Cinemafile

Each summer they bring together over 3,000 attendees to watch movies under the stars through their Free Summer Series at Ojai’s iconic Libbey Bowl, making it one of the largest free event series. For nearly four decades, the Ojai Film Society (OFS) has presented Free Summer Series with quality independent, foreign, documentary, and classic films to the Ojai Valley, making us one of the largest fre...

Color Congress is an ecosystem-builder that is committed to organizations led by people of color that serve nonfiction filmmakers, leaders, and audiences of color across the United States and US islands. We are a membership organization that includes film festivals, artist support and narrative change entities, micro cinemas, filmmaker collectives, and public media. We serve this ecosystem by supp...

After the death of her son, Amanda Bellaconda seeks the help of Dr Jack Forteo to understand why teenagers are suddenly taking their own lives after taking a medication for acne. Carinaderm is the goose that keeps laying golden eggs, an acne medication bringing in a billion dollars a year for the Renzon Pharmaceutical Company. When Dr. Forteo sees a potentially lethal side effect of their blockbus...

Sherman’s March - Director Ross McElwee - Armed with a 16mm camera and a grant to make a documentary about the lingering aftermath of William Tecumseh Sherman’s 1864 march to the sea, Ross McElwee gets sidetracked. After his girlfriend breaks up with him, Ross shifts his attention from the historical to the personal, to the battlefield of modern love, and embarks on a sociological chronicle that d...

If poetry had a pop icon, Mary Oliver would be it. Celebrated bestseller, Pulitzer Prize winner, lover of dogs and long walks in the woods, openly queer but intensely private, Oliver was America’s unlikely contemporary mystic, stalking the ponds and forests of Cape Cod for nearly 50 years in order to open herself – and her readers – to the known and unknowable world. Featuring interviews with her...

For the first time, band members Boy George, Roy Hay, Mikey Craig, and Jon Moss come together to share their complete story, offering candid insights into their creative process, personal relationships, and the cultural impact that defined a generation. At the heart of the documentary is the previously unexplored love story between George and Moss — a relationship that inspired some of the band’s...

Director Advik Beni's winsome and unconventional narrative drama "mother, you have not died yet. but you will. and when you do, you will finally be alive again" takes place in Cato Manor, Durban, where Lishana has spent over two decades caring for her elderly mother, Leela. Their lives unfold through ordinary rituals: preparing meals, tending the garden, watching television, praying before bed, fe...

THE LAST PLACE ON EARTH is a thrilling, nine-year journey into the heart of Sumatra’s Leuser Ecosystem—a 2.6-million-hectare rainforest where tigers, elephants, rhinos, and orangutans still roam free. Filmed by a dedicated mostly Indonesian crew, this investigative documentary follows a group of extraordinary wildlife activists as they risk everything to save one of Earth’s last untouched wilderne...

THE WELCOME TABLE, directed by Academy Award®-nominated filmmaker Josh Fox (“Gasland”), tells the story of climate refugees across six continents, celebrating the voices and experiences of people living at the forefront of the climate crisis, displaced from their homes by climate disasters. Featuring John Boutté, John Cameron Mitchell, and celebrated New Orleans musicians, the film weaves together...

When Alabama's Supreme Court declares IVF embryos are legally children, the immediate fallout devastates families. For acclaimed reproductive journalist and visual artist Abbey Crain, this ruling disrupts half a decade of fertility treatments, placing her dreams of motherhood — and her embryos — in constitutional crossfire. But Crain refuses to surrender her creative power. With a pen and paintbru...

In this light-and-dark comedy, HONEYJOON, June and her Persian-British mother Lela travel to the romantic Azores islands for a grief anniversary, with contrasting ways of coping. A charming surfer takes them on a tour as we surf the waves of life, loss, flirting… an unforgettable ride. A surprisingly sexy, darkly funny, emotional rollercoaster. We are joined in conversation with Director, Producer...

As a young boy, H.N. Shantha Murthy ran away from home to escape the extreme poverty of his Indian village. He travelled the country in search of work, holding onto the belief that one day his life would change. It did, following a serendipitous encounter with a Texan couple. With a sponsored visa, he travelled to the US, but his American Dream was not to be fulfilled. Karla Murthy’s film weaves t...

Set in the small farming community of Three Oaks, Michigan — home to the nation’s largest Flag Day parade — Flag Day is a verité portrait of ritual, identity, and belonging in an era of deep political division. Somewhere between tradition and transformation lies this village, whose annual parade has become a pageant of American aspiration and memory. Over the course of Flag Day weekend, the film i...

