A group of people in Rooftop’s beloved Brooklyn come together to fight the Atlantic Yards Project—a massive real estate development that threatens to destroy...
Brooklyn Castle tells the story of I.S. 318 - an inner-city school where most students come from low-income homes - that also happens to have the most winning chess...
Set to music by mashup musician Girl Talk, this feature-length dance video is a tale of urban exploration following three dancers across New York as they turn...
When his son Gibreel is born, Emad, a Palestinian villager, gets his first camera. In his village of Bil'in, a separation barrier is being built on the villagers'...
Dance experiments in animation and editing exploring the spaces where nothing happens.
An American icon breaks down the nitty-gritty of his place in history in a dashing documentary narrated by Tom Waits.
For some, a gathering of Insane Clown Posse fans might seem like an apocalyptic nightmare, but for those in attendance, it’s a welcoming family. “We have alcohol...
Meet Magick Balay, who runs a midtown Manhattan magic shop by day, and at night performs his own legerdemain at clubs and private parties. A close-up portrait of a...
Unusual things are happening all around you, every day, forever.
Two friends devote a winter afternoon in South Dakota to ice fishing, cold beers, friendly chatter, man’s best friend, guns, dynamite…all on a frozen lake. ...
An American revolutionary updates his place in history in this radically inventive and modern bio-pic.
Directed by Alex Meillier, produced by Alex Meillier and Tanya Ager Meillier, and executive produced by Abigail Disney and GiniReticker. One courageous woman risks...
A reinterpretation of Blackalicious' 'Alphabet Aerobics' in rebus form.
Nance’s explosively creative debut feature documents the relationship between Terence and a woman as they teeter on the divide between platonic and romantic.
A quick rhythmic snapshot showing the diversity of the 99%.
Directed by Stephen Silha and Eric Slade; produced by Stephen Silha, Eric Slade, and Max St. Romain, and executive produced by Stephen Silha and Jok Church. “Big...
A traumatic animation that presents a parable in which our bodies remember the sorrow and pain of our predecessors.
Featuring stellar performances and a smart script, a girl seeks to reconcile her relationship with her estranged father. Wandering into a hustler’s life, she...
Written, directed and produced by Josiah Signor, produced by Mike Rossetti, Robert Profusek, Ryan Silbert, and Gigi Dement, and executive produced by Alexandre...
A group of people in Rooftop’s beloved Brooklyn come together to fight the Atlantic Yards Project—a massive real estate development that threatens to destroy...
A comical insight into the trials and tribulations of two women in Los Angeles who have to deal with love, herbs and random crime. A classic from the Sundance vault.
Written and directed by Alexandre Moors, written by R.F.I. Porto, produced by Isen Robbins, Aimee Schoof, Ron Simons, Kim Jackson, Stephen Tedeschi, and Brian...
Directed and written by Oakley Anderson-Moore; produced by Alexander Reinhard. In 1950′s America, social outcasts risk their lives to start a revolution: climb...
During a tumultuous break-up with his girlfriend, Alex Logan (Ryan O’Nan), a singersongwriter on the verge of giving up his childhood dream of being a musician,...
Brooklyn Castle tells the story of I.S. 318 - an inner-city school where most students come from low-income homes - that also happens to have the most winning chess...
Meet the bees—the queen, the workers and the drones—in this wonderfully fantastic and wildly educational series of short films created by Isabella Rossellini,...
A simple conversation unearths troves of meaning as cultural taboos test a budding relationship in a crowded café in Cairo.
A legendary arcade video gamer questions the significance of his legacy, and the tradition itself, in this fascinating hybrid of documentary and machinema .
9 year old Caine Monroy spent his summer building an elaborate cardboard arcade inside his dad’s used auto parts store, and invited the world to play.
In rural China, young, poor students are recruited for national boxing academies. Given the chance to become Olympic champions, they must choose to fight for the...
Written and directed by Stacie Passon, produced by Rose Troche, and executive produced by Anthony Cupo and Cliff Chenfeld. By day, as her kids sit in school, a...
A short note about Earth and a gentleman of our times.
Doctor Rao passed away. Family and friends are celebrating his last journey.
