PODCAST · tv
Cinemafile
by Mike Kaspar
Cinemafile showcases the very best in independent, documentary and foreign films through our conversations with the more than 2,000 filmmakers who made them. Through Cinemafile we will do our best to bring the most interesting and accomplished filmmakers from around the world to your attention.
Episodes
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Miss Representation: Rise Up - Director Jennifer Siebel Newsom
Over a decade after Miss Representation exposed the media's contribution to the under- representation of women in leadership, Miss Representation: Rise Up dives deep into the cultural backlash against women's agency and power. With the proliferation of AI and deepfakes, this new era of...
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Case 137 - Director Dominik Moll
Following the Yellow Vest protests of Paris in 2018, internal affairs officer Stéphanie Bertrand must investigate the conduct of her fellow police officers during the demonstrations. Though striving to remain objective, Stéphanie’s position leaves her at stark odds with the rest of the police...
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Following Harry - Director Susanne Rostock
Directed by Susanne Rostock (Sing Your Song), FOLLOWING HARRY joins legendary artist and civil rights leader Harry Belafonte as he embarks on a deeply personal and reflective journey, inspiring the next generation of entertainers and activists to disrupt injustice across the globe, striving for...
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Bird in Hand - Director Melody C. Roscher
Inspired by Roscher’s own biracial experience, BIRD IN HAND follows the newly engaged Bird Rowe (Alisha Wainwright) as she returns to her rural hometown to plan the wedding with her narcissistic hippie mother Carlotta (Christine Lahti). Bird also has a hidden agenda, one that leads her to her...
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The Last Message - Subject Kelsie Kimberlin (Co-directors Andrii Voloshyn & Oleksii Mykhailovych Liebiediev)
In The Last Message, Kelsie Kimberlin travels to Ukraine to uncover why her 21-year-old cousin Andrii Rachok was killed by Russian forces during their full-scale invasion. Kelsie, a popular American-Ukrainian singer, struggles to record her song Star in his memory, realizing she must first seek...
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Stalin Boys - Co-directors Bianca Giaever and Ora DeKornfeld
STALIN BOYS follows four Mexican American middle school boys in a tiny Texas border town who have developed an unusual obsession with Joseph Stalin. When their teacher tells them about the Texas State History Fair, they decide to write and perform a play about the Soviet dictator and his efforts…
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Playing with Fire: An Ecosexual Emergency - Co-directors Beth Stephens & Annie Sprinkle
When lightning ignites a firestorm in their redwood forest sanctuary in Northern California, longtime lovers and artists Beth Stephens & Annie Sprinkle are forced to evacuate. Their lives are forever changed as they blend loss and grief into ecosexual art by fusing humor, community care, and...
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Antoinetta Stallings - Maxscene Division at Tyler Perry Studios
Joining us on this edition of Cinemafile is Antoinetta Stallings, the Head of the MAXSCENE Division at Tyler Perry Studios, a new specialty division dedicated to expanding theatrical opportunities for filmmakers with distinctive voices. This new arm of Tyler Perry Studios will focus on...
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Ithaqua - Director Casey Walker
As a brutal winter grips the Canadian wilderness and the fur trade begins its collapse, the isolated inhabitants of a remote trading outpost enlist Cole Franklin, an American mercenary haunted by his past, to investigate the silence that has fallen over a nearby Indigenous settlement. What he...
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Songs of Slow Burning Earth - Director Olha Zhurba & Producer Darya Bassel
SONGS OF SLOW BURNING EARTH was filmed during the first two years of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, documenting the lives of civilians, children and aid workers as war becomes part of everyday life. It’s an intimate and deeply human film about what it means to continue living, working…
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This is Buzz - Director Mark Pellington
This Is Buzz is experimental and music-driven documentary, illustrating the tale of the seismically influential, yet somehow forgotten, MTV slice of life docuseries BUZZ, which only ran for 13 episodes in 1990. The show took an experimental approach to uncovering often undiscussed corners of…
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The Art of Adventure - Director Alison Reid
From Alison Reid, the director of the critically acclaimed documentary about the late and beloved zoologist Anne Innis Dagg, The Woman Who Loves Giraffes, comes her latest feature documentary, THE ART OF ADVENTURE. An exhilarating road-trip film and a heartfelt love letter to the natural world…
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The Scout - Paula González-Nasser
Sofia works as a location scout for a TV pilot filming in New York City. It’s her job to find the homes, businesses, and exteriors where the show will be filmed. Driving around the city's different neighborhoods, she enters the private spaces of strangers to photograph their cozy apartments and...
