America ReFramed

Big Chief Tee is a high school senior and the youngest Mardi Gras Indian Big Chief in New Orleans. During COVID-19, he and the Black Hawk Hunters navigate the impacts of gentrification and systemic racism on their annual masking tradition. Through haute couture, movement, and words, BIG CHIEF, BLACK HAWK celebrates the beauty and resilience of "the culture" even in the face of crisis and change.

After 20 years, Sol Guy finally watches his late father's tapes and embarks on a personal journey of healing and reconciliation. At once a conversation between past and present and a letter to Sol's children, THE DEATH OF MY TWO FATHERS reveals the complexities of identity, the persistence of racial trauma, the challenges of fatherhood -- and the liberation that exists in facing our own mortality.

When housing on the lowest rung of the American dream is being devoured by the wealthiest of the wealthy, whose dream are we serving? A DECENT HOME, directed by Sara Terry, addresses urgent issues of class and economic (im)mobility through the lives of mobile home park residents who can't afford housing anywhere else.

BLURRING THE COLOR LINE follows director Crystal Kwok as she unpacks the history behind her grandmother's family, who were neighborhood grocery store owners in the Black community of Augusta, Georgia during the Jim Crow era. By centering women's experiences, Kwok poses critical questions around the intersections of anti-Black racism, white power, and Chinese patriarchy in the American South.

"Where are you really from?" Inspired by a young generation's creative response to this loaded question, FROM HERE follows artists and activists from immigrant families coming of age in an era of rising xenophobia and political turmoil. Set in New York and Berlin, the film shows them create families, fight for citizenship, make art and forge identities, while redefining what it means to belong.

Tired of watching local government ignore their communities' interests, five diverse female activists run for municipal office in Denver - one of the U.S.'s fastest gentrifying cities. A story about an engaged community outrunning the deep pockets of the political establishment, RUNNING WITH MY GIRLS demonstrates that building a new kind of political power is not just aspirational but possible.

Rhode Island's local election administrators and poll workers work around the clock to secure the vote for their community during the 2020 election -- midst an onslaught of attacks from a sitting President and the deadly threat of a global pandemic. Once invisible to the general public, NO TIME TO FAIL spotlights election administrators as the ground zero of American democracy.

TOWN DESTROYER probes a passionate dispute over historic murals at a public high school depicting the life of George Washington: slaveowner, General, land speculator, President, and a man Seneca leaders called "town destroyer." The controversy becomes a touchstone for a national debate over public art and historic memory in a time of racial reckoning.

BY WATER follows an unlikely hero's journey into his memories, which transform into a vehicle for reconciliation and healing. Based on a true story, the film was written and inspired by Iyabo Kwayana's experience with her brother. Upon receiving an unexpected voicemail from him after his disappearance, Kwayana heeded her brother's message and created this film as a way to "complete" his story.

As a teen, Alaudin Ullah was swept up by the energy of hip-hop and rebelled against his Bangladeshi roots. Now a playwright contending with post-9/11 Hollywood's Islamophobia, he sets out to tell his parents' stories. IN SEARCH OF BENGALI HARLEM tracks his quest from mid-20th-century Harlem to Bangladesh, unveiling intertwined histories of South Asian Muslims, African Americans, and Puerto Ricans.