Return to Cuba (2016)

Cuban Dancer

Alexis, a talented and proud student of the National Ballet School of Cuba, spends his life practicing chassé and entrechats with his girlfriend and dance partner Yelenia. However, when his family moves to Florida to be reunited with his sister, he must adjust his expectations and dreams to a radically new environment. Alexis, facing rejection and homesick for his native Cuba, feels lost and alone. He must find his way in the world of American ballet while remaining faithful to his roots.

Dreams adrift

Mike Porcel is the lost member of the Cuban Nueva Trova musical movement. His lack of “revolutionary spirit” condemned him to the scorn of his peers and made him a pariah for a decade, until he managed to go into exile. Without resentment, but without forgetting, the film reconstructs his story and revives a forgotten brilliance.

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.

Viramundo

Viramundo shows the saga of the northeastern migrants that arrive in São Paulo, beginning with a train arriving and ending with a train leaving São Paulo in a cycle repeated every day. Viramundo's aim was to question why the military coup d'état in Brazil happened without any popular resistance or revolution or reaction of the society.

Personal Che

A documentary that explores the myth behind the truth. Different people around the globe reinterpret the legend of Che Guevara at will: from the rebel living in Hong Kong fighting Chinese domination, to the German neonazi preaching revolution and the Castro-hating Cuban. Their testimonies prove that the Argentinian revolutionary's historical impact reverberates still. But like with all legends, each sees what he will, in often contradictory perspectives.

Buena Vista Social Club

In this fascinating Oscar-nominated documentary, American guitarist Ry Cooder brings together a group of legendary Cuban folk musicians (some in their 90s) to record a Grammy-winning CD in their native city of Havana. The result is a spectacular compilation of concert footage from the group's gigs in Amsterdam and New York City's famed Carnegie Hall, with director Wim Wenders capturing not only the music -- but also the musicians' life stories.

Escape from the World's Most Dangerous Place

Successful model Samira Hashi makes an emotional return to Somalia, one of the most dangerous places in the world and the place she was born. Civil war broke out in 1991, 10 days after Samira's birth, but two years later her family managed to flee the country and she grew up in the UK.Now, as Samira and the war both turn 21, she's going back for the first time to visit the people and places she left behind. The contrast with her safe and glamorous life in London could not be starker as she experiences firsthand the war's effect on a generation of young people growing up in conflict.

Gift of the Game

Acclaimed Florida novelist Randy Wayne White travels to Cuba with former pitchers Bill "Spaceman" Lee (Boston Red Sox) and Jon Warden (Detroit Tigers), and a band of baseball enthusiasts to find and revive the children's baseball league founded by American writer Ernest Hemingway in the days before Fidel Castro came to power.

Vietnam: Fast Forward

An uplifting documentary that explores the human element behind Vietnam’s resurgence as one of the fastest growing economies in the world.

Obāchan

Obāchan is Japanese. She left her native archipelago in 1941 to marry one of her compatriots, 17 years older, settled in Mexico. Through fragments of family films, manga and sequences that she has shot, Nicolasa Ruiz sculpts a complex and delicate memory landscape between the two shores of the Pacific.

Island of the Hungry Ghosts

Christmas Island, Australia is home to one of the largest land migrations on earth—that of forty million crabs journeying from jungle to sea. But the jungle holds another secret: a high-security facility that indefinitely detains individuals seeking asylum.

Nikita Kino

The film is a travelogue of sorts. Ostrovsky’s personal family footage meets the archives of Soviet propaganda footage. The result is a kind of Khruschev-era mix with a collage of Soviet music and a voice-over of my reminiscences of the Cold War era.

The Wire

The inhabitants of the canyon of river Kupa, located on the border between Croatia and Slovenia, have historically been united due to their harsh living conditions, but this peaceful cohabitation between members of different cultures is threatened by the construction of iron fences to prevent the transit of refugees from Bosnia.

Un jour ça ira

Djibi and Ange, two teenagers living on the streets, arrive at the Archipel, an emergency shelter in the heart of Paris. This documentary is a look at the Archipel, a shelter offering an innovative way to welcome families living on the streets.

The Indomitable

The story of women's struggle against sexual discrimination and for inclusion in the democratic process in (West) Germany after WW II.

Looking for Fidel

Oliver Stone's second documentary on/interview with Fidel Castro specifically addresses his country's recent crackdown on Cuban dissidents; namely, the execution of three men who hijacked a ferry to the United States.

