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2024 Documentary Series

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January 24th at 7:30pm EST

Razing Liberty Square

DOCUMENTARY - 86 minutes

Directed by Katja Esson

Description: Liberty City, Miami, was home to one of the oldest segregated public housing projects in the U.S. Now with rising sea levels, the neighborhood’s higher ground has become something else: real estate gold. Wealthy property owners push inland to higher ground, creating a speculators’ market in the historically Black neighborhood previously ignored by developers and policy-makers alike.

February 28th at 7:30pm EST

Breaking the News

DOCUMENTARY - 99 minutes

Directed by Heather Courtney, Princess A. Hairston, Chelsea Hernandez, and Diane M. Quon

Description: Who decides which stories get told? A scrappy group of women and LGBTQ+ journalists buck the white male-dominated status quo, banding together to launch The 19th*, a digital news startup aiming to combat misinformation. A story of an America in flux, and the voices often left out of the narrative, the documentary Breaking the News shows change doesn’t come easy.

March 27th at 7:30pm EST

Matter of Mind: My Parkinson’s

DOCUMENTARY - 60 minutes

Directed by Anna Moot-Levin and Laura Green

Description: Three people—a political cartoonist, a mother turned boxing coach, and an optician—navigate their lives with resourcefulness and determination in the face of a degenerative illness, Parkinson’s disease.

May 1st at 7:30pm EST

The Tuba Thieves

DOCUMENTARY - 92 minutes

Directed by Alison O’Daniel

Description: Three people—a political cartoonist, a mother turned boxing coach, and an optician—navigate their lives with resourcefulness and determination in the face of a degenerative illness, Parkinson’s disease.

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2023 Documentary Series

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February 8th at 7:30pm ET

Love in the Time of Fentanyl

DOCUMENTARY - 60 minutes

Directed by Colin Askey, Monika Navarro, Marc Serpa Francoeur, and Robinder Uppal

Description: As fentanyl overdose deaths in Vancouver, Canada, reach an all-time high, the Overdose Prevention Society opens its doors—a renegade safe injection site that employs current or former drug users. Its staff and volunteers save lives and give hope to a marginalized community, doing whatever it takes to remain open, in this intimate documentary that looks beyond the stigma of injection drug users.

Short film and description: 21: Mercer County - Following a lifelong battle with addiction, Stacey Ross became sober at age 44 and is committed to helping others do the same as a certified peer recovery specialist providing resources for treatment and mentorship to young women.

Talkback with Colin Askey, filmmaker; Rayce Samuelson, Supervisor of ON POINT - NYC's drug overdose prevention center; Dinah Ortiz, Urban Survivor's Union; Stacey Ross, subject of NJ 21 documentary short, Mercer County | Moderated by Anthony Torres, founder of BCLA Bergen County LGBTQ+ Alliance

Sponsored by YWCA of Northern New Jersey

March 15th at 7:30pm ET

Storming Caesars Palace

DOCUMENTARY - 60 minutes

Directed by Hazel Gurland-Pooler

Description: After losing her job as a hotel worker in Las Vegas, Ruby Duncan co-founded a welfare rights group of ordinary mothers who defied notions of the “welfare queen.” In a fight for a universal basic income in 1969, Ruby and other equality activists took on the Nevada mob in organizing a massive protest that shut down Caesars Palace.

Short film and description: 21: Bergen County - When Rhona Vega moved to Bergen County as a single mom, she hoped all future opportunities for her kids and others would be equal. They were not, so she established “Parent Matterz”—an organization that nurtures students’ dreams and ambitions and helps parents prepare for college with tutors, enrichment programs, mentors, and more.

Talkback with Hazel Gurland-Pooler, director; Sondra Phillips-Gilbert, film participant, activist, and Ruby Duncan’s daughter | Moderated by Helen Archontou, CEO of YWCA of Northern New Jersey

Sponsored by YWCA of Northern New Jersey

April 19th at 7:30pm ET

Free Chol Soo Lee

DOCUMENTARY - 60 minutes

Directed by Julie Ha, Eugene Yi, and Su Kim

Description: Sentenced to death for a lurid 1973 San Francisco murder, Korean immigrant Chol Soo Lee was set free after a pan-Asian solidarity movement of Korean, Japanese, and Chinese Americans helped to overturn his conviction. After 10 years of fighting for his life inside San Quentin, Lee found himself in a new fight to rise to the expectations of the people who believed in him.

