The Bella Vista (2012)

Strike a Pose

In 1990, seven young male dancers joined Madonna on her most controversial world tour. Their journey was captured in Truth or Dare. As a self-proclaimed 'mother' to her six gay dancers plus straight Oliver, Madonna used the film to make a stand on gay rights and freedom of expression. The dancers became paragons of pride, inspiring people all over the world to dare to be who you are. 25 years later, the dancers share their own stories about life during and after the tour. What does it really take to express yourself?

My Beautiful Broken Brain

A profoundly personal voyage into the complexity, fragility and wonder of the human brain, after Lotje Sodderland miraculously survives a hemorrhagic stroke and finds herself starting again in an alien world, bereft of language and logic. This feature documentary takes us on a genre-twisting tale that is by turns excruciating and exquisite - from the devastating consequences of a first-time neurological experiment, through to the extraordinary revelations of her altered sensory perception.

Murder Games: The Life and Death of Breck Bednar

Murder Games tells the true story of Breck Bednar, the 14 year-old schoolboy who was lured to his death after being groomed online by Lewis Daynes.

Yarn

The traditional crafts of crochet and knitting have become one of the hottest movements in modern art. We follow a few International artists and knitters as they bring yarn to the streets and into our lives in new ways. Starting in Iceland, this quirky and thought-provoking film takes us on a colourful and global journey as we discover how yarn connects us all.

Out of the Rubble

In Out Of The Rubble, Woolcock shows how planners grappled with the grimmest poverty imaginable in the post-war era, from Brixton to Glasgow, Islington to Birmingham, believing that tower blocks would transform the lives of those living in decaying slums. She follows the cycle of optimism, building and eventual decline, meeting people who 50 years on bear witness to the effects of housing on real families, striking a contemporary chord with the theme of immigration and gentrification affecting working class communities. The irresistible nostalgia of scenes from the 1950s, 60s and 70s is tempered by a realisation of the force of history at work.

The Mask You Live In

Compared to girls, research shows that boys in the United States are more likely to be diagnosed with a behaviour disorder, prescribed stimulant medications, fail out of school, binge drink, commit a violent crime, and/or take their own lives. The Mask You Live In asks: as a society, how are we failing our boys?

Space Junk 3D

50 years after launching our dreams into space, we’re left with a troubling legacy: a growing ring of orbiting debris that threatens the safety of earth’s orbits. SPACE JUNK is a visually explosive journey of discovery that weighs the solutions aimed at restoring our planet’s orbits. Experience mind-boggling collisions, both natural and man-made. Soar for the stunning depths of Meteor Crater to an unprecedented view of our increasingly crowded orbits – 22,000 miles above earth. Join us as foremost expert Don Kessler, the “Father of Space Junk,” guides us through the challenges we face in protecting them, forging a new age of space discovery.

The Ventures: Stars on Guitars

Documentary film on the #1 instrumental rock group in the world, The Ventures. The story of their rise to fame in the 1960s right up to now, as they celebrate their 60th anniversary of playing the best guitar-rock of all time.

Audrie & Daisy

A documentary film about three cases of rape, that includes the stories of two American high school students, Audrie Pott and Daisy Coleman. At the time of the sexual assaults, Pott was 15 and Coleman was 14 years old. After the assaults, the victims and their families were subjected to abuse and cyberbullying.

Newtown

A look at how the community of Newtown, Connecticut came together in the aftermath of the largest mass shooting of schoolchildren in American history.

Trapped

TRAP (Targeted Regulations of Abortion Providers) laws have been passed by conservative state legislatures in the US and clinics have taken their fight to the courts. Follow the struggles of the clinic workers and lawyers who are on the front lines of a battle to keep abortion safe and legal for millions of American women.

Weiner

Documentary featuring a jaw-dropping, behind-the-scenes look at the attempted comeback of Anthony Weiner in 2013 as he mounts a campaign for New York City mayor in the wake of his sexting scandal. Featuring unfettered access to the candidate and his campaign.

Microcosmos

A documentary of insect life in meadows and ponds, using incredible close-ups, slow motion, and time-lapse photography. It includes bees collecting nectar, ladybugs eating mites, snails mating, spiders wrapping their catch, a scarab beetle relentlessly pushing its ball of dung uphill, endless lines of caterpillars, an underwater spider creating an air bubble to live in, and a mosquito hatching.

The New Black

The New Black is a documentary that tells the story of how the African-American community is grappling with the gay rights issue in light of the recent gay marriage movement and the fight over civil rights. The film documents activists, families and clergy on both sides of the campaign to legalize gay marriage and examines homophobia in the black community's institutional pillar-the black church and reveals the Christian right wing's strategy of exploiting this phenomenon in order to pursue an anti-gay political agenda. The New Black takes viewers into the pews and onto the streets and provides a seat at the kitchen table as it tells the story of the historic fight to win marriage equality in Maryland and charts the evolution of this divisive issue within the black community.

