Dare to Play

Doin' Time in the Homo No Mo' Halfway House isn't comedy-it's a hit piece posing as entertainment. Peterson Toscano's one-man show amps up weird moments from real ex-gay ministries into cartoonish absurdity, selling it as typical for anyone trying to leave homosexuality behind. Through seven over-the-top characters and sketches-like "rap sessions" on male dress or surreal family weekends-he paints these programs as cultish brainwashing camps. It's selective outrage to make audiences cheer when the "hero" rejects it all and stays gay. Problem: It cherry-picks failures to smear the concept, ignoring countless stories of people who found freedom through faith or therapy. Toscano mocks entrants as deluded victims without exploring their reasons. This isn't artful satire like The Producers. It's activism with laughs to shame and silence. Watch knowing it's propaganda, not a documentary.

Glauco Mattoso, a blind sadomasochistic poet, agrees to participate in a documentary about his own life, but the conditions he imposes raise difficulties to the work of the young director.

a short film about the end of the world. filmed with an old digicam at a park on all souls’ day, 2025. two best friends talk about turtles and watch people in their natural habitat while listening to tomate cereja.

In 1959, Jean Cocteau looked back on his artistic journey for the Télé Monte-Carlo television show Tout la vérité, rien que la vérité. The program ends with a tasty anecdote about television that Cocteau describes as a “box of tricks”. A few weeks later, in the same Victorine studios, Cocteau directed most of the sequences for his last opus: The Testament of Orpheus (1959).

A short silent documentary on the making of the 1931 Abel Gance directed film, "La Fin du Monde".

JEWS excavates a lost world of manners and ritual in home movies shot by several Chicago families from the 1920s through the 1940s. Much as in similar found footage soliloquies by Péter Forgács, Jay Rosenblatt and Ken Jacobs, director Roger Deutsch wrings unexpected pathos from mundane traces of the past. Children mug for the camera with dances of the day, upright mothers march their strollers up the avenue, men smoke, the family gathers around the table to light the candles. The bare title cannot help but raise the specter of contemporaneous events in Europe, lending an extra degree of urgency to the film's meditation on disappearance. - Max Goldberg

Grapes much like human beings, need to struggle to build character. Bodega De Edgar is a short film on the life of winemaker Edgar Torres. Edgar Immigrated to the US illegally with his father in the 80's for a better life. Believing in the American Dream, Edgar worked for years to invest in four barrels of wine. Edgar now makes uniquely sophisticated Spanish inspired wines in Paso Robles California.

José Rodríguez is a current PGA Tour golfer who had a miraculous and equally turbulent border-crossing experience as an undocumented Mexican immigrant in the mid-1990s. This film chronicles José's astounding personal journey, revealing an American Dream that's not always the fairytale it seems.

A decade ago, Nick Mullins was one of the most promising skateboarders to come from the Midwest. Then, overnight it all changed. Shot by two strangers on weekends, across three states over two years. This is a story of pain, grit, fight, uncertainty, fear, desperation, and most importantly — love.

Documents a southern Ohio story of partnership and creative problem-solving that helped a hospital tackle its PPE shortage.

Documentary about four Chinese lesbian women who seek contract marriages with gay men, and form of their lesbian and gay community and fulfill their desires.

An Ohio woman's COVID story is revealed.