In the future, wars will be fought over water, but in Mexico the war has already begun. This documentary contemplates Mexico’s destiny, telling the story of the struggle of its indigenous people to preserve their natural resources and their cultural identity.

On the official web site of the Brazilian Environmental Institute, the Brazilian wood pernambuco appears on the list of plant species threatened with extinction. Found only in the remnants of the devastated Atlantic Rainforest in the coast of Brazil, this tree has been vital in the manufacturing of fine violin bows and other instruments ever since Mozart was composing his masterpieces in Vienna. A Arvore da Música explores a path to saving the imperiled trees, along with the music that depends on them.

In the 1980s, at the height of the Cold War, a bloody civil war between the Soviet-friendly Sandinistas and U.S.-backed Contras ravaged Nicaragua. Despite the danger, thousands of Americans disobeyed White House warnings and descended upon the Central American nation, determined to lend their skills and labor to the social-democratic Sandinista cause. Using an eclectic mixture of rare archival footage, arresting still photography, and contemporary interviews, American/Sandinista tells the story of a small group of controversial U.S. engineers who partnered with local communities and went further than anyone expected, risking their lives in the process.

In 1999, two brothers were deported from the United States to Mexico. Within two weeks, one of them overdosed on heroin in a seedy Tijuana hotel room, his body left unclaimed for two months in a mass grave. These U.S.-raised men, military veterans, were deported from the only country they knew—and had sworn to protect—to forge new lives in Mexico. Against the backdrop of increased attention to the U.S.-Mexico border, filmmaker Monika Navarro draws on her family’s experience to explore national identity and ties, the lives of immigrants, and what happens after deportees are sent to a homeland they don’t consider home.

A glimpse into the maestro’s life and music, Cachao: Uno más pays tribute to one of the greatest Afro-Cuban musicians of all time, Israel López “Cachao.” This documentary, produced by the DOC Film Institute at San Francisco State, features a live concert in San Francisco and interviews with musical collaborators including Andy García, John Santos, Ray Santos and Orestes Vilató, who help trace Cachao’s musical journey from his early days in Cuba to worldwide fame and recognition.

Casimiro tells the story of an illegal immigrant living in central Texas. As Casimiro tries to write a comforting letter to his family back home, we experience the truth about his days in America. The story follows him through his difficult routine, and demonstrates how a lonely man copes with hardships.

Children of the Amazon follows Brazilian filmmaker Denise Zmekhol to the heart of the Amazon rainforest, in search of the indigenous children she photographed 15 years before. The film invites the viewer to see through the eyes of these inspiring, remarkably resilient people, whose lives have been transformed by a road that was carved through their forest home by an outside world. Poetic and visually stunning, this film engages the senses and sympathies as global issues take on a profoundly human perspective.

Ever since Brian Marquez was murdered on a San Francisco street corner in 2005, his father, Luis, has been on a quest to find the killers that took his son. During the traditional Mexican holiday of Day of the Dead, Close to Home portrays a father that has yet to deal with the death of his son, and a daughter who longs to reconnect with the father she once had.

Conversations II offers an intimate look at the female universe; a journey in time through evocative images and the testimonies of women from the same family. Through the personal search of a daughter into the lives of her mother and grandmother, the film explores the evolution of the female role in a Latin American society and how the views of marriage and motherhood have changed with each generation, as well as the view that women have of themselves.

Crude tells the epic story of one of the largest and most controversial legal cases on the planet. An inside look at the infamous $27 billion “Amazon Chernobyl” case, Crude is a real-life, high stakes, legal drama set against the backdrop of the environmental movement, global politics, celebrity activism, human rights advocacy, the media, multinational corporate power, and rapidly disappearing indigenous cultures. Presenting a complex situation from multiple viewpoints, the film brings an important story of environmental peril and human suffering into focus.

Using home movies and other media, Diário de Sintra documents director Paula Gaitán’s return to the Portuguese city of Sintra, to search for memories of her late husband, Brazilian cinema novo pioneer Glauber Rocha. Gaitán and Rocha lived exiled in Portugal in 1981 with their two children, Eryk and Ava, before his untimely death. The filmmaker’s layered experimental work creates an impression of the past through its rich accumulation of images, meditations, and reminiscences.

A woman facing a bleak future recounts her life in sketchy, seemingly random, episodes. One by one the scars and despair left by a life ridden with responsibilities and sacrifice, but little joy, inevitably emerge. Diario del fin is a visceral and moving account filled with brutally honest, yet liberating, confessions.

