Kímmapiiyipitssini: The Meaning of Empathy (2021)

Hands of History

This documentary follows four female First Nations artists—Doreen Jensen, Rena Point Bolton, Jane Ash Poitras and Joane Cardinal-Schubert are First Nations artists who seek to find a continuum from traditional to contemporary forms of expression. These exceptional artists reveal their philosophies as artists, their techniques and creative styles, and the exaltation they feel when they create. A moving testimony to the role that Indigenous women artists have played in maintaining the voice of their culture.

Fight Club

A young boy Selva chasing his football sports dreams suffers a major setback, grows into an angry young man who is drawn into conflicts by evil forces involving him and his family, which he must navigate and reform

Escalation

1968, London. Luca is living his 'swinging' years away from duties, while his father wants him to take the reins of the family business. He plots to have him kidnapped and placed in a sanitarium, where the young man undergoes electroshock therapy until 'normalised'. Luca is then made to marry a woman who is actually a psychiatrist hired to turn him into a perfect businessman.

Texas Terrors

A lawyer by training, Bob Millburne (Don "Red" Barry) believes in relying on the legal system to exact justice. But he can no longer sate his thirst for vengeance, fueled by the death of his parents at the hands of a bloodthirsty mine jumper. Frustrated and fed up, Bob decides it's time to dust off his guns and holsters.

Florence Fight Club

Intertwined stories from the gladiator/athletes participating to the Calcio Storico Fiorentino yearly championship.

Tell Them Who You Are

The son of acclaimed cinematographer Haskell Wexler confronts his complex father by turning the camera on him. What results is a portrait of a difficult genius and a son's path out of the shadow of a famous father.

Memento Mori

Suddenly they woke up. Not knowing who did it, 6 of them got up in the same place. The survival game for 6 people with nothing in common has begun.

Zeitgeist: Addendum

Zeitgeist: Addendum premiered at the 5th Annual Artivist Film Festival. Director Peter Joseph stated: "The failure of our world to resolve the issues of war, poverty, and corruption, rests within a gross ignorance about what guides human behavior to begin with. It address the true source of the instability in our society, while offering the only fundamental, long-term solution."

Kiss the Bride Goodbye

Working-class girl Joan Dodd's plan to marry Jack Fowler is thwarted when her mother Gladys interferes. Hoping to improve her daughter's social status, Gladys arranges for Joan to wed her boss Adolphus Pickering while Jack is away at war. Jack arrives home to discover his love is engaged to another man. Who will Joan decide to marry?

The Recess

Sahar a 17 year old student is determined to skip high school during the recess to attend the football stadium to watch the football match between Esteghlal F.C. vs. Al-Ain as part of AFC Champions League against the national ban on women to enter football stadiums in Iran.

Zombie Fight Club

It's the end of the century at a corner of the city in a building riddled with crime - Everyone in the building has turned into zombies. After Jenny's boyfriend is killed in a zombie attack, she faces the challenge of surviving in the face of adversity. In order to stay alive, she struggles with Andy to flee danger.

Teresa's Trip

Teresa is an artificial intelligence device that comes from the United States to Colombia to be tested in a real world and with a very particular family: Los Rico. Teresa arrives just at Christmas time, where between novenas, fritters and custard, she will discover deep connections with her new family.

And there was evening and there was morning. The first day

With the lack of personal video archive, Youhanna (the filmmaker) creates false memories using lost home videotapes shot between the 1990s and 2000s in Europe, Africa, and Asia, with the help of an Artificial intelligence programme, until a real, personal video archive surfaces, transporting him into the past to relive one more memory with his late mother.

King Lear

An aging King invites disaster, when he abdicates to his corrupt, toadying daughters, and rejects his loving and honest one.

Sweetheart Dancers

Sean and Adrian, a Two-Spirit couple, are determined to rewrite the rules of Native American culture through their participation in the “Sweetheart Dance.” This celebratory contest is held at powwows across the country, primarily for heterosexual couples … until now.

Super Juice Me!

