“MISAN HARRIMAN: SHOOT THE PEOPLE
Director: Andy Mundy-Castle

This doc profiles Nigerian-British photographer Misan Harriman’s fascinating photographic eye, as well as his trials and hopes. The self-taught shutterbug’s public profile becomes so stellar that he is asked to shoot for the cover of Vogue; however, his real power is in capturing his subjects at their seemingly most vulnerable, whether it’s street protestors or famous figures, including Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minnesota) and Martin Luther King III.

“I think sometimes we can even frighten the devil,” Harriman says of his work. Yet it’s his job to document rather than make an argument. Likewise, filmmaker Mundy-Castle asks you to watch Harriman at work and make up your own mind.

“TIME WARP”
Director: Allison Sloan Berg

Rural Rock Springs, Wyoming, doesn’t seem like the most logical location for a “shadow company” to perform as “The Rocky Horror Picture Show” plays on a big screen, but local impresario Kenny Starling McCormack believes that even this conservative town will embrace such a strange journey. Kenny, who will direct as well as play the cross-dressing Dr. Frank-N-Furter, came west from his native South Carolina to see what positive changes he could make for the LGBTQ+ community. Kenny notes that Rock Springs is close to Laramie, where Matthew Shepherd was murdered in 1999, and we meet some residents of Rock Springs who would rather that “Rocky” and its Pandora’s box remain sealed. And yet there are more gay people in Wyoming than might be expected, with many drawn to Kenny’s artistic venture. We also meet a Japanese exchange student, who is pleased as punch to be cast as Janet in the shadow company

Perhaps the film’s most amusing scene involves a city hall meeting. One person’s complaints go off the rails, making the case that allowing “Rocky” to go forward will somehow lead to pedophilia. One council member, an avowed conservative, responds that he’ll be there for opening night—in fishnet stockings, no less. This draws cheers from Kenny and his fellow thespians.

“Time Warp” is an exercise in joy, which is especially important during Pride Month. (Josh Gad serves as an executive producer.)

“THE SIEGE OF PARADISE”
Director: Gar O’Rourke

Italy’s Cinque Terre is a historic place that draws in tourists. Civic authorities beg visitors to be respectful, but the younger residents are moving away, a concern for the family restaurant proprietors we meet. Meanwhile, births are decreasing, allowing the houses of the recently deceased to become expensive Airbnbs. At the same time, global warming is killing the island’s crucial wine crop. “No wine, no Cinque Terra,” a local says. But are tourist quotas the answer?

We also meet a pair of American influencers whose holiday to the paradise is mostly about getting likes and attention for their social media posts. An Italian laughs at all the visitors who spend more time staring at their phones instead of the beauty around them.

“AMERICAN DOCTOR”
Director: Poh Si Teng

As Israel’s war against Hamas has dragged on, the often-unseen victims of the campaign are Palestinian children. This film follows several American doctors—Jewish and Muslim alike—who travel to Gaza not for political purposes but to lend their medical expertise to civilian victims. Politics inevitably intervenes, especially for a Jewish doctor from North Carolina who says he’s lost many friends by using the word “genocide” to describe what he has seen firsthand in Gaza. The doctors also go to D.C. to lobby their legislators (which they freely admit is outside their comfort zone), hoping that on-the-ground stories might alter some perceptions.

Sad but not condescending to offer easy answers, “American Doctor” paints a fascinating portrait of medical professionals who took the ultimate oath to do no harm, even as they put themselves right in harm’s way.

“WHO KILLED ALEX ODEH?
Director: Jason Osder and William Lafi Youmans

A reporter investigates the 1985 bombing of American Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee activist Alex Odeh. One source working for the Santa Ana police says he was ordered to step down and let potential suspects leave for Israel after the incident. Meanwhile, the suspects, if they can be labeled as such, remain alive and active and backed by extremist elements.

Among the doc’s contemporary sources is Odeh’s wife, Norma, still seeking answers decades later.

