UNORTHODOX DOCS

Tickets $15. A gripping, deeply moving documentary about librarians thrust into the heart of America’s cultural reckoning. This film pulls back the curtain on a surge of book bans targeting essential stories about race, gender, and queerness—and shows how libraries have become unlikely battlegrounds for civil rights.

Tickets $15. In China, a new industry has emerged devoted to helping couples stay married in the face of infidelity. Wang Zhenxi is part of this growing profession, a “mistress dispeller” who is hired to maintain the bonds of marriage — and break up affairs — by any means necessary. Offering strikingly intimate access to private dramas usually hidden behind closed doors, Mistress Dispeller follows a real, unfolding case of infidelity as Teacher Wang attempts to bring a couple back from the edge of crisis. Their story shifts our sympathies between husband, wife and mistress to explore the ways emotion, pragmatism and cultural norms collide to shape romantic relationships in contemporary China.

Tickets $15. A stunning tribute to the resilience of Native people and their way of life – SUGARCANE, the debut feature documentary from Julian Brave NoiseCat and Emily Kassie – is an epic cinematic portrait of a community during a moment of international reckoning. Set amidst a ground-breaking investigation into abuse and death at an Indian residential school, the film empowers participants to break cycles of intergenerational trauma by bearing witness to painful, long-ignored truths – and the love that endures within their families despite the revelation of genocide.  Filmmaker in attendance for this screening.

Tickets $15. A rising pop sensation navigates fame and industry pressures while preparing for her arena tour debut, revealing the transformation of underground culture into mainstream success.

Tickets $15. American filmmaker Julia Loktev, born in the Soviet Union and now based in the U.S., returned to Moscow in 2021 to document the growing crackdown on independent journalism in Putin’s Russia. Months later, the country invaded Ukraine. What began as a vérité portrait of young reporters labeled “foreign agents” suddenly became a frontline chronicle of a nation sliding into war, repression, and exile. Told across five chapters, My Undesirable Friends: Part I – Last Air in Moscow is an intimate, unflinching record of a community fighting to tell the truth as the ground shifts beneath them. Loktev’s camera captures the urgency, fear, humor, and resilience of journalists fighting Putin’s regime —offering a front row seat to how authoritarianism works and the lives of those who resist, which becomes more and more relevant both globally and in the U.S. every day.