Jafar Panâhi is an Iranian film director, screenwriter, and film editor, commonly associated with the Iranian New Wave film movement. After several years of making short films and working as an assistant director for fellow Iranian filmmaker Abbas Kiarostami, Panahi achieved international recognition with his feature film debut, The White Balloon (1995). The film won the Caméra d'Or at the 1995 Cannes Film Festival, the first major award an Iranian film won at Cannes.
Paris Is Burning is a 1990 documentary film directed by Jennie Livingston. Filmed in the mid-to-late 1980s, it chronicles the ball culture of New York City and the African-American, Latino, gay, and transgender communities involved in it.
Wrong Side of the Road is a 1981 low-budget feature film made in South Australia. It is distinctive for being one of the first attempts to bring modern Australian Aboriginal music to a non-Indigenous audience, featuring all-Aboriginal rock reggae bands No Fixed Address and Us Mob.
The San Francisco International Film Festival, organized by the San Francisco Film Society, is held each spring for two weeks, presenting around 200 films from over 50 countries. The festival highlights current trends in international film and video production with an emphasis on work that has not yet secured U.S. distribution. In 2009, it served around 82,000 patrons, with screenings held in San Francisco and Berkeley.
Nicolas Winding Refn, also known as Jang, is a Danish film director, screenwriter, and producer. He is known for his collaborations with Mads Mikkelsen, Tom Hardy and Ryan Gosling.
SFFILM, formerly known as The San Francisco Film Society, is a nonprofit arts organization located in San Francisco, California, that presents year-round programs and events in film exhibition, media education, and filmmaker services.
Binger Filmlab, formerly the Maurits Binger Film Institute, is an Amsterdam-based international feature-film and documentary development centre where screenwriters, directors, producers and script editors from around the world can be coached and supported by mentors and advisors.
Gracie Otto is an Australian filmmaker and actor. She made her feature-length directing debut with the 2013 documentary The Last Impresario about prolific British theatre impresario and film producer Michael White. She has also directed a variety of screen content such as television commercial videos (TCVs), shorts, television series, feature films and documentaries.
Stolen is a 2009 Australian documentary film that uncovers slavery in the Sahrawi refugee camps controlled by the Polisario Front located in Algeria and in the disputed territory of Western Sahara controlled by Morocco, written and directed by Violeta Ayala and Dan Fallshaw. It had its world premiere at the 2009 Sydney Film Festival, where a controversy started after one of the participants in the documentary, Fetim, a black Sahrawi, was flown to Australia by the Polisario Liberation Front to say she wasn't a slave. The POLISARIO, avowing that it doesn’t condone slavery and needing to safeguard its image on the world stage to support its independence fight, began an international campaign against the film. It put out its own video denouncing Stolen, in which several people who Ayala and Fallshaw interviewed say they were coerced or paid by the Australian duo. On May the 2nd 2007, while filming in the refugee camps Ayala and Fallshaw were detained by the Polisario Front and Minurso and the Australian ministry of foreign affairs negotiated their release. "The Polisario Front officials criticised the interest the two journalists took in black members of the Sahrawi population, Reporters Without Borders has learned. Ayala told the press freedom organisation that she saw cases of enslavement. "The fact that they are fighting for their independence does not mean that Polisario’s leaders can allow themselves to commit such human rights violations", she said. "It is our duty as journalists to denounce such practices. We originally went there to work on the problem of separated families. But during our stay, we witnessed scenes of slavery".
John Winter is an Australian film and television writer, director and producer. He is best known for producing Rabbit-Proof Fence, Doing Time for Patsy Cline and Paperback Hero. His directorial debut Black & White & Sex premiered at the 2011 Sydney Film Festival with its international premiere at the 41st International Film Festival Rotterdam. The film won the 'Best Experimental' at the 2012 ATOM Awards.
Nina Menkes is an independent filmmaker. Her films include The Great Sadness of Zohara (1983), Magdalena Viraga (1986), Queen of Diamonds (1991), The Bloody Child (1996), "Massacre (Massaker)" (2005), Phantom Love (2007), Dissolution (2010), and Brainwashed: Sex-Camera-Power (2022). Dissolution (2010) was filmed in black and white and is set in Israel. Nina Menkes' sister Tinka appears as an actress in many of them. Menkes teaches at the California Institute of the Arts in Santa Clarita, California. She has donated copies of several of her works to the Academy Film Archive.
Inside Lara Roxx is a 2011 EyeSteelFilm Canadian documentary film by Canadian film director Mia Donovan. It covers the circumstances of a 21-year-old Canadian woman Lara Roxx who in the Spring of 2004, left her hometown Montreal heading to Los Angeles to work in pornography. Within two months she contracted HIV after shooting an unprotected sex scene with two males. It was revealed that one of the two males, porn actor Darren James, was HIV positive. The film did well critically. In 2012, it was nominated for a Claude Jutra Award for Best Documentary.
Not My Life is a 2011 American independent documentary film about human trafficking and contemporary slavery. The film was written, produced, and directed by Robert Bilheimer, who had been asked to make the film by Antonio Maria Costa, executive director of the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime. Bilheimer planned Not My Life as the second installment in a trilogy, the first being A Closer Walk and the third being the unproduced Take Me Home. The title Not My Life came from a June 2009 interview with Molly Melching, founder of Tostan, who said that many people deny the reality of contemporary slavery because it is an uncomfortable truth, saying, "No, this is not my life."
The Last Impresario is a 2013 documentary film about prolific British theatre impresario and film producer Michael White. The film was directed by Gracie Otto, and made its world premiere at the BFI London Film Festival in October 2013, where it was positively received by critics.
Sherpa is a 2015 documentary film by Australian filmmaker Jennifer Peedom. It was filmed during the 2014 Mount Everest ice avalanche.
Cassie Jaye is an American film director, best known for directing the 2016 documentary film The Red Pill about the men's rights movement.
Slam is a 2018 Australian drama film written and directed by Partho Sen-Gupta.
Don Palathara is a film director, screenwriter, and documentary filmmaker from Kerala, India. Known for working on small budgets, his films are expositions of local Kerala culture and study on the human nature. Palathara's films have gained accolades at several international film festivals, including Moscow International Film Festival, International Film Festival Rotterdam and International Film Festival of Kerala.
Cinema of Sudan refers to both the history and present of the making or screening of films in cinemas or film festivals, as well as to the persons involved in this form of audiovisual culture of the Sudan and its history from the late nineteenth century onwards. It began with cinematography during the British colonial presence in 1897 and developed along with advances in film technology during the twentieth century.
Erica Glynn is an Indigenous Australian filmmaker, known for directing, producing and writing documentaries and other films.
