Hidden among the mountains north of Beijing, a Wild West-themed gated community promises to deliver the American dream to its several thousand Chinese residents. In Americaville, Annie Liu escapes China’s increasingly uninhabitable capital city to pursue happiness, freedom, romance, and spiritual fulfillment in the town; only to find the American idyll harder to attain than what was promised to her.
The Pine Ridge Indian Reservation (in South Dakota) declares a State of Emergency when youth suicide rates reach the highest levels in the country. A respected female elder leads the Oglala Sioux Tribe’s only suicide prevention team, while mentoring a group of suicide-survivor teenagers to find their voice, encouraging them to bring hope and awareness to the reservation.
Island Soldier interweaves the personal stories of Micronesian soldiers serving in the U.S. military, following their journey from the most remote islands in the Pacific to the front lines of war in Afghanistan, and back again. These non-U.S. citizens are fighting in America’s wars – yet they serve, and die, at five times the rate per capita of their American comrades. Through the odyssey of the Nena family of the tiny island of Kosrae, the film humanizes the repercussions of America’s foreign wars, and the changing fabric of a small island nation caught in the tides of international politics, teetering on the brink of economic collapse.
10/5 15:10
Tribal Justice is a feature documentary about a little known, underreported but effective criminal justice reform movement in America today: the efforts of tribal courts to create alternative justice systems based on their traditions. In California, the state with the largest number of Indian people and tribes, two formidable Native American women are among those leading the way. Abby Abinanti, Chief Judge of the Yurok Tribe on the northwest coast, and Claudette White, Chief Judge of the Quechan Tribe in the southeastern desert, are creating innovative systems that focus on restoring rather than punishing offenders in order to keep tribal members out of prison, prevent children from being taken from their communities, and stop the school-to-prison pipeline that plagues their young people.
10/5 17:00
Weaving together the stories and interactions of five activists (Joshua Wong, Denise Ho, Wong Yeung Tat, Ed Lau and Derek Lam) and their friends with astonishing fluidity as they come to terms with life in a post-Umbrella Movement Hong Kong and the realisation that life is the sum of all their choices. Director Matthew Torne (Lessons in Dissent [2014], Joshua: Teenager vs Superpower [2017]) serves up five slices of Twenty-First Century Hong Kong life in this ambitious mosaic of a film.
10/6 18:30