tweet
shareThis spotlight highlights powerful documentaries that offer in-depth looks at important social, political, and cultural issues. The selected documentaries inspire viewers to think critically about the world around them, offering compelling narratives that inform and engage.
Sponsored by Mary Strauss
November 6, 2026
Hell on Hall Street
Directed by Ben Pfeiffer, Troy Jones
Hell on Hall Street documents the grassroots movement led by ArchCity Defenders to close and demolish St. Louis’s notorious Workhouse jail. Through firsthand testimony, archival footage, and movement strategy, the film transforms years of legal advocacy and community organizing into a feature-length documentary that balances emotional storytelling with systemic insight, positioning the project as both a historical record and a blueprint for change.
7:00 pm
Washington University’s Brown Hall Auditorium
November 7, 2026
Hoop Like This
Directed by Shubhangi Shekhar
Twelve players come together to form the world’s first professional Indian origin basketball team, risking their careers, reputation, and identity to redefine who belongs in the game.
12:00 pm
Washington University’s Brown Hall Auditorium
Harvest
Directed by Hyacinth Parker, Natalie Baszile
Four brothers. One farm. A season that could change everything. HARVEST follows the Nelson brothers, fourth-generation farmers in rural Louisiana, as they fight to keep their family operation alive amid drought, equipment failures, rising costs, climate disasters, and mounting family tension. When an unexpected opportunity to expand arrives, the stakes become higher than ever.
12:00 pm
Julia Davis Library
An Irish Atlantic Rainforest
Directed by Gary Lennon
When a Dublin sculptor trades city life for 73 acres of ecologically ravaged land on Ireland's wild Atlantic coast, he discovers that the most radical act of conservation is simply learning to do nothing — and watch a lost rainforest rise from the ruins.
2:00 pm
Chase Park Plaza Cinema
The Gleaners and I
Directed by Agnès Varda
Varda focuses her eye on gleaners: those who scour already-reaped fields for the odd potato or turnip. Her...
2:00 pm
Saint Louis Art Museum
All About the Money
Directed by Sinéad O'Shea
A son of one of America's wealthiest families creates a communist revolutionary base in rural Massachusetts as a means of disrupting the capitalist system he grew up in but has now come to despise. It's the starting point of an astonishing journey.
2:00 pm
B&B Theatres Creve Coeur West Olive 10 and Bowling
Half Order
Directed by Remrod
HALF ORDER is a cultural documentary exploring the bond between Black culture in St. Louis and the city’s...
4:00 pm
Hi-Pointe Theatre
Landscapes of Memory
Directed by Leah Galant
Landscapes Of Memory follows Leah Galant's journey through Germany as she reckons with family trauma and the weight of historical memory of the Holocaust. Interwoven stories of a Holocaust-survivor descendant, a Nazi-descendant historian, exiled Palestinian artists, and her father's ALS, reveal the uses and abuses of memory culture.
4:30 pm
B&B Theatres Creve Coeur West Olive 10 and Bowling
We Are The Shaggs
Directed by Ken William Kwapis
WE ARE THE SHAGGS is a music documentary about The Shaggs, an all-girl band that created some of the most provocative and polarizing music in rock-and-roll history.
4:30 pm
Chase Park Plaza Cinema
Cycle
Directed by Laura Dyan Kezman, William Howell
CYCLE pierces the silence surrounding police violence through the death of Ty’rese West, a Black teenager killed by police on Juneteenth without cameras, witnesses, or public scrutiny. The film maps police impunity through shifting official narratives, historical throughlines, and the human cost of pursuing justice within opaque systems of power, where silence endures, ultimately interrogating what it means to break cycles within our systems and ourselves.
5:00 pm
Washington University’s Brown Hall Auditorium
Kenny Loggins: Conviction of the Heart
Directed by DORI Berinstein
Kenny Loggins – multi-platinum, Grammy, Emmy-winning and Oscar and Tony-nominated Songwriter/Recording Artist – was a shy, gawky, unpopular kid with low self-esteem. He thought he had to create a persona to do the rock star thing. Kenny spend the subsequent 50 years reinventing himself over and over. His career has been a journey into being himself.
