Coach Walt Manigan mentors young boxers at his after-school program in Washington, D.C.’s Ward 8.

Canada loses $80 billion annually in tax revenue to corporations legally, and aggressively, exploiting tax loopholes. Were this money taxed, instead of flowing into offshore tax havens, the Canadian government would garner $20 billion annually. Facing deficits and lay-offs, this film explores both sides: those who believe this is good for Canada, and those who believe it endangers democracy itself.

The ostensibly simple story of a sympathetic veteran teacher giving Italian lessons to a weekly class of diverse immigrants is given infinitely more depth and complexity by the manner in which director Daniele Gaglianone renders his story. Blurring the lines between fact and fiction, truth and artifice, and between documentary and drama, Gaglianone has created a film within a film. You see the apparent artifice of Gaglianone’s crew using professionals, including the noted film actor Valerio Mastandrea as the teacher, interlinked with ‘real’ immigrant protagonists, studying the language to improve their chances of employment and of gaining a permanent residence permit. Thus in the course of the lessons there is simultaneously the painful and upsetting relation of the students’ personal stories but also humour, as they interact and share their humanity, bridging cultural differences, united in their striving to make a better life for themselves. (Source: LFF programme)

Documentary exploring the case of Miranda Barbour, who lured a man into meeting her with a sex ad and then killed him. She then confessed to 22 more murders, committed as part of a Satanic cult. But is she really a serial killer?

In 1959, Berry Gordy Jr. gathered the best musicians from Detroit’s thriving jazz and blues scene to begin cutting songs for his new record company. Over a fourteen year period they were the heartbeat on every hit from Motown’s Detroit era. By the end of their phenomenal run, this unheralded group of musicians had played on more number ones hits than the Beach Boys, the Rolling Stones, Elvis and the Beatles combined – which makes them the greatest hit machine in the history of popular music. They called themselves the Funk Brothers. Forty-one years after they played their first note on a Motown record and three decades since they were all together, the Funk Brothers reunited back in Detroit to play their music and tell their unforgettable story, with the help of archival footage, still photos, narration, interviews, re-creation scenes, 20 Motown master tracks, and twelve new live performances of Motown classics with the Brothers backing up contemporary performers.

On the dating tour to Odessa, Ukraine, Ten North American and European men have 10 days to find a partner for the rest of their lives. How: Social gatherings introduce the men to hundreds of skimpy dressed young and beautiful Ukrainian girls, not to mention a bikini contest. Now, the men have to choose the women to go on dates with, overcome the language barrier, cultural differences, age gap and filter out the scammers. Four couples are formed but can they go the distance? Come on this personal journey and discover that not all men are losers, not all women are scammers and the romantic Odessa is dangerously seductive. After the intoxication of the tour is over only one couple will stay together, but it is not the one you would have guessed.

Jamie Roberts’ documentary filmed over the course of two years, which takes an intimate look at the people spreading extremist fundamentalism in Britain. In 2014 Roberts filmed Islamic extremist Abu Rumaysah, who is now one of the world’s most wanted men and is suspected of being the British jihadi in the latest IS execution video. This film gains extraordinary access to a new wave of extremists, including Rumaysah, who are radicalising and grooming young British Muslims, and asks whether they really have non-violent aims, as they claim, or are a genuine threat to society.

Schooled: The Price of College Sports is a comprehensive look at the business, history and culture of big-time college football and basketball in America. It is an adaptation of “The Cartel” by Pulitzer Prize Winning civil rights scholar Taylor Branch, and his October 2011 article in The Atlantic, “The Shame of College Sports.” Schooled presents a hard-hitting examination of the NCAA’s treatment of its athletes and amateurism in collegiate athletics; weaving interviews, archival and verité footage to tell a story of how college sports became a billion dollar industry built on the backs of athletes who are deprived of numerous rights.

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For the past 26 years 16 expeditions have tried and failed to climb one of Pakistan’s 8,000 meter peaks in winter. On February 2, 2011, Simone Moro, Denis Urubko and Cory Richards became the first. Cory is now the only American to summit any 8,000 meter peak in winter. The journey nearly killed them. Cory carried a small camera and filmed the ordeal constantly. This is their story, as seen from the raw, honest perspective of Cory’s lens.

Canadian documentarian Jamie Kastner (The Secret Disco Revolution) looks back at a notorious 1970s murder trial in the Virgin Islands — where five politicized young islanders were convicted of a massacre at a ritzy country club — and its dramatic aftermath a decade later, when the culprits’ ostensible leader staged a skyjacking and found refuge in Cuba.

Penetrating the insular world of New York’s Hasidic community, focusing on three individuals driven to break away despite threats of retaliation.