Smong (2024)

Attila

Filmmaker Stephen Hosier takes a journey with Richard Csanyi, his childhood friend, as he investigates the life and death of his twin brother Attila, who was found dead on a rooftop in 2020.

Peace of Mind

The story of Christina Lau and her relationship with her parents as she recounts the happy and traumatic memories of her childhood and adolescence. She shares the ways in which the tragic demise of her father and mother have affected her and shaped who she is today. Her story is powerful, tragic, and demonstrates the importance of strong family ties when overcoming hardship. The documentary is directed by her eldest daughter, Robyn Mae, and includes stunning animations created by her youngest daughter, Tammy-Ann.

The Wisdom of Trauma

One in five Americans are diagnosed with mental illness every year. Suicide is the second most common cause of death in the US for youth aged 15-24, and kills over 800,000 people globally per year. Drug overdose kills 81,000 in the US annually. The autoimmune disorder epidemic affects 24 million people in the US alone. What is going on? The interconnected epidemics of anxiety, chronic illness and substance abuse are, according to Dr. Gabor Maté, normal - but not in the way you might think.

No Māori Allowed

When an academic unearths a forgotten history, residents of the small township of Pukekohe, including kaumātua who have never told their personal stories before, confront its deep and dark racist past.

Flee

Recounted mostly through animation to protect his identity, Amin looks back over his past as a child refugee from Afghanistan as he grapples with a secret he’s kept hidden for 20 years.

We Are Not Done Yet

Follows veterans and active-duty service members from varied backgrounds who come together to combat their traumas through the written word in a USO-sponsored arts workshop at Walter Reed National Military Hospital.

Procession

Six men who were sexually abused by Catholic clergy as boys find empowerment by creating short films inspired by their trauma.

The Healing

An inspiring journey of recovery from two very different worlds. Set against the stunning backdrop of Kangaroo Valley in NSW, a revolutionary program brings together traumatised ex-racehorses and traumatised military veterans - to help rebuild each other, and transform lives.

Camp 14: Total Control Zone

Shin Dong-Huyk was born on November 19, 1983 as a political prisoner in a North Korean re-education camp. He was a child of two prisoners who had been married by order of the wardens. He spent his entire childhood and youth in Camp 14, in fact a death camp. He was forced to labor since he was six years old and suffered from hunger, beatings and torture, always at the mercy of the wardens. He knew nothing about the world outside the barbed-wire fences. At the age of 23, with the help of an older prisoner, he managed to escape. For months he traveled through North Korea and China and finally to South Korea, where he encountered a world completely strange to him.

Total Trust

By exploring the relationship between the watched and the watching, our film uncovers the trauma and hope engendered by the Chinese all-surveilling state and lends a voice to those that stand in resilient defiance of such blatant abuse of power.

The Blackout Experiments

You arrive at a secret location at a precise time, prompted by a mysterious email. You must follow the instructions closely. Once inside, disturbing visions begin. Unspeakable acts befall you—often frightening, sometimes sensual, possibly painful—each stimulating your deepest fears. And when it's over, you are changed, abandoned, and left wondering what is real and what was merely a game.

Blackfish

Notorious killer whale Tilikum is responsible for the deaths of three individuals, including a top killer whale trainer. Blackfish shows the sometimes devastating consequences of keeping such intelligent and sentient creatures in captivity.

Relative

A filmmaker unearths a pervasive history of multigenerational trauma in her Italian-American family. As decades of secrets, home movies, and long-avoided conversations surface, a family once bound by tradition forges a new path forward.

War and Peace of Mind

War and Peace of Mind explores what war does to the human mind and how both, the individuals and the nation as a whole, survive it psychologically. Finland and WWII, locally known as continuation war, is the backdrop of this documentary.

Begrijpt u nu waarom ik huil?

The work of Leiden professor Bastiaans on dealing with the trauma of war victims attracts the attention of filmmaker Louis van Gasteren. He decides to make a film about the psychotherapeutic treatment with LSD of a former concentration camp prisoner in the clinic of Bastiaans. Patient Joop is arrested in September 1941 and begins a long hellish journey through various camps, until he is liberated by the Russians. When he returns to his wife, he has become a completely different man. Joop suffers from nightmares and is incapable of normal human contact. With two cameras, Van Gasteren records approximately six and a half hours of the first treatment that Joop undergoes with Bastiaans (four more will follow later). Special attention is paid to details: Joop's hands, the sweat on his forehead, a tear running slowly down his cheek. Van Gasteren reduces the recordings to more than an hour.

September 7, 2012

On September 7, 2012, Ashley MacDonald was sexually assaulted. In this powerful first time film, she talks to strangers about what that same day looked like in their own lives. What were they doing? What happened to them? The result is a documentary about processing trauma, and the power of openness and connection to help us heal.

