A mosquito-repellent soap that prevents malaria, straw bricks made out of agricultural residues for more sustainable housing, a biodigester made out of recycled plastic to create bio-gas for rural populations. The film follows 3 innovative social business ideas from students in Africa to take on ...

When doctors told Karen Aiach there was no cure for her daughter’s brain disease, she took matters into her own hands. With no scientific background, she created a gene therapy business that can fix the faulty genes in patients like her daughter. Now she’s racing against the clock to extend her d...

As Ellice gets low, her room gets messy - she never sees it coming, but it always happens. There seems to be no way to break out of the endless highs or lows that make up bipolar, or even to pick up her clothes up off the floor.

Director: Dorothy Allen-Pickard
Producers: Lauren Pringle
4 min | U...

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...

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...

In the foothills of Nepal, extreme deforestation has pushed many rural communities onto marginal lands. In “Scaling the Mountain,” villagers in Jogimara and Naubise find that combining conservation efforts with reproductive health services helps them support their families and their communities m...

Stripped of her rights, a woman's life changes when she ventures with her husband to remedy an impossible situation.

Directors: Will Hawkes, Melissa Center
Producers: Will Hawkes, Melissa Center
11 min | USA
Languages: English

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

Clowns Without Borders South Africa (www.cwbsa.org) presents OUR STORY YOUR STORY – an intergenerational project connecting elders and youth through autobiographical storytelling. Storytelling has immense power to build connections between individuals, between generations, and between the past an...

OpenBCI has developed a 3D-printed headset that allows our brains to interact with software. Want to measure the effect of meditation on your brain? It's possible. Want to control a prosthetic limb with your mind? It's possible. Right now, the only thing OpenBCI's tech can't do are the things we ...

A glimpse into the everyday life of Juanita, a Mayan traditional doctor, midwife, nurse and activist. Leader of "The Awakening of the Women who Heal," an organization of midwives in the Orient of Yucatan, Mexico. Juanita has dedicated her life to helping others with her gift for healing. The film...

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)....

Of the 30,000 humanitarian organizations operating in Nepal, a tiny Nepalese NGO accomplishes what naysayers said could not be done. From award-winning humanitarian journalist Debi Lang comes Hearts In The Himalayas, a documentary about the extraordinary efforts of Himalayan HealthCare. Using the...

Pristine nature, widespread school campuses, Institute for visually challenged, a health center, an artificial limb center, a neatly built food mess, spacious dorms, open playground and more - well this is how HEAL PARADISE looks like. No one would believe this to be an orphanage when they enter ...

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 ...

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...

“People come here to inject because they can easily run away if the police show up,” says Vova, a street outreach worker with the Andrey Rylkov Foundation (ARF). There are many hotspots that outreach workers of the ARF visit every day to provide sterile injecting equipment, condoms and other form...

[Trigger Warning] A roadside bomb in Iraq left Jerral Hancock paralyzed and without his left arm. But rather than letting his injuries define him, Jerral is fighting back. He’s working with a team of researchers from Johns Hopkins to test the most advanced prosthetic arm in the world that could h...

In The Rise of a Superbug, Dr. Jayant Banavaliker, a leading TB doctor in Delhi, chronicles his daily struggle to save patients using today’s antiquated tools. The film also follows the harrowing story of Phumeza Tisile’s near-death experience with extensively drug-resistant TB, which takes place...

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...

How do you tackle a global health problem that’s largely treatable, but the tools to diagnose it can’t reach its victims? Maybe an app is the answer. Meet Nitin Shrivastava, an M.D. Candidate at the University of Massachusetts Medical School who’s using a free app called CRADLE to diagnose Retino...

Every year in Sub-Saharan Africa 200.000 mothers die from complications of pregnancy and childbirth. A great many of these deaths are preventable, when women have access to quality prevention, diagnostic, and treatment services. "Birth is a Dream" aims to document and raise awareness about the ma...

Baseball in the Time of Cholera is a powerful insight into the tragedy and scandal of Haitis Cholera Epidemic through the eyes of a young baseball player.

Directors: David Darg & Bryn Mooser
2012 | 28 min
Haiti | Canada

Descalzos (Barefoot) is a documentary about a group of indigenous children from Mexico who have been gaining popularity because of their skills on the basketball court. The region that the children come from faces extreme poverty and political turmoil and the kids have found hope through their sp...

In 1989, as Communism fell across Eastern Europe, doctors and nurses in Romania quickly discovered they were dealing with a grand epidemic of pediatric AIDS in their hospitals and institutions. This film offers an intimate portrait of some of the survivors- heroes with inspiring stories that demo...