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Everybody to Kenmure Street - Director Felipe Bustos Sierra
Director Felipe Bustos Sierra's award winning documentary, Everybody to Kenmure Street, is set in motion by a remarkable series of events on a May 2021 morning in Glasgow, Scotland. A U.K. Home Office raid grabbed two Pakistani immigrants from their homes, locked them in a van, and triggered one…
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POWWOW PEOPLE - Director Sky Hopinka (Ho-Chunk/Pechanga)
POWWOW PEOPLE is a vérité-style documentary grounded in the rhythms, relationships, and lived experience of contemporary Native powwow culture. Told through the lens of artist and filmmaker Sky Hopinka (Ho-Chunk/Pechanga), the film is an intimate portrait of a powwow organized, hosted and...
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My Omaha - Director and Subject Nick Beaulieu
As Omaha is shaken by protests and a death that becomes a movement flashpoint, filmmaker Nick Beaulieu navigates family conflict, personal reckoning, and the lived realities of racial justice activists. What begins as an investigation into division becomes an intimate exploration of what it takes...
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Infirmary - Director Nicholas Pineda
A guard vanished on his first night at an old psych hospital in 2023. His bodycam footage shows unexplainable incidents that continue to baffle investigators. We're joined by the director and co-producer Nicholas Pineda About the filmmaker - Nicholas Pineda is a filmmaker and creative director…
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Beware Boiuna - Director Mike P. Nelson
A team of young doctors embarks on a humanitarian mission to the Amazon rainforest, full of enthusiasm to help those in need, but each of them with their own agenda. However, not everyone reacts kindly to their arrival, and their visit awakens an ancient predator: the Boiúna. This mythical...
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Traces of Home – Director Colette Ghunim
TRACES OF HOME follows filmmaker Colette Ghunim on an extraordinary journey of self-discovery as she sets out to reunite her parents with the ancestral homes they were forced to flee as children in Palestine and Mexico. Filmed over five years and featuring evocative animation and archival…
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Sunny Dancer – Director George Jaques
IVY, 17, is a cancer survivor, in remission. Once one of the popular girls at school, she’s now angry and withdrawn, riddled with survivor’s guilt. She hates pity and she definitely doesn’t want to be a Make-A-Wish kid. Her parents are worried and convince her to go to CRF Camp, or Children Run...
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The Condor Daughter - Director Alvaro Olmos Torrico
Bolivia’s entry for the 2027 Academy Award for Best International Feature Film, THE CONDOR DAUGHTER, tells the story of Clara, a teenager growing up in a small indigenous community high in the Andes. Her adoptive mother, a midwife who took her in as a baby, has taught her the ancient songs used…
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Give It a Shot - Director Vaishali Sinha
A global race to develop a new male contraceptive that could revolutionize family planning and improve women’s lives globally. Give It A Shot follows the indomitable 83-year-old Dr. Sujoy Guha in India, the California-based team of Elaine Lissner and L.R. Fox, as well as Kevin Eisenfrats in...
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Brailled It - Co-directors David Grabias & Brendon Schulze & Salome & Isaiah & Chris
Every year, the top under-18 braille readers and writers from across the English-speaking world gather in Los Angeles to compete in the Braille Challenge. For one weekend, blind and low-vision kids are no longer the minority in the room. They're competing, forming friendships, going head-to-head...
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You Had to Be There - Director Nick Davis
YOU HAD TO BE THERE is a hilarious, emotional, and revelatory documentary about the legendary 1972 Canadian production of Godspell that changed entertainment forever. The Toronto production of the musical about the life of Jesus starred a then-unknown cast of Martin Short, Eugene Levy, Gilda...
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You Can’t be Neutral on a Moving Train - Co-directors Deb Ellis & Denis Mueller
You Con’t be Neutral on a Moving Train looks at the amazing life of the renowned historian, activist and author, Howard Zinn. Following his early days as a shipyard labor organizer and bombardier in World War II, Zinn became an academic rebel and leader of civil disobedience in a time of...
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*From the Archive* Wisdom of Happiness - Co-directors Barbara Miller
Co-directors Barbara Miller and Philip Delaquis WISDOM OF HAPPINESS shows us a timeless truth: happiness is still possible, even in the midst of chaos and uncertainty. This powerful message of hope is delivered as a personal audience with one of the greatest living thinkers, Nobel Peace Prize...
