Story Riders

Los Felices

A love letter to Mar del Plata made of images, times and a road trip. "The Happy Ones" is an experimental short documentary composed of past and present family footage. It portrays a place in the summer, the city of Mar del Plata, with a span of 20 years between past and present images (January 2000 and 2020). Despite the time that passed by, it's beaches, essence and people remain, always willing to keep dancing.

2 or 3 Things I Know About Him

What would your family reminiscences about dad sound like if he had been an early supporter of Hitler’s, a leader of the notorious SA and the Third Reich’s minister in charge of Slovakia, including its Final Solution? Executed as a war criminal in 1947, Hanns Ludin left behind a grieving widow and six young children, the youngest of whom became a filmmaker. It's a fascinating, maddening, sometimes even humorous look at what the director calls "a typical German story." (Film Forum)

Capturing the Friedmans

An Oscar nominated documentary about a middle-class American family who is torn apart when the father Arnold and son Jesse are accused of sexually abusing numerous children. Director Jarecki interviews people from different sides of this tragic story and raises the question of whether they were rightfully tried when they claim they were innocent and there was never any evidence against them.

Resurrecting Hassan

Traces the lives of the Hartings, a blind Montreal family of three who make their living singing in the city's subway stations. The Hartings lost their only sighted child Hassan in a tragic drowning accident, and have since turned to the teachings of Russian mystic Grigori Grabovoi, hoping to resurrect their son. Resurrecting Hassan is an exploration of this family's legacy of grief, tragedy and abuse; the film will follow them on their path to redemption.

Our Baby: A Modern Miracle

What's it like starting a family when you're both transgender? This intimate film follows Hannah and Jake Graf on a journey through prejudice and surrogacy to birth during lockdown.

To Be and to Have

The documentary's title translates as "to be and to have", the two auxiliary verbs in the French language. It is about a primary school in the commune of Saint-Étienne-sur-Usson, Puy-de-Dôme, France, the population of which is just over 200. The school has one small class of mixed ages (from four to twelve years), with a dedicated teacher, Georges Lopez, who shows patience and respect for the children as we follow their story through a single school year.

WICCA

I was scrounging around the neighborhood for inspiration. Within a block from my apartment, I found a wild mushroom in the grass, and an advertisement for a psychic named Sara.

La memoria inmortal

The Story of the Weeping Camel

When a Mongolian nomadic family's newest camel colt is rejected by its mother, a musician is needed for a ritual to change her mind.

Sam & Mattie Make a Zombie Movie

Documentary about the making of ’Spring Break Zombie Massacre.’

Léa & I

Best friends travel though Latin America meeting shamans, experimenting with plant medicines, and wondering about what makes a life well-lived when one of them might have half the time to live it.

Arctic Tale

Arctic Tale is a 2007 documentary film from the National Geographic Society about the life cycle of a walrus and her calf, and a polar bear and her cubs, in a similar vein to the 2005 hit production March of the Penguins, also from National Geographic.

Buzz One Four

Buzz One Four chronicles the ill-fated flight of a Cold War B-52 Stratofortress loaded with two 3-4-megaton nuclear bombs that crashed 90 miles from Washington DC in 1961. Information suggests that detonation came closer than official reports indicated. The full details of the crash have remained classified and otherwise repressed by the Air Force, but the filmmaker, Portlander Matt McCormick, grew up with this story because the pilot was his grandfather. As McCormick recounts the history of the era, aspects of this crash, and other little-know nuclear-weapons accidents, he leaves us wondering if the U.S. was in greater danger of nuking itself than of being attacked by the Russians.

Kiss the Wind

After the COVID-19 time, the weather gradually turned cool and the octogenarian couple led a quiet life. The couple realized that there were only three people left in their generation after stumbling upon a photo. So they decided to visit their relative who lived in another city.

Whitney: Can I Be Me

The life and tragic death of Whitney Houston.

Alma Anciana

Three juxtaposing stories taking place in Portugal, Austria and Cuba create an intimate and poetic portrait of the daily lives and struggles of the elderly in an unstable world, seen through the eyes of their grandchildren.

Mr. Trump, Pardon the Interruption

An analysis of the impact on the United States Latino community of immigration policies promoted by President Donald Trump.

Housing

Mr. Lin is a happily retired man who spends his time keeping company with his toddling grandson, walking his dog, and playing golf with his in-laws. Recently, he has been obsessed with houses with river views. In Lin's city of demolitions and reconstructions, money-making investors buy and sell houses at unaffordable prices. Above the skyline of Taipei, will the boundaries between daydreams and reality ever blur?

Homebound

Through first person narration, Tari reveals personal stories related to her decision to work in Taiwan, her strained family relationships, the risks involved in working abroad and the traps she has fallen into.