JustFilms Collection

Fire Through Dry Grass

On a tiny island in NYC, a group of Black and brown disabled artists fight Covid and the city to protect the lives of 500 vulnerable nursing home residents.

The 19th: Breaking the News

Breaking The News, previously The Untitled 19th News Documentary: follows a fearless group of female journalists in 2020, including founder Emily Ramshaw and editor-at-large Errin Haines, as they seek to ​upend the status quo by launching an all-women news start-up. ​Building a newsroom that reflects the women they’re writing about, Breaking The News could be a model in these changing times — If they can survive their tumultuous first year.

Queer Futures

Queer Futures is a 3 episode collection (soon to be 4) that takes its cues from José Estaban Muñoz who defined the concept as “imagining a future that moves beyond the negative present” and leads the day through the dynamism, creativity, and fluidity of queer experience.

What We Leave Behind

At the age of 89, Julián takes one last bus ride to El Paso, Texas, to visit his daughters and their children — a lengthy trip he has made without fail every month for decades. After returning to rural Mexico, he quietly starts building a house in the empty lot next to his home. In the absence of his physical visits, can this new house bridge the distance between his loved ones?

Over several years, director Iliana Sosa films her grandfather’s work, gently sifting through Julián’s previously unspoken memories brought up by the construction project and revealing both the daily pragmatism and poetry of his life. What We Leave Behind unfolds as a love letter to her grandfather, as well as an intimate and insightful exploration of Iliana’s own relationship with him and his homeland.

The Big Payback

An inspiring look at Alderman Robin Rue Simmons’ fight to redress the wrongs of “redlining” and the legacy of slavery through a groundbreaking reparations program in Evanston, Illinois.

An Act of Worship

30 years of Muslim-American history recounted through the collective memory a community.

Split at the Root

Split at the Root follows the emotional journey of mothers separated from their children at the U.S. border and the grassroots initiative that, against all odds, reunites those families. When a Guatemalan mother seeking asylum was separated from her kids under the Zero Tolerance Policy, a Facebook post by a mom in Queens coalesced into a movement as thousands of like-minded women across the US refused to stand by quietly. Immigrant Families Together was born – a rapid response group committed to doing what the government couldn’t – or wouldn’t do: reunite parents with their children separated by the Zero Tolerance Policy.

Sansón and Me

Two Mexican migrants, a young man serving a life sentence in prison and a filmmaker who was his court interpreter, become intertwined through life and cinema.

I Didn’t See You There

Spurred by a circus tent that goes up outside his Oakland apartment, a disabled filmmaker connects the ostensibly antiquated institution of the Freak Show with his own life. Shot from a camera held by director Reid Davenport or mounted to his wheelchair, the film serves as an unequivocal rebuke to the norm of disabled people being seen and not heard. I Didn’t See You There expands on the tradition of point-of-view film toward a new aesthetic for disabled filmmakers, creating film that is disabled through the artist’s own embodiment.

Dr. Norman C. Francis: A Legacy of Leadership

When the New Orleans City Council voted unanimously to rename Jefferson Davis Parkway in Mid-City to Dr. Norman C. Francis Parkway in August 2020, it confirmed what many across the country knew: the retired Xavier University of Louisiana president is a living legend, an icon worthy of every tribute he has earned during a more than 70-year-long career. In a new WYES-TV documentary, Dr. Francis will reflect on his monumental life in a one-on-one interview with New Orleans broadcasting legend Sally-Ann Roberts.

Neutral Ground

In 2015, director CJ Hunt began filming the New Orleans City Council’s vote to remove four Confederate monuments. But when the proposed removal was halted by death threats, Hunt sets out to understand why a losing army from 1865 still holds so much power in America. The result is The Neutral Ground, Hunt’s smart, and bitterly funny look at America’s troubled romance with “The Lost Cause.” While the film is an exploration of race in America – it is also an exploration of Hunt’s own racial identity as African American.

A Cop Movie

A bold experiment in documentary and narrative storytelling sheds light on one of Mexico’s most controversial institutions, the police force and the causes of the impunity crisis plaguing the justice system.