Synopsis

Winner of four Ariel Awards—for Best First Feature, Original Screenplay, Actress, and Breakthrough Performance—and selected as Mexico’s official submission for the Best International Film Oscar, We Shall Not Be Moved tells the story of Socorro—played by Luisa Huertas in a tour-de-force performance—a retired lawyer consumed by her obsession to find the soldier who killed her brother during the student protests of October 2, 1968, when demands for democracy and justice were brutally silenced in Mexico City’s Tlatelolco Square. Nearly six decades later, her relentless pursuit has fractured her relationships with her sister, Esperanza, and her son, Jorge. When a new clue emerges, Socorro sets out on a perilous quest for vengeance, putting her family, her legacy, and her own life in jeopardy. Shot in striking black and white, director Pierre Saint Martin Castellanos delivers a powerful and intimate reflection on the enduring wounds of Mexico’s modern history.

Synopsis

Intimate, epic, and lyrical, Seeds chronicles the lives of a community of Black farmers who have toiled on their land for over a century in the American South. From cotton harvesters rolling across the fields to men pulling corn, wrangling cattle, or bringing burlap bags of pecans to the market, the film poetically shows the eternal rhythms of farm life, at the same time as it reveals the precarity of the farmers’ plight. Trucks are in disrepair; banks refuse to lend them money; and promised federal funds aren’t reaching them. Still, they persist, driven by a duty to their ancestors, their children, and the need to maintain freedom in an increasingly challenging world.

Winner of the Sundance Film Festival’s Grand Jury Prize for Best Documentary, Seeds is a tribute to the determination of filmmaker Brittany Shyne and her subjects. Shot over nine years and presented in pristine black-and-white, Seeds presents a reverent, elegiac, and almost timeless vision of a waning way of life.

Synopsis

Recently released from prison, Pua returns to the criminal underworld in order to make ends meet. He also sets out in search of his former cellmate, Mi-ji. But life on the outside is more complicated. When their reunion doesn’t go as expected, the two men are forced to navigate a web of conflicting loyalties, obligations, and smoldering desires.

Synopsis

A rousing tribute to roller-skating’s pivotal role in the African-American community, United Skates careens around the country, offering an intimate look at a lively subculture that’s under threat. Facing discriminatory policies and rink closures, committed skaters from around the country—including Chicago’s own Buddy Love—fight to preserve a space for people to come together and express themselves in sliding, bouncing, snapping glory.

Synopsis

In this audacious crime drama from celebrated Mexican actor-turned-director Gael García Bernal (Déficit), lifelong friends Cagalera and Moloteco turn to violence and lawlessness to buy their way out of their hard-scrabble Mexico City neighborhood. Hoping to scrape together enough cash to join a union that holds the promise of steady work, the amateur criminals graduate from petty theft to hostage-taking. But their escapades land the teens in desperate circumstances, both darkly humorous and fraught with danger.