Schedule of the Event:

March 27, 2025

Conversations Across Screen Cultures: Ulises Mejias

Join the conversation in this special FLEFF collaboration with Conversations Across Screen Cultures, an online initiative featuring live interviews and discussions with cutting-edge film and media scholars.

Zoom: 7:00pm

March 28, 2025

The White House Effect

Bonni Cohen / Pedro Kos / Jon Shenk, USA, 2024, 97 mins

Three decades ago, the world was poised to stop global warming. Using exclusively archival material, The White House Effect tells the dramatic origin story of the climate crisis and how a political battle in the George H.W. Bush administration changed the course of history. Woven entirely of archival material, the documentary focuses on the pivotal years of the George H.W. Bush administration—1988 to 1992—when the entire country was waking up to the reality of global warming and Bush had pledged to use “the White House effect” to tackle it.

Time: 6:00pm

Little, Big, and Far

Jem Cohen, USA / Austria, 2024, 121 mins

Karl, an Austrian astronomer, is at a crossroads in life and work. Along with a colleague, Sarah, he finds himself struggling with environmental crises reshaping their fields. Sarah, who specializes in “citizen-science,” has begun seeing Mateo, a young Ecuadorian astronomer who brings her to an old telescope in New Jersey, the site of an astonishing discovery about the origin of the universe. Karl revisits the Rosetta Mission, which landed a probe on a very distant comet. His wife, Eleanor, reflects on her attempt to witness a total eclipse in the American South and its unexpected political implications. The historical touchstones of astronomy, his grandson’s future, and his own role as a dark sky advocate begin to spin above Karl’s head.

Time: 8:30pm

March 29, 2025

Human Flowers of Flesh

Helena Wittmann, France / Germany, 2022, 106 mins

After a stirring encounter with the French Foreign Legion, Ida (Dogtooth’s Angeliki Papoulia), sets sail with her own corps of five men, none of whom speak the same language, to trace the route of this fabled troop. Their voyage will take them from Marseille to Corsica and finally to Sidi Bel Abbès, Algeria, the historical headquarters of the Legion. Along the way, boundaries blur. Life at sea produces a special kind of mutual understanding. A legionnaire of yore makes an about-face. In her spellbinding follow-up to the critically acclaimed Drift, Helena Wittmann invites us to relinquish control and join her on a Mediterranean voyage unlike any other.

Time: 1:00pm

Skin of Glass

Denise Zmekhol, USA / Brazil, 2023, 110 mins

A poetic and personal cinematic meditation on displacement and loss, Skin of Glass follows filmmaker Denise Zmekhol’s journey after discovering that her late father's most celebrated work as an architect, a modernist glass skyscraper in the heart of São Paulo, Brazil, has become occupied by hundreds of homeless families.

Time: 3:30pm

With Peter Bradley

Alex Rappoport, USA, 2023, 85 mins

An intimate portrait and a study of the creative process, With Peter Bradley is situated entirely at the artist’s rural home and studio, unfolding over changing seasons. The sole figure on screen, Bradley narrates his life in a series of unscripted conversations: often provocative, sometimes bitter, and full of surprises. For years Bradley thought musician Miles Davis was his father, adding dimension to a lifelong passion for jazz, inextricably linked to his creative process: Bradley paints to music, seeing sound as color and translating the sensation to canvas. Jazz tenor saxophonist Javon Jackson’s classy score seamlessly fuses with Bradley’s witty repartee. Bradley’s confidence and insistence on what makes a picture a complete picture speaks to the mysterious yet intuitive nature of his creativity.

Time: 6:00pm

Snow Leopard

Pema Tseden, China, 2023, 109 mins

On the Tibetan plateau, two brothers face off – a herder who is enraged that a snow leopard has killed nine of his rams, and a monk who believes he can communicate with the leopard. Directed by the late Pema Tseden, the first director from China to make films shot entirely in Tibet, Snow Leopard captures beautifully the complicated relationship with nature and society on the Tibetan plateau.

Time: 8:30pm

March 30, 2025

The Stand

Christopher Auchter, Canada, 2024, 95 mins

On a misty morning in the fall of 1985, a small group of Haida people blockaded a muddy dirt road on Lyell Island, demanding the government work with Indigenous people to find a way to protect the land and the future. In a riveting new feature documentary drawn from more than a hundred hours of archival footage and audio, award-winning director Christopher Auchter (Now Is the Time ) recreates the critical moment when the Haida Nation’s resolute act of vision and conscience changed the world.

