In 2017, a mosque was destroyed by fire in the South Texas city of Victoria. It became a national news story. There were obvious questions to be raised by those events—questions of racism, immigration, Islamophobia, and what it means to be an American. Lu Li’s A Town Called Victoria is a three episode series on…
After the traumatic death of her husband, Aurora (Noelle Schonwald) decides to flee Colombia in search of a new life. Hiding in the trunk of a couple’s car, she decides to leave her daughter behind and make her way to Canada. Although she is unable to speak the language and struggles to get settled, Aurora…
“Entropy in on the rise.” Jakob Zapf’s A Handful of Water is a story of sanctuary. Sanctuary is often used to define a place of safety, but its root comes from being a place of holiness. In this film, the place of safety has the kind of life changing affect where we may see the…
Set at the Mexican-American border, Culture Shock tells the story of Marisol (Martha Higareda), a young Mexican woman who is fleeing the dangers of her home in search for a new life in America. Yearning for freedom and safety for her family, Marisol fights and claws to cross the border only to discover that the world she?s…
In Lindsay Gossling?s 13 Minutes, a natural catastrophe brings devastation to a community. But this isn?t your typical disaster movie that brings the survivors together to return to the way things were. Rather, this is really about the personal catastrophes that were already present in their lives. Set in a rural Oklahoma town, we meet…
Set in rural Arkansas,?Minari?tells the story of Jacob (Steven Yeun) and Monica (Yeri Han) Yi, a Korean American couple in search of the American Dream. Travelling with their two young children, Jacob purchases a farm with the intent of growing Korean vegetables and selling them to vendors for profit. However, as the realities of starting…
?Sometimes you need to close your eyes and start over to see clearly.? No Man?s Land, from director Conor Allyn, is at one level a story about borders, but at a deeper level it is about the importance of welcoming the stranger in our midst. The Greer family has a small cattle ranch along the…
My cat has enjoyed AFIFest 2020 Presented by Audi a great deal this year. She rarely has a chance to spend a whole afternoon on my lap when I actually have to go to movies. I doubt she realizes the qualities of movies she?s sleeping through. She?s missing out on some very good stuff. The…
AFIFest 2020 Presented by Audi has teamed up with NBC News to present the Meet the Press Film Festival, programs of short documentaries about issues facing the world. Today I took in the program entitled ?Justice for All? which included three shorts. My Brother?s Keeper (22 minutes), directed by Laurence Topham, is the story of…
The life of a refugee is hard. It is even harder when the refugees are LGBTQ persons. In Tom Shepard?s documentary Unsettled, we meet four of these asylum seekers as the begin their time in the US. Subhi is a gay man from Syria, whose life has been threated many times by Islamic extremists and…
