Nero (Johnny Ortiz) is sent back to Mexico after failing to cross the Tijuana border. Under  cover of Fourth of July fireworks, Nero makes his second attempt across a concrete trench spanning an interstate highway to the promise land. He hitches a ride with Seymour (Michael Harney), a paranoid pistol-toting veteran traveling with his daughter. Soon after, Nero runs away at a gas station when the local  police question Seymour. Nero makes his way through East Los Angeles, looking for his brother, Jesus (Ian Casselberry), and lands in the plush suburbs of Beverly Hills. Jesus pretends to be a car mechanic living in a gauche Beverly Hills mansion to impress his younger brother, but the ruse won’t last forever. The young Maldonado is now half way around the world fighting for the United States Army to obtain his citizenship. Nero is manning an outpost in the middle of nowhere with his fellow soldiers and commanding officer (Rory Cochrane). The group fights back a hostile ambush after gunning down a car that failed to acknowledge the checkpoint. Nero must survive the unforgiving Middle East desert, and face the harsh reality of being a green card soldier for the United States Army. Rafi Pitts’ films have attained acclaim and awards around the globe. Pitts’ first feature, The Fifth Season (1997), premiered in the Venice Film Festival. His second, Sanam (2000)  was hailed by French critics and compared to The 400 Blows (1959). In 2003, Pitts presented his controversial feature documentary, Cinéma, de notre temps: Abel Ferrara: Not  Guilty (2003) in the Official Selection of the Locarno Film Festival. It’s Winter (2006)  premiered in the Berlin Competition, and one year later, the Seattle International Film Festival honored Pitts with the Emerging Masters Award for his work. Director Rafi Pitts joins us to talk about his gripping tale of people in search of place, security and a new life.

For news and updates go to: soynero.com

MOTHERLAND takes us into the heart of the planet’s busiest maternity hospital in one of the world’s poorest and most populous countries: the Philippines. The film’s viewer, like an unseen outsider dropped unobtrusively into the hospital’s stream of activity, passes through hallways, enters rooms and listens in on conversations. At first, the surrounding people are strangers, but as the film continues, it's absorbingly intimate, rendering the women at the heart of the story increasingly familiar. In a hospital that is literally bursting with life, we witness the miracle and wonder of the human condition. Diaz, a veteran documentarian began filming in the search of a story on reproductive justice, visited the Dr. Jose Fabella Memorial Hospital in Manila, Philippines.  As the busiest maternity ward in the world, it averages 60 births a day—and at its peak, as many as 100 babies within a 24-hour period.  Fabella Hospital is the final safety net for very poor pregnant women, most of whom cannot afford either contraception or the $60 delivery fee.  Immersing the viewer with a fly on the wall cinema verité approach,” MOTHERLAND -  winner of World Cinema Documentary Special Jury Award for Commanding Vision at Sundance will open on September 22 in Los Angeles at the Laemmle Monica Film Center. Director Ramona Diaz stops by to talk about her immersive intimate film that finds intimacy and caring in the midst of controlled bedlam.

For news and updates go to: motherland-film.com

Marrying stunning visuals with social advocacy, Rahul Jain’s debut documentary — winner of the Special Jury Award for Cinematography at the 2017 Sundance Film Festival — takes audiences into the labyrinthine passages of an enormous textile factory in Gujarat, India. Jain’s camera wanders freely between pulsating machines and bubbling vats of dye to create a moving portrait of the human laborers who toil away there for 12 hours a day to eke out a meager living for their families back home. Interviews with these workers and the factory owners who employ them reveal the stark inequality and dangerous working conditions brought about by unregulated industrialization in the region. This political message is delivered amidst the unsettling beauty of the factory’s mechanical underworld and the colorful, billowing fabrics it produces. Director Rahul Jain joins us to talk about the making of his stark, mesmerizing, and unsettling film and the penetrating sense of complicity we all should feel for the men and the inhumane work conditions they find themselves in.

