Jesse McCracken develops an intimate and caring portrait of the residents of this modest micro-community set against the backdrop of neon-lit tourist attractions.

49 Up

49 Up is the seventh film in a series of landmark documentaries that began 42 years ago when UK-based Granada's World in Action team, inspired by the Jesuit maxim "Give me the child until he is seven and I will give you the man," interviewed a diverse group of seven-year-old children from all over England, asking them about their lives and their dreams for the future. Michael Apted, a researcher for the original film, has returned to interview the "children" every seven years since, at ages 14, 21, 28, 35, 42 and now again at age 49.In this latest chapter, more life-changing decisions are revealed, more shocking announcements made and more of the original group take part than ever before, speaking out on a variety of subjects including love, marriage, career, class and prejudice.

Down in Dallas Town

Through interviews with people on the street and songs recorded to memorialize JFK in the mid-1960s, the film explores the impact of the November 22, 1963 assassination on issues in today’s world, from lingering conspiracy theories to the proliferation of gun violence, homelessness, and the scourge of K-2.

Dark Days

A cinematic portrait of the homeless population who live permanently in the underground tunnels of New York City.

Visions of Europe

Twenty-five films from twenty-five European countries by twenty-five European directors.

Nightcrawlers

For five years, Stephen McCoy documented street life in Boston. This is what he captured.

Sicko

A documentary about the corrupt health care system in The United States who's main goal is to make profit even if it means losing people’s lives. "The more people you deny health insurance the more money we make" is the business model for health care providers in America.

Tell Them We Were Here

Tell Them We Were Here is an inspirational feature-length documentary about eight artists who show us why art is vital to a healthy society and reminds us that we are stronger together.

Wild Amsterdam

The city from the unique perspective of the many wild animals and plants that inhabit it. Seen through the eyes of the adventurous urban cat, Abatutu.

This is an Address

Stonewall veterans (including prominent trans activist Sylvia Rivera) and HIV-positive New Yorkers take up residency on the Hudson River piers as cranes raze vacant buildings for a new skyline.

Outside

The film explores the turbulent lives of homeless persons in Cologne, Germany. Through their personal belongings the homeless share with the viewer their memories and emotions, and provide insight into the secrets of survival on the street.

What You’ll Remember

Homelessness in the United States takes many forms. For Elizabeth Herrera, David Lima and their four children, housing instability has meant moving between unsafe apartments, motels, relatives’ couches, shelters, the streets and their car. After 15 years of this uncertainty, the family moved into their first stable housing — an apartment in the San Francisco Bay Area — in the midst of the coronavirus pandemic.

Petit Rempart

Mariem, 53, a former estate agent, has been living at a shelter for several months. Surrounded by women in far more precarious circumstances than herself, she tries to regard her unprecedented social downfall as an immersion in real life. By the time she leaves, Mariem’s view of the world will have changed forever, enriched by all the women she has met along the way.

Lost in America

Following director Rotimi Rainwater, a former homeless youth, as he travels the country to shine a light on the epidemic of youth homelessness in America.

Nine Lives

Several street children in Berlin talk about their daily life, referring not only to drug addiction and physical/traumatic injuries, but also to their talents and dreams.

Juvenile Court

JUVENILE COURT shows the complex variety of cases before the Memphis Juvenile Court: foster home placement, drug abuse, armed robbery, child abuse, and sexual offenses. The sequences illustrate such issues as community protection vs. the desire for rehabilitation, the range and the limits of the choices available to the court, the psychology of the offender, and the constitutional and procedural questions involved in administering a juvenile court.

Pictures of the Old World

A raw and telling portrait of a people left behind by the modern world, inspired by the work of photographer Martin Martinček - whose pictures of the inhabitants of the Liptov region in central Slovakia, encompassed by the Tatra mountains, distilled entire lifetimes into luminous and intransient images. Dušan Hanák's continuation of these photographs takes the shape of a poetic visual essay, capturing more comprehensive vignettes of their isolated human experiences.

Tiny Things

The life and work of a retired model maker.

Someone Lives Here

Chronicles the modern-day David and Goliath tale amidst North America's housing crisis. During the pandemic, Khaleel Seivwright, a young Toronto carpenter, builds life-saving shelters for unhoused people facing the winter outside. His actions attracted international acclaim but also staunch opposition from the city government, portraying a compelling narrative set against the backdrop of societal challenges and governmental resistance.

Lost Angels: Skid Row Is My Home

Los Angeles' Skid Row is home to one of the largest homeless populations in the United States. And we found, inside that community, the remarkable and enormously moving stories of Olympic athletes, Harvard attorneys, accomplished musicians, scholars. We found poverty, drugs and mental illness, of course - but more importantly we found life, hope and incredibly powerful human journeys.

A Good American

A Good American tells the story of the best code-breaker the USA ever had and how he and a small team within NSA created a surveillance tool that could pick up any electronic signal on earth, filter it for targets and render results in real-time while keeping the privacy as demanded by the US constitution.

The Spanish Flu: The Invisible Enemy

In April 1918, a disease of unknown origin swept across the five continents. In 18 months, millions of lives that had not been taken by the war were swept away by a virus that would cause the worst pandemic in history: the Spanish flu.

