FILMS A-Z
The 22nd MVFF
Films A-Z
892
Discussion to follow with director Abi Damaris Corbin
Winner of a special jury award at Sundance, this searing drama stars John Boyega and the late Michael K. Williams in the true story of Brian Brown-Easley, a former Marine and Iraq War veteran who finds himself on the brink of homelessness after his disability check is withheld by Veterans Affairs. With no other options, he walks into a Wells Fargo bank and claims to have a bomb.
ANIMALS IN THE WORLD: SHORT FILMS FOR KIDS OF ALL AGES
Animals in the jungle, in the zoo, in your house, or in the streets—these short films follow animals around the world as they interact with humans, other animals, and their environments.
ÂS NUTAYUNEÂN: CHKUWABONAKIK AKONUTOMAKONOL (WE STILL LIVE HERE: DAWNLAND STORIES)
Discussion to follow with the filmmakers and members of the Wampanoag Tribe of Aquinnah
This is a showcase of narrative and documentary short films led by groundbreaking Indigenous peoples from the Peskotomukatiyik/Passamaquoddy communities in Sipayik and Motahkomikuk, the Panwahpskewiyik/Penobscot, the Diné/Navajo, and the Shinnecock Nations. The films also feature Indigenous leaders from additional communities across Turtle Island. These are stories of genocide—and stories of cultural and environmental revival, resilience, and resistance. We invite these storytellers to the land of the Aquinnah Wôpanâak for all to hear and learn from.
BAD AXE
Followed by a prerecorded discussion via Zoom with director David Siev and film subjects
Cambodian- and Mexican-American filmmaker David Siev documents his family's struggles to keep their Michigan restaurant open as fears of the coronavirus grow and deep generational scars create a rift between the family's patriarch and his daughter. When the Black Lives Matter movement takes center stage in America, the family dares to speak out in their conservative community. What unfolds is a real-time portrait of 2020 through the lens of a family’s fight to keep their American dream alive.
BEYOND BORDERS: SHORTS FROM AROUND THE WORLD
Genre-defying, boundary-breaking, visually spectacular, and fiercely imaginative, these live-action and animated short films from across the globe are testaments to the role of film and art as means of making sense of the world.
BIG FEELINGS FOR LITTLE KIDS: SHORT FILMS FOR KIDS AGES 2-6
This collection of short films explores the emotional range that every toddler experiences, from kindness and love to loneliness and fear. These films remind our children that emotions big and small happen to everyone!
BIG FEELINGS FOR BIG KIDS: SHORT FILMS FOR KIDS AGES 7+
These short films grapple with big emotions: grief, pain, and empathy. They help our older children recognize that even in the darkest of times, happiness and relief can be found when you lean on those around you!
BLACK VOTERS MATTER
Featured work-in-progress screening; discussion to follow with director Daresha Kyi
An in-depth look at the history of the Black Voters Matter Fund and its co-founders Cliff Albright and LaTosha Brown, this documentary-in-progress examines the work they do to empower African-American communities, especially in the rural South, and the crucial role they played in flipping Georgia from red to blue in the 2020 presidential election and the 2021 U.S. Senate runoff elections.
CAMERA AND CHOREOGRAPHY: DANCE SHORTS
Island dancers and choreographers Abby Bender and Jesse Jason will be “dance emcees” for this program, performing between films
These nine short films showcase the hybrid art form of dance, choreography, and filmmaking in all of its variety. Here, all three are integrally and necessarily interdependent. Most of these films were made during the Covid-19 pandemic, when performing all but came to a halt. Many dancers and choreographers turned to filmmaking, as a way to keep dancing, and subsequently accessed storytelling and creative expression through the filmmaker’s camera.
CHA CHA REAL SMOOTH
A Sundance audience award winner, this comedy that brims with emotional honesty is also an unconventional love story about a young man, a teenager with autism, and her mother. Cooper Raiff writes, directs, and stars alongside Dakota Johnson, Brad Garrett, Leslie Mann, and Raúl Castillo.
EVERYTHING EVERYWHERE ALL AT ONCE
This film truly lives up to its name. It is both an hilarious sci-fi action adventure as well as a family drama about an exhausted Chinese-American woman (Michelle Yeoh) who becomes an unlikely hero fighting bizarre dangers from the multiverse as the fate of the world hangs in the balance. It is a genre-bending interdimensional thrill ride!
FROM THE HOOD TO THE HOLLER
Discussion to follow with director Pat McGee and film subject Charles Booker
This inspiring documentary follows Charles Booker as he campaigns to win the Democratic primary and unseat Senator Mitch McConnell in Kentucky. Uniting people across racial lines, he fights against big money in politics, voter suppression, and systemic corruption in an historically deeply red state.
GOOD LUCK TO YOU, LEO GRANDE
Preceded by a prerecorded discussion via Zoom with director Sophie Hyde
In this refreshingly original film that explores the often still-taboo subjects of sexual pleasure and shame, a retired teacher and widow (two-time Academy Award winner Emma Thompson) hires a young sex worker, Leo Grande (Daryl McCormack), for what she hopes will be one really good night in a London hotel room.
GUT BUSTERS: COMEDY SHORTS
This collection of comical short films is a tribute to the absurdity of the current state of humanity. Come for the laughs, stay for the piercing societal critique. Only the funniest.
KLONDIKE
Followed by a prerecorded discussion via Zoom with director Maryna Er Gorbach
Expectant parents Irka and Tolik navigate life in the city of Donetsk during the early days of the 2014 war in the Donbas region of Ukraine. A directing award winner at Sundance, this drama is a beautiful articulation of the choices we make when our world is torn asunder.