For news and updates go to: Machines

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Winner of 16 festival awards - from Audience Choice to Best Feature/Actress/Music and Screenplay - YEAR BY THE SEA chronicles empty-nester Joan Anderson’s (Karen Allen) decision not to follow her relocated husband to Kansas. Instead, she retreats to Cape Cod to rediscover herself and redefine her life. Plagued with guilt, she questions her decision until stumbling upon a spirited mentor, Joan Erikson (Celia Imrie) - author and wife of famed psychologist Erik Erikson (Alvin Epstein), who coined the term “identity crisis.” With a support group that includes her literary agent and a host of locals, Joan learns to embrace the ebb and flow of life - ultimately discovering the balance between self and sacrifice, obligation and desire. YEAR BY THE SEA, based on the New York Times and international best-selling memoir by Joan Anderson and starring highly acclaimed screen and stage actress Karen Allen (Raiders of the Lost Ark, Animal House). Written, directed and composed by Alexander Janko, YEAR BY THE SEA will open at Lincoln Plaza and Landmark Sunshine in New York on September 8 and at Laemmle Royal, Town Center and Playhouse 7 in Los Angeles on September 15. Director Janko joins to talk his life-affirming tale of friendship, love and pushing against expectations.

For news and updates go to: YearByTheSea.com

This observational documentary follows a year in the lives of two inspirational teachers at Headfort, the only primary-age boarding school in Ireland. Housed in an 18th century estate, school life embraces tradition and modernity. For John, rock music is just another subject alongside Maths, Scripture and Latin, taught in a collaborative and often hilarious fashion. For his wife Amanda, the key to connecting with children is the book, and she uses all means to snare the young minds. For nearly half a century these two have shaped thousands of minds, but now the unthinkable looms: what would retirement mean? What will keep them young if they leave? Co-directors David Rane and Neasa Ni Chiandain stop by to talk about gaining the trust of a remarkably dedicated couple who have given their lives to the students and a way of life at Headfort and the joy of documenting an academic culture that celebrates and elevates young minds.

For news and updates go to: schoollifefilm.com

Strong Island chronicles the arc of a family across history, geography and tragedy - from the racial segregation of the Jim Crow South to the promise of New York City; from the presumed safety of middle class suburbs, to the maelstrom of an unexpected, violent death. It is the story of the Ford family: Barbara Dunmore, William Ford and their three children and how their lives were shaped by the enduring shadow of race in America. In April 1992, on Long Island NY, William Jr., the Ford’s eldest child, a black 24 year-old teacher, was killed by Mark Reilly, a white 19 year-old mechanic. Although Ford was unarmed, he became the prime suspect in his own murder. A deeply intimate and meditative film, Strong Island asks what one can do when the grief of loss is entwined with historical injustice, and how one grapples with the complicity of silence, which can bind a family in an imitation of life, and a nation with a false sense of justice. Director Yance Ford, who is transgender, is a recipient of the Creative Capital Award, a MacDowell Colony Fellowship, a Sundance Documentary Film Program Fellowship, and was among Filmmaker Magazine’s 25 New Faces of Independent Film in 2011. For ten years Ford was privileged to work as Series Producer for the PBS showcase POV and where his curatorial work helped garner more than 16 Emmy nominations. Ford is also an architectural welder, and while at Modern Art Foundry he helped assemble the sculpture "Maman" by Louise Bourgeois—the series of three spiders exhibited at Rockefeller Center, and now on permanent display at the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, Spain. Director Yance Ford joins us for a conversation on grief, justice, racism, expectations, and the profound impact this 25-year long saga has had on his family. 

