First Run Features (Firm)

Jean, a 40-year-old unemployed actor, has hit rock bottom. Insufferably clueless and egotistical, his over-the-top "method" acting and high-maintenance personality have gotten him fired from countless jobs. At the unemployment office, his counselor sets him up with a rather odd job: helping the police reconstruct crime scenes by standing in for the dead victim. Jean's obsession for detail impresses the beautiful chief investigator, allowing him to...

In his lifetime, Thomas Merton was hailed as a prophet and censured for his outspoken social criticism. For nearly 27 years he was a monk of the austere Trappist order, where he became an eloquent spiritual writer and mystic as well as an anti-war advocate and witness to peace...Merton: A Film Biography provides the first comprehensive look at this remarkable 20th century religious philosopher who wrote, in addition to his immensely popular autobiography...

Talent Has Hunger is an inspiring film about the power of music to consume, enhance, and propel lives. Filmed over 7 years, the film is a window into the mysterious world of the artist, the passion that can grip and sustain a young player from childhood through the last days of life and the years of sacrifice and dedication a budding artist needs to fulfill one’s talent. The film focuses on the challenges of guiding gifted young people through the...

In 2012, Atsushi Funahashi presentedNuclear Nation, his film about the consequences of the March 2011 nuclear disaster in Fukushima Daiichi. 1400 people from nearby Futaba were evacuated to a school building in a Tokyo suburb. Funahashi documented people’s desperation with true empathy and showed the full extent of the destruction. This year, he presents the sequel.. We learn that the former mayor – previously a fervent advocate of nuclear energy...

Imagine: beauty makeovers for butch lesbians; tackle football for gay men: electroshock orgasmic reorientation... these and other funny, bizarre, and often terrifying methods have been used for decades to "cure" gays and lesbians of their homosexuality. ONE NATION UNDER GOD takes us into the strange world of "ex-gay" ministries and "conversion" therapies, revealing shocking techniques used to "straighten" out all those "twisted" souls. At the center...

How does a mentally ill person drown himself in a few feet of water on a crowded Memorial Day beach? ..A tall, middle-aged, fully dressed man walks up to his shoulders into the cold shallow waters of San Francisco Bay; and he waits. Police and Fire units respond in droves; and they wait. A good-sized crowd watches and waits as the sand in the man’s hourglass runs out. Succumbing to the cold and rising tide, the man loses consciousness within the...

In this relentless thriller, French star Isabelle Huppert brings passion and courage to her portrayal of a hostage caught in a seemingly hopeless situation. At a beach resort in the Philippines, 20 guests are kidnapped by an Islamic separatist group fighting for their independence. French social worker Therese Bourgoine is among those taken to a jungle island, with the Filipino army in pursuit. As the captors and their hostages journey through dense...

Silent Waters is set in 1979 in Pakistan, when General Zia-ul-Haq took control of the country and stoked the fires of Islamic nationalism. Ayesha, a Muslim woman who gets by on her late husband’s pension and by teaching young girls the Koran, invests her hopes in her beloved son Saleem. But when Saleem takes up with a group of Islamic fundamentalists just as a group of Sikh pilgrims come to town, Ayesha’s haunted past turns her present life upside...

James Thurber: The Life and Hard Times is the first major documentary on the life and work of one of America's greatest humorists. Known for his classic short story, The Secret Life of Walter Mitty, Thurber was a legendary contributor of prose and cartoons to The New Yorker magazine where he worked for many years. Narrated by George Plimpton, this documentary includes interviews with Edward Albee, John Updike, Alistair Cooke, Roy Blount Jr., Fran...

In 1986, Ross McElwee and Marilyn Levine were making a film about the 25th anniversary of the Berlin Wall, when the imposing structure was still very much intact as the world’s most visible symbol of hardline Communism and Cold War lore. They thought they were making a documentary on the community of tourists, soldiers, and West Berliners who lived in the seemingly eternal presence of the graffiti emblazoned eyesore...But in 1989, as the original...