Operation Small Axe

Award-winning director Yoav Shamir (Defamation, Checkpoint) sets out on an entertaining and insightful international quest, exploring the notion of heroism through a multi-faceted lens. From ordinary heroes to freedom fighters, primates to humans, behavioral scientists to geneticists, even Ayn Rand to Raelians, Shamir leaves no stone unturned, and along the way unveils the fundamental truths of human nature.

A romantic Cuban Revolution's lover climbs the Sierra Maestra, meets old guerrilla veterans, listens to their stories and cooks for them; At his arrival in La Habana, after 7000km along the island, he understands that there is a different Cuba, a hidden one, the one that communist propaganda and fake intellectuals all over the world try to hide. He discovers the 'Other' Cuba, the one that belongs to independent journalists, bloggers and human rights activists, political prisoners and simple people who talk about their condition in the 'Paradise of Caribbeans...' Local heroes are now young guys who scream to the world that all the promises told on the Sierra have never been fulfilled. Then, after a terrible and mysterious accident, he leaves Cuba.

A compilation film, produced by the American Museum of Natural History, with footage from six major expeditions of the 20th-Century; the Stoll-McCracken Siberian Artic expedition, for the American Museum of Natural History, on the schooner "Morrissery."; the exploration of Borneo and Bali by Gene Lamb; an African expedition by James L. Clark, vice-director of the American Museum of Natural History; the Imperial-Trans-Atlantic Expedition under the guidance of Lieutenant Commander J. R. Stenhouse that made it to the Ross Sea; footage from the Byrd Antartic Expedition, shot by Dr. Laurence E. Gould, geologist and second-in- command; and footage from the Tarlano Ethnological Expedition of the Amazon River by Harold Noice.

On a journey spanning thousands of miles through the enigmatic landscape of Vietnam, Vietnamese Girl documents the lives of a group of women who are caught between the traditions of the past & the promises of the future.

In the artificial landscape that is Los Angeles, where even palm trees are imported, nothing epitomizes man's short-sighted efforts to reshape the face of the earth more than the LA River: modified beyond recognition, its flow tapped before it even reached the surface, the river was used, abused and essentially forgotten. But when an unassuming boater insists on seeing it as a river again, a local controversy takes on national dimensions, and the once-derided eyesore turns into a source of hope for the City of Dreams. 'Rock the Boat' is a fun, high-energy and, ultimately, moving film that tells this every-man's adventure and looks at the price nature has to pay for our urban lifestyle.

Lucky Express is a feature length documentary film that cross-crosses Indian Railways with the destitute children who have made the vast network their home as they share their astonishing life histories.