The Future Starts Here

Margreth Olin has filmed 22 persons i their meeting with the well known voluntary healer Joralf Gjerstad. For 65 years more than 50.000 has gone to him to be healed from illnesses and ill-doings. He has never asked for a penny for this.

Voices is an award-winning documentary that features the stark and intimate portraits of three very different individuals and their struggle with severe mental illness in America. The stories of Sharon, Thomas and Aaron illuminate the challenges, realities, and often complex emotions and choices that surround people with psychotic mental illness and those who love them. In turning the camera on these individuals and their families, the subtle power of Voices lies in the brutal honesty of families sharing their stories for the first time, unburdening themselves from the stigma of mental illness. As they search for answers they know they may never find, they expose the human back-story of the psychotic experience in a way never before captured on camera. The film takes a fresh approach, as families steer the narrative over rocky and deeply personal terrain. Without expert commentators deployed to "make sense" of what often does not, Voices allows people to tell their own stories, unmediated by statistics or authorities that imply answers. With this nuanced style, the film provocatively highlights the disjointed and decompensated behaviors that can result from serious mental illness, and its impact on society and the loved ones in its orbit. In these raw and sometimes jarring real life stories, outcomes are as varied as the people in them: Sharon is well cared for but institutionalized in a long-term care facility; Thomas lives on the street but is a beloved member of his community; and Aaron's father is left wondering what could have prevented his son from committing the violent tragedy that eventually made national headlines. In each case, the questions of how to find the right treatment and the balance between autonomy and involuntary treatment provide a powerful subtext. Voices makes it clear that even when people with severe mental illness are surrounded by loving family, the choices can be tough, and public policies too often fall short of meeting the needs of either the individual or society.

In their hometown of Hirosaki, Aomori Prefecture, Akinori Kimura (Sadao Abe) and his wife Mieko (Miho Kanno) open an apple orchard. Because of Meiko's allergic reaction to pesticides, without the help of chemicals, Akinori Kimura must grow his apples. His family endures hardships due to this challenge and suffers severe financial difficulties. Akinori Kimura is even considering suicide.

A drama about a young woman's visit to the 1915 Panama-Pacific International Exposition in San Francisco. The film tells the story of the exposition, as imagined through the eyes of a visitor.

Our Founding Fathers were yearning for a nation of individual liberty. But, the origins of America were overflowing with a deep-seated paradox. Our Founding Fathers were rallying the colonists to liberty, while many were slave owners.

Based on a true story, Little Big Master chronicles the struggles of the lowest-paid headmistress in Hong Kong history.