Our Spirits Don't Speak English

Buffalo Soldiers, Victorio and Manifest Destiny

April 2017 •English

A look into the 19th century American-Indian Wars, Manifest Destiny, and the conflicts between Apache tribes and the African-American Buffalo soldier regiments.

Elena

June 2021 •Spanish

In 1937, tens of thousands of Haitians and Dominicans of Haitian descent were exterminated by the Dominican army, on the basis of anti-black racism. Fast-forward to 2013, the Dominican Republic's Supreme Court stripped the citizenship of anyone with Haitian parents, retroactive to 1929, rendering more than 200,000 people stateless. Elena, the young protagonist of the film, and her family stand to lose their legal residency in the Dominican Republic if they don't manage to get their documents in time. Negotiating a mountain of opaque bureaucratic processes and a racist, hostile society around, Elena becomes the face of the struggle to remain in a country built on the labor of her father and forefathers.

Mr. Trump, Pardon the Interruption

September 2019 •Spanish

An analysis of the impact on the United States Latino community of immigration policies promoted by President Donald Trump.

Saints And Warriors

February 2025 •English

Throughout the course of the Haida basketball season, leaders of iconic rez ball team the Skidegate Saints compete for two titles - defending their All Native Basketball Championship, while also battling for title to their land and waters with the government that stole it from them with the Indian Act.

The Color of Fear 2: Walking Each Other Home

January 1997 •English

In THE COLOR OF FEAR, eight American men participated in emotionally charged discussions of racism. In this sequel, we hear and see more from those discussions, in which the men talk about about how racism has affected their lives in the United States. We also learn more about the relationships between them, and about their reactions during some of the most intense moments of that discussion.

The Venerable W.

June 2017 •English

A view of the religious tensions between Muslims and Buddhist through the portrait of the Buddhist monk Ashin Wirathu, leader of anti-Muslim movement in Myanmar.

The Tulsa Lynching of 1921: A Hidden Story

May 2000 •English

Documents the race riot of 1921 and the destruction of the African-American community of Greenwood in Tulsa, Oklahoma. With testimony by eyewitnesses and background accounts by historians.

Who Gets To Be an Influencer?

June 2021 •English

Chronicles the rise of Collab Crib, one of the first mainstream Black creator mansion, exclusively documenting their whirlwind drive to achieve social media stardom in 90 days.

The Warrior Tradition

November 2019 •English

The astonishing, heartbreaking, inspiring, and largely-untold story of Native Americans in the United States military. Why do they do it? Why would Indian men and women put their lives on the line for the very government that took their homelands?

Me Alone in the Classroom

March 2017 •Dutch

Doing really well on your school assessment tests, but still having the school recommend that you go to preparatory vocational school. Going to a club with friends and having the bouncer keep you out. Having to endure jokes from classmates. These are examples of the sort of casual racism that the children of director Karin Junger and their friends have to face. In Ik alleen in de klas, director Karin Junger, white mother of three darker-skinned children, stands with her family to confront the racism they experience in their daily lives. Twelve adolescents meet at a mansion in France. The group consists of Junger’s children and their friends. All of them come from ethnic minority backgrounds and share a feeling of being excluded from Dutch society. Re-enactment is used to explore painful situations again. In this simple but effective documentary, we can see the impact of subtle and less subtle forms of racism on the lives of young Dutch people.

Dresden Story

January 1954 •English

People are interviewed in Dresden, Ontario, to sample local attitudes towards racial discrimination against black people that brought this town into the news. After a round-up of the opinions of individual citizens, white and black, commentator Gordon Burwash joins two discussion panels, presenting opposite points of view. The rights and wrongs of the quarrel are left for the audience to decide.

Contrary Warriors: A Film of the Crow Tribe

November 1985 •English

Examines the impact a century of struggling for survival has on a native people. It weaves the Crow tribe's turbulent past with modern-day accounts from Robert Yellow-tail, a 97-year-old Crow leader and a major reason for the tribe's survival. Poverty and isolation combine with outside pressures to undermine the tribe, but they resist defeat as "Contrary Warriors," defying the odds.

Mankiller

June 2017 •English

The story of an American hero and the Cherokee Nation's first woman Principal Chief who humbly defied all odds to give a voice to the voiceless.

Chasing Voices: The Story of John Peabody Harrington

April 2021 •English

For 50 years, controversial ethnographer John Peabody Harrington crisscrossed the United States, frantically searching and documenting dying Native American languages. Harrington amassed over a million pages of notes on over 150 different tribal languages. Some of these languages were considered dead until his notes were discovered. Today tribes are accessing the notes, reviving their once dormant languages, and bringing together a new generation of language learners in the hope of saving Native languages.

Viikinki

September 2022 •Finnish

Documentary film about Tony Halme, masculinity and populism. The film follows how Tony Halme created a mythical, highly masculine freestyle wrestling character, The Viking, who gained fame both in the ring and in the public eye and eventually became captivated by it. With his brash speeches, Halme fired the starting shot for the rise of the Finns Party. The voice of a forgotten section of the population, a protest against the ruling elite, were the building blocks of Halme's popularity. Halme's great popularity has served as a good example of a populist figure, admired within the deep ranks of the nation, who comes from outside the political elite and changes the direction of politics. Also, despite - or perhaps because of - his openly racist statements, he was part of changing the political climate in Finland to a more acrimonious one.

The Rumba Kings

May 2021 •English

In the fifties, when the future Democratic Republic of Congo was still a Belgian colony, an entire generation of musicians fused traditional African tunes with Afro-Cuban music to create the electrifying Congolese rumba, a style that conquered the entire continent thanks to an infectious rhythm, captivating guitar sounds and smooth vocals.

Dolores

January 1984 •Spanish

Indian Rights for Indian Women

September 2018 •English

Three intrepid women battle for Indigenous women's treaty rights.

Racist Trees

November 2022 •English

Can a tree be racist? A few years ago, debate on this issue reached as far as Fox News. The focus was a row of tamarisk trees along a huge golf course in Palm Springs, which screened off the neighborhood of Crossley Tract. This is a historically Black neighborhood, named after its founder Lawrence Crossley, who was one of the first Black residents to settle in the largely white tourist paradise, established on indigenous land over a century ago.

Speakers for the Dead

January 2000 •English

A film about small Ontario town's struggle to restore a desecrated African-Canadian cemetery and the resulting turmoil over it.