Short film and description: 21: Cumberland County - Edgar Aquino-Huerta, the son of undocumented migrant workers and a Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program beneficiary, is using his protected status and his voice to help educate the local undocumented community and advocate for immigration reform.

Talkback with Filmmakers of "Free Chol Soo Lee" Julie Ha and Eugene Yi and Edgar Aquino-Huerta (subject of short)| Moderated by Amy Torres - NJ Alliance for Immigrant Justice

Sponsored by YWCA of Northern New Jersey

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2022 Documentary Series

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January 12th at 7:30pm ET

Missing in Brooks County

Documentary - 60 Minutes

Filmmakers: Jeff Bemiss, Lisa Molomot, and Jacob Bricca

Description: Migrants go missing in rural Brooks County, Texas more than anywhere else in the U.S. For many families, community activist Eddie Canales is the last hope for finding loved ones.

(Missing in Brooks County premieres on Independent Lens Monday, January 31, 2022)

Talkback with Jeff Bemiss and Eddie Canales | Moderated by Snehal Batra and David Nachman

Sponsored by NPZ Law Group

February 16th at 7:30pm ET

Apart

DOCUMENTARY - 60 Minutes

Filmmakers: Jennifer Redfearn and Tim Metzger

Description: In a country leading the world in incarcerating women, meet three mothers fighting to rebuild their lives.

Talkback with Malika Kidd (featured in Apart) - Program Director, Workforce Development, Lutheran Metropolitan Ministry | Moderated by Helen Archontou - CEO, YWCA Northern New Jersey

Sponsored by YWCA Northern New Jersey, Sen. Loretta Weinberg, League of Women Voters of Teaneck

(Apart premieres on Independent Lens Monday, February 21, 2022)

March 23rd at 7:30pm ET

Writing with Fire

DOCUMENTARY - 60 Minutes

Filmmakers: Rintu Thomas and Sushmit Ghosh

Description: In the midst of a patriarchal news landscape, the reporters with Khabar Lahariya – India’s only all-female news network – are taking it upon themselves to redefine power.

Nominated for Oscar for Best Documentary Feature

Talkback with David Nachman & Snehal Batra of NPZ Law

Sponsored by NPZ Law Group

(Writing with Fire premieres on Independent Lens Monday, March 28, 2022)

April 13th at 7:30pm ET

Try Harder!

DOCUMENTARY - 60 Minutes

Filmmaker: Debbie Lum

Description: At a prestigious public high school with a majority Asian American student body, fiercely competitive seniors share the dream, and the stress, of getting into a top university.

(Try Harder! premieres on Independent Lens Monday, May 2, 2022)

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2021 Documentary Series

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January 13th at 7pm ET

9to5: The Story of a Movement

Documentary - 86 Minutes

Directed by Julia Reichert, Steven Bognar

Description: The latest film from Oscar-winners Julia Reichert and Steve Bognar (American Factory , DOC NYC 2019) explores a pivotal but little remembered intersection of women’s rights and labor rights. In the early 1970s, secretaries and other female office workers were underpaid, undervalued, unable to advance, and often subject to sexual harassment. In the wake of the Women’s Liberation Movement, a group of women in Boston finally had enough, joining together to begin 9to5, a movement that would sweep the nation with irreverent, attention-getting actions to demand meaningful change—and later inspire the eponymous hit film and song.

Sponsored by Bergen County (NJ) Chapter of the Links, Inc.; Jewish Standard; League of Women Voters of Teaneck; National Coalition of 100 Black Women, Inc., Bergen / Passaic Chapter; National Council of Jewish Women Bergen County Section; Sandi Klein’s Conversations with Creative Women; Teaneck Women Together; The Whole Woman; The Woolfer Community; Wise Older Women; YWCA of Northern New Jersey

Talkback with State Senate Majority Leader Loretta Weinberg; Mary Jung, a 9to5 organizer featured in the film | Moderated by Sandi Klein, Conversations with Creative Women

February 17th at 7pm ET

Mr. SOUL!

DOCUMENTARY - 90 Minutes

Directed by Melissa Haizlip, Samuel D. Pollard

Description: In 1968, producer Ellis Haizlip developed a new show aimed at Black audiences, one that used the familiar variety-show format to display and celebrate the breadth of Black culture. For five years, the public television series SOUL! highlighted Black literature, music, and politics, and often paired guests in unexpected juxtapositions that gave them an opportunity to shine in unique ways. Haizlip presided over the show as an unusual, unassuming host who conducted interviews with both an intense interest and laid-back style, attracting notable, eclectic figures to the show, and providing a national platform for previously unheard voices.

