It's a hardscrabble existence that many would flee, but the Bowling clan of Mudlick Hollow in Eastern Kentucky feels the gravitational pull of family, and especially of its tenacious matriarch, Iree Bowling.

This film chronicles two years in the turbulent life of Robert Oliver, a little boy whose deeply disturbed, even violent, behavior at home in the questionable care of his grandmother contrasts sharply with his conduct at school, where he makes the honor roll.

This gripping account of the battle to save the life of a woman on death row challenges the morality of the death penalty in general, but particularly when race, mental health, and sexuality come into play.

Life at the Louisiana State Penitentiary in Angola, the largest maximum security prison in the United States, as seen through the eyes of both its prisoners—most of whom will die there—and its wardens, bears a disturbing resemblance to plantation life.

A $3.1-billion, 700-mile fence built along our Mexico border to keep out illegal immigrants, drugs, and terrorists proves absurdly ineffective.

Through a series of in-depth interviews with American guards who engaged in torture, higher-ranking officers, and detainees, Ghosts of Abu Ghraib reveals that far from the dissenting action of a few, the abuses perpetrated there were inextricably linked to U.S. government policies enacted after 9/11.

A compelling story about the First Amendment's past and future shown through several gripping case studies about the limits of free speech in today's America.

Everything you always wanted to know about digital to film transfers.

Work-in-progress screening of 2010 grant recipients' first feature documentary projects.

Spalding Gray made a living from revealing himself. Collaborator Steven Soderbergh honors the monologist’s literally storied career with a fitting tribute comprised of performance excerpts and interviews that further reveal the varied shades of Gray.

Western TV infiltrates Estonia during the Cold War and sparks a quiet revolution—the threat of hegemonic capitalist imperialism has never looked so fun!

Facing a mid-life crisis, an intrepid reporter sets out to reunite the notoriously rancorous band the Kinks, collecting spontaneous performances of British Invasion classics by some of rock’s royalty along the way.

An unfinished Nazi propaganda film depicting the Warsaw Ghetto is now known to have been far more disingenuous than it first appeared.

A stirring account of eight extraordinary months in 1961 when 400 black and white men and women risked their lives by flouting Jim Crow laws to travel together on interstate buses and trains traveling across the South.

Four soldiers who fought together in Iraq come home to resume their normal lives—with very different results. As one of them says, "We went to war as a unit and came home alone."

Prodigy composer Jason Moran revisits bebop jazz great Thelonious Monk’s historic 1959 Town Hall big band concert in this sizzling film.

A personal documentary about the emotional reality of having your only child grow up and leave home, this film is also a window into modern-day parenting made possible by the age of digital videography.

Concocting all manner of sweet delights, from gold foil-bedecked chocolates to towering sculptures of blown sugar, sixteen chefs compete for the French pastry world’s highest honor–the Meilleur Ouvrier de France–in a contest of unbelievable artistry and tension.

A chronicle of the final months at a GM plant in Ohio as heartbroken workers prepare for the closing of the factory.

The fascinating story of Daniel Ellsberg, the former Marine and State Department analyst who served as an architect of the Vietnam War while also protesting it—living two lives until he made the fateful and historic decision to smuggle the Pentagon Papers to the New York Times.

Filmmaker Steve James returns to his hometown of Hampton, Virginia, to explore the lasting polarization surrounding the 1993 trial of Allen Iverson, then a high school basketball star three years away from the NBA.

Two former college athletes, one male and one female, travel the world looking for pickup soccer games, meeting an extraordinary range of people who play for the love of the game.

Meet Annabeth, Brandon, and Josh, pre-teens from different regions and circumstances sharing a common goal: to win a World Karting Championship. Street Fight director Marshall Curry follows the exceptional young drivers and their families during a season of challenges and surprises.

The story of April 4, 1968, the day that James Earl Ray shot and killed Martin Luther King Jr., and the volatile forces—social, political, and psychological—that led to it.

A captivating film about one of America’s greatest (and most reclusive) songwriters, Strange Powers is the film you never thought you’d see about the band you’ve always loved - or the film you absolutely must see about the band you’ve always meant to check out.

