On October 24th, 2014, 57-­year-old Google Executive Alan Eustace stepped into a spacesuit, attached himself to a football stadium sized balloon, and began a fourteen minute descent back to earth, breaking not only the sound barrier but also the world record for the highest flight and free fall of any human in history. Filmed under a cloak of secrecy and at times 135,000 feet in the stratosphere, this fantastic film is a roller coaster of ride of scientific innovations and humanity.-Jennifer Morris

The US Supreme Court decision Roe v. Wade gave every woman the right to have an abortion, but today abortion remains one of the most divisive issues, with each year seeing more restrictions.  This powerful film sheds new light on the contentious issue, with a focus not on the debate, but rather on the women themselves: those struggling with unplanned pregnancies, the providers who show up at clinics to give medical care, as well as the activists on the sidewalks hoping to sway decisions and lives. -Chris Metzler

Four fearless young adults, Katherine, Morgin, Sean and Olivia, defy societal norms to be their true selves and become more visible. Rejected by their families and lured to New York City with the hope of finding connection and love, many of these trans teens instead find themselves again rejected and homeless. For trans people, the difference between visibility and invisibility can be the difference between life and death. Becoming More Visible helps to bring these kids out from the shadows by giving them a voice and a safe space to express their individuality.-Jennifer Morris

Enter the lives of a group of girls attending The Mbaracayú Forest Girls’ School in Paraguay, which is surrounded by land where 95 percent of the forest has been burned and cleared. Here the girls learn both their academics and how to run a business.  Will this unique education give them the courage and skills they need to resist the intense pressure to leave school so they can fill the only role for which many in their community think teenage girls are suited? -Chris Metzler

80-year-old eccentric Frank is pretty much retired and has turned his attentions to playing the accordion. However, the focus of this revealing film is his celebrity, which derives from a deeply felt friendship with Pudgie Wudgie, his 20-pound performing house cat.  The soon-to-be-famous feline’s distinguishing trait is its Buddha-like patience with the costumes that Frank imposes on him.  Frank and Pudgie start out humbly but soon their growing fame takes them from elementary-school assemblies to the dizzying heights of national television.  Strange, oddly beautiful and hilarious. -Chris Metzler

Fifty years ago, Ken Kesey took his iconic bus,“Further,” across the country to Woodstock, and inspired a generation. His son Zane decides to fire up the old bus and get back out on the road. Armed with a new band of Merry Pranksters, the Further bus travels over 15,000 miles in 75 days, riding into music festivals, community events, tribal gatherings, and national landmarks. Never-before-seen archive footage from the first trip are combined with over 300 hours from this new exploration to explore the roots of a culture birthed in the early sixties and how it has influenced today's generations.-Jennifer Morris

The Hollywood Shorties were a basketball team formed from a group of recognizable-but-typecast actors from the dwarf community. It began as a rare outlet for these little people to gather publicly, but by the early 1980s the Shorties were enjoying a niche in entertainment akin to the Harlem Globetrotters. They found themselves at the vanguard of a revolution to represent little people as something other than objects of curiosity. In a bittersweet turn, the very popularity they created would phase the team out of the sport they pioneered. -Chris Metzler

A tribute to a tormented love story as a husband immerses himself in his wife’s environment, the ballet, and starts documenting it. At first he is fascinated by her discipline until he finds out that she is abusing her body. This changes the way he sees her as she is transformed from an admirable dancer into a dance-obsessed person with no mercy for her own body. Made up of private recordings, the film concentrates on the couple’s move to the Bay Area and her pursuit of a career as prima ballerina with the San Francisco Ballet. -Metzler Co-Presented by the SF Dance Film Festival

In the fall of 2008, at the dawn of the Great Recession, General Motors, Ford, and Chrysler--- three of the most famous and powerful American industrial companies--- found themselves on the verge of total collapse. Live Another Day, based on the book Crash Course, by Pulitzer Prize-winning author Paul Ingrassia, reveals the inside story of the fall and rescue of Detroit’s big three automakers. Full of twists and turns, betrayal, political intrigue, and back room backstabbing. -Jennifer Morris