7:00 pm
Chase Park Plaza Cinema
November 8, 2026
The Tiger Widows
Directed by Kaustuv Mukherjee
A documentary feature about human survival, resilience and hope against all odds in the perilous forests of “Sundarbans”, in Eastern India, facing severe threat from tigers as their homeland gradually sinks from ever-increasing climate change.
1:00 pm
Washington University’s Brown Hall Auditorium
Reading the World
Directed by Catherine Murphy, Iris de Oliveira
In 1963, global icon Paulo Freire led an experimental project teaching hundreds of rural farmers to read, write and vote in Brazil, until he was arrested and forced into exile during a U.S.-backed coup d'etat.
1:00 pm
Julia Davis Library
Sapiro v. Ford: The Jew Who Sued Henry Ford / Shoulder
Sapiro v. Ford: The Jew Who Sued Henry Ford Sapiro v. Ford tells the riveting true story of...
1:00 pm
B&B Theatres Creve Coeur West Olive 10 and Bowling
The Last Picture Shows / Let’s All Go To The Lobby
Last Picture Shows Filmmaker Rustin Thompson journeys into the American West on a search for traces of what...
2:15 pm
Chase Park Plaza Cinema
Fork In The Road / Growing Humanity – CLIMATE SUMMIT III
Fork In The Road Through compelling stories from independent farmers across the United States, from Alaskan kelp harvesters...
3:00 pm
Hi-Pointe Theatre
Kikuyu Land
Directed by Andrew H. Brown, Bea Wangondu
In Kenya’s tea highlands, one man’s claim to his family’s stolen land sets Mr. Mungai against a multinational giant. His fight draws a local news producer into a battle that exposes buried histories, her family secrets, and the unfinished business of colonial power.
3:00 pm
Julia Davis Library
Tim Miller Citizen Artist / Couture To The Max
Tim Miller Citizen Artist Citizen Artist explores the life and career of the internationally acclaimed performance artist Tim...
3:30 pm
B&B Theatres Creve Coeur West Olive 10 and Bowling
Harvest
Directed by Hyacinth Parker, Natalie Baszile
Four brothers. One farm. A season that could change everything. HARVEST follows the Nelson brothers, fourth-generation farmers in rural Louisiana, as they fight to keep their family operation alive amid drought, equipment failures, rising costs, climate disasters, and mounting family tension. When an unexpected opportunity to expand arrives, the stakes become higher than ever.
4:00 pm
Lincoln Theatre
Romare Bearden: A Life in Collage
Directed by Deborah Riley Draper
RB_SM_WIKI.1716__Pablo Picasso meeting with Rosanjin
6:30 pm
Washington University’s Brown Hall Auditorium
The Last Prometheus of Donbas
Directed by Anton Shtuka
A story of heroic energy workers at the last operating power plant in eastern Ukraine, only 10 km from the frontline. Under constant shelling, they risk their lives to keep the lights on until the plant’s destruction and forced evacuation, echoing historical parallels from 1941.
7:00 pm
Lincoln Theatre
November 10, 2026
Yo (Love Is A Rebellious Bird) / Are We Breaking Up?
Yo (Love Is A Rebellious Bird) Anna spends a decade obsessively building a detailed 1/3-scale version of her...
5:15 pm
Chase Park Plaza Cinema
Every Line Becomes A Circle
Directed by Christopher Leete, Lynnette Luis, Ottilie Maters
Every Line Becomes A Circle is a powerful documentary about 94-year-old German artist Inge Besgen. Her life and art reflect how every experience and choice shapes who we become. Inge's story is one of resilience, creativity, and the belief that it's never too late to follow your dreams.
7:00 pm
Contemporary Art Museum St. Louis (CAM)
Wood Street
Directed by Caron Creighton
Two unhoused men turned community leaders— John and LaMonté —organize their neighbors in the face of displacement, addiction, and a failing social system.
