Production

Prison birth is grim—a mother is shackled to a hospital bed, surrounded by armed guards, and her child is taken from her after delivery. You Don’t Know My Name confronts the often overlooked injustice of forced family separation and the generational trauma wrought by the prison system. Director Tommy Franklin is a formerly incarcerated filmmaker who longs for a mother he never knew. He was taken from her in prison as an infant and placed in the foster system. As a newborn, he was adopted by a white Minnesotan family. He begins therapy to better understand his internal world and [...]

Once Oakland’s largest homeless encampment, Wood Street is the last stop for unhoused “brothers,” John and LaMonté. They moved there eight years ago after police pushed them from other encampments around the city. After a devastating fire, their tight-knit community faces eviction. It’s their goal to stop it.

The eldest of five daughters, 15-year-old Tamia is expected to perform domestic chores and act as an additional caretaker. A protector and budding poet, she speaks her truth through rhythmic verse. Tamia makes powerful strides to communicate to her mom that she needs a break, even as the reality of their situation escalates. Tamia takes her 7-year-old sister, London, under her wings to shield her from the pressures for Black girls to grow up too fast. The pair transform Brooklyn into their playground before Tamia’s departure to college separates them for the first time. Can Tamia go away without the [...]

Todo Lo Sólido merges documentary and fantasy to tell the story of an island sinking into the Caribbean Sea. Searching for answers to make sense of the imminent storm, a nameless rifter visits a spiritist. After summoning the drifter’s ancestors, the spiritist confirms the sinking of the island. Traveling around present-day Cuba, the drifter will begin a journey in search for the causes behind the potential disappearance of his homeland. The drifter’s voice is simultaneously the voice of the filmmaker merging diaristic and fictionalized points of view. During his journey, he encounters five characters:a historian, a fisherman, a farmer, a [...]

A queer woman of Japanese descent grieves the spirit she met and parted ways with through her pregnancy and subsequent abortion. She dreams for many nights of a taiko drum with a koi fish sticking out of one side, holding a jade ball in its mouth, representing a world restored to wholeness. Kizuna, meaning the bonds that cannot be broken, tells the story of the construction of this sacred drum and the alchemizing of loss into ancestral kinship through ritual. The drum named Kizuna by her side, the woman goes on to hold rituals for others who have undergone abortions [...]

Named after the African cinema classic, Yeelen journeys to Bamako to make a movie about the enigmatic elder who inspired their name. Souleymane Cisse, director of YEELEN, readily assumes the role of godfather to the multimedia artist, but soon begins questioning the millennial’s vision. What starts as a playful personal documentary about the origin of a name, spirals into an existential interrogation of representation, collective imagination, and the power manifested through image creation.

DEAR YOU is a story of love and longing, anchored around the slow-burning internal evolution of Grace James, a Pacific Islander woman seeking asylum in the US from her abusive husband. When Grace begins attending dance therapy, she must process the realities of her life: the ever-present threat of deportation, haunting recurring memories of domestic abuse, and the rising tides of climate change impatiently consuming her homeland.