Time: 1:00pm

Ithaca Murals: A Community Conversation

Join the team behind Ithaca Murals to discuss their ongoing project of bringing people and voices together to transform our local environments through the visual storytelling and collective empowerment of community murals. Individual murals will be discussed and illustrated through the parallel moving images that document the creation and afterlife of amazing murals across Ithaca and beyond.

Time: 3:30pm

A Thousand Pines

Sebastián Díaz / Noam Osband, USA, 2023, 77 mins

A Thousand Pines shows the lives of migrants who depend on the controversial guest worker visa program, following a crew of workers from Oaxaca, Mexico over the course of a season planting trees throughout the United States. In this tale of labor and family that shines a light on the precarity of temporary work visas, Raymundo Morales leads a crew of workers who have to make the challenging decision to leave their families in rural Mexico to plant commercial pine forests in the United States.

Time: 6:00pm

My Stolen Planet

Farahnaz Sharifi, Germany / Iran, 2024, 82 mins

My Stolen Planet is a diary-style narrative by Farah, an Iranian filmmaker, who captures moments of joy and defiance in her daily life, navigating the contrast between domestic freedom and external oppression. Simultaneously, she collects 8mm archives from people she doesn't know. Relying on others' recordings, she gains a new perspective on losing memories. Leyla, an Iranian professor who left Iran during the revolution, adds a name and story to one of her archive's faces. Farah's mother, suffering from Alzheimer's, motivates her to fight against forgetting. In the fall of 2022, the Women, Life, Freedom uprising became a turning point in Farah's life, as well as in the lives of many others in Iran.

Time: 8:30pm

March 31, 2025

Youth (Hard Times)

Wang Bing, China, 2024, 227 mins

Youth (Hard Times) is the second installment in Wang Bing’s monumental series chronicling the lives of migrant garment workers in the Zhili district of Huzhou City. Wang immerses himself in the lives of these workers, as they try to find potential dates, negotiate better piece-work rates with bosses, and sew, sew, sew, everything from padded jackets, to jeans, to pillows. While the film captures a sense of their struggles, it also highlights a growing solidarity. But the workers recognize — as the film’s sole interview makes clear — that ultimately they are up against the forces of capital and the state, and those forces won’t hesitate to crush them if it thinks they are getting too far out of line.

Time: 7:30pm

April 2, 2025

Lyd

Rami Younis / Sarah Ema Friedland, Palestine / UK / USA, 2023, 79 mins

This feature-length, sci-fi documentary shares multiple pasts, presents, and futures of the city of Lyd in Palestine/Israel. From the perspective of the city herself, the viewer is guided through the lifespan of a five-thousand-year-old city and its residents. Once a thriving Palestinian city with a rich history, when the State of Israel was founded in 1948, Lyd became an Israeli city. In the process, hundreds were massacred by Israeli forces, and most of the city’s 50,000 Palestinian residents were exiled. Today, the city has a Jewish Israeli majority and a Palestinian minority and is disinvested and divided by racism and violence, but this film dares to ask: what would the city be like had the Israeli occupation of Lyd never happened?

Time: 7:30pm

April 3, 2025

Shorts in Focus: 'Border Dwellers'

Screening and extended discussion of 'Border Dwellers' (Cathy Lee Crane, US, 2025, 19 mins) as a deep dive into the creative possibilities of the short film in relation to this year's special festival theme: 'movement.'

This screening will feature a single-channel version of a multi-channel work, 'Drawing the Line,' originally presented in gallery installation through the Harun Farocki Institute in Berlin, Germany:

A mosaic portrait of people who live along the US/Mexico border. Each of the fourteen channels represents one of the many crossing towns from Tijuana on the left to El Paso & the Rio Grande on the right.

Time: 7:30pm

April 4, 2025

Once Upon a Time in a Forest

Virpi Suutari, Finland, 2024, 93 mins

Once Upon A Time in a Forest unfolds as a modern fairy tale in the enchanting embrace of the Finnish forest. We witness young people seamlessly woven into the fabric of nature, swimming in crystalline lakes and reveling in the calm presence of the ancient trees. This idyllic harmony is imperiled as the forest faces man-made extinction. Driven by her love for the forest, 22-year-old Ida becomes the leader of the new Forest Movement, coming face to face with Finnish forest industry giants and confronting generational bias. Breathtaking visuals take viewers into the heart of the forest and the center of the conflict. The film is a hopeful ode to nature and its protectors.

