Schedule:

1:00 - 3:00 PM - Zara Yacoub: A Militant Filmmaker - Childhood Destroyed & The Feminine Dilemma

Childhood Destroyed

Eleven year old Mariam works as a domestic to provide for her guardian, her unemployed Uncle Djimet, and his family. Mariam wakes up early each day to go to work while Djimet, his wife Isabelle and their children are still asleep. Mariam works as an all-purpose maid, housekeeper, cook and baby sitter for the Nadji family. With her many tasks, she is constantly under pressure from Nadji and his son Moussa, and must answer to the whims of his wife, and young children. One day, Mariam is arrested for having unwittingly thrown rubbish in a prohibited place. She is detained for five days in prison without her uncle or employer even inquiring of her whereabouts. "Childhood destroyed" denounces the living conditions of young girls in Chad in a delicate yet powerful way.

2:30 - 4:00 PM - Myopia

Fatem, sixth month pregnant, leaves her village perched in the mountains, to fill a frame with empty glasses for the elder of her village, the only person who can decipher the letters sent by members of the villagers’ families who have gone to work in the cities. She moves from station to station to arrive in town in the middle of a protest. This will turn her trip into a peaceful revolution that she is hardly aware of.

4:40 - 6:15 PM - Loimata, the Sweetest Tears

With Ema diagnosed with terminal cancer, the Siope family searches for healing by confronting intergenerational trauma head on and returning to their homeland of Sāmoa.

The redemptive tale of waka builder and captain Lilo Ema Siope’s final years, the stunning LOIMATA, The Sweetest Tears is a chronicle of journeys. Confronting intergenerational trauma head on, the Siope family returns to their homeland of Sāmoa. For Ema’s father, this is his first time back to his birthplace since leaving in 1959. The result is a poignant yet tender story of a family’s unconditional love for each other, and a commitment to becoming whole again.

6:30 - 8:00 PM - Rediet's Coming Home - NY Premiere
A tear-jerking documentary that follows 18-year-old Rediet Adane back to her birth country of Ethiopia for the first time since she was adopted from an orphanage at age 5. Having lost everything, including her birth parents, native language and culture, she now returns to her homeland as a virtual foreigner hoping to reconnect with her past, rediscover her rich heritage, and reunite with her living relatives. This intimately shot video diary centers around the importance of family, community, culture and identity.

8:30 - 10:00 PM - The Survival of Kindness
In a cage on a trailer in the middle of the desert, BlackWoman (Mwajemi Hussein) is abandoned, left to die. But BlackWoman seems not ready. She escapes, journeying through pestilence and persecution, from desert to mountain and finally to city, on a quest for an unknown beginning. But the city is more uncertain even than the desert, and recaptured, BlackWoman must find another escape.