JustFilms / Ford Foundation

An investigation of how Hollywood's fabled stories have deeply influenced how Americans feel about transgender people, and how transgender people have been taught to feel about themselves.

Monrovia, Indiana explores a small town in rural, mid-America and illustrates how values like community service, duty, spiritual life, generosity, and authenticity are formed, experienced, and lived along with conflicting stereotypes. The film gives a complex and nuanced view of daily life in Monrovia and provides some understanding of a way of life whose influence and force have not always been recognized or understood in the big cities on the east and west coasts of America and in other countries.

Fashion revolutionary Bethann Hardison looks back on her journey as a pioneering Black model, modeling agent, and activist, shining a light on an untold chapter in the fight for racial diversity.

Direct cinema pioneer Frederick Wiseman takes an in-depth look at the preeminent American university during a fall semester that saw a vigorous debate taking place over tuition hikes, budget cuts, and the future of higher education in the United States.

After Rhoda’s husband passed away, she was thrown off the land and endured seven tough years living in an outdoor market with her children. Many women in rural Kenya meet the same fate when deeply rooted patriarchal cultural traditions and discriminatory practices deny widows their rightful share.

Best friends Silvia and Beba record their lives as they dance, make music, and face an uncertain immigration process in Texas near the Mexican border.

When two siblings undertake an archaeological excavation of their late grandmother’s house, they embark on a magical-realist journey from her home in New Jersey to ancient Rome, from fashion to physics, in search of what life remains in the objects we leave behind.

Amid the surge in anti-trans legislation that Chase Strangio battles in the courtroom, he must also fight against media bias, exposing how the narratives in the press influence public perception and the fight for transgender rights.

E-Team is driven by the high-stakes investigative work of four intrepid human rights workers, offering a rare look at their lives at home and their dramatic work in the field.

Adapted from Kahlil Joseph’s renowned video art installation, BLKNWS: Terms & Conditions is a distinctive cinematic experience that mirrors the sonic textures of a record album, weaving fiction and history in an immersive journey where the fictionalized figures of W. E. B Du Bois and Marcus Garvey join artists, musicians, Joseph’s family, and even Twitter chats, in a vision for black consciousness.

Against political resistance and industry skepticism, Luis Valdez pushes Chicano storytelling from the fields to the film screen with Zoot Suit and La Bamba, crafting iconic works that challenge, celebrate, and expand America’s story.

Exploring the fallout of MIT Media Lab researcher Joy Buolamwini's startling discovery that facial recognition does not see dark-skinned faces accurately, and her journey to push for the first-ever legislation in the U.S. to govern against bias in the algorithms that impact us all.

About the extraordinary doctors and activists—including Paul Farmer, Jim Yong Kim, and Ophelia Dahl—whose work 30 years ago to save lives in a rural Haitian village grew into a global battle in the halls of power for the right to health for all.

In 1970, a group of young Puerto Rican activists took over a decrepit hospital in New York City, launching a battle for their lives, their community, and healthcare for all.

Detroit’s story has encapsulated the iconic narrative of America over the last century – the Great Migration of African Americans escaping Jim Crow; the rise of manufacturing and the middle class; the love affair with automobiles; the flowering of the American dream; and now… the collapse of the economy and the fading American mythos.

Meet Ousmane Sembene, the African freedom fighter who used stories as his weapon.

Raising Bertie is a longitudinal documentary feature following three young African American boys over the course of six years as they grow into adulthood in Bertie County, a rural African American-led community in Eastern North Carolina. Through the intimate portrayal of these boys, this powerful vérité film offers a rare in-depth look at the issues facing America's rural youth and the complex relationships between generational poverty, educational equity, and race. The evocative result is an experience that encourages us to recognize the value and complexity in lives all too often ignored.

Take a stroll down Sesame Street and witness the birth of the most influential children's show in television history. From the iconic furry characters to the classic songs you know by heart, learn how a gang of visionary creators changed the world.

A documentary about the legendary series of nationally televised debates in 1968 between two great public intellectuals, the liberal Gore Vidal and the conservative William F. Buckley Jr. Intended as commentary on the issues of their day, these vitriolic and explosive encounters came to define the modern era of public discourse in the media, marking the big bang moment of our contemporary media landscape when spectacle trumped content and argument replaced substance. Best of Enemies delves into the entangled biographies of these two great thinkers, and luxuriates in the language and the theater of their debates, begging the question, "What has television done to the way we discuss politics in our democracy today?"

Expertly merging old VHS home movies with new family interviews, filmmaker Eddie Sánchez traces his parents' journey from Mexico to the U.S. in this poignant and affecting documentary debut.