In this wildly entertaining documentary Cabali & the Tiki Mug Obsession Director Joshua Dragotta explores the colorful subculture of Tiki enthusiasts who celebrate and collect ceramic drinking vessels known as Tiki mugs as well as the artists that create them. The film follows Doug “Fini” Finical – a man with a dream – as he assembles a team of craftsman and artists to build a Tiki bar dedicat...

This enthralling music documentary traces the turbulent, transcendent life of Gregg Allman — from a childhood ruptured by his father’s murder to the soulful emergence that reshaped American music. Through archival recordings, candid interviews, and electric performances, the film follows Gregg’s musical awakening amid the blues he worshipped, the creation of the Allman Brothers Band with his broth...

Set in the shadowy underworld of 1990s Saigon, Skin of Youth follows San, a transgender sex worker navigating desire, survival, and the fight for self-determination — all while a dangerous oligarch closes in on her relationship with her underground cage-fighter lover. It's a rare film: a queer love story rooted in Vietnamese history, told with uncompromising intimacy by one of Asian cinema's most...

Groundbreaking when it was made and still fiercely innovative today, BY HOOK OR BY CROOK chronicles three weeks in the life of a handsome, gender-bending, small town dreamer with a nagging messiah complex. Emotionally defeated after the death of his father, SHY heads to the big city to sink himself into a "life of crime." He is quickly distracted by VALENTINE, a deliriously expressive, wise-acre a...

On the Amazon rainforest island of Marajó, 13-year-old Tielle lives in an isolated riverside enclave with her family. She idolizes her older sister, who escaped the area with “a good man” (according to her mother) on one of the commercial river barges. But as she matures and learns the true price her sister paid to leave, she fears for the safety of her younger sister and resolves to challenge the...

Renowned Icelandic poet and author Andri Snær Magnason is chasing something elusive. As the glacial ice of his homeland melts, he constructs a cinematic time capsule to hold onto this moment and send it to the future, before everything he loves slips away. Using his own collected archives, his grandparents’ photographs, and films, as well as traditional songs and folktales, Andri interlaces his fa...

An Ivorian pastor and former journalist, Marie, opens her home in Tunisia to three generations of migrant women: Naney, Jolie, and Kenza. A mother desperate to obtain residency status in Tunisia, Naney seeks a better life for herself and her daughter. Jolie, in Tunisia on a student visa, feels burdened by her family’s expectations for her future. Kenza, an orphaned child and the only survivor of a...

Haunting and unforgettable, THIS ORDINARY THING tells the story of non-Jews who helped save Jewish people across Europe during The Holocaust. The film combines never-before-seen archival footage with the testimonies of over forty different people who, operating independently and at great risk to themselves and their families, saved thousands of Jewish strangers from almost certain death. THIS ORDI...

Charlie and Erin escape to the desert to navigate an unexpected and challenging new phase of their relationship. Magic Hour is a story of love, perception, regret and acceptance. Director, writer, co-lead actor Kate Aselton joins us for a conversation on the making of Magic Hour, the early days of indie filmmaking, working with her husband / collaborator Mark Duplass and the brilliant co-lead, Dav...

Amber and her four best friends flee Los Angeles for a girls’ trip in Joshua Tree, only to find themselves unwelcome in a desert town simmering with quiet hostility. As isolation sets in and encounters with aggressive locals grow more threatening, festering resentments within the group begin to surface. What begins as fun and reckless escape spirals into a violent struggle for control and survival...

Acclaimed director Adam Carter Rehmeier’s romantic crime thriller stars Samara Weaving (READY OR NOT, BORDERLINE) as Caroline Daniels, whose desire to leave her small Texas town brings her into the orbit of a charismatic con man (Kyle Gallner, DINNER IN AMERICA), and together they weave a path of crime and passion across the American Southeast. Also starring Kyra Sedgwick, the film features a wide...

Emmy award-winning Filipino American film director Michele Josue (Matt Shepard is a Friend of Mine) masterfully blends cinematic storytelling with intimate cultural exploration, FOOD ROOTS follows Billy Dec, two-time Emmy Award Winning TV Personality, Actor, Attorney and Entrepreneur, as he journeys through his mother’s native 7,641 islands in the Philippines in search of his last living elders, a...