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.

In June 2013, Laura Poitras and reporter Glenn Greenwald flew to Hong Kong for the first of many meetings with Edward Snowden. She brought her camera with her.

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.

Up against one of the most powerful companies on the planet, a group of Amazon workers embark on an unprecedented campaign to unionize their warehouse in Staten Island, New York.

A real-time portrait of 2020 unfolds as an Asian-American family in Trump’s rural America fights to keep their restaurant and American dream alive in the face of a pandemic, Neo-Nazis, and generational scars from the Cambodian Killing Fields.

Over the past 25 years, Lauren Greenfield's documentary photography and film projects have explored youth culture, gender, body image, and affluence. Underscoring the ever-increasing gap between the haves and the have-nots, portraits reveal a focus on cultivating image over substance, where subjects unable to attain actual wealth instead settle for its trappings, no matter their ability to pay for it.

Petra heads to New York in search of her older sister after a long time of being separated. They are both movie actresses and heirs of the wounds of the Brazilian dictatorship. But Petra has only a few clues: home movies, newspaper clippings, a diary...

A documentary about how a dominant cultural and demographic institution both sustains their traditional activities and adapts to the digital revolution.

A year in the life of an underdog competitive high school mariachi band in the Texas borderlands.

This artful and intimate meditation on the legendary storyteller examines her life, her works, and the powerful themes she has confronted throughout her literary career. Toni Morrison leads an assembly of her peers, critics, and colleagues on an exploration of race, history, the United States, and the human condition.

In the aftermath of the deadly "Unite the Right" rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, a civil lawsuit was filed against white nationalist leaders and organizations on behalf of plaintiffs who suffered injuries while peacefully counterprotesting. This documentary chronicles this seminal civil rights trial, exposing a broad network of conspirators and detailing the challenges of holding those leaders and organizations liable for their actions.

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.

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.

In July 2020, Rob Bliss, a young, white filmmaker, posted a video of what happened when he held up a ‘Black Lives Matter’ sign in Harrison, Arkansas, 'the most racist town in America'. It went viral, attracting 12 million views. What Bliss did next was remarkable. Over 1500 miles, two months and 25 miles a day, he set out to walk through the American South, wearing a Black Lives Matter t-shirt, and a sign that invited people to ‘come walk with me’. His goal was simple: to take the conversation Floyd’s murder had sparked about racism in American society into the places where it was most needed, yet most silent.

The memory of a particular moment in early 20th century history when, in 1913, Helen Keller (1880-1968), a deaf-blind writer, lecturer and political activist, spoke, for the first time and in public, about socialism and progressive causes.

An alarmingly disproportionate number of Black women are failed every year by the U.S. maternal health system. Shamony Gibson and Amber Rose Isaac were vibrant, excited mothers-to-be whose deaths due to childbirth complications were preventable. Now, their partners and families are determined to sound a rallying cry around this chilling yet largely ignored crisis.

When 17-year-old Lennon Lacy is found hanging from a swing set in rural North Carolina in 2014, his mother's search for justice and reconciliation begins while the trauma of more than a century of lynching African Americans bleeds into the present.

On March 11, 1959, Lorraine Hansberry’s 'A Raisin in the Sun' opened on Broadway and changed the face of American theater forever. As the first-ever black woman to author a play performed on Broadway, she did not shy away from richly drawn characters and unprecedented subject matter. The play attracted record crowds and earned the coveted top prize from the New York Drama Critics’ Circle. While the play is seen as a groundbreaking work of art, the timely story of Hansberry’s life is far less known.

Examining the violent death of the filmmaker’s brother and the judicial system that allowed his killer to go free, this documentary interrogates murderous fear and racialized perception, and re-imagines the wreckage in catastrophe’s wake, challenging us to change.

A documentary that explores the range of experiences lived by transgender Americans.