The show quickly gained critical praise and public support as one of the first platforms to expand the image of African Americans on television and shift their representation from inner-city poverty and violence to the vibrancy of the Black Arts Movement. Despite pressure from producers and government administrations, the show never wavered in its celebration of all facets of Black culture, from ballet dancers to blues singers. Mr. SOUL! delves into this critical moment in television history, as well as the man who guided it, through participants’ recollections and archival footage, highlighting a turning point in representation whose impact continues to resonate to this day.

Talkback with Melissa Haizlip - Writer, producer, and director of Mr. SOUL! | Moderated by Daniel Calderon - Brand strategist, film producer, & founder of Entrepreneurs of Tomorrow and #WORKFROMHOME

Sponsored by FDU School of the Arts, Theo Lacey, Ray & Vivian Chew, YWCA Northern NJ, Dreamers Unite, Jeannette Curtis-Rideau, Zoe Flowers, Native Son

March 10th at 7pm ET

Coded Bias

DOCUMENTARY - 90 Minutes

Directed by Shalini Kantayya

Description: Modern society sits at the intersection of two crucial questions: What does it mean when artificial intelligence increasingly governs our liberties? And what are the consequences for the people AI is biased against? When MIT Media Lab researcher Joy Buolamwini discovers that most facial-recognition software does not accurately identify darker-skinned faces and the faces of women, she delves into an investigation of widespread bias in algorithms. As it turns out, artificial intelligence is not neutral, and women are leading the charge to ensure our civil rights are protected.

Talkback with Gurbir Grewal - New Jersey Attorney General; Dr. Riad Nasser - Professor, Fairleigh Dickinson University, A.I. expert; Karen Thompson - Senior Staff Attorney at the ACLU of New Jersey | Moderated by Karen Hao, senior A.I. reporter at MIT Technology Review

Sponsored by FDU School of the Arts, League of Women Voters of Bergen County, Ethical Culture Society of Bergen County, Addie Wijnen, Susan Lesh & David Bland

April 7th at 7pm ET

Philly D.A.

DOCUMENTARY - 110 Minutes

Directed by Ted Passon and Yoni Brook

Description: In 2017, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania had one of the highest incarceration rates of any major city in the United States. And it’s become the epicenter of a historic experiment that could shape the future of prosecution in America for decades to come. When civil rights attorney Larry Krasner mounted a long-shot campaign to become District Attorney, he ran on a bold pledge: to end mass incarceration by changing the culture of the criminal justice system from within. He shocked the establishment by winning in a landslide.

Now, the bureaucrats he spent his campaign denigrating are his co-workers; the police he alienated are his rank-and-file law enforcers. Pressure comes from all sides of a system resistant to reform. Krasner’s unapologetic promise to use the power of the DA’s office for sweeping change is what got him elected; now that he’s in office, that same stubbornness threatens to alienate those he needs to work with the most.

From the eye of this political storm, District Attorney Krasner has allowed filmmakers unprecedented access into his office and behind the scenes of the criminal justice system. Over the course of eight episodes, Philly D.A. explores the most pressing social issues of our time—police brutality, the opioid crisis, gun violence, and mass incarceration—through the lens of one man attempting fundamental overhaul from within the system.

Talkback with Larry Krasner – Philadelphia D.A. & subject of film; Mike Lee – Assistant Philadelphia D.A., Director of Legislation & Government Affairs; Mark I. Bernstein - Retired Judge, Philadelphia County; Ted Passon – Director, Philly D.A. | Moderated by Jennifer Sellitti — Office of Public Defender in NJ

Sponsored by The Jewish Standard; Wise Older Women; Katz & Koutsantanou, PC; Susan Davison

May 19th at 7pm ET

The Donut King

DOCUMENTARY - 90 Minutes

Directed by Alice Gu

Description: The Donut King is Ted Ngoy's rags to riches story of a refugee escaping Cambodia, arriving in America in 1975, and building an unlikely multimillion-dollar empire baking America’s favorite pastry, the donut. Ngoy sponsored hundreds of visas for incoming refugees and helped them get on their feet teaching them the ways of the donut business. By 1979, he was living the American Dream—but a great rise often comes with a great fall.

