The Yuanhai Migrants Children’s School, which serves children of migrant laborers in Beijing, is shut down by city officials for reasons never made clear. The students and teachers manage to continue class, first by sneaking into the shuttered campus, then moving inside a ruined factory, and even setting up class on the street. Following the personal journeys of students as they battle bureaucratic corruption for their right to learn, Cui exposes a crisis of social values in the wake of China’s economic reforms.

A humorous but incisive look at the saxophonist Kenny G, the best-selling instrumental artist of all time, and quite possibly one of the most famous living musicians.

A documentary of the decline of America. It features a lot a great footage (most exclusive to this film) from race riots to serial killers and much-much more.

Charting Aubrey Gordon’s journey from anonymous blogger to NY Times bestselling author and podcast host, and the complexities of making change. It’s a film about fatness, family and the deep, messy feelings all of us hold about our bodies.

The Surire Salt Flat is located at an altitude of 4300 m in the Chilean High Plateau and is one of the most remote places in the world, keeping the treasure of untouched nature with all its beauty but also holding an allurement: a huge amount of borax, promising the mining industry profits at unknown levels. Surire, metaphorically tells us in an outstanding visual way the story of our planet – about the very important subjects of the disappearance of traditional indigenous culture, untouched nature, the environment, and the clash of new and old.

With Olin’s 85-year-old father as guide, we experience Norway’s most adventurous valley, Oldedalen in Nordfjord. He grew up here, and here generations before him have lived in balance with nature.

Welcome to the curious, surprising and always outspoken world of straight men who go Gay4Pay. Curiously, there is a disproportionate percentage of men working in gay porn who identify as straight. Why would a straight man do gay porn? What motivates him to try this or make a career of it? Why is there such keen interest and debate into the sexuality and personal lives of these men? And what does it say about us, the viewer that so much of gay porn is dominated by images of straight men?

IDFA and Canadian filmmaker Peter Wintonick had a close relationship for decades. He was a hard worker and often far from home, visiting festivals around the world. In 2013, he died after a short illness. His daughter Mira was left behind with a whole lot of questions, and a box full of videotapes that Wintonick shot for his Utopia project. She resolved to investigate what sort of film he envisaged, and to complete it for him.

David Byrne is a visual artist as well as a musician, and ever since his early days as a member of Talking Heads, he’s wanted his concerts to be more than just a static performance. In 1984, Byrne and filmmaker Jonathan Demme redefined the boundaries of the concert film with the Talking Heads documentary STOP MAKING SENSE, and more than 25 years later Byrne has teamed up with David Hillman to create RIDE, RISE, ROAR, which documents Byrne’s 2008-2009 concert tour, in which he performs new material written in collaboration with Brian Eno as well as favorites from his solo career as well as his tenure in Talking Heads. Using costumes and inventive choreography, Byrne and his musicians and dancers give his music a stage presentation as exciting as the music.

This essay film tells of the ocean as a place of yearning, of the world of giant container ships and their crews, and the women that wait for them in ports and drinking holes. The protagonists’ thoughts are rendered as inner monologues in voiceover, all set to striking documentary images. Sandy represents all the women willing to give themselves to strange men, the perfect complement for the desire of all those roaming restlessly from port to port. The film has an affectionate eye for this eccentric former prostitute, for her body marked by life, lust, and the men she’s met, as well as for her free, yet romantic idea of love. She is a siren and Penelope in equal measure.

Narrated by Uncle Jack Charles and seen through the eyes of Indigenous prisoners at Victoria’s Fulham Correctional Centre, this documentary explores how art and culture can empower Australia’s First Nations people to transcend their unjust cycles of imprisonment.

Gil Scott-Heron, one of rap’s earliest (and unfortunately unknown) pioneers, gets his full due in Black Wax, the 1982 documentary recently reissued on video. Interspliced between performance footage of Scott-Heron and his Midnight Band are vignettes of him walking around Washington D.C., spouting his views on then-President Reagan (dubbed “Ray-Gun”) and generally dropping knowledge. The live performance features many of Scott-Heron’s best-known hits, including “Johannesburg,” “Winter in America,” and “Angel Dust,” among others. Warm, intelligent, and insightful throughout, Scott-Heron is clearly enjoying himself and the opportunity to espouse his views. A must for any fan of Scott-Heron’s, and definitely worth a look for fans of the funkier jazz music of the mid to late 1970’s.