Louis Vuitton Hawaii International FIlm Festival 2008

After spending the first ten years of her life in a Catholic orphanage, the young and fiery Awet excitedly learns that she is soon to be reunited with her family. But her hopes for a normal life are dashed when her father, a fanatical supporter of the Eritrean Liberation Front, places Awet directly into the military forces' hands. At first willing to join the fight, she soon realizes that their enemies are just as human as she, and Awet makes a solemn vow never to kill... Labeled a traitor by the group's commander, the young Awet nevertheless courageously stands by her convictions and fights the violence in the disarming way that only a child could.

Mai, a girl of 17 lives with her parents, two younger sisters and her brother in a poor village in central Vietnam. While her mother tries hard to feed the family, her father pursues pleasure with his outside affairs. This life of deprivation and misery never brings the family any happiness. Deep in the little girl's tiny heart, she desires to earn more to help her family. From a family acquaintance, she is soon referred to a so-called tailoring course in Saigon. At the admiration of her peers, especially her younger sister, who is just about 16 year old, Mai leaves the family to seek a better life in the splendid city....Beyond everyone's belief, she is sold to a brothel...

Hanh is an HIV-positive widow in Vietnam. Nada, a survivor of the Bosnian war. And Jacqueline works the slums of Bamako, Mali. Three very different lives. Three vastly different worlds. But they share something in common: Power. These ordinary women are overcoming deep-seeded gender barriers to rise up and claim a voice in their societies. Through their empowerment and the ability to empower others, Hanh, Nada and Jacqueline are sparking remarkable and unprecedented changes. Fighting AIDS. Educating girls. Rebuilding communities. A POWERFUL NOISE is a meditation on the inherent potential of women to change the world.

On February 12, 2005, Sister Dorothy Stang, a 73 year-old Catholic nun and environmental and social activist, was gunned down in the Brazilian rain forest in which she had lived and worked for over 30 years. The trials of the gunmen and the rancher accused of arranging for her murder sent shock waves through the environmental community, exposing the politics surrounding the battle over the future of the rain forest and the plight of the peasant farmers who live there. THEY KILLED SISTER DOROTHY follows the powerful real-life courtroom drama that unfolds at the trials of her killers and explores her life's work in the Brazilian rain forest that led to that fateful day.

Three young men navigate the dilemmas of being gay in modern China, torn between the lure of big city life and the demands of Chinese tradition. "Frog" Cui and his friends live and work in cosmopolitan Beijing, reveling in the freedom that it affords them. But does their happiness come at the expense of their mothers and fathers? Can they be gay, and still be good sons? The film is directed by Ruby Yang who, with producer Thomas Lennon, won a documentary Oscar in 2006.

TROUBLE THE WATER opens the day before Katrina makes landfall. Kimberly Rivers Roberts is turning her video camera on herself and her 9th Ward neighbors. "It’s going to be a day to remember," Kim says excitedly into her new camera as the storm is brewing. It's her first time shooting video and it's rough, jumpy but dense with reality. Kim's playful homegrown newscast tone grinds against the audience's knowledge that hell is just hours away. When the hurricane begins to rage and the flood waters fill their world and the screen, Kim and her husband Scott continue to film, documenting their harrowing voyage to higher ground and dramatic rescues of friends and neighbors. This film is a redemptive tale of self-described street hustlers who become heroes that takes you inside Hurricane Katrina in a way never before seen on screen.

THE UNWINKING GAZE is an observational portrait of the Dalai Lama as he tries to engage the Chinese government into accepting the need for a negotiated settlement on the future of Tibet. Filmmaker Joshua Dugdale spent a year bargaining with the Dalai Lama's Private Office to agree the access and over the following eighteen months we are party to the day-to-day agonies of a God King as he tries to strike a balance between his own personal vows as a Buddhist and the realpolitik required to bring China to the negotiating table. A modern day biblical epic, this film takes you inside the Dalai Lama's inner circle showing the titanic struggle of one of the most significant global figures of our time, leading his people through non-violence, in his efforts to engage China, perhaps for the final time.