Time: 6:00pm

The Invisible Doctrine: The Secret History of Neoliberalism (& how it came to control your life)

Peter Hutchison / Lucas Sabean, USA, 2025, 75 mins

The Invisible Doctrine – featuring activist & best-selling author George Monbiot – deconstructs the roots, secretive propagation and deep impact of a doctrine that has played a profound role in transforming our economics, politics, environment, and even how we’ve come to view ourselves – converting us from citizens to consumers in the process.

Time: 8:30pm

April 5, 2025

Bring Them Home

Ivan MacDonald / Ivy MacDonald / Daniel Glick, USA, 2024, 85 mins

Bring Them Home examines the deeply meaningful role that buffalo played in Blackfeet life prior to the arrival of settlers who nearly eradicated wild buffalo in an effort to eradicate the Blackfeet people. For Blackfeet, the buffalo are seen not only as fundamental to a healthy ecosystem, but as spiritual relatives. Their removal from the land meant the loss of the Blackfeet way of life, the trauma of which still reverberates today. In the present, the film focuses on Ervin Carlson, director of the Blackfeet Buffalo Program and Paulette Fox, co-creator of the Iinnii Initiative, who join forces with non-native conservation groups, such as the Wildlife Conservation Society of New York City, who recognize the buffalo as a keystone species not only for Blackfeet lands, but for North America’s ecological stability. Narrated by Lily Gladstone.

Time: 1:00pm

Borderland - The Line Within

Pamela Yates, USA, 2024, 110 mins

The United States border is not just a geographic location. The border is everywhere. It lies within every undocumented immigrant family with the threat that at any moment they can be captured, incarcerated, deported; their lives destroyed. Borderland | The Line Within not only exposes the profitable business of immigration and its human cost, but weaves together the stories of immigrant heroines and heroes resisting and showing a way forward, intent on building a movement in the shadow of the border industrial complex, recognizing the human rights of all.

Time: 3:30pm

Single-Use Planet

Steve Cowan, USA, 2024, 59 mins

Plastic is vital in so many ways to our modern way of life and well-being—but not all forms of it. In search of why more and more single-use plastic debris enters the ocean despite all efforts to recycle, SINGLE-USE PLANET goes upstream to where millions of tons of raw plastic are being made amidst the ruins of America's bygone steel industry in Pennsylvania. Further upstream, we see the economic and political realities that have boosted the new industry—realities reaching all the way to rural Louisiana where plans are laid to build the biggest plastic plant in the world. Can the powerful industry be persuaded to temper their production of single-use plastic? Our search leads to Washington D.C.—where a federal bill to regulate the industry remains stalled—and finally to France, where the prohibition of campaign donations by corporations may provide a key to the effective reduction of plastic pollution.

Time: 6:00pm

Sleep With Your Eyes Open

Nele Wohlatz, Brazil / Taiwan / Argentina / Germany, 2024, 97 mins

A coastal city in Brazil. Kai arrives from Taiwan for holidays with a broken heart. A broken air conditioner sends her into Fu Ang’s umbrella store. He could become a friend, but the rainy season doesn't arrive and his shop disappears. While looking for Fu Ang, Kai discovers the story of Xiaoxin and a group of Chinese workers in a posh skyscraper. Kai finds herself strangely mirrored in Xiaoxin’s tale.

Time: 8:30pm

April 6, 2025

Festivals in Focus

Join the conversation as festival guests explore their work in relation to this year's special festival theme: 'movement.'

Time: 1:00pm

Tigre Gente

Elizabeth Unger, USA, 2021, 93 mins

As China pours hundreds of billions of dollars into South American infrastructure, jaguars are disappearing from the continent’s most protected rainforests. Targeted as substitutes for tiger parts, which have historically been used in traditional Chinese medicines, jaguars are now being trafficked at dangerously high numbers to fill a new market demand. A Bolivian park ranger and a young Hong Kongese journalist risk their lives to go undercover and investigate a new, deadly jaguar trade that’s sweeping South America. Along the way, they grapple with questions of empathy, responsibility, and bridging a cultural gap to prevent the jaguar trade from spiraling out of control.

