First Run Features (Firm)

Documents an entire school year with Wilma Stephenson and those students committed enough to surrender themselves to her enlightened despotism. By the end of the year, thirteen of her students will have made it through the gauntlet. At a school where over 40% of students don't even make it to their senior year, Wilma shows her kids how to achieve the American Dream: You choose a realistic goal. You work hard. You work the system. You get out of Northeast...

Upon moving his family's Southern plantation, Godfrey Cheshire discovers an unknown African American branch of the family. Cheshire examines the Southern plantation in American history and how the racial legacy from the past continues into the present.

This eye-opening film goes deep into the heart of the Muslim world to explore the history and current state of Islam. It also delves into the personal lives of its subjects, who range from ayatollahs and grand imams to simple farmers and women living in veiled seclusion. Their relationship with this holy book reveals a complex, beautiful, and often contradictory guide for humanity.

Takes the viewer on a humorous, emotional and illuminating look into the mysterious world of the Court of Master Sommeliers and their massively intimidating master sommelier exam.

It places the spotlight on one of filmmaking's unsung heroes, casting director Marion Dougherty, and takes viewers on a journey through 50 years of Hollywood history from an entirely new perspective. Relying on her exquisite taste and gut instincts, Dougherty helped usher in the 'New Hollywood' with movies like Midnight Cowboy, The Graduate, Butch Cassidy and The Sundance Kid and Bonnie and Clyde.

After three decades turning his lens on New York City, taxi driver turned street photographer Matt Weber has seen it all. It not only chronicles the life and times of Weber, but becomes a vibrant conversation about the photographic medium, artistic expression, and New York City. There is no telling how many stories Weber has attempted to capture since he first started taking pictures out of the window of the cab he used to drive.

Carmo would do anything to escape the hellhole of a Brazilian border town where she lives. So when a lonesome, wheelchair-bound low-life named Marco arrives on the scene, she jumps at the chance to help him transport a shipment of smuggled goods. An unlikely romance unfolds as the two are chased through a lush and jagged South American landscape by bandidos, the police and their own passions alike. A lawless, reckless journey of self-discovery, this...

You beat the weight or the weight beats you - it's the test every powerlifter faces when approaching the bar. But the weight that's been pressing down on coach and gym owner Paul Steinman is something far more challenging than sport. Bombing out on his squats at the 2012 American Open was just one more failure for Paul. It had been a bad stretch both in and out of the gym but it was nobody's business and so Paul didn't talk about it. But now it's...

The Nation, America's oldest weekly magazine, founded in 1865 and now in its 150th year, has long been considered one of America's definitive journalistic voices. Hot Type, the new film by Barbara Kopple, a two-time Academy Award winner for Best Documentary Feature, tells the riveting and surprising story of The Nation.. The film captures daily life at the magazine, introduces staff writers and editors past and present, and follows members of The...

An attractive and successful doctor places a personal ad in a newspaper to try to meet (and eventually marry) Mr. Right. A succession of blind dates ensues, featuring men who are lonely, desperate, dangerous, perverted or all of the above. From a tightfisted businessman to a shy writer who brings his mother to a shoe fetishist and a pimp looking for call girls, the woman meets them all and patiently listens to their stories. What they don't know is...