Creativity has never been easier! Or scarier! (Kids, don’t try this at home.)
Returning to his hometown to retrieve his grandmother’s ashes, Peter must rely on his only local contact, estranged buddy Donald. Awkwardness ensues as the men...
One day at breakfast, a man's soul bursts out of his eyeball. Two wild deer caretake his catatonic body in this meditation on the quirky, but rejuvenating, nature of...
Dreaming to care for her grandmother, a little girl is restricted by her aunt and mother
A collage of sensually charged moments from Korean horror films of the 2000s. Found footage showing faked surprise expressions, quick head-turns, sudden awakenings...
Written and directed by Felipe Echavarria, produced by Maggie Drayton and executive produced by Dawson Peden and Egon Stephan Jr. While on vacation in the Florida...
A documentary about a 77-year-old Staten Islander fighting for the survival of his family and looking for gold in the most unexpected of places in a story of...
A story of pirates in Somalia—told from the perspective of the pirates.
On November 15th, after protesters had been violently evicted from Zucotti Park, tension rose about the desire to reenter the park. One protester and one cop found...
When depressed fat kid Troy’s attempt to throw himself in front of a bus is thwarted by drug-addicted musical genius Marcus, the two are thrown into an adventure...
Breathtaking story of how the West Indies triumphed over its colonial masters through the achievements of one of the most gifted teams in sporting history. In a...
A classic visit to the refreshment stand before we begin our mind-bending year of revolution.
Directed and produced by Mike Ambs, written by Mike Ambs and Erica Hampton. A story of a young man split between two lives, struggling to feel at home after a 60-day...
A barren rock island off the coast of Peru. No soil, no water, but hundreds of thousands of birds. For a period of ten years, only two guards may live on Guañape...
Girl Walk//All Day is a feature-length dance music video and tale of urban exploration that follows three dancers across New York City. They turn the city's...
Set to music by mashup musician Girl Talk, this feature-length dance video is a tale of urban exploration following three dancers across New York as they turn...
Written and directed by Aaron Schimberg, and produced by Vanessa McDonnell and Caroline Oliveira. A frail schoolboy, a sinister doctor, a disfigured outcast,...
Sigríður Níelsdóttir started making music in her living room at age 70, recording 59 albums and becoming an Icelandic cult hero. It’s never too late to do what...
Heavy Girls is a comedy of sorts that follows the lives of Sven, his dementia suffering mother Edeltraut and her married male home care worker Daniel; touching on...
Monika is attempting to seduce a housefly when a sad stranger suddenly surprises her by entering through the wrong door. A minimalistic black comedy about loneliness...
In this gutsy and sidesplitting self-examination, conflicted ventriloquist Nina Conti takes the bereaved puppets of her mentor on a pilgrimage to the resting place...
Written, directed and produced by Daniel Carbone, and produced by Matthew Petock, Zachary Shedd, and Jordan Bailey-Hoover. An atmospheric exploration of nature,...
Dallas Penn and Rafi Kamm (the Internets Celebrities) return to Rooftop with their serio-comic investigation of the legendary hypothesis that the cost of a subway...
In 2005, an unknown Irish boxer shocked the world, beating Mike Tyson. Then he disappeared. Rooftop alum Weinstein rediscovers Kevin McBride in a gritty Boston...
Written and directed by Leah Meyerhoff, produced by Heather Rae, and executive produced by Allison Anders. A teenage girl avoids caring for her disabled mother by...
In this heartbreaking but ultimately uplifting documentary, the filmmaker uses a lifetime of anguished drawings and photographs to address his father’s suicide.
Signs of life for this man may very well exist on the Moon.
Starring and featuring original songs by Alexandra Clayton, I Think It’s Raining is a music-infused San Francisco portrait of a woman at odds with who she once was...
Academy Award winner (and Rooftop grantee) Don Hertzfeldt presents the third and final chapter to his masterful mixed media opus, “Everything Will Be OK,”...
"Josephine and the Roach" is a surreal, offbeat short film about a cockroach who falls in love with the woman whose apartment he infests. They make beautiful music...
A haunted meteorologist dreams of storms that are both closer and further away than he thought. His unshakable bravado is undone through fast winds and high pressure...