The world is facing a “pandemic” of chronic disease – heart disease, diabetes, cancer, obesity, asthma, kidney and liver disease, Alzheimer’s, autoimmune diseases, allergies and skin conditions and many, many more. This year more than 36 million people will die from degenerative conditions – more than from all other causes put together*, and that number is expected to rise to over 50 million within 15 years. At the same time, the amount spent trying to treat these diseases with pharmaceutical drugs is expected to rise by 50% to more than $1.2 trillion! One summer Jason Vale took eight people who collectively suffered from 22 different chronic diseases and put them on his ‘Juice Only’ diet for 28 days. Could these different diseases with their many different prescribed drugs be improved and even cured by one thing? Maybe it’s time to get Super Juiced!

The Dirty War on the NHS

John Pilger unearths the hidden agenda behind the NHS crisis.

Saints And Warriors

Throughout the course of the Haida basketball season, leaders of iconic rez ball team the Skidegate Saints compete for two titles - defending their All Native Basketball Championship, while also battling for title to their land and waters with the government that stole it from them with the Indian Act.

Heal

A documentary film that takes us on a scientific and spiritual journey where we discover that by changing one's perceptions, the human body can heal itself from any disease.

What's With Wheat?

Why are so many people wheat-intolerant or sensitive to wheat? And why is wheat linked to so many modern-day health problems, when it has been a staple of the human diet for thousands of years? In this documentary, a nutritionist interviews 14 experts, to understand how wheat has changed since it was first cultivated, how these changes could be affecting human health, and how people can break a dietary cycle that could be making them sick.

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.

Club Native

With moving stories from a range of characters from her Kahnawake Reserve, Mohawk filmmaker, Tracey Deer, reveals the divisive legacy of more than a hundred years of discriminatory and sexist government policy to expose the lingering "blood quantum" ideals, snobby attitudes and outright racism that threaten to destroy the fabric of her community.

Food ReLOVution

“Food Relovution: What We Eat Can Make A Difference” is an eye-opening and compelling feature documentary that examines the consequences of the meat culture as concerns grow about health, world hunger, animal welfare and the environmental cost of livestock production. It aims to show how these global issues affect everyone and are interrelated, and how making our food choices with a sense of awareness, knowing what we are buying and what we are eating is the first fundamental step towards a better world.

Mother River

In a remote Peruvian city, lives Honorata Vilca, an illiterate woman of Quechua descent who sells candies more than 20 years ago, with the rain will cry to the sky itself.

Bliss

After a tragic series of events in his life, Rob discovers the over-the-counter drug known as codeine. The effects of the pill are so strong and addictive, that soon, Rob becomes dependant and consumes them daily. But the less he feels the more he misses, as his life degrades into a deep, dangerous, oblivion of bliss.

Phases of Matter

Phases of Matter follows living and inanimate residents of a teaching hospital in Istanbul, moving from the operating room to the morgue, between life and other states, the real and the virtual.

Cholitas

Five Bolivian indigenous women share one goal: climbing the highest mountain in America.

Nuuca

In this evocative meditation, a disturbing link is made between the resource extraction industries’ exploitation of the land and violence inflicted on Indigenous women and girls. Or, as one young woman testifies, “Just as the land is being used, these women are being used.”

Against the Tide

Two friends, both Indigenous fishermen, are driven to desperation by a dying sea. Their friendship begins to fracture as they take very different paths to provide for their struggling families.

Nin E Tepueian: My Cry

NIN E TEPUEIAN - MY CRY is a documentary tracks the journey of Innu poet, actress and activist, Natasha Kanapé Fontaine, at a pivotal time in her career as a committed artist. Santiago Bertolino's camera follows a young Innu poet over the course of a year. A voice rises, inspiration builds; another star finds its place amongst the constellation of contemporary Indigenous literature. A voice of prominent magnitude illuminates the road towards healing and renewal: Natasha Kanapé Fontaine.

The Salt Mines

Explores the lives of Sara, Gigi and Giovanna, three Latino transvestites who for years have lived on the streets of Manhattan supporting their drug addictions through prostitution. They made their temporary home inside broken garbage trucks that the Sanitation Department keeps next to the salt deposits used in the winter to melt the snow. The three friends share the place known as "The Salt Mines".

Baraka

A paralysingly beautiful documentary with a global vision—an odyssey through landscape and time—that attempts to capture the essence of life.

