If anything filmmaker Zach Heinzerling hopes that as people watch his new docuseries “Stolen Youth: Inside the Cult at Sarah Lawrence,” they try to keep in mind that it’s easy, from the outside, to say “this could never be me.” Indeed, the filmmaker wishes viewers appreciate the power that a malevolent narcissist such as Larry Ray can have on young people who are trying to find their identity at such an impressionable age.

The Sundance documentary “Pianoforte” follows some of the world’s best young pianists as they compete at the renowned International Chopin Piano Competition in Warsaw. Among them are Vladimir Ashkenazy, Mitsuko Uchida, Krystian Zimerman and Kevin Kenner. They are teenagers, in that netherworld between youth and adulthood, and finding their way while simultaneously giving expression to their amazing talents.

PALM SPRINGS, Calif.—Florian Zeller broke our hearts in 2020 with “The Father,” which placed us inside the mind of a man suffering from dementia. It featured a bravura performance from Anthony Hopkins, who justly took home an Oscar. Zeller appeared at the 34th annual Palm Springs International Film Festival on Tuesday for a screening and conversation about “The Son,” his new film.

PALM SPRINGS, Calif.—Trees may be alive, but they certainly aren’t sentient enough to distinguish one race of people from another. Humans, however, are—and in Palm Springs a specific group of trees was effectively weaponized as a means of separating a historically Black community from the rest of this desert enclave 100 miles east of Hollywood.

The new documentary

The documentary filmmaker brothers Jules and Gédéon Naudet know something of capturing trauma on film. On September 11th, 2001, they were embedded with a New York Fire Department unit when the first plane struck the World Trade Center, capturing the only known footage of that initial horror. Their resulting film, “9/11,” provides a firsthand account of the heroism of the firefighters who ran to the inferno and is capped by a tearful

Matthew Heineman has taken his camera to some of the most dangerous places on earth. For “City of Ghosts” from 2017 he filmed those brave souls who dared to decry the Islamic State’s terror tactics in Syria. Heineman’s latest is “Retrograde,” which started out as a chronicle of the final battalion of Green Berets stationed in Afghanistan but became a record of a rushed U.S. exit, followed by a surge of Afghan refugees desperate to escape the Taliban’s

Ramin Bahrani steers far clear of the conventional.  Roger Ebert called him one of the most promising filmmakers on the scene, and indeed Bahrani dedicated “99 Homes” to the late critic.  His more recent films include the HBO movie “Fahrenheit 451” and “The White Tiger,” the latter for which he was Oscar-nominated.  All feature protagonists who are complicated or unusual.  

Bahrani has kept up this trend with