Purchase tickets for films below
(Please note times and venue for your films & present receipt for admission. You will NOT receive a printed ticket). Online sales will close approximately 2 hours before the start of the first film each evening. Tickets will then be available at the venue.
This year we again present a slate of good films for a better world, films that will challenge and inspire us to be better neighbors and build a stronger community!
We're grateful to the following sponsors for making the 2022 GFFF possible: Farmington Brewing Company, Bill Brown Ford, Thornton & Grooms, Cutters Studios, Wright Beamer, Clarus Lighting + Controls, Friends of the Library, David and Abigail Viane, Shekufa & Ardeshir Irani, and the family of Sandy and Tommye Feit, in loving memory. Thanks also to our supportive venues: The Riviera Cinema, Farmington Community Library, and Zekelman Holocaust Center.
Thursday, October 6th
7:00 pm at the Riviera Cinema
Documentary, 94 mins
This is a film about who gets seen and who gets left behind in today’s seductive, secretive and unregulated art world. The Art of Making It follows a diverse group of compelling young artists on the brink of unimaginable success or failure as they challenge systems, break barriers and risk it all with the goal of making it in an industry where all the rules are currently being rewritten.
Winner of the Audience Award at the 2022 SXSW Film Festival
Friday, October 7th
7:00 pm at the Riviera Cinema
FINDING HAPPINESS in TROUBLED TIMES
Documentary, 90 mins
Deeply moving and laugh-out-loud funny, Mission: JOY is a documentary with unprecedented access to the unlikely friendship of two international icons who transcend religion: His Holiness the Dalai Lama and Archbishop Tutu. In their final joint mission, these self-described mischievous brothers give a master class in how to create joy in a world that was never easy for them. They offer neuroscience-backed wisdom to help each of us live with more joy, despite circumstances.
Consisting largely of never-before-seen footage shot over 5 days at the Dalai Lama’s residence in Dharamsala, the film invites viewers to join these luminaries behind the scenes as they recount stories from their lives, each having lived through periods of incredible difficulty and strife. With genuine affection, mutual respect and a healthy dose of teasing, these unlikely friends impart lessons gleaned from lived experience, ancient traditions, and the latest cutting-edge science regarding how to live with joy in the face of all of life’s challenges from the extraordinary to the mundane.
Mission: Joy is an antidote for the times.
“When you are kind to someone else, you end up being joyful, but why? Because we realize that we are made for goodness.” - Archbishop Desmond Tutu
“You see, usually everybody seeks happiness – joyfulness – but from outside. From money, from power, from big car, from big house. Ultimate source of happy life – even physical health – inside not outside.” - His Holiness the Dalai Lama
9:15 pm at the Riviera Cinema
WHO WE ARE: A CHRONICLE of RACISM in AMERICA
Documentary, 118 mins
Jeffery Robinson had one of the best educations in America. He went to Marquette University and Harvard Law School and has been a trial lawyer for over 40 years – as a public defender, in private practice, at the ACLU, and now at The Who We Are Project. In 2011, Robinson began raising his then 13-year-old nephew and, as a Black man raising a Black son, struggled with what to tell his son about racism in America. How, he wondered, did we get here? And when he started looking at our Nation’s history, Robinson was shocked by what he had not known. For the past 10 years, in community centers, concert halls, houses of worship, and conference rooms across America, he has been sharing what he learned.
In Who We Are – A Chronicle of Racism in America, Robinson faces his largest audience, asking all of us to examine who we are, where we come from, and who we want to be. Anchored by Robinson’s 2018 performance at NYC’s historic Town Hall Theater, the film interweaves historical and present-day archival footage, Robinson’s personal story, and observational and interview footage capturing Robinson’s meetings with Black change-makers and eyewitnesses to history. From a hanging tree in Charleston, South Carolina, to a walking tour of the origins of slavery in colonial New York, to the site of a 1947 lynching in rural Alabama, the film brings history to life, exploring the enduring legacy of white supremacy and our collective responsibility to overcome it.
“Jeffery Robinson is precise, empathetic and informed. He is every teacher you might have ever wished for as a student” - Screen Daily
Saturday, October 8th
2:00 pm at the Farmington Community Library
NYICFF KID FLICKS, presented in partnership with the New York International Children’s Film Festival.
Lively collections of short animation, live action, and documentary films reflect NYICFF’s commitment to storytelling and diversity and are sure to spark meaningful conversations. This FREE screening is recommended for kids young and old!
