POV - Season 36

After 20 years in the United States, an undocumented family decides to return home.

Uýra shares ancestral knowledge with Indigenous youth in the Amazon to promote the significance of identity and place, threatened by Brazil's oppressive political regime. Through dance, poetry, and stunning characterization, Uýra confronts historical racism, transphobia, and environmental destruction, while emphasizing the interdependence of humans and the environment.

How would you handle the trauma of losing a loved one? Murders That Matter documents African American Muslim mother Movita Johnson-Harrell over five years as she transforms from a victim of violent trauma into a fierce advocate against gun violence in Black communities.

At 14, Aurora Madriganian survived the Armenian Genocide and escaped to New York, where her story became a media sensation. Her newfound fame led to her starring in Auction of Souls, one of Hollywood's earliest blockbusters. Blending storybook animation, video testimony, and rediscovered footage from her lost silent epic, Aurora's Sunrise revives her forgotten story.

Wearing snapback caps and Air Jordans, the Reality Poets aren't typical nursing home residents. In Fire Through Dry Grass, these young, Black and brown disabled artists document their lives on lockdown during Covid, their rhymes underscoring the danger and imprisonment they feel. In the face of institutional neglect, they refuse to be abused, confined, and erased.

A vibrant tender cine-poem, a filmmaker collaborates with her Nisei mother as they confront the painful curious reality of wisdom ‘gone wild' in the shadows of dementia. Made over 16 years, the film blends humor and sadness in an encounter between mother and daughter that blooms into an affectionate portrait of love, care, and a relationship transformed.

How to Have an American Baby is a kaleidoscopic voyage into the shadow economy catering to Chinese tourists who travel to the US to give birth for citizenship. Told through a series of intimately observed vignettes, the story of a hidden global economy emerges–depicting the fortunes and tragedies that befall the ordinary people caught in its web.

At the elite MIT, a Ghanaian alum follows four African students striving to become agents of positive change back home. Even as their dreams are anchored in the societies they left, their daily realities are defined by America. Each must refine their ideas about the world and about themselves, and ultimately, how to transform youthful ideals into action as adults.

As a blind, undocumented immigrant, Pedro faces uncertainty to obtain his college degree, become a social worker, and support his family. Through experimental cinematography and sound, unseen reimagines the accessibility of cinema, while exploring the intersections of immigration, disability, and mental health.