Time: 3:30pm

Let Them Be Naked

Jeff Garner, USA, 2024, 104 mins

Let Them Be Naked is an audacious exploration into the presence of toxic and often harmful chemicals in the fabrics and materials used in our everyday clothing. Since his mother’s death from breast cancer, designer and activist Jeff Garner has spearheaded a campaign to uncover the health implications of exposure to these chemicals and the urgent need for more ethical production of garments. His advocacy has created relationships with research organizations and innovators across the globe, all leading the conversation surrounding unregulated toxins in the fashion industry.

Time: 6:00pm

The Echo

Tatiana Huezo, Mexico / Germany, 2023, 102 mins

In the remote village of El Eco that exists outside of time, the children care for the sheep and their elders. While the frost and drought punish the land, they learn to understand death, illness and love with each act, word and silence of their parents. A story about the echo of what clings to the soul, about the certainty of shelter provided by those around us, about rebellion and vertigo in the face of life. About growing up.

Time: 8:30pm

April 7, 2025

Apple Cider Vinegar

Sofie Benoot, Belgium / Netherlands, 2024, 80 mins

Stones are at once the most foundational and the most overlooked parts of our lifeworld. When a retired nature documentary narrator passes a kidney stone, she decides to tell one more story about this forgotten world of stone. A hypnotic essay film asking urgent ecological questions, Apple Cider Vinegar takes the viewer on a journey meeting Palestinian quarry workers, a passionate British geologist and people living on the lava fields of Fogo.

Time: 7:30pm

April 9, 2025

The Legend of the Vagabond Queen of Lagos

The Agbajowo Collective, Nigeria / Germany / South Africa / USA, 2024, 101 mins

The Legend of the Vagabond Queen of Lagos tells the story of a young mother from a waterfront slum in Lagos who stumbles upon a horde of corrupt blood-money earmarked for a luxury condo development to be built where her community stands, and a journey that takes her from isolated individualism to a being a unifying force in a community that stands to lose everything. The film brings the audience into the world of Lagos’s waterfront settlements with an unprecedented realism – one in which the magical is woven into the mundane, and where the waterways and footpaths bustle in ancestral rhythms under the shadow of ever-encroaching urbanization.

Time: 7:30pm

April 10, 2025

Youth (Homecoming)

Wang Bing, China, 2024, 152 mins

Youth (Homecoming) is the final installment in Wang Bing’s ambitious trilogy on the young workers of Zhili. In contrast to the previous films, here Wang focuses more closely on a handful of characters, following them on their journeys back to their families, riding packed trains and negotiating perilous mountain roads. Back home, the factories of Zhili seem far away, as Shi Wei and another young worker, Fang Lingping, celebrate weddings. After the holidays end, the newlyweds and other workers head back to Zhili. Youth is a fitting end to the series — a quieter and more intimate film, and a powerful record of the unseen young labor force that drives garment production at a steep personal cost.

Time: 7:30pm

April 11, 2025

Arts in Movement: Panel Discussion of FLEFF 2025's New Media Exhibition

Join artists, scholars, and curators to discuss the work in this year's online exhibition, Arts in Movement. This event is co-sponsored by the Media and Society program, Hobart and William Smith Colleges, Geneva, USA.

Zoom: 12:00pm

Are We There Yet?: Compassionate Explorations with Issues of Immigration

Thomas Hoebbel, USA, 2024, 75 mins

Our country is facing unprecedented immigration reform and migrants are suffering the most. ¿Are We There Yet? examines the immigration narratives of people from Asia, Africa, Central, and South America. The film takes a compassionate look at migration and facilitates immigrants telling their own stories: of their journeys to the United States, hardships they experienced along the way, and the challenges they have faced in the US. Set against a backdrop of the increasingly caustic rhetoric espoused by national figures proclaiming "an invasion of our country," ¿Are We There Yet? examines the complex history of US immigration while searching for a path forward.

Time: 6:00pm

A New Kind of Wilderness

Silje Evensmo Jacobsen, Norway, 2024, 84 mins

On a small farm in a Norwegian forest, the Paynes live a purposefully isolated life, aiming to be wild and free. Maria and Nik, along with their four children Ulv, Falk, Freja, and Ronja are self-sufficient. They practice home-schooling and strive for a closely-knit family dynamic in harmony with nature. However, when tragedy strikes the family, it upends their idyllic world and forces them to forge a new path into modern society. In A New Kind Of Wilderness, filmmaker Silje Evensmo Jacobsen captures an intimate and soulful portrait of love, life, and growing up, one that reflects on our own life choices, our responsibility to the planet and our children, and how we navigate life after loss.

