YOUTH
The following films from the multiple Media That Matters Film Festival collections explore the issue of youth. For even more films on this issue, visit MediaRights.org.
(Hate) Machine
When media messages are constructed, sometimes truth hits the cutting room floor.
Official selection of the sixth annual festival
A Girl Like Me
Color is more than skin deep for young African-American women struggling to define themselves.
Official selection of the sixth annual festival
A Girl Named Kai
Through a stirring poetic mix of video and sound, Kai appeals to her traditional Taiwanese parents for acceptance in spite of her untraditional take on life and love.
Official selection of the fifth annual festival
All That I Can Be
William, like many young Americans, feels that joining the military is his only way out of a dead-end job and a rough life.
Official selection of the fifth annual festival
Ashray
Affected or infected, the children of Ashray in Bombay live together as one family, despite their HIV status.
Official selection of the seventh annual festival
Bad Choices
Without a support system, it’s hard for a teenager to stay out of trouble. Aderian reflects on the lessons he has learned from his bad choices.
Official selection of the fifth annual festival
Battleground Minnesota
Hip-hop activist Shakademic proves that if Walter Mondale can learn how to scratch, young voters can get schooled in election politics.
Official selection of the fifth annual festival
Book 'Em: Undereducated, Overincarcerated
In New Haven, Connecticut the pipeline from school to prison is shorter than you might think.
Official selection of the sixth annual festival
Books Not Bars
The teens of the Books Not Bars movement demand that education be the government’s priority, now and in the future.
Official selection of the fourth annual festival
CopWatch
Fed up with police brutality, the organization “Copwatch” decided to keep an eye on big brother. This short film shows how peaceful observation of police behavior can change the way a neighborhood and a police force deal with one another.
Official selection of the third annual festival
Dedicated to My Family
Living in a teen shelter, Nicole has learned that family is where the heart is.
Official selection of the fourth annual festival
Face to Face: Stories from the Aftermath of Infamy
Sixty years have passed between Pearl Harbor and September 11th, but have things really changed? An interactive online documentary explores what it means to be an American with the face of the enemy.
Official selection of the third annual festival
Happy Ending
Drugs have taken Chris’s mom out of his life but not out of his heart. In this personal travelogue, he goes to Philadelphia in search of a happy ending.
Official selection of the fifth annual festival
Holla Back Dubai!
In this touching video letter exchange, kids from the United Arab Emirates “holla back” to a class of sixth-graders in Washington Heights, New York and show that a stereotype is no match for a smile.
Official selection of the third annual festival
Homecoming
When coming out makes Ron a target for attack, he finds a school where respect and acceptance are taught alongside Math and English.
Official selection of the fifth annual festival
I Promise Africa
While making a documentary about orphans, a filmmaker preserves the voices of a generation that will soon be silenced.
Official selection of the fourth annual festival
I'm Not a Boy
Julie Joyce is not a boy. As a transgendered youth, she just wants what all young people want – to have a positive space to live and grow.
Official selection of the seventh annual festival
Inch By Inch: Providence Youth Gardens for Change
Teachers and students in Providence, Rhode Island get their hands dirty and their lives enriched.
Official selection of the media that matters: good food festival
Laugh at the Fat Kid
A young boy caught in a cycle of ridicule and overeating — what’s wrong with this picture?
Official selection of the fourth annual festival
Lean on Me
When the mayor’s office says “no,” a group of kids find a safe place to play basketball.
Official selection of the fourth annual festival
No Escape, Prison Rape
When Rodney Hulin set fire to a trashcan, he never imagined he would end up in adult prison, serially raped and brutally beaten.
Official selection of the third annual festival
Novela, Novela
A group of Nicaraguan activists produce a homegrown soap opera about issues like safe sex and domestic abuse.
Official selection of the fourth annual festival
Rapping at Fear
In Andrés Tabares’ barrio in Colombia, “social cleansing” groups wage war. When this thirteen-year-old raps against violence, people listen.
Official selection of the seventh annual festival
Rebel
In this body-positive youth-produced film, the young women of the Lower East Side Girls Club take to the streets in celebration of their individuality and strength.
Official selection of the third annual festival
Silence Speaks
Domestic abuse, hate crimes, poverty, political persecution and war. Highly personal multimedia pieces tell the stories of survivors and witnesses of these many forms of violence.
Official selection of the third annual festival
Slip of the Tongue
“What’s your ethnic make up?” A young man makes a pass at a beautiful stranger and gets an eye-opening schooling on race and gender.
Official selection of the sixth annual festival
Something Other Than Other
New parents Jerry and Andrea have endured their own share of discrimination growing up. They hope their newborn son can grow up identifying as something other than “other.”
Official selection of the fifth annual festival
Storm
Billy, the beleaguered hero of Storm finds himself without allies as he struggles to stave off an onslaught of classroom abuse.
Official selection of the third annual festival
Struggling to Survive
Teenagers in eastern Kentucky turn their cameras on the living wage crisis in their community.
Official selection of the fourth annual festival
Superstar
With the support and guidance of his family, nothing will stop Naiquan from becoming a superstar.
Official selection of the seventh annual festival
System Failure
Physical abuse, sexual harassment, inadequate education for incarcerated youth – if a society can be graded by how it treats its prisoners, then the state of California gets an “F.”
Official selection of the fifth annual festival
The Children of Birmingham
Baltimore youth tell the story of their 1960s counterparts who fought for civil rights.
Official selection of the fourth annual festival
The Farm Sanctuary
Fifth graders from the Bronx go upstate to meet rescued farm animals and try out veganism, at least for the weekend.
Official selection of the seventh annual festival
The News Is What We Make It
When the same company owns all the TV stations in town, where can you turn for an alternative perspective? A high-schooler gets burned and turns insult into action.
Official selection of the fifth annual festival
We Were Humans
This multimedia animation asks what would happen if the billions of dollars of yearly military spending were directed towards education and world hunger.
Official selection of the third annual festival
World On Fire
$5,000 could cover the cost of hair and make-up for one day on set in LA or pay for one year’s schooling for 145 girls in Afghanistan. Sarah McLachlan does the math and encourages you to join her.
Official selection of the fifth annual festival
Young Agrarians
Young people plant the seeds for a sustainable future in this portrait of organic farming in California.
Official selection of the fifth annual festival
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