Acclaimed and endlessly inventive director Michel Gondry trains the camera on his own family—in particular, his aunt Suzette—in this personal and unconventional charm bracelet of a film, crowded with tokens of curious affection and bittersweet reminiscence.

What happens when a nation’s leader also owns its most popular television stations? Director Erik Gandini exposes the startling effects of Silvio Berlusconi’s generation-long influence on Italian politics and culture.

Like all good fairy tales, the inside story of Disney animation’s stunning comeback after years of box-office disappointments features princesses, princes, and villains, as well as love, laughter, and tears.

At a single intersection in Fort Prince, Florida, sits a microcosm of America’s most intractable ideological battle: on one side of the street an abortion clinic, on the other the pro-life Pregnancy Care Center.

Cinematographer Bob Richman, in his directing debut, celebrates Ruth Gruber, an intrepid scholar and journalist, now almost a hundred, who documented and participated in some of the pivotal events of the 20th century.

A young Danish boy spends the winter balancing the whimsy of childhood play, the demands of his education, and the omnipresence of his mother’s cancer.

In this oddly suspenseful and ethereal short film, an early morning commute leads to a surprisingly transcendent destination.

In this elegy filmed in a country retirement home—on a beautiful bluff in rural Quebec—two dozen seniors live out their final years to the slow rhythms of the changing seasons.

A tender meditation on identity and the search for belonging, this is a portrait of Miri, a Korean-Swedish librarian who finds refuge in her blog, where she diligently records her fashion adventures and intimate thoughts.

The residents of Slemence wake up one morning to find half their village in Slovakia and the other half in the Ukraine, the random new border dividing family members and friends for the next 60 years.

Vinh is a Cambodian boy sick from arsenic poisoning who knows he may not have long to live but dreams of falling in love and becoming a karaoke star.

Astana, the capital of Kazakhstan, sprouted almost overnight in the middle of the Central Asian steppe. Now celebrating the city’s tenth anniversary, its sanguine yet skeptical inhabitants offer glimpses of life in a modern utopia gone somewhat askew.

An invigorating examination of the greed and corruption that led to lobbyist Jack Abramoff’s arrest.

A slightly salacious Siberian photographer prone to chronic small talk meticulously ensures all the men are appropriately attired and the women properly coiffed for their photos—after all, it is their passport for life, yes?

An artistic exploration of suicide presented with a paradoxically uplifting cinematic lyricism.

This intriguing film documents the search for the author of a diary whose account of life at a dive hotel in pre-Giuliani Times Square includes many memorable characters, some of whom are tracked down and interviewed here.

Rolling Stone reporter Jeff Goodell exposes the real cost of coal in this enlightening and very timely feature.

In this ode to a seemingly bygone era of local butchers and home-raised pork, Gerard Zwetsloot must decide whether to slaughter his product-turned-pet Dorus, a dilemma that shows how complicated and personal our relationship to our food can be.

When one of filmmaker Amy Hardie's disturbing dreams manifests in real life, she is left to wonder if her most recent premonition - that she will die in the upcoming year - will also come true.

A Cambodian reporter investigates who gave the order to kill millions during the Khmer Rouge regime. After ten years, he gains the trust of the only person who knows the truth.

Chico David Colvard untangles a deep and disturbing family mystery in this profound, unflinching tale of sexual abuse and forgiveness.

Did a Catalonian double agent almost single-handedly divert Nazi troops from Normandy on D-Day to secure Allied victory? Decide for yourself if the man whom the British code-named Garbo was truly the greatest actor in the world.

The tales of five displaced characters, including the filmmaker, intermingle in this boldly paced film to evoke, both through narrative and poetic technique, the exile’s experience of alienation and moral dilemma.

This beautifully crafted portrait of the extraordinary pianist Glenn Gould delves deep into his work and beyond his public persona through never-before-seen footage and interviews with those who knew him best.

In a global economic chain linking the United States to India to Israel, the incredibly intimate act of baby making has been outsourced.

In this experimental short, time-lapse photography transforms the demolition of a coal-fired power plant into a stunning work of art.

Through the assembly of brilliant 16mm streetscapes, performance footage, and illuminating interviews with those closest to the subject, Peter Sillen offers a portrait of Steven J. Bernstein (aka Jesse Bernstein) as strikingly lyrical as the writings and spoken-word theatrics of the late artist himself.