“BABY/GIRLS”
Directors: Alyse Walsh and Jackie Jesko

Teenage mothers-to-be in Arkansas, unsurprisingly, share rather similar stories: They are poor, and sex education was mostly absent, with one saying she was forced to sit through a lecture on the topic while seven months pregnant. We are introduced to the hard-working staff at a maternity home for expectant mothers. One of the counselors relates that she was molested, and, when she herself became pregnant as a teen, was told to never return to school again. She says the system is set up for women to fail by removing sex education and abortion access at the same time.

The cycle of poverty and neglect and incarceration and substance abuse repeats, with many of these young women themselves the daughters of teen mothers.

“BLACK ZOMBIE”
Director: Maya Annik Bedward

As with most legends, the myth of the zombie has some basis in fact, and “Black Zombie” takes an even deeper look into the folklore behind the fear. Based on African traditions and taking hold in Haiti, the ideas of voodoo and the zombie reflect the notion of “living under someone’s thumb,” as an interviewee says. When the U.S. occupied Haiti, it oppressed those who practiced voodoo and forced them into unpaid labor. The sheer number of the enslaved compared to the enslavers was enough to strike fear into the White establishment: What if they revolted?

John Russo, co-writer of “Night of the Living Dead,” says he and George Romero came up with the idea of zombies being flesh-eating creatures. Their movie’s hero, a Black man, was infamously shot dead at the end of the film by a White mob, even though he was still human, lending it an extra-thematic level. And Wade Davis, who wrote the book “The Serpent and the Rainbow,” discusses the White adventurer figure, and also the notorious “factual” Wes Craven film made of his book.

Slash is among the talking heads who appear in the doc, which also includes makeup maestro Tom Savini, who says, “our taste for [zombies] is insatiable.

“LOVE APPTUALLY”
Director: Shalini Kantayya

I met my wife on a dating app, and we’ve been together for a decade. However, both of us have horror stories, as do the subjects of “Love Apptually.” Stable relationships are bad for business, after all, so it behooves companies making the apps to keep people coming back. A French journalist who was on Tinder even asks the company for her data: 800 pages of it came back (think about that).

Also, a woman from Florida meets her virtual boyfriend, who lives in Michigan, in a VR experience. Things are going swimmingly thanks to the internet experience, but will their online chemistry translate into the real world?

“AMAZOMANIA”
Director: Nathan Grossman

In 1996, Erling Söderström and Sydney Possuelo journeyed deep into the Amazon in search of the Koruba, a tribe never contacted by the outside world. Their three-decade-old footage provides the first half of the film, and then it gets so much stranger. Söderström
Returns to the Amazon: The Koruba now have iPhones and want to be paid. They also demand to be back-paid for appearing in Söderström’s footage 30 years earlier—and they want to keep that footage too.

It’s a big-time bummer to the cameraman—an unfair reaction given that it was he and his fellow invaders from the outside world that gave them the appetite for capitalism in the first place.

“THE BEND IN THE RIVER”
Director: Robb Moss

In 2003, Robb Moss’s “The Same River Twice” chronicled a group of hippies who, in their youth, had floated down the Grand Canyon and enjoyed a rather undressed life there on the banks of the Colorado. Moss has returned to both the aging group and the river, two decades on, for this fascinating follow-up that can’t help but remind me of Michael Apted’s “Up” series. Indeed, one of Moss’s subjects says he’s becoming “familiar with your cinematic gimmicks,” including the tried-and-true shot as he’s driving and hopefully saying something profound for Moss’s camera.

Moss’s subjects reflect on life, death, aging, hope, and loss, many while watching footage of their 20-year-younger selves. One man had cancer, but now has a second lease on life. Two of the hippies married one another; we learn that the husband cheated, but now he’s running for state senate in California, with or without said baggage. And Jim, the river guide, two decades on, is still building a house that is barely a skeleton.

Moss must get his subjects back into the canyon for a third ride down the Colorado. If there is any justice in the world, we will see what the hippies are up to in a threequel.