For news and updates go to: strongislandfilm.com

Opening Friday, September 15

IFC CENTER, NEW YORK

IFC Center + Q&A with director Yance Ford - Friday 7:05 PM

LAEMMLE MONICA FILM CENTER, SANTA MONICA

Laemmle Monica Film Center, Santa Monica | California

Filmmakers Shaul Schwarz’s and Christina Clusiau’s bracingly balanced new documentary TROPHY explores the complex heart of contemporary issues of animal conservation and commodification at a time when endangered African species such as elephants, rhinos and lions march ever closer to extinction. This provocative follow-up to Schwarz’s acclaimed Narco Cultura journeys viewers across lush African forests and vast plains and into the world’s largest hunters’ convention in Las Vegas to meet breeders and hunters who passionately believe in animal conservation. A common mantra of these businesses – “if it pays, it stays” – sums up the controversial notion that if you assign monetary value to an animal, it is worth protecting. TROPHY follows Philip Glass, a Texas-based sheep breeder and life-long hunter who is on a quest to collect the “Big Five” (elephant, buffalo, lion, leopard, and rhino). Philip is deeply connected to the land and animals, Chris Moore, a Zimbabwean wildlife officer whose anti-poaching campaign is partially subsidized by big-game hunters like Philip. Chris works with government authorities and communities to keep people safe from wild animals. He also protects those animals from ruthless poachers. The great irony of Chris’s work is that he goes to “extreme lengths” to protect endangered animals, only to have them killed by trophy hunters. Co-director Christina Clusiau and Shaul Schwarz joins us for a frank conversation on the fate of these magnificent creatures and who or what will determine their uncertain future.

For news and update go to: trophy.film

100% on Rotten Tomatoes

Dolores Huerta is among the most important, yet least known, activists in American history. An equal partner in co-founding the first farm workers unions with Cesar Chavez, her enormous contributions have gone largely unrecognized. Dolores tirelessly led the fight for racial and labor justice alongside Chavez, becoming one of the most defiant feminists of the twentieth century—and she continues the fight to this day, at 87. With intimate and unprecedented access to this intensely private mother to eleven, the film reveals the raw, personal stakes involved in committing one’s life to social change. DOLORES is directed by Peter Bratt (LA MISSION) and Executive Produced by humanitarian and Grammy Award-winning musician Carlos Santana. The film debuted at the Sundance Film Festival this year and continues to be a favorite on the festival circuit, garnering Audience Awards at the San Francisco International Film Festival, Montclair Film Festival, Houston Latino Film Festival and the Denver Women + Film Festival, as well as receiving the Golden Space Needle Best Documentary Award from the Seattle International Film Festival. Director Peter Bratt joins us for an engaging and lively conversation about a visionary leader who refuses to give into to pessimism and inaction.

For news and updates go to: doloresthemovie.com

Twitter #DOLORESHUERTA

Frankie, an aimless teenager on the outer edges of Brooklyn, is having a miserable summer. With his father dying and his mother wanting him to find a girlfriend, Frankie escapes the bleakness of his home life by causing trouble with his delinquent friends and flirting with older men online. When his chatting and webcamming intensify, he finally starts hooking up with guys at a nearby cruising beach while simultaneously entering into a cautious relationship with a young woman. As Frankie struggles to reconcile his competing desires, his decisions leave him hurtling towards irreparable consequences.  Director and writer Eliza Hittman (It Felt Like Love) talks about sexual identity, dealing with loss, and growing up in an era of America’s broken dream.

RUMBLE: THE INDIANS WHO ROCKED THE WORLD, reveals the rousing history of American Indians in popular music, kicks off with Link Wray (Shawnee) whose raw, distorted electric guitar riff from the 1958 instrumental “Rumble” was a major influence on rock legends Pete Townshend, Jimmy Page, and Iggy Pop. RUMBLE powers through the music and life stories of artists whose Indian heritage has long been unsung: Delta blues master Charley Patton (Choctaw), “queen of swing” Mildred Bailey (Coeur D’Alene), The Band’s Robbie Robertson (Mohawk), Jimi Hendrix (Cherokee), folk icon Buffy Sainte-Marie (Cree), “guitarist to the greats” Jesse Ed Davis (Kiowa/Comanche), and others. RUMBLE collages historical footage and electrifying performances with commentary by surviving musicians. Music historians, family members and assorted luminaries (including Martin Scorsese, Quincy Jones, George Clinton, Dan Auerbach, Taj Mahal, Steven Van Zandt, Slash, Steven Tyler, Tony Bennett, and Rolling Stone’s David Fricke) weigh in on how Native American musicians shaped the sounds of our lives. The film won the World Cinema Documentary Special Jury Award for Masterful Storytelling at the 2017 Sundance Film Festival. RUMBLE originated with guitarist/executive producer Stevie Salas (Apache), who realized that the public was unaware of the profound contribution of Native Americans to pop music. Salas joins us for a lively conversation on the profound impact Native American’s have had on our collective history, culture and music.

For news and updates go to: rumblethemovie.com