Kitchen Dialogue

A generational trauma through the lens of an Asian American teenager through food and poetry.

Bitter Cells

Huiju learned of her biopsy test results, but lied to her mum about them. Feeling guilty about the lie, she embarks on her journey to find cancer patients who have the same diagnosis as hers and learns about their experiences. After hearing their stories, she finds the courage to tell the truth to her mum.

Circus

We all carry hell with us. The filmmaker’s hell exists on a canvas, which he studied carefully in childhood. The mystical picture has many names: Circus, Hell, Game at the Arena. Decades later he finds the painting again. The film unravels as loose ponderings about the plight of being an artist and touches upon the filmmaker’s personal demons. Can he see the painting in a new light?

Rewinding Dominoes

In her attempt to escape her past, Huiju relocated to the UK over 11 months ago. However, even after moving to a new country, she found that her nightmares from Korea continued to haunt her. Determined to move forward, she made the decision to confront her memories head-on in a very contemporary way, using dating apps to push the boundaries she had set due to her sexual trauma.

The Cult Next Door

A short documentary featuring a brief overview of Bill Gothard's ministries, and some of the consequences for his followers.

Sherwood Park

Reclaiming what was once stolen from him, a man journeys back to the place of his childhood nearly 80 years after his world came crashing down.

Violently in Love

Behind the closed doors of the Copenhagen-based women's shelter, the women and children are slowly recovering after having escaped domestic violence. Day by day the women are processing their traumas, building confidence and slowly understanding what it takes to break the cycle of violence.

things that won't die

After finding some videos she uploaded to YouTube when she was a child, Manuela attempts to follow the trail she herself has left on the Internet. A search that looks into all that things that won't never die and that, especially, thinks about the way we look at ourselves.

Dare Remember

"It's been 25 years and there is so little I remember. I can not remember the police investigation and I can not remember the trial. I have never talked to my parents about the rape, but it is always there anyway. " Dare Remember is an exceptionally brave documentary film that put words to what has been hushed. About meeting what you prefer to forget. A movie about moving forward.

My Beginning!!

This film is like a person standing naked in the middle of a square, covered in wounds, holding up a sign that says “Free Hug.” Many people come to embrace him, and he embraces many in return. Yet this does not mean that those who embrace him are unscarred—it is only that they are clothed. — Director Zhang Yu

L'épreuve d'une vie - Michel Catalano face aux Kouachi

Plot unavailable

Mulholland Drive

Blonde Betty Elms has only just arrived in Hollywood to become a movie star when she meets an enigmatic brunette with amnesia. Meanwhile, as the two set off to solve the second woman's identity, filmmaker Adam Kesher runs into ominous trouble while casting his latest project.

November

Sophie Jacobs is going through the most difficult time of her life. Now, she just has to find out if it's real.

The Butterfly Effect

A young man struggles to access sublimated childhood memories. He finds a technique that allows him to travel back into the past, to occupy his childhood body and change history. However, he soon finds that every change he makes has unexpected consequences.

Live and Become

In 1980, the black Falashas in Ethiopia are recognised as genuine Jews and are secretly carried to Israel. The day before the transport the son of a Jewish mother dies. In his place and with his name (Schlomo) she takes a Christian 9-year-old boy.

Paranoid Park

A teenage skateboarder becomes suspected of being connected with a security guard who suffered a brutal death in a skate park called "Paranoid Park".

Natural Born Killers

Two victims of traumatized childhoods become lovers and serial murderers irresponsibly glorified by the mass media.

The Haunting

Dr. David Marrow invites three distinct individuals to the eerie and isolated Hill House to be subjects for a sleep disorder study. The unfortunate guests discover that Marrow is far more interested in the sinister mansion itself — and they soon see the true nature of its horror.

Machuca

Santiago, capital of Chile during the Marxist government of elected, highly controversial president Salvador Allende. Father McEnroe supports his leftist views by introducing a program at the prestigious "collegio" (Catholic prep school) St. Patrick to allow free admission of some proletarian kids. One of them is Pedro Machuca, slum-raised son of the cleaning lady in Gonzalo Infante's liberal-bourgeois home. Yet the new classmates become buddies, paradoxically protesting together as Gonzalo gets adopted by Pedro's slum family and gang. But the adults spoil that too, not in the least when general Pinochet's coup ousts Allende, and supporters such as McEnroe.

The New Interns

Young doctors mix romance with their careers in a big-city hospital.

Willbaht

Plot unavailable

Reign Over Me

A man who lost his family in the September 11 attack on New York City runs into his old college roommate. Rekindling the friendship is the one thing that appears able to help the man recover from his grief.

MK Ultra Violence

Hopper, a Vietnam vet riddled with PTSD is taken under the wing of a charismatic undercover CIA agent, Reese, promising him a newly repaired mind. Unbeknownst to the vet, he'll be treated less like a patient, and more like a test subject.