7:30 pm
B&B Theatres Creve Coeur West Olive 10 and Bowling
Acting Like Women
Directed by Cheri Gaulke
Revisiting the groundbreaking feminist performance art movement in 1970s Los Angeles, one artist spotlights the inspirational, transformational, radical community exploding the narrative and status quo.
7:45 pm
Chase Park Plaza Cinema
November 11, 2026
Home From The Vietnam War
Directed by Mat Hames
Haunted by the war he tried to forget, a decorated U.S. veteran returns to Vietnam with a friend who fled the country as a child. Together, they retrace the past and discover the location of one of the bloodiest battlefields of 1968, coming face to face with the Vietnamese soldiers they once fought. Directed by award-winning filmmaker Mat Hames, Home from the Vietnam War is a powerful journey into memory, reconciliation, and the possibility of healing from old nightmares. A Wyoming PBS Film in Association with Alpheus Media, directed by Mat Hames
12:00 pm
Hi-Pointe Theatre
Jane Elliott Against the World
Directed by Judd Ehrlich
A rural Iowa schoolteacher becomes a national voice against racism after leading a controversial 1968 lesson in discrimination...
5:00 pm
Hi-Pointe Theatre
What Will I Become?
Directed by Lexie Bean, Logan Rozos
Winner of the Amnesty International Film Award at the Berlin International Film Festival, What Will I Become? explores grief, mental health, trans boyhood, and other realities too often dealt with in isolation. Directors Lexie and Logan delve into their own personal experiences, intertwining the stories of two young trans men no longer here today. Homecoming king Blake Brockington and soft-spoken Kyler Prescott were poets, musicians, and community advocates. Together, we trace their joys and challenges, their tragic deaths, resulting media attention, and the larger aftermath within their communities. We also uplift resources that affirm trans boys and the QFest LGBTQ SpotlightIA2S+ community to provide alternative forms of care, resilience, and masculinity.
5:15 pm
B&B Theatres Creve Coeur West Olive 10 and Bowling
Bob And David Climb Machu Picchu
Directed by MICHAEL LAHAIE
Comedy legends Bob Odenkirk and David Cross tackle one of the world's toughest hikes — and each other — in this high-altitude, coca-fueled meditation on friendship, mortality, and profoundly absurd comedy from two icons still magnificently in sync.
7:30 pm
Hi-Pointe Theatre
November 12, 2026
Seized
Directed by Sharon Liese
Balancing the absurdity of small-town politics with the gravity of a constitutional crisis, the small town of Marion, Kansas is thrust into the international spotlight after a police raid on the Marion County Record and the death of its 98-year-old co-owner.
7:00 pm
Hi-Pointe Theatre
November 13, 2026
My NDA
Directed by Juliane Dressner and Miriam Shor
Bound by non-disclosure agreements that forbid them from even acknowledging they signed one, three individuals risk everything by breaking their silence to expose how NDAs have been weaponized to conceal rape, racial discrimination, corporate crimes, and other unlawful activity - reclaiming their voices from the institutions that tried to bury them.
5:15 pm
B&B Theatres Creve Coeur West Olive 10 and Bowling
Annie Turnbo Malone: The Untold Story
Directed by Kim Love
This documentary brings to life the remarkable story of Annie Turnbo Malone, the woman who launched an international health and beauty empire for African-American women that was headquartered in St. Louis from 1902-1930. She employed 75,000 agents around the world, one of whom was Madam C. J. Walker. She was an industrial titan whose impact was much like that of Bill Gates and Steve Jobs.
7:00 pm
Washington University’s Brown Hall Auditorium
November 14, 2026
Wild Inside
Directed by Penny Lane
On February 2, 2023, Flaco — a male Eurasian eagle-owl, the largest species of owl in the world...
11:00 am
B&B Theatres Creve Coeur West Olive 10 and Bowling
The Life We Leave / Worldless
The Life We Leave An ambitious entrepreneur and two funeral directors pioneer a groundbreaking eco-friendly deathcare facility in...
