AWARDS:

• 2015 Locarno International Film Festival – Don Quixote Award - Special Mention, Golden Leopard Award nomination
• 2015 Sundance Film Festival – Audience Award

SYNOPSIS
James White is a troubled twenty something trying to stay afloat in a frenzied New York City. As he retreats further into a hedonistic lifestyle, his mother's battle with a serious illness faces a series of setbacks that force him to assume more responsibility.

**

James White is a confident and closely observed directorial debut that explores loss and the deep relationship between a mother and son. The film thrives off the compassion in their relationship and the way it tests James' love for his mother Gail, but unfortunately to the expense of what lies on the sidelines.

Abbott's strong central performance is aided by a stellar supporting cast featuring Cynthia Nixon (Sex and the City), Scott "Kid Cudi" Mescudi, and Ron Livingston (Drinking Buddies). Shot on location in New York City with an intimate visual style and a driving contemporary soundtrack, James White follows its lead into deep, affecting places while still maintaining its fragile humanity.

AWARDS:
2015 SXSW Film Festival – Audience Award

SYNOPSIS
After a lifetime of being overlooked and ignored, a woman of a certain age finds her world turned upside down by a handsome new co-worker and a self-help seminar that inspires her to take a chance on love in HELLO, MY NAME IS DORIS, a witty and compassionate late-life coming-of-age-story.

**

HELLO, MY NAME IS DORIS received positive reviews from film critics:
"The film is immeasurably elevated by Sally Field's remarkable performance in the title role, which overpowers a surfeit of stereotypical indie quirk." "Sally Field keeps the movie on an even keel, for the most part, with an adroit and disciplined lead performance that generates both laughter and sympathy, with relatively few yanks on the heartstrings." —Joe Leydon of Variety

"HELLO, MY NAME IS DORIS effectively conveys the cruel ambivalence of an ageist society, and despite its formulaic ingredients, the movie responds to that setback with Field's exuberant, virtuoso turn providing the ultimate critical response." —Eric Kohn of Indiewire.com

AWARDS:

• 2016 Rotterdam International Film Festival – Tiger Award

SYNOPSIS
He left for a country where he hardly spoke the language. Yet he was a man who made a living from words: in Iran, he was a respected author. Now, Mister Royani (Mohsen Namjoo, a well-known musician in Iran) is head of programming at Pars Radio, a Persian radio station in San Francisco. In this role, he creates poetic, sometimes even meditative broadcasts for Afghans and Iranians living in the Bay Area. He reads stories, receives guests, and discusses topics of interest, such as 'the history of apes in space'. But on the day that RADIO DREAMS takes place, a very special event is planned: Kabul Dreams, the first rock band from Afghanistan, is to be in the studio. Later that day, they will jam with the world-famous rock band Metallica. Everyone is excited, except for Mister Royani, for whom everyday life seems to be one big disappointment.

**
Babak Jalali was born in Iran, but moved to London at a young age. After earning his bachelor's and master's degrees, he was accepted at the London Film School. His graduation film, "Heydar: An Afghan in Tehran," was nominated for the BAFTA for Best Short Film. In 2009 he made his first feature film, "Frontier Blues," the production of which was backed by Cinefondation.

AWARDS:

• 2015 Twin Cities Film Fest, US – Breakthrough Achievement Award

SYNOPSIS
Private investigator Mel Sampson (Academy Award nominee John Hawkes) is tasked with tracking down the whereabouts of a missing woman from his own past. With this familiar setup, TOO LATE takes the spine of the classic private eye genre and tears it to pieces, weaving it back together into a tapestry of southern California and the menagerie of eccentric personalities and lost souls who inhabit it. From the desolate, overgrown Radio Hill to the ritzy penthouse of The Beverly Hilton, the film presents a sprawling view of Los Angeles that ranges from the undiscovered to the iconic. Ultimately, TOO LATE tells the story of a missing woman, but paints the portrait of a lost man.