Vegan: Everyday Stories

A feature-length documentary that explores the lives of four remarkably different people who share a common thread - they're all vegan. The movie traces the personal journeys of an ultramarathon runner who has overcome addiction to compete in one hundred mile races, a cattle rancher's wife who creates the first cattle ranch turned farmed animal sanctuary in Texas, a food truck owner cooking up knee-buckling plant-based foods, and an 8-year-old girl who convinces her family of six to go vegan.

La Buena Vida - The Good Life

The village of Tamaquito lies deep in the forests of Colombia. Here, nature provides the people with everything they need. But the Wayúu community's way of life is being destroyed by the vast and rapidly growing El Cerrejón coal mine. Determined to save his community from forced resettlement, the leader Jairo Fuentes negotiates with the mine's operators, which soon becomes a fight to survive.

Users Are Losers

Educational film about the dangers of drug use and abuse in high school. Framed around the death of a classmate from overdose.

Elementa

A black-and-white visual meditation of wilderness and the elements. Wildlife filmmaker Richard Sidey returns to the triptych format for a cinematic experience like no other.

Inhabit: A Permaculture Perspective

Inhabit is a feature length documentary introducing permaculture: a design method that offers an ecological lens for solving issues related to agriculture, economics, governance, and on. The film presents a vast array of projects, concepts, and people, and it translates the diversity of permaculture into something that can be understood by an equally diverse audience. For those familiar, it will be a call to action and a glimpse into what's possible - what kind of projects and solutions are already underway. For those unfamiliar, it will be an introduction to a new way of being and a new way of relating to the Earth. For everyone, it will be a reminder that humans are capable of being planetary healing forces.

Tawai: A Voice from the Forest

Explorer Bruce Parry visits nomadic tribes in Borneo and the Amazon in hope to better understand humanity's changing relationship with the world around us.

Monica in the South Seas

Finnish filmmaker and artist Sami van Ingen is a great-grandson of documentary pioneer Robert Flaherty, and seemingly the sole member of the family with a hands-on interest in continuing the directing legacy. Among the materials he found in the estate of Robert and Frances Flaherty’s daughter Monica were the film reels and video tapes detailing several years of work on realising her lifelong dream project: a sound version of her parents’ 1926 docu-fiction axiom, Moana: A Romance of the Golden Age.

Drop by Drop

A Wisconsin doctor's controversial allergy treatment is shunned by the medical community for over half a century. Is a cure for the growing allergy epidemic on the horizon or will red tape keep patients wheezing?

The Fittest

In 2019 the fittest athletes on earth took on the unknown and unknowable during four intense days of competition at the CrossFit Games. "The Fittest " captures all the drama as chiseled athletes descend on Madison, Wisconsin, to face a series of trials. On top of the physical challenges, this year the sport grew from 40 men and women, to over 100 of each. But with this new format came cuts of the field, so for the final half of the weekend, only 10 men and 10 women move on to determine who is the fittest. The best among them enter the pantheon of CrossFit giants and earn the right to call themselves the "Fittest on Earth."

Aitamaako'tamisskapi Natosi: Before the Sun

An intimate and thrilling portrait of a young Siksika woman and the deep bonds between her father and family in the golden plains of Blackfoot Territory as she prepares for one of the most dangerous horse races in the world… bareback.

Sugar Coated

The investigation and exposure of the US sugar industry’s systematic hijacking of scientific study to bury evidence that sugar is—in fact—toxic.

That Sugar Film

One man's journey to discover the bitter truth about sugar. Damon Gameau embarks on a unique experiment to document the effects of a high sugar diet on a healthy body, consuming only foods that are commonly perceived as 'healthy'. Through this entertaining and informative journey, Damon highlights some of the issues that plague the sugar industry, and where sugar lurks on supermarket shelves.

My Foreign Land

For the Suruí, an indigenous people in western Brazil, there was a lot at stake in the 2022 presidential elections. Under incumbent President Bolsonaro, logging and mining companies were given free rein in their territory. His opponent Lula, on the other hand, pledged to protect the Amazon and uphold Indigenous rights. Tribal leader Almir and his daughter, the young activist Txai Suruí, are each followed during their campaign in the final month before the elections. While Txai travels abroad to raise awareness about the destruction of the rainforest, Almir campaigns across the state of Rondônia, seeking support for his congressional bid.