In the wake of the Sandy Hook tragedy, a theater production seeks to cast local children in a rock version of A Midsummer Night's Dream, which they hope will heal a community devastated by the school shooting. From auditions to dress rehearsals, we witness the children find their voices and ultimately shine on opening night.  It is a powerful testament to the transformative force of artistic expression and to the resilience of a community that is fighting to not be defined by tragedy. -Chris Metzler

Dive into the strange and wonderful world of the Federal Duck Stamp Contest – the only juried art competition run by the U.S. government. The Duck Stamp is among the most successful conservation tools ever created. It has also spawned a uniquely American subculture of talent, ego, art, controversy, big money, and migratory waterfowl. The film explores the history and challenges facing this successful conservation program, while delving into the eccentric nature of six wildlife artists as they competitively paint waterfowl in their obsessive quests to win the “Olympics of wildlife art.” -Chris Metzler

Martina Batan is an eccentric NY gallery director who is haunted by the brutal murder of her brother in 1978. Martina obsessively collects the work of Roy Ferdinand, a controversial outsider artist from New Orleans whose graphic art chronicles African-American cultural identity of pre-Katrina New Orleans. The film follows Martina as she hires a private detective to solve her brother’s murder and goes on a fact-finding mission to New Orleans to meet the people and neighborhoods found in Roy’s paintings.

New York’s infamous transit thief, 50-year-old Darius McCollum, has been impersonating transit staff and stealing trains and buses for over 35 years. He has been arrested no less than 30 times and has spent much of his life behind bars. Diagnosed with Asperger’s syndrome (an autism disorder), as well as depression and anxiety stemming from a childhood school attack, the courts have never understood his obsession with transit. The subway was his sanctuary as child and he soon had memorized every trains schedule and all their stops. So much so that a driver once asked him to drive the train to the next station while he got it on with a ticket collector. He was 14 and drove the train perfectly and on time. He promised the judge he would never to do it again, but somehow he always ends up back on the rails or behind the wheel of a bus, and, inevitably, back in front of a judge and then in jail. -Jennifer Morris

The never-before-told story of the Brotherhood of Eternal Love – a spiritual group of surfers and hippies that became the largest suppliers of psychedelic drugs in the world during the 1960s.  Bonded by their dreams to fight social injustice, this unlikely band of free-spirited idealists quickly transformed into a drug-smuggling empire and at the same time inadvertently invented the modern illegal drug trade.  At the heart of this story is the anti-capitalistic husband and wife team who made it their mission to change the world through LSD. -Chris Metzler

Fresh off a Best Documentary win at Cinequest, The Promised Band shines a powerful light on the huge distances that a group of Israeli queer women must go to, hence the band, in order to cross a border and build bridges between Israel and Palestine. All director Jen Heck wants to do is introduce her friends to Lina, a mother of two who lives in Nablus, which lies in Area A, a region of Palestine off-limit to Israeli citizens. -Jennifer Morris

We all know there are millions of cat lovers who collect anything to do with cats and dog lovers who love their dogs. But it was joy to learn that there are also some amazing lovers of hippos out there. The Pursuit of Hippo-ness features an ensemble of people whose lives are tied to the hippopotamus in some manner, the film explores their relationships with the animal and with each other and raises the larger questions about how we conceptualize, represent, and interact with nature. -Jennifer Morris

In the last century, 94% of vegetable seed varieties have disappeared, leaving our food supply dangerously vulnerable to blight and famine. While biotech chemical companies control the majority of our seeds, thankfully, an inspiring ensemble of farmers, scientists, and seed savers are fighting a David and Goliath battle to defend the future of our food and protect our 12,000 year-old food legacy.  SEED tells their harrowing and heartening story – and the larger history of human agriculture – with equal parts whimsy and rage. -Chris Metzler

At their university in Eastern Europe, they are future bankers, journalists and politicians. In America, they are just “the help.”  From Martha’s Vineyard to Myrtle Beach, thousands of international students descend upon summer resorts and tourist towns in the U.S. to clean hotel rooms, wash dishes, and make pizza for Americans on vacation. Filmmaker Melody Gilbert (SF DocFest Non-Fiction Vanguard Award recipient - 2008) looks beyond the nametags to the young and impressionable individuals who come to the U.S. to chase a dream. -Chris Mettzler