MAKE PEOPLE BETTER
Discussion to follow with director Cody Sheehy and producer Samira Kiani
This investigative documentary tells the inside story behind the world’s first genetically designed babies and their creator, Chinese scientist Dr. He Jiankui. Although supported by China's government and top U.S. scientists, the controversial experiment led to an international uproar and swift moves by Chinese authorities to disappear not just Dr. He, but also the twin girls whose genes he had edited. This thought-provoking film considers a future where rival governments and corporations compete to make designer babies the new normal.
MAMA BEARS
Discussion to follow with director Daresha Kyi
This documentary is an intimate exploration of the lives of two “mama bears”—conservative, Christian mothers who have become fierce advocates for LGBTQ+ people—and a young lesbian whose struggle for self-acceptance exemplifies why these women are so important. They are willing to risk losing friends, family, and faith communities to keep their offspring safe—even if it challenges their belief systems and rips their worlds apart.
MANZANAR, DIVERTED: WHEN WATER BECOMES DUST
Following the screening, Brad Lopes, a member of the Wampanoag Tribe of Aquinnah and program director of the Aquinnah Cultural Center, will lead a land preservation discussion with the film’s director, Ann Kaneko, producer Jin Yoo-Kim, and Kathy Bancroft, Elder of the Lone Pine Paiute-Shoshone Tribe
In this poetic documentary, Native American, Japanese-American, and rancher communities form an unexpected alliance to defend their land and water from Los Angeles. Manzanar, the W.W. II concentration camp at the foot of the Sierra Nevada, becomes the confluence for memories of Payahuunadü, the now-parched “land of flowing water.”
MARCEL THE SHELL WITH SHOES ON
In this feature adaptation of a beloved series of animated, mockumentary short films, Marcel is an adorable, one-inch-tall mollusk who lives with his grandmother, Connie, and their pet lint, Alan. After meeting a documentary filmmaker who sparks a new desire in him, Marcel begins an adventure filled with hope and danger, in an attempt to find his long-lost family.
NAVALNY
This Sundance audience award and “festival favorite” winner is a fly-on-the-wall documentary thriller about the Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny. Recovering in Berlin after nearly being poisoned to death, he makes shocking discoveries about his assassination attempt and bravely decides to return home—whatever the consequences.
NOTHING COMPARES
Charting singer Sinéad OʼConnorʼs phenomenal rise to worldwide fame, this documentary examines how she became a fearless trailblazer at the height of her stardom, before her iconoclastic personality led to exile from the pop mainstream. Focusing on her prophetic words and deeds between 1987 and 1993, the film presents a richly cinematic portrait through a contemporary feminist lens.
ON THE DIVIDE
Discussion to follow with producer Elizabeth Woodward, and Women’s Centers president Elizabeth Barnes
Despite their differences, three Latinx people living in McAllen, Texas, are connected by the most unexpected of places: the last abortion clinic on the U.S./Mexico border. As threats to the clinic and their personal safety mount, these three are forced to make decisions they never could have imagined.
OUR WORDS COLLIDE
Followed by a prerecorded discussion by Zoom with directors Jordan Barrow and Matt Edwards, film subject Amari Turner, and executive producer and Get Lit–Words Ignite founder Diane Luby Lane
Five teenage spoken-word poets have something urgent to communicate about their life experiences. Following them through their final year of high school in Los Angeles, this vérité, coming-of-age documentary explores many of the challenges facing young people today—identity and expression, transitioning into adulthood, overcoming mental health issues—through the unique prism of poetry.
A PIECE OF SILVER: A MULTIMEDIA THEATRICAL EXPERIENCE
Mashpee Wampanoag writer and performer Siobhan Growing Elm Brown will be in residence before the festival, working on her new multimedia project. To develop the piece, which is based on recorded conversations with her maternal and paternal grandmothers who are Mashpee Wampanoag and African American, she will collaborate with Ty Defoe, an interdisciplinary artist and filmmaker from the Oneida and Ojibwe Nations of the Great Lakes, and the Wampanoag Women’s Writers’ Group.
RESILIENCE AND RECOGNITION: SHORT FILMS THROUGH A BLACK LENS
These short films from across the United States honor Black history, poetry, imagination, innovation, and creativity.
THE TERRITORY
Followed by a prerecorded discussion with director Alex Pritz
Follow the Uru-eu-wau-wau Indigenous Surveillance Team as they defend their land against a network of Brazilian farmers intent on colonizing their protected territory. Winner of audience and special jury awards at Sundance, this documentary draws on intimate access to both the Indigenous community and the opposing farmers’ network, bringing audiences directly into the heart of the Amazon rainforest.
TRUTH TELLERS
Discussion to follow via Zoom with director Richard Kane and film subject and singer/songwriter/activist Reggie Harris
Both a story of artist and activist Robert Shetterly's portrait painting project, “Americans Who Tell the Truth,” and a history lesson on what it means to be a citizen of a democracy, this documentary explores our country’s ongoing struggle to live up to our democratic ideals, and honors the courage of those who speak truth and challenge the status quo.
WILD JOURNEYS: SHORT FILMS OF ADVENTURE
These inspiring short films feature stories of ordinary people who find themselves on journeys they never imagined, alongside animal companions they will never forget. What wild journeys do our non-human siblings have in store for us?
YOU RESEMBLE ME
Discussion to follow with director Dina Amer and producer Elizabeth Woodward
When two young sisters are separated, the older one loses her identity. In the name of belonging and resistance, she transforms into someone new, leading to a choice that shocks the world. Amer, a first-time filmmaker and former New York Times and Vice News journalist, deconstructs radicalization in an intimate drama about family, love, and sisterhood.