For over a decade, this portrait of a North Philadelphia family and the creative sanctuary offered by their home music studio was filmed with vérité intimacy. The family’s 10-year journey is an illumination of race and class in America, and it’s a testament to love, healing and hope.

A charismatic activist works to build a better Chicago for the teens in his neglected community even if it comes at the cost of his home, his family, and his safety.

Anas has been called the James Bond of Ghanaian journalism. He’s exposed a sex-trafficking ring by masquerading as a bartender, uncovered deplorable conditions in Accra’s psychiatric hospital, posed as a crown prince in order to bypass a rebel checkpoint. His unorthodox methods are infamous throughout Ghana, but, despite his notoriety, his face is unknown to the public. The film takes us behind the scenes of the Tiger Eye Investigations Bureau hot on the heels of his next big case.

Doctors expose the junk science behind a criminal justice crisis.

“Raised by Krump” explores the LA-born dance movement “krumping,” and how the dance has helped the lives of some of the area’s most influential dancers.

For over 40 years Val Kilmer, one of Hollywood’s most mercurial and/or misunderstood actors has been documenting his own life and craft through film and video. He has amassed thousands of hours of footage, from 16mm home movies made with his brothers, to time spent in iconic roles for blockbuster movies like Top Gun, The Doors, Tombstone, and Batman Forever. This raw, wildly original and unflinching documentary reveals a life lived to extremes and a heart-filled, sometimes hilarious look at what it means to be an artist and a complex man.

Chronological look at the life and career of Johnny Carson (1925-2005), with commentary from an ex-wife and more than 30 fellow comedians, friends, employees, and biographers. The biography defines why Carson was an enduring star (his cool, his timing, his genuine laugh, his breadth of knowledge) and pursues his motivations and inner self (a loner with a drinking problem, a decent Midwesterner whose mother withheld approval, a quiet person who loved to entertain). The key to understanding him, argues the biography, is his love of magic.

Before Bad Brains, the Sex Pistols or even the Ramones, there was Death. Formed in the early ’70s by three teenage brothers from Detroit, Death is credited as being the first black punk band, and the Hackney brothers, David, Bobby, and Dannis, are now considered pioneers in their field. But it wasn’t until recently — when a dusty 1974 demo tape made its way out of Bobby’s attic nearly 30 years after Death’s heyday — that anyone outside a small group of punk enthusiasts had even heard of them.

Follows a soldier trying to gain recognition for comrades who died in 1948, at a turning point in the civil war between the communists and the nationalist forces of the Kuomintang (KMT).

From filmmaker Dawn Porter (who earlier this year directed “John Lewis: Good Trouble”), the film explores the remarkable journey of Jordan from modest Southern origins to national renown as a pioneering attorney, businessman, civil rights leader, and as a fixture (could one also say a “fixer?”) on the DC scene. Jordan’s story is told principally through a chronological narration of his life and accomplishment, most of it taken from recent (2019) interviews with and narration by Jordan himself. His early life in Atlanta is limned, where Jordan describes the treasured influence of his mother Mary and his early academic successes (including a law degree from Howard University). His activities in the civil rights movement in the 1960’s and 1970’s are highlighted, culminating in his ten-year tenure as director of the Urban League.

After escaping Russia’s communist revolution, Leon Theremin travels to New York, where he pioneers the field of electronic music with his synthesizer. But at the height of his popularity, Soviet agents kidnap and force him to develop spy technology. Steven M. Martin writes and directs this intriguing documentary about a man’s “strange” music and his very interesting life as an inventor and influential musician.

Renowned documentary filmmaker D.A. Pennebaker captures Otis Redding in his ascendancy, singing at the historic Monterey International Pop Festival in June 1967. Comedian Tom Smothers introduces Redding to a crowd that is leaving — until Redding grabs them with his charged rendition of “Shake.” Redding’s performance also includes “Respect” (which he wrote), “I’ve Been Loving You Too Long,” “Satisfaction,” and “Try a Little Tenderness.” Tragically, Redding died in a plane crash six months later. An innovative filmmaker who started in the 1950s making experimental films, Pennebaker garnered an Oscar nomination for Best Documentary Feature in 1993 for The War Room, his behind-the-scenes look at Bill Clinton’s 1992 campaign. His other subjects have included Norman Mailer, Bob Dylan, and David Bowie.