AWARDS:

• 2015 Tribeca Film Festival – Audience Award
• 2016 Independent Spirit Awards – Someone to Watch Award

SYNOPSIS
Jack is a scrappy fifteen-year-old, growing up in a rural town and looking down the barrel of another bout of summer school. Burdened with an oblivious mother, an absent father, and a violent bully, Jack has learned to do what it takes to get by. After his aunt falls ill and a runty younger cousin comes to stay with him, the tough teen is set on a course to discover the importance of friendship, family, and looking for happiness even in the most desolate of circumstances. Unfolding over the course of a single summer weekend, KING JACK is a tough and tender coming-of-age story from first-timer Felix Thompson.

With a keen sense of the perceived heightened stakes that seem to typify all of teen existence, and a beautiful sense of a unique place and moment in time, Thompson brings to life one boy's rough-and-tumble daily life as he grasps for happiness in a way that is both specific and widely resonant.

AWARDS

• 2015 Cannes Film Festival – Golden Eye nomination

SYNOPSIS
In 1962, Hitchcock and Truffaut holed up together for a week in Hollywood to discuss their ideas for transforming the art of film directing. Drawing on the original tape recordings of this encounter – the source material for Truffaut's landmark book "Hitchcock by Truffaut," this film provides images for the greatest film lesson of all time, inviting viewers into the spellbinding world of the creator of "Psycho," "The Birds" and "Vertigo." Hitchcock's stunningly modern artistry is explained and illuminated by some of the greatest directors of our times: Martin Scorsese, Wes Anderson, James Gray, David Fincher, Kiyoshi Kurosawa, Olivier Assayas, Richard Linklater, Arnaud Desplechin, Peter Bogdanovich and Paul Schrader.

AWARDS

• SXSW – Special Jury Prize

SYNOPSIS
3D printing is changing the world – from printing guns and human organs, to dismantling the world's industrial infrastructure by enabling home manufacturing. It's "the next Industrial Revolution." For the first time in history, the stories of the human beings building an industry have been filmed. The result: PRINT THE LEGEND, which follows the people racing to bring 3D printing to your desktop and into your life. For the winners, there are fortunes – and history – to be made. PRINT THE LEGEND is both the definitive 3D Printing Documentary – capturing a tech in the midst of its "Macintosh Moment" – and a compelling tale about what it takes to live the American Dream in any field.

AWARDS

• 2014 Independent Film Festival Boston – Audience Award Best Documentary

SYNOPSIS
SHE'S BEAUTIFUL WHEN SHE'S ANGRY resurrects the buried history of the outrageous, often brilliant women who founded the modern women's movement from 1966 to 1971. SHE'S BEAUTIFUL takes us from the founding of NOW, with ladies in hats and gloves, to the emergence of more radical factions of women's liberation; from intellectuals like Kate Millett to the street theatrics of WITCH (Women's International Conspiracy from Hell!). It does not shy away from controversies over race, sexual preference and leadership that arose in the women's movement, and brilliantly captures the spirit of the time – thrilling, scandalous, and often hilarious.

AWARDS

• Oscar Shortlist – Best Feature Documentary
• Directors Guild of America – Nomination for Outstanding Directorial Achievement in Documentary 2014
• Sundance Film Festival – Special Jury Prize for Intuitive Filmmaking

SYNOPSIS
In the tiny town of Williston, North Dakota tens of thousands of unemployed hopefuls show up with dreams of honest work and a big paycheck when hydraulic fracturing in that region unlocks a vast oil field in the nearby Bakken shale. Upon arrival, however, busloads of newcomers step into the sad reality of slim work prospects and nowhere to sleep — the town lacks the infrastructure to house even those who do find gainful employment. Over at Concordia Lutheran Church, Pastor Jay Reinke is Hell-bent on delivering the migrants some dignity. Night after night he converts his church into a makeshift dorm and counseling center, opening the church's doors to allow the "Overnighters" – as he calls them — to stay. As broken men continue to arrive in droves, the congregants sling criticism, neighbors get suspicious, and the City Council threatens an ordinance to shut the Overnighter's program down. When the Williston Herald gets wind that sex offenders are among Reinke's church guests, and a mounting controversy peaks within the clergyman's personal life, even the Pastor's supernatural determination and heartfelt quest for humanity can't stop things from spiraling enormously out of control.