Past and present collide as filmmaker Natalia Almada brings to life audio recordings she inherited from her grandmother—reminiscences about Natalia’s great-grandfather General Plutarco Elías Calles, a revolutionary general who became president of Mexico in 1924. In his time, Calles was called “El Bolshevique” and “El Jefe Máximo” (the foremost chief). Today, he is remembered as “el Quema-Curas” (the Burner of Priests) and as a dictator who ruled through puppet presidents until he was exiled in 1936. Through his daughter’s recordings, El General moves between the memories of a daughter grappling with her memory of her family life versus history’s portrait of her father, and the weight of his legacy in the country today.

Exiled In America is a film that explores immigration issues in the United States related to detention and deportation from the point of view of those most affected: children. Over 1.5 million immigrants have been deported since 1996—a policy that has torn families apart and led to human rights violations. Exiled In America tells the story of five siblings who struggle to live in America after their mother was deported to Mexico.

Extranjero is a short film about belonging. The smell of things, the noises and the flavors of the country left behind, haunt you and make you realize that life, maybe, wasn't that terrible back in your country.

Fotógrafos reveals the stories of the photographers who work at the foot of the stairs of the Capitol in Havana, Cuba. Their beautiful antique cameras may be relics of the past as supplies become harder and harder to acquire, yet they remain upbeat as they preserve the images of visitors in sepia-toned photographs.

A story about an immigrant's beloved, whose sadness and loneliness are not eased by the remittances sent back to them.

The lodging house owned by Rosa Carbajal at the corner of Shakespeare and Victor Hugo streets in Mexico City, is a shelter that hides an intimate and passionate story. Twenty years ago Rosa met Jorge Riosse, a young tenant who became her closest friend and for eight years made indelible marks on everyone he knew. But after his sudden death, some dark characteristics emerged. The film is a profound sketch of two lonely characters whose lives become strongly and strangely entwined.

The movie documents a cross-cultural conquest dance, La Danza de la Pluma, which evolved from Zapotec dance rituals in Oaxaca under the influence of the Spanish colonizers. It incorporates the struggle between Moctezuma and Cortez, Christianity and paganism, with several variations as to the ultimate victor. It has deep cultural significance and importance, with dancers committing themselves for a three-year period, and involves much ritual preparation and community involvement. The movie focuses on the dancers' motivations, their three-year commitment, the sacrifices involved, and how this ancient tradition has survived.

Does Venezuela represent the dream of a new socialist society or is it just another distortion of populism and dictatorship? A trip with President Chávez over the largest oil reserve in the world, situated beneath the Orinoco River, becomes the occasion in which to enter into the lives of Venezuelans, nine years after the beginning of the Bolivarian Revolution. The government missions to fight illiteracy and hunger, the creation of a public health care system, and the development of an economy based on cooperative work are some of the achievements which characterize the Chavez era. But on the other hand there are the country’s 60 violent deaths a week and its collapsing hospitals, the closure of the most popular television channel, the old European immigrants in flight, the opposition black list, and the ubiquitous government propaganda. Venezuela en route to socialism: is this still possible in our post-ideological times.

The life of actress Camila Quiroga (1891-1948) seems to have been forgotten. In 1943 an autobiography in a magazine detailed her trips around Latin America and Europe, and discussed her pro-proletarian film Juan sin ropa (1919). Juan sin ropa’s scheduled release unfortunately coincided with Argentina’s Semana Trágica (“Tragic Week”), when a series of labor revolts in Buenos Aires were violently suppressed. But 60 years after her death, interviewees throughout this documentary bring to light more intricate details and stories about the acclaimed actress that would have been otherwise left forgotten.

For over 50 years, the Kahnawake Mohawks of Quebec, Canada occupied a 10 square-block hub in the North Gowanus section of Brooklyn, which became known as Little Caughnawaga. The men, skilled ironworkers, came to New York in search of work and brought their wives, children and, often, extended family with them. Little Caughnawaga tells the personal story of Mohawk filmmaker Reaghan Tarbell from Kahnawake, Quebec, as she explores her roots and traces the connections of her family to the once legendary Mohawk community through the stories of the women who lived there.