The Donut King

Cambodian refugee Ted Ngoy builds a multi-million dollar empire by baking America's favourite pastry: the doughnut.

Leysi over media in Cuba

Plot unavailable

Brothers in Exile

Major League Baseball has been transformed by the influx of Cuban players such as Aroldis Chapman, Yasiel Puig and Jose Abreu. But a special debt of gratitude is owed to two half-brothers, whose courage two decades ago paved the way for their stardom. "Brothers in Exile" tells the incredible story of Livan and Orlando "El Duque" Hernandez, who risked their lives to get off the island.

The Pigeons of Lahore

The parallel stories of four Pakistani immigrants in Greece become the trigger for the director to explore the story of his father, a worker in the Perama Shipyard. The background unfolds a most deadly shipwreck, Libyan immigrants found in limbo, as well as a (possibly racist) crime, which was committed during the shooting of this film.

Havana Divas

The story focus on Caridad and Georgina, who had learned the art of Cantonese Opera in Havana as a young age and performed as divas for over a decade before their lives were changed by Fidel Castro's revolution.

Köy

KÖY (Turkish for village) is about the longing for home, for belonging and the freedom of the self. Three women from three generations are united by their Kurdish roots.

Fidel: The Untold Story

Documentary about Fidel Castro, covering 40 years of Cuban Revolution. Rare Fidel Castro footage: he appears swimming with a bodyguard, visiting his childhood home and school, playing with his friend Nelson Mandela, meeting kid Elián Gonzalez, and celebrating his birthday with the Buena Vista Social Club group.

Meow Wolf: Origin Story

When a group of young DIY artists in Santa Fe can’t find a door into the art world, they blow open an entirely new portal with their grit, passion, and tenacity. Within just a few short years – and with a little help from George R.R. Martin – this group called Meow Wolf ultimately hits a cultural nerve and garners massive, unexpected success with their exhibit, House of Eternal Return.

A Tuba To Cuba

A son seeking to fulfill his late father’s dream takes his band from the storied city of New Orleans to the shores of Cuba, where — through the universal language of music — dark and ancient connections between their peoples reveal the roots of jazz.

Iragan gunea Berlin

'Iragan gunea Berlin' follows five people from different origins as they move anonymously around the streets of Berlin. Each of them with another life somewhere else, trying to ascertain where to go.

Chaja & Mimi

Chaja Florentin and Mimi Frons have been best friends for 83 years. Born and raised in Berlin, they had to escape from the Nazis to Palestine with their families in 1934. They talk about their complicated relationship with Berlin in a Tel Aviv café where they meet everyday. A film about friendship, homeland and identity.

Grass: A Nation's Battle for Life

A silent documentary which follows a branch of the Bakhtiari tribe of Persia as they and their herds make their epic seasonal journey to better pastures.

The Right Girls

In this documentary about friendship and perseverance, three young transgender women from El Salvador and Honduras go on a 2,400-mile journey with the high-profile migrant caravan. These women, strangers at the outset and fleeing extortion, discrimination, and abusive relationships, endure hardship as they slowly make their way to the US, teaming up with other trans girls along the route and integrating with the caravan’s LGBTQ community.

Seguridad

In her feature documentary Seguridad, Newfoundland-based filmmaker Tamara Segura—once named “Cuba’s youngest soldier” in a militia publicity stunt—portrays her troubled relationship with her father in the context of the Cuban Revolution. When Segura accepts a scholarship to study film in Canada, the move offers crucial distance from her alcoholic father. After four years, she returns to Cuba hoping to make amends. But her father’s sudden death just days after her arrival forces Segura to explore his troubled past and the role Cuba’s highly militarized system played in his downfall. Through a series of deeply personal on-camera interviews with her immediate family, Segura unearths long-held secrets that ultimately tell a story of resilience and profound love between family members. Seguridad artfully weaves a lifetime’s worth of still photographs into its intimate narrative, which offers a rare glimpse into the inner lives of Cubans in the post-revolutionary era.

Fadia’s Tree

While millions of birds migrate freely in the skies above, Fadia, a Palestinian refugee stranded in Lebanon, yearns for the ancestral homeland she is denied. When a chance meeting introduces her to the director, Sarah, she challenges her to find an ancient mulberry tree that once grew next to her grandfather’s house in historic Palestine, a tree that stands witness to her family’s existence.