The Chinese government has policy of executing dissidents to deter others. This powerful narrative plays out the absurdity of that strategy in reverse.
Written and directed by Visra Vichit Vadkan and produced by Pornmanus Rattavanich and Samina Akbari. Balancing fact and fiction, dream and reality, “Karaoke...
Zoé Chantre offers an intimate and wry self-portrait that celebrates the healing qualities of art and the power of defining one’s own story. Diagnosed as a child...
A selection of two shorter shorts: The Pianist (1 min.) where a man and his piano make beautiful music together – eventually, and Moi, (4 min.) the portrait of a...
An ingeniously animated attempt to prove the tragic story of a father in Nigeria who believes that his twins are cursed and therefore kills one of his sons...
Written and directed by Kimberly Levin, produced by Kurt Pitzer, and executive produced by Will Battersby and Julia Chasman. As financial pressures mount on her...
For thousands of years, humanity has watched the sun with a mixture of fear and awe, believing without knowing why, that our lives depend on its mysterious...
New York City is the backdrop, inspiration, and co-creator of this funny and passionate meta-fictional romance.
Directed by Laura Checkoway and produced by Laura Checkoway and Neyda Martínez. Orphaned as a child, Lucky Torres is a defiant survivor. Masked in tattoos, the...
Mike Sullivan has been shooting a stop-motion robot sex film in his apartment for the past 10 years. Now his miniature robot porn stars are threatening to squeeze...
Mulvar's shallow understanding of human politics does not keep him from running for office. This is his campaign TV ad.
The filmmaker, a Bengali-American teenager, is strikingly honest in expressing his internal conflicts between his Muslim heritage and his desire to lead a...
In this artfully oblique animated home movie, the filmmaker recollects the her mother’s struggles, discovering one moment of clarity.
The IMF is shut down when it's implicated in the bombing of the Kremlin, causing Ethan Hunt and his new team to go rogue to clear their organization's name.
"They gave me a gun, a pick, and a hand grenade, and said 'Win at any cost,' and I said 'Right.' There's nothing I love more than winning..." From a story by Susan...
A random invitation to a Halloween party leads a man into the hands of a rogue collective intent on murdering him for the sake of their art, sparking a bloodbath of...
Kay Wang was a strong-willed grandmother begrudgingly dragged into a StoryCorps booth by her son and granddaughter. Sadly, Kay passed away weeks after this...
Supported by the Rooftop Filmmakers Fund / Chicken and Egg Grant for Women Filmmakers. A mixed media film that recounts how "Stormin'" Norman’s life has influenced...
Neptune, in a true display of his personality, prank calls the other planets.
Take a trip into the memories, and the fields of current realities
Jim and Dave are brothers. They don't like each other, but are forced to come together when their dad dies. Alonzo Mourning was drafted by the Hornets in 1992 and...
A little robot born on Mars. The introverted scientist who created it. A meta-fictional re-telling of NASA's Mars Pathfinder mission, discovering a story about...
A gambit is a chess opening in which a player sacrifices a pawn with the hope of achieving a resulting advantageous position. The film follows Saravuth Inn, a...
Public School 22 in NYC has more than just an amazing chorus, they have an amazing story. These 5th graders went from performing in their school auditorium on Staten...
Kevin, Garrison and Skye are three Californian teenagers who live for skating, hanging out and Jesus. This luscious documentary follows them through their last...
Directed by Penny Lane and Brian Frye, produced by Penny Lane, and executive produced by Dan Cogan and Jenny Raskin. Never before seen Super 8 home movies of Richard...
Mixed media exploration of the relationship between memory and place.
This uncut original “Planet Earth” series comes to BBC AMERICA in a special weekend marathon this Earth Day weekend - Saturday April 21 & Sunday April 22 -...
Directed and produced by Rodrigo Reyes; executive produced by Hugo Perez. Purgatorio brings together a universe of stories into a compelling cinematic experience...
Rocky and Lulu bump into each other on Chatroulette.com and create a place where they can truly be themselves. But how real is their world, and their relationship?
The tale of a celebrated Entomologist who is being haunted by his insect collecting past.