AWARDS
Sundance Film Festival – Directing Award
SXSW – Audience Award – Festival Favorites
Hot Docs – Top Ten Audience Favorite
Sheffield – Special Jury Nomination

SYNOPSIS
THE CASE AGAINST 8 takes an inside look at the groundbreaking Supreme Court case that overturned Proposition 8, California's ban on same-sex marriage. Five years in the making, the film chronicles the struggle that helped pave the way for marriage equality battles nationwide, with behind-the-scenes access to the two California couples seeking the right to marry and the legal team of conservative Ted Olson and liberal David Boies, who previously faced off as opposing counsel in Bush v. Gore. THE CASE AGAINST 8 provides a definite account of the battle that effectively ended marriage discrimination in California and took the issue of marriage equality all the way to the Supreme Court.

AWARDS

• 2014 Sundance Film Festival – Audience Award Documentary; Nominated Grand Jury Prize
• 2014 Seattle International Film Festival – 2nd Place Golden Space Needle Award

SYNOPSIS
ALIVE INSIDE follows social worker Dan Cohen, founder of the nonprofit organization Music & Memory, as he fights against a broken health-care system to demonstrate music's ability to combat memory loss and restore a deep sense of self to those suffering from it. Rossato-Bennett visits family members who have witnessed the miraculous effects of personalized music on their loved ones, and offers illuminating interviews with experts including renowned neurologist and best-selling author Oliver Sacks (Musicophilia: Tales of Music and the Brain) and musician Bobby McFerrin ("Don't Worry, Be Happy").

SYNOPSIS
Whether fighting or documenting the realities on the ground as a journalist, how does the context of war transform a person's identity? What happens to that identity when soldiers return home? Sebastian Junger, war journalist and author of The Perfect Storm, explores these questions on a soul-searching journey with three comrades-in-arms. Junger, joined by Brendan O'Bryne and Dave Roels, protagonists of the Academy Award-nominated documentary, Restrepo, and combat journalist Guillermo Cervera walk along railroad tracks from Washington, D.C. to Pennsylvania. They move with a purposeful invisibility designed to echo the isolation felt by many who return from war. The men live outdoors and discuss the transition from soldier to civilian. With the backdrop of a varied United States revealed by the path of the tracks—ghettos and wealthy suburbs, heavy industry and farm country—the juxtaposition of scenery and conversations uncover diverse and conflicting American perceptions of war and what it means for veterans to come home.

AWARDS

• Hot Docs – Audience Award
• Los Angeles Film Festival – Audience Award
• Traverse City Film Festival – Best Film Award, Audience Award

SYNOPSIS
MEET THE PATELS is a laugh-out-loud real life romantic comedy about Ravi Patel, an almost-30-year-old Indian-American who enters a love triangle between the woman of his dreams … and his parents. Filmed by Ravi's sister in what started as a family vacation video, this hilarious and heartbreaking film reveals how love is a family affair. In addition to the witty comedic nature of the film, the documentary also uses humor to address a timely social issue: In early 2009, directors, sister and brother team, Geeta and Ravi Patel began to explore and document the societal pressures of marriage in their first-generation Indian American family. Through research in India and America, they discovered that their "Indian Issue" was more of an "American Issue": the majority of Americans with strong cultural and religious roots shared a serious psychological conflict when it came to dating (and marrying) outside of their skin color, culture, religion, and ethnicity.

AWARDS

• American Academy of Nursing – Excellence in Media award winner

SYNOPSIS
THE AMERICAN NURSE explores some of the biggest issues facing America – aging, war, poverty, prisons – through the work and lives of nurses. It is an examination of real people that will change how we think about nurses and how we wrestle with the challenges of healing America. THE AMERICAN NURSE is an important contribution to America's ongoing conversation about what it means to care. The film follows the paths of five nurses in various practice specialties including Jason Short as he drives up a rugged creek to reach a home-bound cancer patient in Appalachia. Tonia Faust, who runs a prison hospice program where inmates serving life sentences care for their fellow inmates as they're dying. Naomi Cross, as she coaches an ovarian cancer survivor through the Caesarean delivery of her son. Sister Stephen, a nun who runs a nursing home filled with goats, sheep, llamas, and chickens, where the entire nursing staff comes together to sing for a dying resident. And Brian McMillion, an Army veteran and former medic, rehabilitating wounded soldiers returning from war.

