A thoughtful and remarkably comprehensive examination of modern day human trafficking, Jezza Neumann’s China’s Stolen Children opens to a portrait of Detective Zhu, an overworked, former police officer who left his post in order to dedicate his time trying to find some of the 70,000 children who are abducted each year. With a predominantly poor […]
My Terrorist, 2002 (Yulie Cohen Gerstel) Provocative, insightful, passionate, and courageous, My Terrorist chronicles Ms. Cohen Gerstel’s controversial campaign to win the parole release of a convicted PLO (Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine) terrorist Fahad Mihyi who, in 1978, had boarded and opened fire on a London bus occupied by Ms. Cohen Gerstel […]
Life on the Tracks (Riles), 2002 (Ditsi Carolino) Life on the Tracks is a charming, graceful, compassionate, and staggeringly intimate portrait of the everyday struggles of a poor, but devoted (and playfully bickering) married couple named Eddie and Pen Renomeron as they eke out a meager existence for their two daughters and three adopted children […]
Continuing in the vein of Justice, Maria Ramos’s examination of the Brazilian justice system, Behave is an equally potent and sobering social inquiry into the state’s juvenile re-socialization program. Working within the limitations of protecting the identity of the young offenders’ identities, the film is predominantly shot facing Judge Luciana Fiala, a conscientious juvenile court […]
In the subtly insightful opening sequence of the film, a disabled parking attendant is brought before a judge in a Rio de Janeiro criminal courtroom for a preliminary hearing stemming from a police arrest on a burglary charge. The defendant begins to provide an explanation for the circumstances of how he came to be at […]
During the Q&A for the film, filmmaker David Redmon explained that the initial concept for Mardi Gras: Made in China revolved around the idea of exploring the interconnection between pop culture, ritual, and globalization. To this end, the idea of tracing the origin of a disposable commodity – Mardi Gras beads – seemed ideally suited […]