The Acadian Connection

The Tattooed Police Horse(en)

Barred from racing for breaking stride, a trotting horse finds a new career as a police officer's mount in Boston.

Buzz One Four(en)

Buzz One Four chronicles the ill-fated flight of a Cold War B-52 Stratofortress loaded with two 3-4-megaton nuclear bombs that crashed 90 miles from Washington DC in 1961. Information suggests that detonation came closer than official reports indicated. The full details of the crash have remained classified and otherwise repressed by the Air Force, but the filmmaker, Portlander Matt McCormick, grew up with this story because the pilot was his grandfather. As McCormick recounts the history of the era, aspects of this crash, and other little-know nuclear-weapons accidents, he leaves us wondering if the U.S. was in greater danger of nuking itself than of being attacked by the Russians.

The House We Lived In(en)

Nearly a decade in the making, The House We Lived In is a strikingly candid portrait of a family transformed by a father’s brain injury. In 2011, 61-year-old Tod O’Donnell awoke from a coma with a case of total amnesia that doctors assured his wife and children was temporary. But when it proved permanent, and for no discernible reason, the O’Donnell’s were left to themselves to untangle the mystery — a struggle for answers that would only raise more questions as they came to realize, painfully, that the real mystery was Tod himself.

Eneida(pt)

Eneida, 83 years old, makes a journey into her past, in search of her firstborn daughter, whom she has not seen for over two decades.

The Unwanted: The Secret Windrush Files(en)

David Olusoga opens secret government files to show how the Windrush scandal and the ‘hostile environment’ for black British immigrants has been 70 years in the making.

An Intervention(en)

Chelsea Bledsoe and her husband Graig throw a surprise intervention for her old high school boyfriend, Henry, with a mismatched group of acquaintances from back in the day to fill out the guest list.

Neirud(pt)

Aunt Neirud was always present at family gatherings. Neirud was big, strong, and worked in the circus. Who was this woman so close to the family and about whom we know so little?

Les Yeux de ma Mer(fr)

The Spider and the Fly(en)

Few amateur films with sound were produced in the 1930s and fewer remain extant. A charming artifact that demonstrates the expressive possibilities and technical limitations of amateur talkies, "The Spider and the Fly" includes a backyard Labor Day gathering, a trip to the Riverview Amusement Park, and a homemade Halloween parade of witches and ghouls.

Sam & Mattie Make a Zombie Movie(en)

Documentary about the making of ’Spring Break Zombie Massacre.’

Small Talk(zh)

In the table that symbolizes the value of traditional women, a woman who wants to break free from her family must face her daughter.

Dim Sum (A Little Bit of Heart)(en)

Documentarist Jane Wong films her mother and two Chinese friends as they discuss their lives and experiences as émigrés living in Liverpool.

Century of Smoke(en)

Laosan, a young family man, spends all his time smoking opium. For his community, lost in the heart of the Laotian jungle, opium farming is the only way to survive. But opium is also the poison that puts men to sleep and kills their desires.

Bad Axe(en)

A real-time portrait of 2020 unfolds as an Asian-American family in Trump’s rural America fights to keep their restaurant and American dream alive in the face of a pandemic, Neo-Nazis, and generational scars from the Cambodian Killing Fields.

2 or 3 Things I Know About Him(de)

What would your family reminiscences about dad sound like if he had been an early supporter of Hitler’s, a leader of the notorious SA and the Third Reich’s minister in charge of Slovakia, including its Final Solution? Executed as a war criminal in 1947, Hanns Ludin left behind a grieving widow and six young children, the youngest of whom became a filmmaker. It's a fascinating, maddening, sometimes even humorous look at what the director calls "a typical German story." (Film Forum)

Clacton Pier(xx)

The family enjoys a sunny but windy day on the pier in Clacton-On-Sea.

Harrow Hospital Carnival(xx)

Harrow’s extraordinary and opulent pageant, and seaside holidays on the south coast.

Not Bad at All(en)

Every weekend for six years, Jessica takes a bus from NYC, where she lives and works as a set decorator, to Boston, her hometown, where she cares for her dad, Aloysius, who is 87 and has advanced Alzheimer's disease.

Ireland(xx)

Film capturing a family holiday on the North Antrim coast, with trips to the Giant's Causeway and the Carrick-a-Rede Rope Bridge.

The Story of the Weeping Camel(mn)

When a Mongolian nomadic family's newest camel colt is rejected by its mother, a musician is needed for a ritual to change her mind.