AWARDS

• 2014 Tribeca Film Festival – Best New Documentary Director, Heineken Audience Award
• 2014 Hot Docs – Top Ten Audience Favorite

SYNOPSIS
Shot over the course of five years by first time filmmaker Al Hicks, KEEP ON KEEPIN' ON depicts a 23-year-old, blind piano prodigy, Justin Kauflin, and music legend and teacher Clark Terry, 89. After a life spent working with and teaching the most totemic figures in jazz history, Terry continues to attract and cultivate budding talents. KEEP ON KEEPIN' ON highlights Terry's friendship with the preternaturally gifted Justin Kauflin, who suffers from debilitating stage fright. Not long after Kauflin is invited to compete in an elite Jazz competition, Terry's health takes a turn for the worse. As the clock ticks, we see two friends confront the toughest challenges of their lives…

5th Independence American Film Festival opens on May 20 in Kyiv and other Ukrainian cities. This year, the festival which brings the best and newest American independent films to Ukrainian viewer, will traditionally consist of documentary and narrative programs.
The documentary program includes 9 films. It will be shown free of charge* in Kyiv and Lviv.
The narrative program consists of 6 award-winning films, participants of Sundance, Tribeca, and other prestigious film festivals.
The festival schedule will be announced soon on the Independence website and the websites of movie theaters. Tickets for narrative films will be on sale in early May.
* in Kyiv tickets for documentary program will cost 5 hryvnias.

Locations of the festival:

Kyiv
May 20–25
Kyiv Cinema

Lviv
Documentary Films
May 25–27
Palace of Arts Film Theater
Narrative Films
May 25 – June 1
Kopernik Kinopalace Cinema

Kharkiv
May 26 – June 1
8 1/2 Cinema

Odessa
May 26 – June 1

Jesse Moss is a San Francisco based filmmaker and cinematographer. OVERNIGHTERS, his most recent film, is a feature documentary set in the North Dakota oilfields. The film premiered in the US Documentary Competition at the 2014 Sundance Film Festival, where it was awarded the Special Jury Prize for Intuitive Filmmaking.

He also received a DGA Nomination for Outstanding Directorial Achievement in Documentary. The Playlist and Nonfics named OVERNIGHTERS the top documentary of 2014. Drafthouse Films is currently releasing the film in theaters nationwide, and it continues to screen at festivals around the world. Previous films include: Full Battle Rattle (Berlinale Panorama, SXSW Special Jury Prize), about the US Army's Iraq War simulation in California's Mojave Desert; Speedo: A Demolition Derby Love Story (SXSW, PBS/POV), about a Long Island demolition derby champion; and Con Man (HBO/Cinemax), the story of a Princeton University impostor. This summer he served as an advisor at the Sundance Documentary Edit & Story Lab.

Patricia R. Zimmermann is Professor of Screen Studies at Ithaca College and is also the co-director of the Finger Lakes Environmental Film Festival. She has been the Ida Beam Professor at the University of Iowa and the Shaw Foundation Professor at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore.

She specializes in documentary, new media, film/media/new media history, amateur film and emerging amateur technologies, and institutional histories of the international public media arts sectors. She is author of Reel Families: A Social History of Amateur Film; States of Emergency: Documentaries, Wars, Democracies; and Thinking Through Digital Media: Transnational Environments and Locative Places (with Dale Hudson). She is also co-editor ( with Karen Ishizuka) of Mining the Home Movies: Excavations in Histories and Memories. Open Spaces: Openings, Closings, and Thresholds of International Public Media, a book of her literary nonfiction essays which includes some of her American Film Showcase blog writing, will be published in February 2016.