De Platoschool

The Platoschool was founded in Amsterdam in 1983, a primary school for parents who wanted more than just math and language for their children. The founders of the Platoschool had great ideals, ideals that the parents of documentary maker Yara Hannema fell in love with. The children would grow into special people with a high level of consciousness, but the teachers ran wild in their strictness and discipline. There was beating and abuse of authority. The school was discredited and had to close its doors in 2002.

The Unemployed

SFRJ is officially a place where everyone have a job and a house. The story follows hard labored workers who can't find a job, who bathe in public bathrooms and sleep in homeless centers.

Black Film

Director invites six homeless men to his flat for a few days (surprising his wife). He asks officials and people on the street if someone can help them, this being SFRJ, a state officially without those left on their own.

Welfare

WELFARE shows the nature and complexity of the welfare system in sequences illustrating the staggering diversity of problems that constitute welfare: housing, unemployment, divorce, medical and psychiatric problems, abandoned and abused children, and the elderly. These issues are presented in a context where welfare workers as well as clients struggle to cope with and interpret the laws and regulations that govern their work and life.

16 Acres

The dramatic inside story of the monumental collision of interests at Ground Zero in the decade after 9/11.

Down and Out in America

The recession of the 1980s split the country into the haves and have-nots, from family farmers to factory workers and homeless people forced to live in decrepit welfare hotels. On the verge of losing everything, courageous Americans discover the power of community organizing to fight injustice.

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.

Beppie

BEPPIE is a moving and disarming portrait of an Amsterdam street urchin. Van der Keuken once described her as follows: 'She was ten years old and the joy of the Achtergracht, where I was living at the time. An Amsterdam child, sweet and crooked as a corkscrew.' He films her while she skims the city with some friends and knocks at strangers' doors. Her family has nine children and is not well off. In those days, a visit to the De Miranda swimming pool cost a quarter, but only ten cents if the weather was bad. At school, Beppie gets a poor mark because she is too boisterous, but when the whole class rattles off the multiplication tables, she joins in at the top of her voice. All of TV-watching Holland was wildly enthusiastic about this portrait, with which Van der Keuken even made the front page of the national newspaper De Telegraaf.

LIFT

Lift shines a spotlight on the invisible story of homelessness in America through the eyes of a group of young homeless and home-insecure ballet dancers in New York City and the mentor that inspires them.

Minimalism: A Documentary About the Important Things

How might your life be better with less? The popular simple-living duo The Minimalists examines the many flavors of minimalism by taking the audience inside the lives of minimalists from various walks of life.

Boys without a home

Young people who have to survive without a home base are helped on their way to a life on their own two feet at Wonen Met Kansen. Little by little, with trial and error, but with the rock-solid confidence that the supervisors have in them.

Paperland: The Bureaucrat Observed

Bureaucracy shapes our lives and guides us from the cradle to the grave. This documentary lays bare the idiosyncrasies of bureaucracy, whether in Canada, Austria, Hungary, the Vatican or the Virgin Islands. It also attempts to make the functioning of the public service more comprehensible. The absurdities of bureaucratic behaviour are exposed with humour and irreverence.

Cinema Morocco

For two decades, Cine Marrocos, a movie theatre in the heart of São Paulo, was one of the most popular and opulent of the city. After it was closed, in 1972, it was occupied by a homeless workers' movement. The documentary tells the story of the people who lived there, alternating scenes from an acting class with those of the movies exhibited there in the past.

The Meaning of Vanlife

The Meaning of Vanlife is an adventurous, revealing look into the Vanlife community through the eyes of nomads who have chosen to live a life of freedom on the road. A movement that exemplifies a deeper societal trend towards minimalism and authentic community building.

Life After the Oasis

In 2008, feature documentary, The Oasis, shocked Australia with its gritty insight into the lives of homeless teens at a notorious youth refuge in inner city Sydney. An outpouring of social and political goodwill followed, with the then Prime Minister pledging to halve homelessness by 2020. A decade later, with social inequality and homelessness worse than ever, the original participants reflect on where their lives have taken them.

No Address

This feature-length documentary by Alanis Obomsawin examines the plight of Native people who come to Montreal searching for jobs and a better life. Often arriving without money, friends or jobs, a number of them quickly become part of the homeless population. Both dislocated from their traditional values and alienated from the rest of the population, they are torn between staying and returning home.

Under Cover

Some 240,000 women over 55 are at risk of homelessness In Australia – a figure both surprising (owing to this demographic being less likely to speak up about their difficulties) and shocking, given this country’s wealth. Under Cover introduces us to 10 of these people, including a survivor of domestic violence, a former advertising executive, a self-confessed loner and a displaced immigrant, for whom security and shelter are constant unknowns and who, until now, have suffered in silence.

Australia

How do seven young people, former street children from Romania, get to see the Pacific Ocean? On 1 December 2008, a Romanian national team participates for the first time in the Homeless World Cup in Melbourne, Australia. The film follows the team from the formation of the squad to the end of the championship. The young people are from Timisoara and Arad, runaway children who now live in abandoned houses or who have managed to get a job and live in rented accommodation after going through orphanages or prisons. After taking a beating from many teams, the young Romanians manage to beat the USA. They are happy. They are all thinking of never going "home" again. It's warm and nice here, the people are nice. "In case I stay, I kissed you all!" says one of them cautiously. But after taking pictures of themselves on the beach with the ocean behind them and beautiful girls by their side, the seven return to Romania and get on with their lives.