“BUCKS HARBOR”
Director: Pete Muller

Lobstermen in northern Maine face many scourges, including climate change, drug abuse, and lost revenue. The trauma of violent fatherhood revisits itself on succeeding generations—and, several of the men hope, not on their own children. The idea of what constitutes masculinity is much discussed in “Bucks Harbor,” including by one lobsterman who now gleefully performs drag shows for an online audience despite a censorious father. An intriguing and thought-provoking depiction of a lesser-known American subculture.

“HELL’S ARMY”
Director: Richard Rowley

Investigative reporter Katya Hakim makes it her mission to find out how deeply the shadowy Wagner Group and its ostentatious leader, Yevgeny Prigozhin, are embedded in the war in Ukraine. The group commits war crimes but operates with seeming impunity (and Vladimir Putin’s backing). Hakim even gets hold of particularly disturbing footage of the group torturing and burning to death a man in Syria. Then, as the war in Ukraine seems to founder, Prighozin stages a mutiny and instead invades Russia. Yes, he brags and boasts in online videos, but it isn’t long before he and his helicopter are shot out of the sky, almost certainly on Putin’s orders.

The reporter Hakim treads in dangerous territory. Many of her colleagues, on the trail of the Wagner Group’s resource extraction efforts in Africa, continue turning up dead. Whether she is brave or foolish, the world deserves to know what she has uncovered.

“OH WHALE” (short)
Director: Winslow Crane-Murdoch

In November 1970, a sperm whale washed ashore in sleepy Florence, Oregon. Reporter Paul Linnman was there, along with the curious, the onlookers, and a former military specialist in explosives. After blowing up the carcass really well, the local media outlet kept fielding calls from people seeking copies of the tape. And that was long before the internet (even John Oliver showed the clip on his HBO show).

Why did the exploding whale video connect so well with the audience? And why has it hung on for over half a century? Linnman, the reporter, says he doesn’t enjoy watching it anymore. (His nickname among the public: “The Whale Guy.”)

Oh, and make sure you stick around for the end credits song, “Battered by Blubber Chunks.” You’ll thank me later.

“SEA SONG” (short)
Director: An-Phuong Ly

“Sea Song” relates the tale of how South Vietnamese military officers went to Officer Training School (OCS) in Rhode Island, when (they hoped) their country would be united under a democracy. That never came to pass, and when the war ended, many of them were sent to “re-education” camps by the victorious northern forces. However, those men continued meeting annually, with several saying the reunions helped salve the war’s trauma.

“STALIN BOYS” (short)
Directors: Dra DeKornfeld and Bianca Giaever

In tiny Marathon, Texas, a most unusual academic experiment takes place, with a student named Malachi staging a play where he portrays Josef Stalin. His reasons are complex, and Malachi’s personal history informs at least part of an explanation for this quixotic endeavor that he hopes will allow the play to travel to Austin for an academic competition. As with so much in life, the reaction to his art will not be what he expects, and the lessons this young man takes away should be long-lasting.

“STILL STANDING” (short)
Directors: Victor Tadashi Suarez and Livia Albeck-Ripka

My former home, Altadena, California, continues to recover from the fires of January 2025, but just as uncertain is the danger remaining behind. Insurers claim many of the damaged homes are “habitable” even though they test positive for toxic chemicals. We even see one homeowner return to their domicile in a hazmat suit. These are “the lucky unlucky” people whose homes didn’t burn to the ground, but for whom the unleashed chemicals nonetheless present a continued danger.

“THE SECOND LIFE OF FREDDY NOLE” (short)
Director: Dana Nachman

Incarcerated at seventeen, Freddy Nole is now a middle-aged man who makes it his mission to help others returning to society not to go back inside. We meet Edward, a man exiting the pen after serving time for assault, who is picked up by Freddy and his wife outside the prison walls. In addition to treating him to a meal, they introduce him to another formerly incarcerated man who has turned his life around. Anything you need, they tell Edward, you call us as Edward seeks a job. Nearly all of Freddy’s “pickups,” we learn, have stayed out of trouble. An inspiring statistic.