In 1930, the American Smelting & Refining Company hired William "Bill" Parker to work at the Angangueo mines in Michoacán. Bill arrived with his girlfriend, Joyce Hartzell, a photographer. Bill and Joyce fell in love with the town and its simple ways and decided to make it their permanent home. Bill was an amateur filmmaker and used his 16mm camera to shoot several documentaries portraying day-to-day life in Angangueo and Joyce’s trips around Spain and South America. But Joyce died in 1975, victim to pulmonary cancer, and 36 days later, Bill shot himself in the head. Bill’s diary describes those last few days: from Joyce’s passing to his own suicide. The movies and photographs made by the Parkers over the years become the material that relives their memories and tells the story of these two lovers that even death couldn’t tear apart.

Los herederos is a portrait of the young children in the Mexican countryside who begin to work at an early age. The film focuses on their daily struggle for survival and their activities in farming, sculpting and painting “alebrijes,” shepherding, making bricks, weaving, looking after their siblings, collecting water, harvesting tomato, chili, maize, and laboring in a myriad of other activities. They have inherited tools and techniques from their ancestors, but they have also inherited their day-to-day hardship because, as generations pass, child workers seem to remain captive in a cycle of inherited poverty.

Luca is the story of Luca Prodan, a young Italian man educated in Great Britain caught in the frenzy of London’s punk rock scene in the late 1970s, who takes a leap of faith by traveling to Argentina during the military dictatorship just before the war in the Falkland Islands. Here he formed SUMO, a rock band that left its mark on three generations and that, still to this day, remains a legend and an inescapable reference for Latin American musicians.

Rosa is a Mexican woman who, in 1999, at the age of 17, migrated illegally to Austin, Texas. In January of 2003, she was arrested for suspicion of murder and then sent to trial in August 2005. Rosa’s imprisonment in a foreign country, the judicial process, the verdict, the separation from her family, and her powerlessness make Mi vida dentro a true and revealing look into the life of Mexican immigrants in the United States.

On October 13, 1972, a young rugby team from Montevideo, Uruguay, boarded a plane for a match in Chile—and then vanished into thin air. Two days before Christmas, 16 of the 45 passengers miraculously resurfaced. Thirty-five years later, the survivors returned to the crash site—known as the Valley of Tears—to recount their harrowing story of defiant endurance and indestructible friendship. Previously documented in the 1973 worldwide bestseller Alive (and the 1993 Ethan Hawke movie of the same name), this shocking true story finally gets the cinematic treatment it deserves. Visually breathtaking and crafted with riveting detail by documentary filmmaker Gonzalo Arijón with a masterful combination of on-location interviews, archival footage, and reenactments, Stranded is by turns hauntingly powerful and spiritually moving.

When people think about Brazilian music, they think about samba and bossa nova. But in between these two is a forgotten decade when baião, a rhythm from the northeast moved south, took the country by storm, and then spread around the world. The Man Who Bottled Clouds tells the story of baião through the rise and fall of its main proponent, the lyricist and composer known as “The Doctor of Baião,” and features appearances by other renowned Brazilian musicians like Chico Buarque, Caetano Veloso, Gilberto Gil, and Lenine.

Nashville, Tennessee, the “buckle of the Bible Belt” and the country music capital of the world, has become one of the most popular destinations for Latino immigrants. Despite the recent growth of this community, until December of 2007 Hispanic Catholics in Nashville did not have a place of worship they could call their own. This film follows the story of Nashville’s first 100% Hispanic Catholic church from the idea of its creation through its inauguration six months later. The film depicts a community that is proud and grateful, having finally found its own place for its members to let go of their minds, let go of their spirits, and truly be free.

Pachamama tells the story of the director's journey through the Brazilian rainforest on his way to Perú and Bolivia, where he encounters the reality of people historically cut-off from the political process of their own country and that, for the first time, are attempting to have a say in the outcome of their own fate. The title of the film, Pachamama, is a word that means “Mother Earth” to certain groups of Native Americans, and refers to the bucolic goddess of the rural workers. A meditative film that also reveals social movements and moments often obscured from outsiders.

Charles, Zuleide, Gilberto, Cleide, Rogério, Claudio, and Lobão are the seven dwarves, all sons of the mythical Pindoba, the smallest and funniest clown in the world. Together they form the Pindorama Circus and travel from town town in northern Brazil, bringing with them their simplicity and humanity, fun and bravery. In their world, everyone wants to be a dwarf and all this makes the Pindorama world something new, and completely different from everything that surrounds it.

Tito Juan Vera used to work as film projectionist, unveiling the magic of the movies to people in the Paraguayan interior. In Profesión cinero, Tito tells of his experiences and commemorates the golden days of cinema, through the thousands of film reels, posters, and equipment conserved from his job.