Talkback with Snehal Batra, Esq. - Managing Attorney, Raritan office of NPZ Law Group, PC; Karen Monken - HIAS Director of Pre-Arrival & Initial Resettlement, U.S. Programs; Ayda Zugay – Refugees International, Refugee Leader | Moderated by David Bland - TIFF Committee Member

Sponsored by Teaneck Chamber of Commerce; Nachman, Phulwani, Zimovcak (NPZ) Law Group in memory of Michael Phulwani, Esq. & Walter Distler; A fan of TIFF and donuts; HIAS; Jewish Standard

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2020 Documentary Series

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January | THE FIRST RAINBOW COALITION

DOCUMENTARY - 56 Minutes

Directed by Ray Santisteban

Description: In 1969, the Chicago Black Panther Party, notably led by the charismatic Fred Hampton, began to form alliances across lines of race and ethnicity with other community-based movements in the city, including the Latino group the Young Lords Organization and the working-class young southern whites of the Young Patriots. Finding common ground, these disparate groups banded together in one of the most segregated cities in postwar America to collectively confront issues such as police brutality and substandard housing, calling themselves the Rainbow Coalition. The First Rainbow Coalition tells the movement’s little-known story through rare archival footage and interviews with former coalition members in the present-day. 

While the coalition eventually collapsed under duress from constant harassment by local and federal law enforcement, including the murder of Fred Hampton, it had a long term impact, breaking down barriers between communities, and creating a model for future activists and diverse politicians across America.

Talkback with Denise Oliver-Velez, former black panther and a Young Lord | Moderator: Randall Pinkston, former correspondent/anchor for Al Jazeera

March | Bedlam

documentary - 86 Minutes

Directed by Kenneth Paul Rosenberg, M.D.

Description To get to the bottom of the current mental health crisis in the U.S., psychiatrist and documentarian Kenneth Paul Rosenberg, M.D. chronicles the personal, poignant stories of those suffering from serious mental illness, including his own family, to bring to light to this epidemic and possible solutions. Shot over the course of five years, Bedlam takes viewers inside Los Angeles County’s overwhelmed and vastly under-resourced psych ER, a nearby jail warehousing thousands of psychiatric patients, and the homes — and homeless encampments — of people affected by severe mental illness, where silence and shame often worsen the suffering.

Rosenberg follows the lives of three patients in particular who find themselves with a chronic lack of institutional support while weaving in his own story of how the system failed his late sister, Merle, and her battle with schizophrenia.  Featuring interviews with experts, activists, individuals living with a mental illness, and their families, Bedlam builds on historical footage and commentary related to mental health, exploring the rise of this issue on a national scale in the mid- and late 20th century.

Talkback with Peter Miller, producer

April | Eating Up Easter

documentary - 77 minutes

Directed by Sergio Mata'u Rapu and Elena Rapu

Description More than just a picture-perfect postcard of iconic stone statues, Rapa Nui, also known as Easter Island, is a microcosm of a planet in flux. Directed by native Rapa Nui filmmaker Sergio Mata’u Rapu, Eating Up Easter explores the challenges his people are facing, and the intergenerational fight to preserve their culture and a beloved environment against a backdrop of a modernizing society and a booming tourism trade.  

Crafted as a story passed down to his newborn son, Rapu intertwines the authentic history of the island with the stories of four islanders, crafting a moving portrait of a society striving to keep step with the rest of the world while maintaining its own unique identity, and asking the next generation, "what will be left for you?" 

Talkback with Dr. David Robinson, New Jersey State Climatologist & Distinguished Professor at Rutgers University; Alexa Fantacone, M.S., M.A. - Executive Director of The Teaneck Creek Conservancy; Paula Rogovin - Activist, Educator, Author and Co-Founder of The Coalition to Ban Unsafe Oil Trains and Don't Gas The Meadowlands Coalition | Moderator: Harriet Shugarman - Executive Director of ClimateMama

Get a Behind the Scenes Look on our Instagram Page

It’s Mental Health Awareness Month, so TIFF is highlighting Devan Blackwell’s short film, “The Spe@k Project.” The message of this film is that each of us has a voice that needs to be found and heard. When silenced, we become
Congratulations to producer/TIFF alum Sheryl Lee Ralph’s film, “Unexpected”, for receiving its two Daytime Emmy nominations for Outstanding Daytime Special and Outstanding Original Song. #pbs #documentary #shortfilm 
TIFF and NJ PBS invites you all to attend our screening of “21-Gloucester County.” Gloucester native Anna Baldwin embraced her journey with Tourette Syndrome, and through soccer and the TOPSports program, has found a space to connect with
It is with a heavy heart that TIFF learns of the passing of Harlem-born artist, author, activist, and Englewood resident Faith Ringgold. Ringgold painted some of the most truthful and empowering representations of African Americans during the civil