Grasshopper Film (Firm)

The documentary explores the complexities of violence in schools by looking at the strategies employed to prevent it. The film observes the longstanding rituals that take place in and around American schools: homecoming parades, basketball practice, morning announcements, and math class. Unfolding alongside these scenes are a collection of newer traditions: lockdown drills, teacher firearms training, metal detector screenings, and school safety trade...

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...

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...

"William Keane is barely able to cope. It has been six months since his six-year-old daughter was abducted from New York City's Port Authority Bus Terminal while traveling with him. Repeatedly drawn to the site of the abduction, Keane wanders the bus station, compulsively replaying the events of that fateful day, as if hoping to change the outcome. One day he meets a financially strapped woman, Lynn Bedik, and her seven-year-old daughter, Kira, at...

Gifted with sometimes-prophetic dreams and a lifelong interest in the paranormal, Shelia is asked to investigate a potential haunting at a Tennessee farmhouse. It's there she meets Richard, a recent widower who believes his wife may still be with him. The investigation that ensues, which eventually pulls in Shelia's son, Owen, and his classmate Lucy, forces them to confront the mysteries of their own lives.

Part film, part baptism, director Khalik Allah brings us on a spiritual journey through Jamaica. Soaking up its bustling metropolises and tranquil countryside, Allah introduces us to a succession of vividly rendered souls who call this island home. Their candid testimonies create a polyphonic symphony, set against a visual prayer of indelible portraiture. Thoroughly immersed between the sacred and profane, Black Mother channels rebellion and reverence...

In 1976, William Eggleston's images were featured in the Museum of Modern Art's first one-man exhibition of color photographs. It is rare for an artist of such stature to allow himself to be shown as unguarded as Eggleston does in Michael Almereyda's intimate portrait. The filmmaker tracks the photographer on trips but gives particular attention to downtime in Memphis, Eggleston's home base. The film shows a deep connection between Eggleston's enigmatic...

Stonebreakers chronicle the heated conflicts around monuments that arose in the United States during the George Floyd protests and the 2020 presidential election and continue to reverberate in towns and cities across the nation.

Paints an intimate yet candid portrait of a group of Western women who devoted their young lives to ISIS, but who now want to be given the chance to rebuild their lives back at home.

To a stranger, he's a guy obsessed with toilets, but to those who know him, he's "Mr. Toilet," a crusader for global sanitation. Born in the Singapore slums, Jack Sim knows firsthand the agonies of not having a proper loo. Now he's dedicating his life to a crisis no one dares talk about: Shit. Not having a place "to go" isn't just an inconvenience; it's a problem that impacts 2.4 billion people worldwide. In India alone, 200,000 children die each...