In August, 2014, a video of the public execution of American photojournalist James Foley rippled across the globe. Foley wore an orange jumpsuit as he knelt beside an ISIS militant dressed in black. That image challenged the world to deal with a new face of terror. And it tested one American family. Seen through the lens of filmmaker Brian Oakes, Foley’s close childhood friend, Jim takes us from small-town New England to the adrenaline-fueled front lines of Libya and Syria, where Foley pushed the limits of danger to report on the plight of civilians impacted by war.
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New Jersey car mechanic Stacie Andree and her police detective girlfriend Laurel Hester both battle to secure Hester’s pension benefits after she was diagnosed with a terminal illness.
Papa Machete is an intimate account of ‘Professor’ Alfred Avril, one of the world’s only known masters of the esoteric martial art of Haitian machete fencing, known in Creole as ‘Tire Machet’. The film documents a proud, but aging man’s devotion to his heritage and his desire to continue tradition.
The journey of the thousands of people from Central America and Mexico who leave their homes and families and suffer extraordinary brutality -or loss of life itself- in search of the American Dream.
The 2016 Reebok CrossFit Games were a grueling five-day, 15-event test to find the fittest man and woman on Earth. “Fittest on Earth: A Decade of Fitness” follows the dramatic story of the top athletes who qualified and competed and offers an inside look at what it takes to be among the world’s elite athletes, both in training and on the competition floor. The CrossFit Games challenge competitors to perform intense physical tasks, but the hardest part is sometimes mental. Athletes often learn the details of the events only minutes before they begin, and everyone handles the pressure differently. Which of these fierce competitors will rise to the top and earn the title of Fittest on Earth?
In intimate conversations with those involved, including 28-year-old death row inmate Michael Perry (who was scheduled to die eight days after his interview with Herzog), legendary filmmaker Werner Herzog achieves what he describes as “a gaze into the abyss of the human soul.” As he’s so often done before, Herzog’s investigation unveils layers of humanity, making an enlightening trip out of ominous territory.
At the annual Vent Haven Convention in Ft. Mitchell, Kentucky, ventriloquism capital of the world, director Mark Goffman discovers five extraordinary characters straight out of a Christopher Guest mockumentary. But in this delightful, it’s-all-true documentary, the characters are real, and so are the emotional attachments that they have with their “dummies.”
David Spade riffs on the humiliations of doctor visits, lemur season in paradise, falling for clickbait and the one selfie he can never get right.
Biography of Mohammed Ali Jinnah, the founder of modern Pakistan is told through flashbacks as his soul tries to find eternal rest. The flashbacks start in 1947 as Jinnah pleads for a separate nation from the Muslim regime, infuriating Lord Mountbatten. Mountbatten then tries to enlist Gandhi & Nehru to persuade Jinnah to stop his efforts. Gandhi sides with Jinnah, which upsets Nehru. However, Jinnah turns down the offer to become prime minister and the film takes another slide back to 1916, which reveals all of the political implications that have occurred.
In 1988, filmmaker Kevin Tomlinson filmed & interviewed a group of back-to-the- land “hippies”–living off-grid, insulated from mainstream culture. In 2006 he tracked down his subjects again to find out what had become of their families’ utopian plans and dreams.
Born from the simplest rules, the ancient game of Go is the most complex and elegant game ever discovered. For thousands of years, masters and disciples have passed the game down as a window to the human mind. Now, for the first time, a group of Americans enter the ring, in search of a prodigy who will change the game forever.
