Genre: Documentary

An epic journey forty years in the making, acclaimed filmmaker, Louie Schwartzberg, the director of Fantastic Fungi, takes us on a transformational, cinematic experience of how to live a more meaningful life full of Gratitude through his intimate conversations with everyday people, thought leaders, and personalities such as Norman Lear, Jack Kornfield, Luisah Teish, Alex Grey and other luminaries.

Only at the Savoy! ALL SHOWS DOWNSTAIRS: In remote Idaho, Colie and Hollyn embark on a long summer season working as range riders herding cattle. We follow them closely through the immensity of the landscapes and intimate moments of friendship. Emelie Mahdavian masterfully revisits the genre of the western and invites us to rethink the challenge of nomadism from the perspective of two young women.

SPECIAL EVENT SCREENING with panel discussion to follow: A feature-length documentary film-in-progress chronicling the birth and development of LGBTQ comics through the eyes of several of its pioneers. The film was inspired by the Lambda award-winning book of the same name, and dives deeper into the personal stories at the heart of this unique underground artistic scene. Featuring Alison Bechdel (Fun Home), the recently departed Howard Cruse (Stuck Rubber Baby, Gay Comix), and others, this film aims to show how DIY queer cartoonists have represented, poked fun at, and celebrated LGBTQ lives and experiences in challenging, humorous, and profound ways.

ALL SHOWS DOWNSTAIRS: When a wild tiger kills men who enter his territory he is declared a man-eater and locked up in a zoo. TIGER 24 takes a deep dive into who is responsible when animals kill humans in the Ranthambhore Tiger Reserve in India. A nuanced and balanced look at all sides of a series tragic events and a window into the lives of wild tigers and the ever shrinking environments they inhabit and sometimes share with humans.

The events at the World Eskimo-Indian Olympics — like the Four Man Carry and the Knuckle Hop — won’t be familiar to most Americans in the Lower 48, but they are rooted in traditional Eskimo culture and pure Americana.

VTIFF Global Roots Festival showcase, March 6th
Facing the consequences of a violent uprooting, Mateo Sobode Chiqueno has been recording stories, songs, and testimonies of his Ayoreo people since the seventies. In an attempt to preserve fragments of a disappearing culture, Mateo walks across communities in the arid and desolate Paraguayan Chaco region, and registers on cassettes the experiences of other Ayoreo who, like him, were born in the vast forest, free and nomadic, without any contact with white civilization, until religious missionaries forced them to abandon their ancestral territory, their means of subsistence, their beliefs and their home.