Henri Rousseau looks down on earth and the mysterious figure of the Salmon Man
The trees alongside the road, everything was blurry. There was a faint electrical buzz coming from somewhere. It was damp and raw, like the Stone Age.
Through the Freak’s nihilistic, drug-induced musings, this doc/fiction hybrid chronicles the last days of the iconic and abrasive Coney Island attraction as an...
On a cold winter morning, a lone piano stands curbside in New York City. Passersby slow, stop, and play. Plinking slightly out-of-tune over the white noise of...
A contemplative walk spurs a desire to escape via a bizarre climbing tour.
On another quiet summer day in Park Dufresne, neighborhood youth loiter until a new park monitor appears. Two universes clash, and a territorial struggle begins.
A wayward, ironic adaptation of the fairytale Goldilocks and the Three Bears
Singer-songwriter Luis Vargas is a bachatero — meaning he plays Bachata, a genre of music once maligned by the Dominican Republic’s elite as the soundtrack of...
A hilariously bloody parody of mystery cartoons and the consequences of meddling with the supernatural.
The most beautiful planet deconstructed, played with, put back together again.
On April 2nd, 2011, LCD SOUNDSYSTEM played its final show at NYC's legendary Madison Square Garden. Frontman James Murphy had made the conscious decision to disband...
'Metaphor of vision' that shows the shapes of the world beyond realism.
It’s just another workday for office drone Derek. Then everything changes.
A poetic and symphonic homage to the city of Havana, this breathtaking film portrays Cuba’s capital as no other art form has before. A loving picture over a 24...
A young couple flee a violent past in this visceral road trip through the desolate bywater towns of Florida.
Nicholas Petron remembers family dinners at his grandfather's place and how everything changed when the city made new plans for their neighborhood.
Directed and produced by Benjamin Greené. Survival Prayer celebrates the modern lifeways of a remote indigenous community against the backdrop of cultural loss and...
Developed by multimedia artists Carl Skelton and R. Luke DuBois, Sweet Stream Love’s River displays words of love, glowing in the rippling surface of a real-time...
Based in the Florida Everglades, Rooftop alum Bardsley has crafted an autobiographical study of history and myth, decaying in the swamps. The mixed materials that...
Hailed as the “godfather of Brooklyn pizza,” for forty five years Domenico DeMarco, Italian émigré and father of seven, has been slinging pizzas in his...
While trying to move 40 kids six New York City blocks all by himself, a stressed man accidentally loses a bouquet of a hundred balloons. In that bouquet, a lone...
The centrifuge brain project is a scientific experiment that started in the 1970s. It involves an amusement park to enhance people’s brain capacity. Dr. Laslowicz...
Personal home movies follow how a young boy's attempts to avoid a bad grade in school in 1990's Sarajevo may have contributed to a civil war.
It’s the start of the hunting season. The animals of the forest board a small bus and flee to safety.
In the old days, Norway used to be a safe haven for Trolls, but not anymore. An adorable, melancholy animation about three young goats and a fading tradition.
A remake of La Jetée, set in Miami and starring Uncle Luke of the 2 Live Crew.
In the woods, in the middle of the night, a woman finds refuge with a dangerous man in an eerie mansion. But she has a secret that will save or destroy him....
The Stanford MRI Lab hosts the world’s first ever love competition, in which seven contestants have five minutes to neurochemically love someone as hard as they...
Based on stories from Colombia’s civil unrest, a man rafts into dark waters, hoping desperately to discover the truth about his neighbors and loved ones.
From the Maroon village of Malobi in Suriname, this hypnotic single-take film moves into and out of a mysterious ritual. Deliberately offering no explanation, the...
The worlds of production and perception blur and crack apart. Part of a series examining “physical voyages, psychedelic journeys, and a phenomenological...
Captured in breathtaking 16mm film, an eight-year-old traveling from Poland to Argentina meets Marcia, a beautiful and brave young girl, 11 going on 30.
Tim Heidecker stars in this black comedy about a self-absorbed, filthy-rich, obnoxious hipster, insulting his friends and condescending to strangers, and yet somehow...