Time: 8:30pm

April 12, 2025

A Conversation with Arthur Groys (Ithaca City of Asylum Artist Protection Fund Fellow)

Meet Ithaca City of Asylum (ICOA)'s artist in residence, Arthur Groys, and learn more about his acclaimed work in Russian children's television and subsequent journey from Moscow to Ithaca, NY. Arthur is currently a fellow of the Artist Protection Fund (a program of the Institute of International Education) and in residence at Ithaca College.

Time: 1:00pm

Video Essay Shorts

In this rare chance to see a program of video essay shorts projected on the big screen, some of the most celebrated video essays of recent years dig deep into the archive of sounds and images – old and new – to reimagine and reassemble these sources in surprising new ways as a dazzling means of exploring the world around us and the role of the environment in our cinematic imaginary.

Documentaries on the Sensory Journey (Max Ranieri)
A History of the World According to Getty Images (Richard Misek)
Volcanic Visions (Johannes Binotto)
Fire Film Supercut (Daniel Pope)
Tomahawk Clouds (Eric Marsh)
Onscreen a Dream, Offscreen a Waste (Max Tohline)

Time: 3:30pm

Farming While Black

Mark Decena, USA, 2023, 75 mins

Leah Penniman, co-founder of Soul Fire Farm, reflects on the plight of Black farmers in the United States. From the height of Black-owned farms at 14% in 1910 to less than 2% today. Leah and her Soul Fire Farm cohorts help propel a rising generation finding strength in the deep historical knowledge of African agrarianism - and its potential to save the planet.

Time: 6:00pm

The End of St. Petersburg

Vsevolod Pudovkin, Soviet Union, 1927, 90 mins

Created to commemorate the 10th anniversary of the October Revolution, the film tells the story of how the Bolshevik party came to power, but through the lens of a peasant boy’s journey from slave laborer to political revolutionary. Pudovkin employed a mix of classical and montage editing styles to produce a feeling of tension in the audience. The result is both a deeply emotional and stylized work of epic filmmaking. Featuring a live musical accompaniment by long-time FLEFF collaborators, Cloud Chamber Orchestra.

Time: 8:30pm

April 13, 2025

Elliott and Schlemowitz’s Magic Lantern Show: Views of Nature and Moving Images Before the Movies

Join experimental filmmaker and magic lantern afficianado Joel Schlemowitz for a spectacular live journey in the elemental images conjured through the pre-cinematic play of light and shadow. 19th century optical devices will project a flight of fantasy through the environmental imaginations of a prior era, bringing to life visions of the natural world in a specially curated program unique to FLEFF 2025 and its special theme of 'movement.'

Time: 1:00pm

7 Walks With Mark Brown

Vincent Barré / Pierre Creton, France, 2024, 104 mins

7 Walks with Mark Brown focuses on paleobotanist Mark Brown through Normandy as he identifies the rare flora of the region as part of his attempt to recreate a primary forest in his own garden in Normandy. This “phytocentric road movie” follows Brown as he leads a small group scouting for Indigenous plants while sharing his ecological knowledge and passion for his work with them. A gorgeous and meditative reflection on life, nature, and passion.

Time: 3:30pm

Every Little Thing

Sally Aitken, USA, 2024, 93 mins

Author and wildlife rehabber Terry Masear has an ambitious goal: to save every injured hummingbird in Los Angeles. But the path to survival is fraught with danger. This heart-expanding Sundance hit introduces audiences to Terry's diminutive patients through breathtaking slow-motion photography and emotional storytelling. Over the course of director Sally Aitken’s moving documentary, we become deeply invested in baby hummingbirds like Cactus and Wasabi, celebrating their tiny victories and lamenting their tragedies. Through Terry's eyes, each bird becomes memorable, mighty and heroic. Her compassion and empathy serves as a reminder that grace can be found in the smallest of acts and the tiniest of creatures.

Time: 6:00pm

Nocturnes

Anirban Dutta / Anupama Srinivasan, India / USA, 2024, 83 mins

In the dense forests of the Eastern Himalayas, moths are whispering something to us. In the dark of night, two curious observers shine a light on this secret universe. Together, they are on an expedition to decode these nocturnal creatures in a remote ecological “hot spot” on the border of India and Bhutan. The result is a deeply immersive film that transports audiences to a rarely-seen place and urges us all to look more closely at the hidden interconnections of the natural world.

Time: 8:30pm

Date: March 28 - April 13, 2025

Location: Cinemapolis, 120 E Green St, Ithaca, NY 14850

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