S1.E3 ∙ Friends, Family and Me

'Give Me A Shot Of Anything' is a story about courage, caring and survival. The film follows Boston street doctor Jim O'Connell and his extraordinary team as they make house calls to the homeless, delivering life-saving medical care, offering their patients hope and a chance to feel whole again.

What happens when love runs out of time? For a 92-year-old mother, Mimi, who has cared 64 years for her daughter, Dona, who has an intellectual disability, it means facing the inevitable -- she will not outlive her daughter -- and finding her daughter a home. This poignant, heartbreaking and, at times, humorous documentary traces this process through the story of a wonderfully quirky and deeply connected mother-daughter duo. The film spotlights the challenges of aging caregivers of people with intellectual and developmental disabilities -- some 4.6 million Americans, 75 percent of whom live at home with family -- and details the ripple effects of Dona's disability on three generations of a Texas family.

This film tells a story of the House of One Heart, a nursing center for mentally challenged people. The director moves to the center's neighbourhood and records the life of the people living there. His camera becomes a mediator to help him enter this space and a friend to understand its residents. The film observes them as they deal with their symptoms with the help of medication, repress their anger for fear of being sent back to a hospital, bear with unfair payment for their work and an inability to to choose their own places to live. The director, as I, narrates in the film in the way that sounds more like a private confession rather than an explanation. This film is especially notable as it approaches the mentally challenged people not as an anonymous group but as independent individuals with their own names and pays attention to their lives and voices. It sees them not as a bunch of Alices in Wonderland but as neighbours living next door. It observes and records them closely with warm and intimate eyes.

Of Kites and Borders is a documentary about the daily struggle to be a child just across the border from the US told through the eyes of four working children from Tijuana : Edie is just a teen that leads undocumented people to the US as he promises himself he will never get worn-out working in the factories. Carmela is a nine year old who knows more about dumps than tales yet fantasizes of a better life just by looking at the kites fly over the giants assembly plants that crown her slum. Adrian and Fernando conceal their childhood with masks everyday to perform wrestling matches beneath the streetlights to support their family while dreaming of one day travel the world as famous Mexican wrestlers.

Eight men from the streets of Cape Town band together to fight for their place in society through a fast-paced game of street soccer.