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*Best of 2026* - Ghost in the Machine - Director Valerie Veatch
Director Valerie Veatch navigates the torrential rapids of artificial intelligence with this mind-expanding investigative essay documentary that excavates the philosophical, cultural and political forces driving the global AI boom. Ghost in the Machine approaches ubiquitous questions like “What…
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The Natural State Director Matthew Dougherty
In 1989, Julie Thayer, a wealthy mother from New York City, went to the Swiss Alps to have her ego destroyed. The man she chose for the job was U.G. Krishnamurti, a radical Indian anti-guru who refused followers, refused donations, and told everyone who came to him to go away. Julie stayed — and...
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The Hummingbird Paints Fragrant Songs - Co-directors Matteo Norzi & Èlia Gasull Balada
Sara Flores, a visionary practitioner of kené—the design system of the Shipibo People—spent a lifetime with little recognition before finding herself, in her seventies, suddenly embraced by the global contemporary art world. As gallery invitations, a Dior collaboration, and international travel...
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The Oldest Person in the World - Director Sam Green
THE OLDEST PERSON IN THE WORLD is a decade-long odyssey chronicling the ever-changing record holders of the title of oldest person alive. As the title inevitably passes from one supercentenarian to the next, acclaimed filmmaker Sam Green traverses the globe to meet each new record holder, his...
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Black Zombie - Director Maya Annik Bedward
BLACK ZOMBIE digs beneath the blood-soaked spectacle of modern horror to uncover the zombie’s buried and unsettling origins. Long before it became associated with flesh-eating ghouls, the zombie was a living metaphor for slavery: not a monster, but the ultimate victim of colonial power. A symbol…
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*Why Labor Day Matters* - Who Moves America - Director Yael Bridge
UPS is the world’s largest package delivery company, moving millions of packages across 200 countries and territories every day. With their 2023 contract set to expire, the Teamsters mount increasing pressure on UPS to improve working conditions or face 340,000 workers walking off the job and...
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*Cinemafile Archive* - The Teacher - Director Farah Nabulsi
A gripping and emotional drama filmed and set in the West Bank of Palestine, THE TEACHER, the debut feature from Oscar-nominated director Farah Nabulsi. The film stars renowned Palestinian actor Saleh Bakri (The Band's Visit) — who Farah dubs "the Daniel Day-Lewis of the Arab world" — and the...
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The Incomer - Director Louis Paxton
Sundance Award winning comedy, The Incomer is a modern folk fairy tale set on a remote Scottish island, where two siblings survive by hunting seabirds, retelling the stories of their ancestors, and defending the isle from dreaded Incomers'. Their world is upended with the arrival of an awkward...
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Occupational Hazard: The First Coral Reefers - Director John H. Cunningham
OCCUPATIONAL HAZARD: THE FIRST CORAL REEFERS is a feature documentary that journeys back to the 1970s and early 1980s to tell the origin story of Jimmy Buffett’s original Coral Reefer Band. Set against the creative backdrop of Key West, the film explores the musicians, friendships, touring years,...
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Teenage Wasteland - Co-directors Amanda McBaine & Jesse Moss
Set in 1991 in upstate New York, Teenage Wasteland follows a group of teenage misfits, inspired by a renegade English teacher, who embark on a student film project and uncover a vast conspiracy that is poisoning the ground beneath their feet. Banding together to confront the indifferent adults,...
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The Cycle of Love - Director Orlando von Einsiedel
Orlando von Einsiedel's THE CYCLE OF LOVE begins in 1977, PK, with a 23-year-old street artist from a marginalized “untouchable” family in Delhi as he sets out on an extraordinary 6,000-mile journey across continents with little more than a handful of paintbrushes and a secondhand bicycle. Driven...
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The Sun Never Sets - Director Joe Swanberg
Wendy (Dakota Fanning) believes she's perfectly happy in her relationship, until her older boyfriend, Jack (Jake Johnson), who is divorced with children, insists they take a break to make sure she's truly okay giving up on the idea of marriage and babies. During this time, Wendy unexpectedly runs...
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Hanging by a Wire - Director Mohammed Ali Naqvi
Hanging by a Wire recounts the true story of a routine school commute that turned terrifying when a makeshift cable car's wire snapped, leaving eight passengers — including six schoolboys — suspended hundreds of feet above a ravine in the remote foothills of the Pakistani Himalayas. With the…
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Finding Emily - Director Alicia MacDonald
From the producers of Bridget Jones’s Diary and Love Actually comes the heartfelt new romantic comedy FINDING EMILY. Sensitive musician Owen (Spike Fearn) meets the woman of his dreams during a late shift at the Manchester City University Student Union. They flirt, they drink, they dance, then...