Six months after Bob Mader passed away in 2005, his son, Austin filmmaker Berndt Mader, discovers his father’s camera loaded with a last roll of film. In an attempt to deal with his grief, Berndt decides to finish this final roll in the small Mexican village of Tlacotepec—a town his father had visited and photographed 40 years before. On his journey to this obscure Mexican village, Berndt is diverted to the country of Belize where his sister has run into legal trouble in her adoption of a Belizian baby. After this detour and other misadventures, Berndt finally makes it to the town in Mexico. There he discovers there are possible connections to the past and answers to the questions of his own memory.

On May 20th, 1997, the team leader of a four-man US Marine unit conducting a counter-narcotics mission near border-town of Redford, Texas shot and killed 18-year-old Esequiel Hernández, Jr. within sight of the Hernández home. It was the first time an American citizen had been killed on US soil by the military or National Guard since 1970. None of the marines was ever charged with a crime. Compelled by the current political climate on the US-Mexico Border, the marines agreed to be interviewed for the first time for The Ballad of Esequiel Hernández. The film contrasts their frustration and guilt at having killed one of the citizens they were pledged to protect, with the anger and grief of a family whose son died at the hands of their own military. Narrated by Texas’ own Tommy Lee Jones.

As part of its new policy to end the “catch and release” of undocumented immigrants, the U.S. government opened the T. Don Hutto Residential Center in May 2006 as a prototype family detention facility. The facility is a former medium-security prison in central Texas operated by the Corrections Corporation of America, the largest private prison operator in the country. The facility houses immigrant children and their parents from all over the world who are awaiting asylum hearings or deportation proceedings. As information about troubling conditions at the facility leaks out, three activist attorneys seek to investigate and address the issues.

This is the story of the Lipan Apache Tribe of Texas, a Native American tribe indigenous to the state. Though they have been present in Texas and the surrounding areas for hundreds of years, their story is hardly taught and their existence is not recognized. In October 2008, members of the Lipan Apache Tribe opened the first museum for the continuation and preservation of their culture. This documentary aims to bring awareness to one Native American group that has become endangered through centuries of oppression and assimilation. As Lipan Tom Castillo expressed, “Hopefully now we can tell our story. Without fear.”

The Other Side of Immigration examines the causes and effects of international migration from the perspective of rural Mexican communities where large numbers of people leave to work in the United States. The film explores how NAFTA, Mexican agricultural policies, and Mexican politics have stimulated emigration over the past two decades; the extent to which households in rural Mexico directly and indirectly depend on money that undocumented immigrants send home; and the effects of emigration on families and children left behind in rural Mexico.

In the midst of the tough social context of Pinochet’s dictatorship, Raúl Peralta, a man in his fifties, is obsessed with the idea of impersonating “Tony Manero,” John Travolta’s character in Saturday Night Fever. He leads a small group of dancers regularly performing at a bar located in the outskirts of the city every Saturday. Beneath Raúl’s exterior of seeming indifference to anything except meticulous recreation of Tony Manero’s dance moves and the chance to compete in a nationally televised Tony Manero impersonating contest, lies a darker side of his personality driven to commit a bizarre series of violent crimes. Meanwhile, his dancing partners, who are involved in underground activities against the regime, are persecuted by the government’s secret police. Tony Manero is a story about the loss of identity and obsession in recent Chilean history.

Un fragmento de intimidad tells the story of two Mexican immigrant cross dressers in Montreal who are part of a show in which they portray famous Latin American women artists.

In telling the story of Pedro Manrique Figueroa, the pioneer of collage in Colombia, Ospina proposes nothing less than the re-telling and re-imagining of a crucial period of Colombian history, from the civil war that began in 1948 to the guerrilla fighting and new drug culture of the 1970s. Un tigre de papel is a collage itself, where art and politics, truth and lies, documentary and fiction intermingle.

Unidad 25 is the only jail-church in Latin America. There, in an environment that functions according to its unique set of rules, two hundred and fifty prisoners and thirty guards share their passion for Evangelism. This documentary film follows a prisoner from his arrival to the jail, his initial fear and distrust of the people around him, through his eventual indoctrination and transformation into an Evangelical prisoner.

In the remote Spanish village of Riofrío, most of the women have left. Unable to bear the disastrous situation any longer, the village men organize a busload of single women to come from Madrid to relieve their solitude. Their ideal aim is to fall in love but having never learned how to relate to women, besides their mothers and prostitutes, the event turns into a bizarre adventure. Waiting for Women is a heart-warming documentary about love, solitude, gender, migration and hope.