Grasshopper Film (Firm)

Nominated for Best Documentary by the Director's Guild, Producer's Guild, Independent Spirit Awards, and Gotham Awards, and winner of Best Documentary at the Tribeca Film Festival, this film explores the paradoxical pursuit of wealth and progress in China. Loosely structured around the distinct social and economic classes that divide the nation, this extraordinary documentary follows factory workers, middle class consumers and elites as they chase...

Los Reyes is the oldest skate park in Santiago and it brings together teenagers from very different social and cultural backgrounds. Chola is young and vigorous and spends her days playing with balls that she throws to the pools in which skaters ride. Football is an old dog, but beautiful and energetic, that obsessively accompanies Chola in this game. The human world appears in stories of adolescents in transit to adulthood. We listen to their voices...

Mara and Jo, in their twenties, have been close friends since middle school. It soon becomes apparent that Jo, despite her intellectual gifts, is unreliable in her professional life, losing and acquiring jobs at a troubling rate. Substance abuse may be responsible for Jo's instability, but some observers suspect a deeper problem. Over a decade, the more stable Mara sometimes tries to help, sometimes backs away to protect herself, but never leaves...

The greatest hoax in the history of Modern Art. DRIVEN TO ABSTRACTION unravels an improbable tale of self-delusion, greed, and fraud – the {dollar}80 million forgery scandal that rocked the art world and brought down New York's oldest and most venerable gallery. Was the gallery’s esteemed director the victim of a con artist who showed up with an endless treasure trove of abstract expressionist masterpieces? Or did she suspect they were fakes yet...

In this poignant and carefully composed portrait of six service dogs and their owners, renowned documentary filmmaker Heddy Honigmann explores the close bond between animal and human. Honigmann questions the owners in her characteristic way — respectfully and with genuine concern rooted in a deep trust — about what the animals mean to them. Buddy is an ode to the fighting spirit of the main characters and a loving portrait of the deep...

Spanish-born filmmaker Antonio Mňdez Esparza follows-up his debut drama Aqu ̕y all ̀with another sensitive portrait of a struggling family. Stressed by her job in a diner, single mother Regina is raising her two children in northern Florida. When her fourteen-year-old son Andrew has another brush with the law, she worries he will wind up in prison like his father. Mňdez Esparza employs documentary-style realism in this snapshot of race, class...

Part of absurdist comedy, a part deep-seated satire of contemporary Australia as experienced by the young and affluent, the show follows twenty-somethings Ray and Alice as they navigate a series of increasingly awkward and comedic situations, from limp romantic encounters to bungled opportunities for professional growth. Once they have tacitly buried their vague ambitions, all that remains are half-hearted attempts with equally indeterminate results....

On the French Polynesian island of Tahiti, the High Commissioner of the Republic and French government official De Roller is a calculating man with flawless manners. His somewhat broad perception of his role brings him to navigate the high-end' establishment' as well as shady venues where he mingles with the locals. Especially since a persistent rumor has been going around: the sighting of a submarine whose ghostly presence could herald the return...

During the economic boom of the 1960s, Europe's highest building is being built in Italy's prosperous North. At the other end of the country, young speleologists explore Europe's deepest cave in the untouched Calabrian hinterland. The bottom of the Bifurto Abyss, 700 meters below Earth, is reached for the first time. The intruders' venture goes unnoticed by the inhabitants of a small neighboring village, but not by the old shepherd of the Pollino...

"Follows the efforts of the internationally recognized White Helmets, an organization comprised of ordinary citizens who are the first to rush towards explosions in the hope of saving lives ... the documentary draws us into the lives of three of its founders - Khaled, Subhi, and Mahmoud - as they grapple with the chaos around them and struggle with an ever-present dilemma: do they flee with their families or stay and fight for their country"--Container....