Waves follows three young girls growing up in one of South Africa's most violent communities. The film looks at the effects that high levels of violence, rape and femicide have on the psyche of young girls growing up amongst it, and how they learn to cope.

Director: Jessie Ayles
4 min | South Af...

Kathleen is a hairdresser. Always has been, always will be. Even at 83 she is still doing hair, just not in the way you would expect. Kathleen's work is special—for the last 31 years, she has done the hair of the terminally ill in palliative care. In this short, poetic documentary, Kathleen refle...

Step into Geramy’s world, a scrappy, budding inventor, who is trying to find a better way to commute to school. Based in the Philippines, this story highlights the students that swim between the small islands in order to travel to the nearest elementary or high schools in their remote areas.

Dir...

The Affordable Care Act explicitly denies undocumented immigrants access to healthcare. While laws in California have now made healthcare available for undocumented young people, undocumented adults continue to be excluded. COVER/AGE follows an elderly caregiver and a policy advocate in the campa...

[Trigger Warning] In March 2016 Kausalya and her husband Shankar were brutally attacked on a crowded street in southern India. Shankar, who came from a lower Dalit caste, died of his injuries. Kausalya survives and accuses her parents of orchestrating an honour killing. She fights for justice thr...

In 2017, Myanmar carried out genocide against its own people, the Rohingya Muslims. Over one million Rohingya were forced to flee to neighbouring Bangladesh into what has become the largest refugee camp in the world. Some Rohingya documented their violent displacement and persecution on cell phon...

As Singapore dredges sand out from beneath Cambodia’s mangrove forests, an ecosystem, a communal way of life, and one woman’s relationship to her beloved home are faced with the threat of erasure. For over a decade, the government of Cambodia has granted several private companies concessions to m...

Rain Harvests, exposes the harsh reality of an indigenous community in Huehuetenango, Guatemala. Climate change has caused droughts, the rainy season comes only once a year and getting water has become a daily challenge. Without fail, the women of this community must make nearly 5 trips daily to ...

12-year-old Edelsin Linette Mendez illuminates the consequences of climate change on the coffee market, her community’s traditional source of livelihood and Nicaragua’s primary agricultural product.

Directors: Edelsin Linette Mendez
Producers: Joyce Chopra, Sammy Chadwick, Holly Carter
2016 | 2...

Welcome to Cherán, a small Indigenous community in the state of Michoacán that took up self-rule to kick out local drug cartels.

In 2011, Yunuen Torres was a little girl, but she remembers life before her community took their town back. Now a community radio host, Torres has made it her mission ...

What About Our Future? chronicles the Sustainabiliteens, a group of young environmental activists who organized the largest strike in Vancouver's history. The film takes a unique look into the movement while the youth organize protests, pressure politicians and educate younger teens about environ...

A photojournalist, during lockdown in Cape Town, documents a strange and conflicted society and discovers his own sense of morality during a time of great hardship.

Director: Jasyn Howes
Producers: Jasyn Howes and Anna Telford
2020 | 16 min
Cape Town
Language: English

FILMMAKER Q&A:
https://sim...

Adiela Jinet Mera Paz, a leader of the Siona people, has taken up the effort to remove mines from the tribe's ancestral land, following decades of armed conflict that has left them facing extinction.

Director: Tom Laffay
Producer: Emily Wright
2021 | 10 min | Colombia
Language: Spanish
Subtitle...

Blue Chalk worked with The Red Door Project to create a film that showcases its unique participatory process as they work to stage a series of monologues called “Evolve,” which tackles the fraught relationships between communities of color and law enforcement. In the face of seemingly insurmounta...

Torn from her family, her paintings, and her beloved Calcutta after the partition of India, artist Surayia Rahman finds a new life in Bangladesh teaching marginalized mothers to embroider her story-telling designs. An inspirational example of the power of art and the impact of empowering women a...

Fifty years ago, amid the turmoil of 1968, there was Arthur Ashe, an athlete who parlayed his fame as the first black man to win the US Open tennis championship into a lifetime devoted to fighting injustice.The ASHE ’68 Virtual Reality Experience brings viewers into the intimate moments right bef...

In the midst of Trump's immigration ban, a teenage refugee Ahmed and his sister Ruba find a home at a Cleveland school for immigrants. Will they be able to reach their dreams?

Director: Apo Bazidi
2020 | 21 min | USA
Language: English

FILMMAKER Q&A:
https://simaacademy.com/filmmaker-qa/how-far-...

Yoiner Machado – The founder of a dance academy in Manrique, teacher and professional in dance as well as creator of methodologies for the coexistence and peace-building through dance. For 13 years he has been dedicated to the transformation of communities and has impacted 1,500 lives. He empower...

The Gender Line is about a transgender rock star, Cidny Bullens (formerly Cindy Bullens) who once sang in Elton John’s band and had recording contracts with three major labels and two independents. Cidny is fortunate to have been both a wife and husband in the same lifetime. He reflects on his pe...

In Indonesia where 14 million people suffer from mental health disorders and shackling is still practised, this story is about how a man’s decade-long struggle with schizophrenia almost cost him his family and how he reclaimed his life with the help of Rumah Berdaya (meaning Home of Empowerment)....

In painting and dance, Marie-Hélène, a respected figure on the Canadian contemporary art scene, finds an outlet for her creativity and her resilient spirit, after losing both her legs as a child. The arrival of her daughters sparks a new sense of freedom, pushing herself to let go self-censorship...

As the global demand for the super food avocados has soared, Chile has become the world’s third largest exporter of avocados. But the community of Petorca, in northern Chile say drought and the insatiable appetite for avocados has brought desperate water shortages.

This film explores the quiet...

Lynda, an indigenous woman whose sons died tragically, and Max, the sole survivor of a horrific car accident, are heroin users in Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside, infamous as Canada’s poorest neighborhood. As participants in a radical opioid-assisted therapy program, the first of its kind in North ...

When a young man mysteriously dies in a Bay Area jail, his mother begins a determined quest to find out what happened to him, but quickly runs into the opaque and powerful position of American sheriffs.This intimate, fast-paced documentary follows Barbara Doss’ search to discover the details of h...