11:30 am
Washington University’s Brown Hall Auditorium
Mexicanamerican
Directed by Eddie Sánchez
Expertly merging old VHS home movies with new family interviews, filmmaker Eddie Sánchez traces his parents' journey from Mexico to the U.S. in this poignant and affecting documentary debut.
1:00 pm
Hi-Pointe Theatre
Theodor Herzl: The Man Behind Israel
Directed by Dominic Howlett, James Dann
Theodor Herzl is one of the most consequential figures in modern history; yet almost no one knows his name. In this documentary, David Baddiel sets out to uncover how a 19th-century Jewish journalist's answer to rising antisemitism became the founding vision of the State of Israel, and how that vision still shapes one of the world's most fraught conflicts today.
1:30 pm
B&B Theatres Creve Coeur West Olive 10 and Bowling
The Great Experiment
Directed by Eric Daniel Metzgar, Stephen T. Maing
The Great Experiment is an ambitious cinematic time capsule of one of the most volatile and perplexing eras...
2:00 pm
Washington University’s Brown Hall Auditorium
While You Return / Who Trains My Hands To War
When You Return A woman in exile fights to free her husband, a political prisoner in Nicaragua, while...
3:00 pm
Julia Davis Library
Brothers in Blood: Black in Vietnam
Directed by Joseph Puleo
In the 1960s and early 1970s, Black Americans fought two wars, one in Vietnam and one at home for civil rights. As disproportionate numbers of Black men were drafted and sent to the front lines, the racism they faced in the United States followed them overseas. Through firsthand testimony, Brothers in Blood: Black in Vietnam examines discrimination within the military and the lasting physical, emotional, and social consequences veterans faced after returning home.
4:00 pm
Hi-Pointe Theatre
The Lorraine
Directed by Sam Pollard
Renowned documentarian Sam Pollard tells the astonishing, inspiring story of the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, Tennessee, site of...
4:30 pm
Washington University’s Brown Hall Auditorium
Manhood
Directed by Daniel Lombroso
“Manhood” follows Dallas entrepreneur Bill Moore as he attempts to make penis enlargement as commonplace as Botox. Along...
6:00 pm
Arkadin Cinema & Bar
4000 Days
Directed by Daniel Catullo
4000 Days is a powerful documentary chronicling the relentless fight of three families who turned their personal tragedies into a nationwide movement for change. After losing their sons to fraternity hazing, the families found themselves up against a deeply entrenched system that thrived on secrecy, denial, and silence. Refusing to accept that their children died in vain, they joined forces and waged a years-long battle to expose the dangers of hazing, challenge university and fraternity accountability, and push for sweeping legislative reform.
7:00 pm
Washington University’s Brown Hall Auditorium
November 15, 2026
The [Conserv]atives
Directed by Dominic Whinfield Gill, Nadia Michelle Gill
As extreme weather intensifies and the 2024 election looms, four Republicans embedded in different corners of the conservative ecosystem wage an uphill battle to trans- form their party from within—testing whether personal con- viction can survive tribal loyalty.
4:00 pm
B&B Theatres Creve Coeur West Olive 10 and Bowling
From Gaza with Love
Directed by Charles Villa, Suhail Nassar
Before the war, Suhail Nassar was a graphic designer. Since then, he has been filming the children of Gaza so that no one will ever forget. Charles Villa is a French reporter and YouTuber. Israel bars him from entering Gaza, as it does all other foreign reporters. 3,200 kilometres apart, Suhail and Charles meet, grow closer, and make this original and luminous documentary. The story of a youth still alive despite the bombs but also the story of a budding friendship.
4:30 pm
Chase Park Plaza Cinema
Crime & Parody
Directed by Will Thwaites
After an amateur comedian is thrown in jail for political satire, The Onion joins his fight for free speech in a case that helps draw national attention to police conduct and accountability.
4:30 pm
Arkadin Cinema & Bar
