Mother was a CEO

Until Porn Do Us Part

April 2018 •Portuguese

Eulália, a conservative Portuguese mother, found out that her son who emigrated to Germany has become Fostter Riviera, the internationally awarded first Portuguese gay porn actor. She suffers with the distance, sometimes toned down through the computer that has become her main source of information and communication with her son. This documentary focuses on the long journey of this mother towards acceptance and endeavour to get closer to her son.

Joanne Martin: A Life in Miniature

October 2017 •English

A septuagenarian woman from St. Louis, Missouri has been a miniaturist, businesswoman, museum president, Girl Scout leader, teacher, student, mother, daughter, and most of all, an indomitable human spirit. Life is what you make it.

Por Favor, Socorro

June 2021 •Portuguese

Alive Inside

January 2014 •English

Five million Americans suffer from Alzheimer's disease and dementia—many of them alone in nursing homes. A man with a simple idea discovers that songs embedded deep in memory can ease pain and awaken these fading minds. Joy and life are resuscitated, and our cultural fears over aging are confronted.

Sieben Mulden und eine Leiche

April 2007 •German

Thomas Haemmerli is about to celebrate his fortieth birthday when he learns of his mother's death. A further shock follows when he and his brother Erik discover her apartment, which is filthy and full to bursting with junk. It takes the brothers an entire month to clean out the place. Among the chaos, they find films going back to the 1930s, photos and other memorabilia.

Joanne & Jacob

October 2015 •Dutch

A short, poetic documentary of an old woman and the loneliness that surrounds her after her husband was sent to a nursing home.

Ona Carbonell: Starting Over

February 2022 •Spanish

In August 2020, Olympic artistic swimmer Ona Carbonell became a first time mother, an experience that reshaped her life overnight.

Voorgoed samen

February 2022 •Dutch

A Love Letter to Coopers Cafe

Invalid date •English

During the summer of 2023, my father decided to hang up the boots and walk away from the family business of 25 years. This is my love letter to the cafe in which my family and I have worked, encapsulating the good vibes and cheery nature the business held for a quarter of a century.

23

March 2016 •Spanish

Mother Land

February 2022 •Finnish

When filmmaker Mari Soppela took her children and husband to live for a year on a sacred mountain in her native Finland, she was fulfilling a lifelong dream to share the arctic wilderness of her childhood with her family. But when years later her children turn the camera onto her, she is forced to confront her motivation for filming their lives in this searching and searingly honest cinematic exploration of identity, belonging and motherhood. Filmed over the course of 27 years, Mother Land challenges us all to examine the landscapes we carry within us and the narratives we create to make sense of our lives.

Option Zero

April 2021 •Spanish

There are countless stories of Cubans reaching their dream destination of Florida as boat refugees. A lesser known route to the United States starts with a flight in a ramshackle plane to Guyana. Then the refugees travel to Colombia where they cross the jungle to arrive in Central America, from where they hope to reach the promised land of America—a hard and dangerous journey. Cuban filmmaker Marcel Beltrán visits them in a refugee camp in Panama, where one of the residents gives him an idea. Many people here have filmed their journey, she says, and these videos tell their real story. These jerky, shocking videos are interspersed with Beltrán’s footage of the camp, tangibly illustrating the difference between the hectic pace of the journey and the insecure life at the reception center.

After You

January 2013 •Swedish

"My mother is spending all her time with her dying father. I’m spending all my time filming her. As the end is getting closer, my mother and I start doing the filming more and more together. It becomes our way of dealing with the time we have left." —Marius Dybwad Brandrud

Voices That Heal

Invalid date •Spanish

Herlinda Augustin is a Shipibo healer who lives with her family in Peruvian Amazonia. Will she and other healers be able to maintain their ancient tradition despite Western encroachment?

Dinner

September 2021 •English

What are one week films? They're an assignment we do our first week back at CalArts, designed to dust off cobwebs by throwing us straight into the deep end. Our class theme was "square," and we had a lot of fun playing around with compositions inspired by East Asian graphic design.

On the Line: The Richard Williams Story

June 2022 •English

Told in his own words using interviews spanning from the 1980s through now, father and tennis coach Richard Williams retraces his family's journey from the courts in Compton to the grass at Wimbledon, defying every custom of the lily-white tennis establishment and fighting back against a system of oppression to raise two of the greatest champions in history - Venus and Serena Williams.

Het leven gaat niet altijd over tulpen

June 2021 •English

The life of the Schouten family revolves around tulips and top sport. Together they run a large international tulip company and children Irene and Simon skate at world top level. When mother Jolanda unexpectedly needs a lot of care and attention due to a brain haemorrhage, everything changes. How does the family relate to each other, skating and the company in this new situation?

A Butcher's Heart

October 2017 •Dutch

13-year-old Wessel faces a dilemma: will he become a butcher, like his tough father and grandfather or does he prefer to work with living animals?

Calling Mother

May 2019 •Finnish

Calling Mother is about the moments when you just have to call your mum. It is a compilation of phone calls made by different people to their mothers. Film follows the lifespan of a human being from youth to adulthood, a child changing from a dependent to a caretaker. Phone calls are connected by images of an old telephone center and a story of a young mother who doesn’t have a mother to call.

Terry Pratchett: Back in Black

February 2017 •English

A poignant and humorous film telling the life story of the hugely popular author of the discworld series of books, in his own words.