Season 39

In a country where eligible men are estimated to outnumber women by more than 30 million, three working-class bachelors — Zhou, Li, and Wu — join an intensive seven-day dating camp in Chongqing led by one of China's most sought-after dating coaches, in what may be their last-ditch effort to find love.

Kalief Browder's legacy expands through the poetry and activism of his mother, Venida Brodnax Browder. Blending vérité, poetic imagery, and rare 1970s archival footage of the Black Panthers, the film traces grief, resilience, and the enduring impact of mass incarceration on communities of color, while following contemporary efforts to transform Rikers Island into a renewable-energy site.

Director Karla Murthy weaves together home videos and recorded phone conversations from when her father, H.N. Shantha Murthy, worked at a gas station in Texas, tracing his journey from an impoverished Indian village to the United States. Murthy also reflects on her own identity as a first-generation American — her mother is from the Philippines — navigating adulthood and now motherhood.

In Nairobi, Kenya, Shiro Koinange and Angela Wachuka work to restore the McMillan Memorial Library — a library founded by British colonizers in 1932 that operated on a whites-only basis until 1958 — into a vibrant public and cultural hub, navigating local politics, fundraising, and the lingering legacy of colonialism.

When trusted midwives serving Amish and Mennonite families in rural upstate New York are arrested following the death of a newborn, a quiet community is thrust into turmoil. Director Elaine Epstein follows women who defy tradition and become activists, turning a local case into a national reckoning over maternal health, reproductive rights, and the freedom to choose how and where to give birth.

For nearly forty years, Ross McElwee has made autobiographical documentaries about how his personal life intersects with the wider world. After his son Adrian died of a fentanyl overdose in 2016, McElwee abandoned a planned Hollywood dramatic remake of his own 1986 breakthrough film Sherman's March, and instead used decades of home-movie footage — including Adrian's own camera work — to reckon with his son's life, his addiction, and what the camera did and did not capture.