Season 25

July 5, 2012

Is darkness becoming extinct? A meditation on the human relationship to the stars.

July 12, 2012

Every four seconds a romance novel published by Harlequin or its British counterpart, Mills & Boon, is sold somewhere in the world. Julie Moggan’s 'Guilty Pleasures' takes an amusing and touching look at this global phenomenon. Ironies abound in the contrasts between the everyday lives of the books’ readers and the fantasy worlds that offer them escape.

July 19, 2012

Houda al-Habash, a conservative Muslim preacher, founded a Qur’an school for girls in Damascus, Syria, 30 years ago. Every summer, her students immerse themselves in a rigorous study of Islam. A surprising cultural shift is underway - women are claiming space within the mosque. Shot right before the uprising in Syria erupted, 'The Light in Her Eyes' offers an extraordinary portrait of a leader.

July 26, 2012

Up Heartbreak Hill chronicles the lives of three high school seniors living on the Navajo Nation and struggling to shape their identities as both Native American and modern American. They must decide whether to stay in their community - a place inextricably woven into the fiber of their beings - or leave in pursuit of educational and economic opportunities.

August 9, 2012

Five shorts, including "The Barber of Birmingham: Foot Soldier of the Civil Rights Movement," about an octogenarian Alabama barber and WWII veteran who carried the American flag across the bridge on the first Selma to Montgomery march of 1965; and "Sin País (Without Country)," about illegal immigrants from Guatemala who, 20 years after arriving in the U.S., are deported to their home country. Also: three StoryCorps animations, including "Eyes on the Stars," about astronaut Ronald McNair.

September 20, 2012

Jonathan Demme’s portrait of post-Katrina New Orleans tells the story of Carolyn Parker, a lifelong resident of the Lower Ninth Ward, who is fighting for the right to rebuild her home and community.

September 27, 2012

From dusk to dawn, 'El Velador' accompanies Martin, a guard who watches over the extravagant mausoleums of some of Mexico’s most notorious drug lords. In the labyrinth of the cemetery, this film about violence without violence reminds us that, amid the turmoil of a drug war that has claimed more than 50,000 lives, ordinary existence persists in Mexico and quietly defies the dead.

October 4, 2012

Exposing shocking corruption within the judicial system of the Philippines in one of the most sensational trials in the country’s history. Two grieving mothers, entangled in a case that ends a nation’s use of capital punishment but fails to free an innocent man, dedicate more than a decade to executing or saving him.

October 18, 2012

When a Navajo couple uncovers a hidden link between their children’s rare genetic disorder and the American government’s conquest of their tribe, their lives are changed forever.

October 25, 2012

Patricio Guzmán's Nostalgia for the Light is a remarkable meditation on memory, history and eternity. Chile’s remote Atacama Desert, 10,000 feet above sea level, provides stunningly clear views of the heavens for astronomers. But it also holds secrets from the past: human remains, from pre-Columbian mummies to the bones of political prisoners "disappeared" during the Pinochet dictatorship.

January 7, 2013

A veteran reporter and his colleagues at an independent newsweekly defy powerful drug cartels and corrupt officials to continue publishing the news in Mexico.

March 24, 2013

A lyrical exploration of youth, beauty and ambition, seen through the eyes of a conflicted American scout and a 13-year-old she discovers.