Is it worth it? Three unique stories look at the work and sacrifice that goes into pursuing athletic dreams in America.
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Victor Fleming’s 1939 film The Wizard of Oz is one of David Lynch’s most enduring obsessions. This documentary goes over the rainbow to explore this Technicolor through-line in Lynch’s work.
Anita, Rita, Ricardo and Andrés have been attending a school for children with Down syndrome for 40 years. After all this time, they are starting to tire of this safe, familiar environment. Now over 45 years old, some of them feel that working in the school bakery is no longer a challenge. They also yearn for freedom on a more personal level. Anita and Andrés are in love but still live with their families. They dream of finding a quiet place to be alone together, and they want to get married and raise a family. Sadly, the society they live in is not equipped to cater to their desire for more independence. In spite of the training they receive on becoming “responsible adults,” all four of them remain dependent on others to make decisions for them, much to their frustration.
Chinese teenagers from the wealthy elite, with big American dreams, settle into a boarding school in small-town Maine. As their fuzzy visions of the American dream slowly gain more clarity, their relationship to home takes on a poignant new aspect.
‘I Need You to Kill,’ follows three American comics – Chad Daniels, Pete Lee, and Tom Segura on a six show tour through three of the world’s newest stand-up comedy scenes: Hong Kong, Singapore, and Macau. The film explores the anxieties and surprises of taking your act halfway around the world as well as giving a ground-floor glimpse into Asia’s newest growth industry – stand-up comedy.
The untold story of Hammer at Warner Bros, and the relationship that produced some of the British company’s finest films.
It’s 1994: a 13-year-old boy disappears from his home in San Antonio, Texas. Three and a half years later, he is found alive, thousands of miles away, in Spain. Disoriented and quivering with fear, he divulges his shocking story of kidnap and torture. His family is overjoyed to bring him home. But all is not what it seems. Sure, he has the same tattoos, but he looks decidedly different, and he now speaks with a strange accent. Why doesn’t the family seem to notice these glaring inconsistencies? It’s only when an investigator starts asking questions that this astounding true story takes an even stranger turn.
Famous by age 9, struggling by age 20 and dead at ripe age of 34, this documentary dives deep into the life of pop singer Aaron Carter. He became a mainstay of the early 2000s pop scene, touring the world as a child solo artist with chart-topping hits like “I Want Candy” and earning the title “The Little Prince of Pop” from Michael Jackson. Just a few years after his rise to fame, Carter began a cycle of mental health struggles, experienced family turmoil, and grappled with addiction ― culminating in his untimely death in November 2022.
Told from the centre of the playing field, In The Middle follows a diverse group of match officials as they attempt to cope with the rigours of running matches in grassroots football. Experienced or new to it, young or old, male, female or non-binary, these unsung heroes tell us about their passion for the game, about their lives outside of it and why they’re drawn to the often-thankless task of refereeing.
In this two-part Channel 4 series, Professor Richard Dawkins challenges what he describes as ‘a process of non-thinking called faith’. He describes his astonishment that, at the start of the 21st century, religious faith is gaining ground in the face of rational, scientific truth. Science, based on scepticism, investigation and evidence, must continuously test its own concepts and claims. Faith, by definition, defies evidence: it is untested and unshakeable, and is therefore in direct contradiction with science. In addition, though religions preach morality, peace and hope, in fact, says Dawkins, they bring intolerance, violence and destruction. The growth of extreme fundamentalism in so many religions across the world not only endangers humanity but, he argues, is in conflict with the trend over thousands of years of history for humanity to progress to become more enlightened and more tolerant.
In September 2022, a 22-year-old Iranian woman, Mahsa Amini, died in police custody. She had been arrested by Iran’s religious police, accused of not wearing her hijab properly. The authorities said she had died of a heart attack, but rumors spread that she had been beaten on arrest. Citizens took to the streets in their thousands in fury. This is an extraordinary and shocking insight into what has been happening across Iran, revealing a regime under huge pressure and resorting to extreme cruelty to control its citizens.
A look at the people affected by seven shootings which occurred during the same July weekend.