7:00 pm at the Riviera Cinema
Documentary, 91 mins
Mama Bears is an exploration of the journeys taken by two “mama bears”—conservative, Christian mothers whose profound love for their LGBTQ+ children has turned them into fierce advocates for the entire queer community—and a young African American lesbian whose struggle for self-acceptance perfectly exemplifies why the mama bears are so vitally important.
Mama Bears is the story of women who have allowed nearly every aspect of their lives to be completely reshaped by love. Although they may have grown up as fundamentalist, evangelical Christians, mama bears are willing to risk losing friends, family, and faith communities to keep their children safe—even if it challenges their belief systems and rips their worlds apart.
Shot in a poetic, deeply intimate style, Mama Bears uses social media posts, home movies, photographs, interviews, and cinema verité footage to explore the complex intersections of politics, religion, faith, and true, unconditional love.
Premiered at the 2022 SXSW Film Festival.
9:15 pm at the Riviera Cinema
Animated Documentary, 89 mins
Flee tells the story of Amin Nawabi as he grapples with a painful secret he has kept hidden for twenty years, one that threatens to derail the life he has built for himself and his soon to be husband. Recounted mostly through animation to director Jonas Poher Rasmussen, he tells for the first time the story of his extraordinary journey as a child refugee from Afghanistan.
Flee was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Animated Feature.
“One of the most uniquely memorable animated films of the last decade”
- The Guardian
Sunday, October 9th
12:30 pm at the Zekelman Holocaust Center
Animated Drama, 93 mins
Charlotte is an animated drama that tells the true story of Charlotte Salomon (Keira Knightley), a young German-Jewish painter who comes of age in Berlin on the eve of the Second World War. Fiercely imaginative and deeply gifted, she dreams of becoming an artist. Her first love applauds her talent, which emboldens her resolve. But the world around her is changing quickly and dangerously, limiting her options and derailing her dream.
When anti-Semitic policies inspire violent mobs, she leaves Berlin for the safety of the South of France. There she begins to paint again and finds new love. But her work is interrupted, this time by a family tragedy that reveals an even darker secret. Believing that only the extraordinary will save her, she embarks on the monumental adventure of painting her life story.
FREE VIRTUAL FILM SCREENINGS (please consider making a donation HERE.)
RACE, SPACE, and MOBILITY in AMERICA
Documentary, 115 mins
Register HERE with invitation code DWB-KSF.
Discover how the advent of the automobile brought new mobility and freedom for African Americans but also exposed them to discrimination and deadly violence, and how that history resonates today.
“It’s a thorough history of the effort to restrict and shame Black mobility, and it’s a must-watch.”
- IndieWire
Documentary, 87 mins
View the film HERE with code viva.
Narrated and featuring Woody Harrelson, Kiss the Ground is an inspiring and groundbreaking film that reveals the first viable solution to our climate crisis.
Kiss the Ground reveals that, by regenerating the world’s soils, we can completely and rapidly stabilize Earth’s climate, restore lost ecosystems and create abundant food supplies. Using compelling graphics and visuals, along with striking NASA and NOAA footage, the film artfully illustrates how, by drawing down atmospheric carbon, soil is the missing piece of the climate puzzle.
This movie is positioned to catalyze a movement to accomplish the impossible – to solve humanity’s greatest challenge, to balance the climate and secure our species future.
“Inspires a rare feeling of hope” - The New York Times
Documentary, 78 mins
Register and view HERE.
A how-to manual for saving the earth.
The number of Millennials in the United States — those born between approximately 1978 and 2000 — is near 80 million people. They’re the most diverse generation in America, with 56 percent of them registered as politically Independent … and every single one of them will be needed if the planet is to avoid climate catastrophe. In The Revolution Generation, filmmakers Josh Tickell and Rebecca Tickell (whose previous films Fuel, Pump, and Kiss the Ground have examined oil, capitalism, and a regenerative way forward for the earth) spotlight a generation that has been mischaracterized, mislabeled, and mistakenly mocked. Through interviews and highlighting a theory by authors/generational demographists Neil Howe and William Strauss that history can be viewed as a series of 80-year cycles — and within that, into four “seasons” that bring with them profound societal changes — the film shows the impact of the WWII Generation, Baby Boomers, and Gen X. But Millennials occupy a special spot: They’re creators of social tech and native digital users, are anti-corporate crusaders, are more empathetic that any previous group … and they now have to secure voting rights, equality, and the safety of the planet itself. Can they do it? A kinetic, perceptive documentary of a generation and why they are who they are, The Revolution Generation is also, as Josh Tickell says, “A how-to manual for saving the earth.”