Filmmaker Deann Borshay Liem arrived in the U.S. at the age of eight under another girl’s name, and so began a tale of deception and amnesia that led her back to South Korea forty years later in search of the “real” Cha Jung Hee.

A character sketch of Yoshiro Nakamatsu, Japanese inventor extraordinaire, this film takes us on a rollicking exploration of the human capacity for creativity and invention.

A sudden explosion in a police training barrack uncovers a secret archive housing thousands of records amassed by the Guatemalan police and army from the 1930s through the end of the civil war in 1996.

Follow Fujioka, boxing-champion-turned-Buddhist-monk, as he takes a hypnotic journey through Tokyo’s underbelly, hearing confession from all quarters.

This layered examination of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict unfolds through the history of the Jaffa orange. A small fruit with sizeable significance, the orange originated in Palestine and later became an Israeli brand name.

Every year Yang and Suquin Zhang take part in the world’s largest human migration, traveling alongside another 130 million Chinese migrant workers to return home to their family for the New Year’s Holiday.

Can we really live forever? And would we want to? Through interviews with monks, physicists and everyone in between, this film explores the human need to control life and death.

A sumptuously filmed chronicle of the rise and fall of architect Louis Sullivan, known variously as “the father of the skyscraper” and “the prophet of modern architecture."

Along a famed pilgrimage route to Santiago de Compostela in Spain, one woman’s calling is to sit by the narrow thoroughfare greeting and counting the travelers as they pass by.

This beautifully shot film blends the absurdism of Fellini and the generosity of DeSantis as it closely observes a remote village in the Italian Alps whose mayor lights upon an ingenious solution to a seemingly insurmountable dilemma: for three months of the year, the village is plunged into the shadow of a nearby mountain.

In May 2000, a fireworks storage room exploded in the east Netherlands city of Enschede. The tragic accident killed twenty-three people and injured another thousand. Filmmaker Astrid Bussink, who was living there at the time, returns to the city, gauging the many ways the explosion continues to resonate within the community.

Following five classmates who came of age during the collapse of the Soviet Union, this film offers a personal and nuanced look at Russia, from the Iron Curtain to today.

Every summer a surprising number of bearded men flock to Key West to take part in the annual Ernest Hemingway look-alike contest, imitating a famous author who himself donned the persona of fearless adventurer.

The stories of brothers-in-law Abu Jandal and Hamdan—Osama bin Laden’s bodyguard and driver respectively—converge and diverge in ways that shed light on a part of the world too few understand.

Friends and former models fondly recall Gerard Petrus Fieret, the eccentric Dutch photographer whose life’s work is now hotly desired by the art market.

Stop-motion animation whisks viewers through card catalogs and filing cabinets to reveal the bizarre and impossible photo requests that cross an archivist’s desk.

Spurred by his own father’s gambling, filmmaker John Appel deftly traces the overlapping psychology and compulsions of three characters: a bookie, a poker player, and an incarcerated swindler.

Irina Markova loves training poodles, large and small, under the circus big top, creating a glittery symbiosis between herself and her fluffy cream and caramel colored dogs.

A pure visual treat, The Poot traces the production of beautiful, handmade Persian rugs from sheep to market.

This film presents the struggles of black and white South Africans involved in two land claims cases, documenting the efforts of the descendants of those who were dispossessed under apartheid to reclaim their inheritance from current landowners.

Born men, once women, and now men again, Orlando and Mikael dig deep into the psychology behind the one regret they share, offering a thoughtful exploration of identity and expectations.

An unblinking look at American soldiers on a long deployment in the dangerous Korengal Valley of Afghanistan, where they exchange fire with the Taliban almost every day.

With its thirst-inducing series of images and sounds, this charming, nostalgic short takes us into the last seltzer factory in New York.

A selection of short films screening at Full Frame 2010.

A somber look into the lives of three parents whose children have gone missing, this short film strikes a strong emotional chord.

This essential history of gay rights in America centers on the night the patrons of a Greenwich Village bar stood up and refused be arrested just for being themselves.

At once exotic and oddly familiar, this is a deeply satisfying, visually compelling story of a young nomadic Tibetan family struggling to survive on the revenues of caterpillar fungus and yak herding.