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Learning to Fly - Director Max Lowe
LEARNING TO FLY follows former competitive runner turned photographer Aisha McAdams as she embarks on a journey to document the triumphs and struggles of some of the biggest names in ultra running, such as Jim Walmsley, Eszter Csillag and Vincent Bouillard, as they compete at the Western States...
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MOOCH - Director Jeff Ryan
Set against the backdrop of suburban New Jersey golf courses, MOOCH is about Shane, played by Jeff Ryan, at nearly thirty and still the oldest caddy at his local golf club, he has mastered the art of getting by without ever quite growing up. When a botched theft of four hundred dollars…
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*2026 Sundance Award Winner - American Doctor - Director Poh Si Teng
From Oscar®-nominated and Emmy® Award-winning filmmaker Poh Si Teng, AMERICAN DOCTOR follows three American physicians— Palestinian, Jewish, and Zoroastrian—united by a single oath to save lives. American Doctor is a vérité documentary following three prominent physicians-Palestinian, Jewish, and...
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How To Divorce During the War - Director Andrius Blaževičius
Vilnius, 2022. High-flying executive Marija (Zygimante Elena Jakstaite) chooses the worst possible moment to inform her husband Vytas (Vee-tus) (Marius Repsys) she wants a divorce: just one day before Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Suddenly the couple must navigate the process of separation as it...
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Never Stop Chasing - Director Ken Cole & Subject Reed Timmer
In the immersive documentary Never Stop Chasing, legendary storm chaser Reed Timmer pursues a life hunting the world’s most violent weather. Haunted by the tragic death of his mentor, Tim Samaras, in the historic 2013 El Reno tornado, and the sudden loss of his best friend and long-time chase...
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To Use a Mountain - Director Casey Carter
In 1982, six rural communities across the United States were notified that all of the nation’s nuclear waste might be buried beneath them forever. Faced with a mandate to isolate the waste for 10,000 years, the Department of Energy mapped, analyzed, and assembled its assessments, while the...
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Our Hero, Balthazar - Director Oscar Boyson & Co-screenwriter Ricky Camilleri
The audacious coming-of-age story that expertly balances pitch-black humor with a sense of creeping menace, Our Hero, Balthazar is an engrossing modern fable about the influence of social media, isolation, and glorified violence on modern adolescence. Showcasing “the superb acting” (Deadline) of...
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Union County - Director Adam Meeks
Will Poulter and Noah Centineo give pitch perfect performances in Adam Meeks's Sundance hit, Union County. Playing brothers Cody and Jack Parsons, each navigating a court-mandated drug rehabilitation program in a pocket of rural Ohio hit hard by the opioid epidemic. Provided with hope for the…
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Winter Hymns - Director Nathan Deming
WINTER HYMNS takes shape in a single hospital room on a gray winter day, Dr. Linda Vobernik (Colleen Madden) meets a series of patients and families confronting the end of life. Among them are a farmer who refuses to accept his failing body, an English teacher clinging to her students’ futures…
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Awake, My Soul: The Story of the Sacred Harp, Co-directors Matt Hinton & Erica Hinton
Erica and Matt Hinton's are the filmmaking team behind this endlessly fascinating documentary Awake, My Soul: The Story of the Sacred Harp. It is the first feature documentary to explore the history, music, and traditions of Sacred Harp singing, the oldest distinctively American form of music.…
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ABOUT THIS SHOW
Cinemafile showcases the very best in independent, documentary and foreign films through our conversations with the more than 2,000 filmmakers who made them. Through Cinemafile we will do our best to bring the most interesting and accomplished filmmakers from around the world to your attention.
HOSTED BY
Mike Kaspar
CATEGORIES
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Frequently Asked Questions
How many episodes does Cinemafile have?
Cinemafile currently has 278 episodes available on PodParley. New episodes are automatically indexed when they're published to the podcast feed.
What is Cinemafile about?
Cinemafile showcases the very best in independent, documentary and foreign films through our conversations with the more than 2,000 filmmakers who made them. Through Cinemafile we will do our best to bring the most interesting and accomplished filmmakers from around the world to your attention.
How often does Cinemafile release new episodes?
Cinemafile publishes regularly with 278 episodes available. Check the episode list for the typical release schedule.
Where can I listen to Cinemafile?
You can listen to Cinemafile on PodParley by clicking any episode. We provide an embedded audio player for direct listening, and you can also subscribe via your preferred podcast app using the RSS feed.
Who hosts Cinemafile?
Cinemafile is created and hosted by Mike Kaspar.
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