A turn into the psyche of projected shadows, fleeting lights and ethereal vocal incantations.
Kick off this celebration of NY summer with the floating trance-like harmonies of a steel drum orchestra, gathering in panyards across Brooklyn to gear up for the...
Written and directed, by Andrew Mudge, produced by Cecil Matlou and TR Boyce, and executive produced by Terry Leonard. Returning to Lesotho to bury his father, a...
A boy goes missing in the snow-covered wilderness, feared taken by wolves. A hunter undertakes a journey to find the him, but as he tracks the boy into the...
A mythical romance forged in fantasy comes apart under the scrutiny of a Brooklyn dinner party.
Rooftop Films, indieWIRE, and Snag Films celebrate our 16 year anniversaries with a special sneak preview of The Imposter. An engaging investigation into a bizarre...
Philip meets strange and dangerous creatures in the desert.
A darkly humorous glimpse into the everyday goings-on in a typical American nursing home, poignantly capturing the realities of growing old. Supported by the Rooftop...
Laetitia and Sophie decide to spend the weekend in Brittany, the birthplace of Laetitia, in the town of Quimper. Throughout their stay punctuated by pancakes, walks...
Presented by Rooftop Films and SXSW Caveh Zahedi might face a fatwah for this provocative and darkly amusing look at his inability to make a boundary-pushing movie...
A man and a boy, traveling to an unknown destination, find respite in a motel swimming pool. But an unseen tension begins to mount, exposing a complicated,...
Survivors from Japan's recent tsunami find the courage to revive and rebuild as cherry blossom season begins. A stunning visual poem about the ephemeral nature of...
An evening of health care activism based around a character-driven documentary, going inside a hospital struggling to care for a community of uninsured patients as...
In the aftermath of an alien occupation of Britain, a lone man devotes his life solely to a myth that salvation can be found in the water. However, he must avoid the...
Directed by Bassam Tariq and Omar Mullick and produced by Bassam Tariq, Omar Mullick, and Valentina Canavesio. A portrait of contemporary Pakistan is created through...
As things unravel for a struggling single mother in Las Vegas, she must decide what she's willing to give up to get by.
A hit at the 2012 Berlinale,This Ain’t California takes a look at the transformation of Germany over the course of 40 years through the lens of three skateboarder...
In a cold, bleak field there lays a lonely scarecrow. But he won't be alone for long.
A poor kid from Brooklyn fights the fates for a chance to change his life.
A young man from rural Mexico with secret aspirations of being a drag performer is forced to choose between helping his hard-working farm parents and running for his...
Todd decided to illegally grow a vegetable garden on a neglected patch of land in Brooklyn.
Todd returns to the garden and encounters a thief, a dirty old man, and God.
Where would Travis Bickle fit in with the Disney-fied New York City?
A lyrical and delightful documentary about a girl who must live somewhere other than the woods for the first time in her life.
Dry landscapes are filled with the traces of meta-conflict, beyond any visible political or ideological issues. An unexplainable state of crisis takes over the...
A recently reformed drug dealer working as a claims adjuster receives earth-shattering news that compels him to make peace with his past and search for freedom...
Documents the Haitian band, Septentrional. For 60 years this 20 piece band has been making beautiful music — a fusion of Cuban big band and Haitian vodou beats –...
Directed by Nicolas Hudak and Anna Hudak, and produced by Anna Hudak “Where God Likes to Be” portrays young Native Americans’ struggle to find their place in a...
“(Indecipherable.) (Indecipherable.) Check his left pocket.” Two career criminals debate the merits of letting an associate bleed to death in a motel bathroom....
Two young public defenders in the Bronx strive to resolve hundreds of cases while facing the emotional burden of working in a system they consider fundamentally...
A rare look into a pastime fading from popularity, this intimate documentary exposes the obscure nuances and amusing cultural details among the flyers at New...
Since comets have been recorded, they’ve augured catastrophe, messiahs, upheaval and end times. This will be a little film about these meteoric ice-cored...
Rooftop Films is a New York based non-profit whose mission is to engage diverse communities by showing independent movies in outdoor locations, producing new films, coordinating youth media education, and renting equipment at low cost to artists.
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