This riveting love story, anchored in a plot to kill Hitler during the height of his power, offers an eye-opening look at life under the Third Reich.

Former members of Houston’s renowned Kashmere Stage Band, arguably the nation's best high-school jazz and funk band in the 1970s, get together for a reunion concert in honor of beloved band director Conrad Johnson in this fast-paced, toe-tapping funk celebration.

Inseparable eleven-year-old cousins and best friends, Leh and Bo, face a harsh reality: one will go to a monastery and one will go to school, sequestered from each other and their families. Filmmaker Anna Rodgers spent four years in Laos with the boys as they grew up and apart.

A riveting war crimes trial in Sierra Leone is closely watched by a healing nation.

Brazilian artist Vik Muniz embarks on a new project, collaborating with recyclers who work in the world’s largest landfill as he constructs their portraits entirely out of garbage.

Over years of civil war, it’s estimated that over 150,000 women have been raped in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. This harrowing document includes direct interviews with current and former soldiers involved in the policy of systematic sexual terrorism.

Spend time with Dewey Thompson as he transforms a tree into a rocking chair while sharing stories about a lifetime spent in Appalachia.

Shooting clandestinely, with smuggled equipment and under threat of arrest, director Micha Peled gains extraordinary access into life at a blue-jeans factory in China to give us an unprecedented look at the current state of Chinese labor.

From the Appalshop archive, a rare trip down a 1970s Virginia coal mine with an expressive, engaging miner to tell us about union organizing, prejudice, and the coal-mining way of life.

From Mexico to the Philippines to Tennessee, this remarkably prescient film, completed in 1986, examines the consequences both at home and abroad of the then relatively new American business practice of outsourcing manufacture and assembly jobs.

Each year thousands of Jamaicans spend six months cutting sugar cane by hand in Florida.  They arrive with hopes of decent wages and a better life, only to find themselves exploited in ways that recall the shameful days of slavery. 

In a surreal, unending cycle, workers at the shipbreaking yards of Gujarat in India take monstrous ships apart, bolt by bolt, using only the simplest of tools.

Travis Wilkerson reconstructs the 1917 lynching of labor organizer Frank Little, drawing a parallel between the environmental degradation wrought by the Anaconda Mining Company in Butte, Montana, and the shattered dreams of social revolution.

Drilled in American popular culture and pronunciation, young Indian workers at a call center in Mumbai inhabit a surreal virtual world where their American identities, often eagerly adopted if ill fitting, are at odds with the reality of their lives. 

Members of the United Mine Workers take over the Pittston Coal Company and wait for the cops to attack in this vérité recounting of one of the most important labor struggles of the second half of the twentieth century.

Workers at the Lusty Lady, a notorious peepshow theater in San Francisco, set out to form the only strippers’ union in the United States.

A much-lauded independent fiction film about a former Pakistani rock star, now selling coffee and bagels on the streets of Manhattan and struggling to reclaim his life.

Morristown, Tennessee, and Juarez, Mexico, are being drawn closer together by the global economy, and the way their inhabitants live and work (or don’t) is a testament to how the dislocating effects of so-called free-trade agreements have cemented into place a permanent, migratory underclass within our borders, and within Mexico’s.

A weekly Saturday night gathering of fellow immigrants in chilly upstate New York turns into an exercise in serious philanthropy and the chance to make a significant difference in their hometown in Mexico.

Before becoming a successful filmmaker, a punk musician turned marketing assistant took his camera to work at Columbia House Records and for two years documented his unexpected rise to management, with results that are both funny and painful.

In stirring 16mm, this portrait of a seven-week strike at a small steel chain factory offers remarkable access to picket line confrontations, tumultuous union meetings, and conflict-ridden negotiations

Immigrant day laborers in Austin perform some of the city’s most critical jobs but find themselves at the center of a town battle over the location of their depot, which nobody wants in their backyard.

Through rare archival footage and participant interviews, this groundbreaking film recovers the long-suppressed history of the 1934 General Textile Strike, when hundreds of thousands of Southern cotton mill workers walked off the job.

Members of the Industrial Workers of the World, now in their eighties and nineties, reminisce about their union’s heyday—the textile strikes, free-speech battles, life in the lumber camps—in this meticulously researched history of the Wobblies.