Participant Media (Firm)
1) Human Flow
Pub. Date
2020.
Description
Over 65 million people around the world have been forced from their homes to escape famine, climate change and war in the greatest human displacement since World War II. HUMAN FLOW, an epic film journey led by the internationally renowned artist Ai Weiwei, gives a powerful visual expression to this massive human migration. The documentary elucidates both the staggering scale of the refugee crisis and its profoundly personal human impact. Official...
Pub. Date
2021.
Description
Hidden inside overcrowded factories around the world, THE PRICE OF FREE tells the story of countless children who are forced into slave labor due to rising global demands for cheap goods. With the help of a covert network of informants, Nobel Prize winner Kailash Satyarthi and his dedicated team carry out daring raids to rescue and rehabilitate imprisoned children.
Pub. Date
2021.
Description
For almost 50 years, the world’s population has grown at an alarming rate, raising fears about strains on the Earth’s resources. MISCONCEPTION offers a provocative glimpse at how the world, and women in particular, are tackling a subject at once personal and global. Following three individuals, director Jessica Yu focuses on the human implications of this highly charged political issue.
4) Watson
Pub. Date
2021.
Description
Captain Watson and his crews have confronted whaling vessels from Europe to the Southern Ocean, seal hunters in Canada, and shark finners in Central America. WATSON blends revealing contemporary interviews with Captain Watson, archival clips of Sea Shepherd’s dramatic encounters, and spectacular underwater nature footage, as award-winning documentarian Lesley Chilcott (An Inconvenient Truth, Waiting for “Superman”) paints a fascinating portrait...
Pub. Date
2021.
Description
ANGELS IN THE DUST is the inspiring story of Marion Cloete, a university-trained therapist who—with her husband and two daughters—fearlessly walked away from a privileged life in a wealthy Johannesburg suburb to establish Boikarabelo (formerly Botshabelo), an extraordinary village and school that provide shelter, food, and education to more than 550 South African children.
Pub. Date
2021.
Description
In DEATH BY A THOUSAND CUTS, Eligio Eloy Vargas, alias Melaneo, a Dominican Park Ranger in the Sierra de Bahoruco National Park was found brutally murdered by machete. At the time, he was believed to have been on patrol investigating an illegal charcoal production site often run by Haitians coming across the border into protected Dominican forests. This murder becomes the metaphor for the larger story of increasing tension between Haiti and the Dominican...
7) Foster
Pub. Date
2020.
Description
Oscar-winning filmmakers Deborah Oppenheimer and Mark Jonathan Harris reunite for a revealing first-hand look at the foster care system as seen through the eyes of those who know it best. With extraordinary access to the inner workings of the Los Angeles County Department of Children and Family Services (DCFS), Oppenheimer and Harris go beyond the sensational headlines and stereotypes.
Pub. Date
2021.
Description
Please note that this Film is only available through participating public libraries. This unique and powerful film follows two Special Operations soldiers as they struggle with PTSD and reintegrating back into society. THAT WHICH I LOVE DESTROYS ME is an uncensored look at the current epidemic of PTSD and severe mental trauma that create tremendous challenges for returning service members.
Pub. Date
2021.
Description
50 million people in the U.S.—one in four children—don’t know where their next meal is coming from, despite our having the means to provide nutritious, affordable food for all Americans. Directors Kristi Jacobson and Lori Silverbush examine this issue through the lens of three people who are struggling with food insecurity.
Pub. Date
2021.
Description
MIDSUMMER IN NEWTOWN paints the most intimate of portraits of a New England town as its citizens deploy the power of art to push beyond one of the greatest tragedies in American history. In the aftermath of 2012's Sandy Hook school shooting, Kramer learned that a group of artists from New York were traveling to Newtown to work with kids from the local school system to mount an adaptation of Shakespeare's "A Midsummer Night's Dream."
Pub. Date
2021.
Description
In KINGDOM OF SHADOWS, Bernardo Ruiz takes an unflinching look at the hard choices and destructive consequences of the U.S.-Mexico "drug war", weaving together the stories of a U.S. drug enforcement agent on the border, an activist nun in violence-scarred Monterrey, Mexico, and a former Texas smuggler, to reveal the human side of an often misunderstood conflict.
12) Arna's Children
Pub. Date
2021.
Description
Please note that this Film is only available through participating public libraries. Legendary activist Arna Mer Khamis married a Palestinian Arab and spent her life campaigning for justice and human rights in her homeland of Israel. She founded an alternative education system and opened a theatre group for Palestinian children. Five years after Arna’s death, Juliano returns to the camp to discover what happened to ARNA’S CHILDREN.
13) Pressure Cooker
Pub. Date
2021.
Description
PRESSURE COOKER profiles the lives of three high school seniors from Northeast Philadelphia, each with unique hardships but with the shared goal of winning scholarships to the country’s best culinary schools. Their unlikely hero is the irreverent culinary arts teacher, Mrs. Stephenson, whose teaching style is hilariously blunt. Mrs. Stephenson is both a surrogate mother and a culinary boot-camp instructor, as she pushes her kids to achieve beyond...
Pub. Date
2021.
Description
3 1⁄2 MINUTES, TEN BULLETS dissects the shooting death of 17-year-old Jordan Davis by Michael Dunn in Jacksonville, Florida on Black Friday, 2012. The film examines the aftermath of this systemic tragedy, the contradictions within the American criminal justice system -particularly the implications of the "Stand Your Ground" self-defense law, and the racial prejudices that ensued. With intimate access, the film follows the trial of Dunn and its deep...
Pub. Date
2021.
Description
In September 2011, The Occupy Wall Street movement propelled issues of economic inequality into the spotlight. 99% – THE OCCUPY WALL STREET COLLABORATIVE FILM goes behind the scenes of the movement, definitively revealing what happened, and why. Personal stories imbue analysis of big picture issues with the real-world struggles of those compelled to take action, speak up, march, and risk arrest.
16) Chicago 10
Pub. Date
2021.
Description
Written and directed by Brett Morgen (The Kid Stays in the Picture), CHICAGO 10 presents contemporary history with a forced perspective, mixing bold and original animation with extraordinary archival footage that explores the build-up to and unraveling of the Chicago Conspiracy Trial. CHICAGO 10 is a parable of hope, courage, and ultimate victory.
17) Snitch
Pub. Date
2013
Description
A father's teenage son is wrongly accused of a drug distribution crime and is looking at a mandatory minimum prison sentence of ten years. Desperate and determined to rescue his son at all costs, he makes a deal with the U.S. attorney to work as an undercover informant and infiltrate a drug cartel on a dangerous mission, risking everything, including his family and his own life.