The Galapagos Affair: Satan Came to Eden

Darwin meets Hitchcock in this documentary. Directors Dan Geller and Dayna Goldfine have created a parable about the search for paradise, set in the brutal yet alluring landscape of the Galapagos Islands, which interweaves an unsolved 1930s murder mystery with stories of present day Galapagos pioneers. A gripping tale of idealistic dreams gone awry, featuring voice-over performances by Cate Blanchett, Diane Kruger, and Gustaf Skarsgard.

New Wave

An endearingly nostalgic exploration of the defiant Vietnamese new wave music scene, as well as a vulnerable and personal look at the filmmaker and her community’s revisiting of their unexamined past.

Tall Poppy: A Skater's Story

A child who just loved to skate from the age of eight, Poppy Starr Olsen became the number one female bowl skater in Australia at 14 and went on to take out bronze at the XGames at 17 - the ultimate competition in the world of skateboarding. The same year, skateboarding was announced as an official additional sport category at the Tokyo 2020 Olympics. Now faced with the opportunity to represent Australia on the world stage Poppy grapples with the transition from skater to athlete and the pressure of competition mounts in a way it has never done before.

Law Not War

Chronicles the adventurous life of Hungarian-born Jewish lawyer Benjamin Ferencz, who fled to the USA as a child and later became chief war crime prosecutor in the Nuremberg Trials of 1945-1949 and one of the founding members of the International Criminal Court, which entered into force in 2002.

Sole Survivor

In the history of aviation, there have been only 14 of them: sole survivors of a commercial aviation disaster. Most have never spoken publicly about the loss, the guilt, the immense pressure of feeling "spared." Who, after all, could ever truly understand? The answer is only each other. Sole Survivor brings four of them together (George Lamson, Cecilia Cichan, Bahia Bakari and Jim Polehinke) to share their very complex, personal stories for the first time. They revisit the most harrowing moments of their lives in an effort to heal and overcome their most perplexing questions.

Rocks at Whiskey Trench

The fourth film in Alanis Obomsawin's landmark series on the Oka crisis uses a single, shameful incident as a lens through which to examine the region's long history of prejudice and injustice against the Mohawk population.

TWA Flight 800

A thought-provoking documentary about the ill-fated Trans World Airline Flight 800 to Paris, France, which exploded on July 17, 1996 just 12 minutes after takeoff from JFK International Airport, killing all 230 people on board. The special features six former members of the official crash investigation breaking their silence to refute the officially proposed cause of the jetliner's demise and reveal how the investigation was systematically undermined.

The Dancer

The career of a classical ballet dancer is short and often riddled with injuries, and it takes a special kind of artist to submit to the discipline and strenuous regimen needed to dance with a world-class company. Follows the young and gifted Katja Björner through years of intensive training at the Royal Swedish Ballet School as she develops into an international ballet star.

Manakamana

A documentary about a group of pilgrims who travel to Nepal to worship at the legendary Manakamana temple.

China Love

A fascinating exploration of contemporary China through the pre-wedding photography industry – a billion-dollar fantasy world.

I Don't Belong Anywhere: The Cinema of Chantal Akerman

I Don’t Belong Anywhere - Le Cinéma de Chantal Akerman, explores some of the Belgian filmmaker’s 40 plus films. From Brussels to Tel-Aviv, from Paris to New-York, this documentary charts the sites of her peregrinations. An experimental filmmaker, a nomad, Chantal Akerman shares her cinematic trajectory, one that has never ceased to interrogate the the meaning of her existence. Thanks in great part to the interventions of her editor, Claire Atherton, she delineates the origins of her film language and her aesthetic stance.

Ukraine Is Not a Brothel

Ukraine's topless feminist sensation Femen has created a media frenzy across Europe, but before they take the world by storm, these bold and beautiful women must confront the dark and perverse forces that power their organisation.

Beware the Slenderman

In this horrifyingly modern fairytale lurks an online Boogeyman and two 12-year-old girls who would kill for him. The entrance to the internet quickly leads to its darkest basement. How responsible are our children for what they find there?

Cameraperson

As a visually radical memoir, CAMERAPERSON draws on the remarkable footage that filmmaker Kirsten Johnson has shot and reframes it in ways that illuminate moments and situations that have personally affected her. What emerges is an elegant meditation on the relationship between truth and the camera frame, as Johnson transforms scenes that have been presented on Festival screens as one kind of truth into another kind of story—one about personal journey, craft, and direct human connection.

Be Natural: The Untold Story of Alice Guy-Blaché

The epic life story of Alice Guy-Blaché (1873–1968), a French screenwriter, director and producer, true pioneer of cinema, the first person who made a narrative fiction film; author of hundreds of movies, but banished from history books. Ignored and forgotten. At last remembered.