"Our Family" is a film about the time that we can't get back. I left my home along with my friends and family behind in 2017, when I was aged 15 to study in the United States. In some ways I feel like I may have not been best suited to make that decision for myself at the time, but 4 years later, I decided to take this opportunity to reflect on my departure and to reconnect with my family. Because of the COVID-19 pandemic, I haven't been able to go home to Sikkim in over 2 years. Talking to my parents over WhatsApp, I recorded two interviews with them discussing stories from the collective past of our family as well as individual ones. I was able to discover the love story my parents were a part of before I was even born, recollect the bits and pieces of my childhood that I'm beginning to forget, and process how my departure has affected my relationship with my parents and the course of our lives.
Picture Proof (2023)
Examines the intergenerational impact of addiction by chronicling the love, labor, loss, and uncertainty of one woman’s struggle to live a life of sobriety. Weaving together moments of glee, fulfillment, acceptance, sorrow, and disappointment, this documentary takes an intimate look at the bonds that hold one family together and a disease that threatens to tear them apart.
fifteen zero three nineteenth of january two thousand sixteen (2024)
fifteen zero three nineteenth of january two thousand sixteen explores how everyday routines and gestures are transformed when a mother loses her child in the violence impacting Swedish outskirts since the early 2000s. The film resists simplistic media depictions of the suburbs and shows how a home can hold both mourning and the mobilization of women to fight for their own and others' children.
Ritorno a casa (1980)
The film explores the reasons for emigrating from Italy and describes the feeling of being a stranger in one's own country after many years in Switzerland. It is the sequel to Emigrazione.
My Father (2000)
This short documentary is a tribute to the unknown father. Emerging filmmaker Danic Champoux poses the question "How many men still have to uproot themselves and leave their families to get work?" as he sets out to search for his own father. He wonders about these men who are labourers, itinerants, and mostly nameless, but who are all exemplary providers. But at what cost? This film was produced as part of the Libres Courts collection of first-time documentary shorts.
Children of Soldiers (2010)
In this documentary shot at Canadian Forces Base Petawawa during a troop deployment to Afghanistan, children and teens talk about the particular circumstances of having soldiers as parents. Directed by Claire Corriveau, Children of Soldiers lifts the veil on a reality shared by thousands of young Canadians, and on the difficulty of finding a balance between loyalty to the troops and staying true to themselves.
Trek - Spy on the Wildebeest (2007)
Each year over 1.2 million wildebeest travel across the vast Serengeti plains and Kenya's Masai Mara on a 1,800 kilometer circular journey, relentlessly followed by every big African predator. Revolutionary spy cams - airborne, swimming or disguised as rocks, skulls or dung - reveal the Great Wildebeest Migration from entirely new perspectives. This 2-part series focuses on the growing-up of a calf as he takes his first steps, faces his first deadly perils and tries to cross crocodile-infested rivers. It combines natural humor with exciting drama and gripping music.
Aita Mari (2021)
The Stella Maris Berria is a tuna vessel destined for scrapping. However, Iñigo Mijangos and Iñigo Gutierrez, two members of the NGO Salvamento Marítimo Humanitario, have an unusual idea: to transform the fishing boat into a rescue boat to save refugees drowning in the Mediterranean Sea. That is how Aita Mari was born.
Suburban Mayhem (2006)
Can you really get away with murder? Welcome to the world of Katrina, a 19-year-old single mum who's planning to do just that. Katrina lives in a world of petty crime, fast cars, manicures and blow-jobs. A master manipulator of men living at home with her father in suburban Golden Grove, Katrina will stop at nothing to get what she wants - even murder.
Golden Door (2006)
The story is set at the beginning of the 20th century in Sicily. Salvatore, a very poor farmer, and a widower, decides to emigrate to the US with all his family, including his old mother. Before they embark, they meet Lucy. She is supposed to be a British lady and wants to come back to the States. Lucy, or Luce as Salvatore calls her, for unknown reasons wants to marry someone before to arrive to Ellis Island in New York. Salvatore accepts the proposal. Once they arrive in Ellis Island they spend the quarantine period trying to pass the examinations to be admitted to the States. Tests are not so simple for poor farmers coming from Sicily. Their destiny is in the hands of the custom officers.
Family Video Diaries: Daughter of the Bride (1997)
Pearl Randall, a 66-year-old widow, announces that she is planning to remarry, but her three grown children express conflicting emotions. Daughter Terri captures on tape the family's attempts to come to grips with Pearl's new romance.
My Favorite Child (2007)
The story of Dwight Core, Jr. and his family, following up the events of the home documentary "Think of Me First as a Person", shot decades ago by his father Dwight Core, Sr. and portraying the love a boy with Down syndrome shares with his four sisters, but also a heartache common to the era's disabled: leaving home for an institution. The little boy, Dwight Core, Jr., grew into a tall, 48-year-old man who enjoyed coloring and watching television in the living room of the Ocean View section of Norfolk, Virginia home he shared with one of his sisters, Cindy Klingler. In 2007, filmmaker Roger M. Richards brought the story of Dwight Core, Jr. to the present, documenting him as a grown man and the continuing love and devotion of his sisters to their brother.
A Family Gathering (1988)
Silence - the stuff of assumptions and confusion - is a legacy inherited by many grandchildren of Japanese Americans interned during WWII. Shortly after Japan attacked Pearl Harbor, Masuo Yasui, a respected figure of Hood River Valley, Oregon was arrested by the FBI as a "potentially dangerous enemy alien." In A FAMILY GATHERING, Lise Yasui, a granddaughter that Masuo never knew, shows that courageous journeys into the past can bring greater understanding of family and personal history to the present.
The Story of the Weeping Camel (2003)
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.
Playing by Heart (1998)
In a vibrant tapestry of love and longing, nine interconnected souls navigate romance and heartbreak in L.A., where passions collide and truths unfold, revealing that the heart's desires often lead us where we least expect.
The Road of Health (1938)
The lecturer shows a microcinematographic sequence of spirochaetes and drawings of the gonoccus (the bacteria responsible for syphilis and gonorrhea). He then turns to an easel and begins to draw 'the road of health'; the cartoon takes this up in magic drawing, in a style that is highly reminiscent of the 'Giro the Germ' series made for the Health and Cleanliness Council a few years before.
Don Juan (1998)
Spain in the mid-seventeenth century. A series of bloody wars has ravaged the nation. Don Juan the nobleman and his valet, Sganarelle, roam the countryside on horseback, on the run and lost.
2 or 3 Things I Know About Him (2005)
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)
The Other Side of Sadness (2018)
In a hybrid film, both documentary and fiction, five young women describe the feeling of grief when losing a parent at a young age. Anna returns to her father's home, a year after his death. In one weekend, she lives through a storm of emotions as these may come and go in the process of grief.