A young Sri Lankan woman struggles to gain independence,

while holding her troublesome family together in post-tsunami Sri Lanka.

Mayomi lost her husband to the Tamil Tigers, and her mother and home to the Tsunami. She is now the only female member left in her family, and single-handedly cares forher disabled father, her alcoholic brother and his abandoned six-year old son.

She is also still homeless and knows that, in a country crippled by bureaucracy and corruption, this is unlikely to change. As Mayomi struggles to overcome these obstacles, her optimism and courage drive her forward in this moving and tender film.

Sable Island is a protected area 300 kilometres southeast of Halifax that people cannot visit without special permission from the Canadian Coast Guard. Roberto Dutesco has travelled to the island five times.

The Romanian-born photographer has worked for years as a fashion photographer in New York City for magazines such as Vogue, Maxim, GQ and Vanity Fair. But he also has another passion — the wild horses of Sable Island.

Halifax filmmaker Matt Trecartin chronicles Dutesco’s obsession in the short film Chasing Wild Horses.

In 1942, hundreds of Czech Jews are deported to Riga in Latvia. In an eerily empty, dilapidated, fenced-off and snowed-in part of town, they find pots on stoves, clothes on the floor, as if everyone left in a hurry. Then stones wrapped in paper are thrown over the wire by young men held in a cordoned-off section of the ghetto. The notes say: "You will all be killed, like our families. We are the last survivors."

Yet life continues. Some people are sent to the Salaspils camp, where only ruthless selfishness offers a slim chance of survival, but others cling together, steadfastly maintaining "normality" amidst the atrocities. Children go to school past bodies hanging from the gallows. Boys play football on the ghetto square/execution ground. Teenagers fall in love at clandestine parties, almost literally "dancing on graves"...

Edited from 270 hours of interviews shot in 20 countries over 10 years, the film dispels our notions of a "Holocaust documentary". Employing no commentary or contemporary footage, only a minimalist montage of interviews and never-seen materials drawn from a vast array of sources, these entirely personal points of view combine in a life-affirming picture of survival through luck, wisdom, ingenuity and sheer will, to form a depiction of the Holocaust "as we don’t know it".

In northern Albania, lives are defined by the vendetta. Fearful of revenge attacks, thousands of people dare not leave their homes. Death awaits them the moment they cross the threshold of their door.

Christian knows every crack and every bump on the wall in front of him. For twelve years, he has not left this room because his father murdered someone. His last hope is the German nun, Sister Christina Färber.

As a mediator, she is trying to achieve the near impossible- to get the two families, sworn enemies, to abandon their vendetta and seek reconciliation. "I have seen too many people lying on the ground with a bullet in their head," she says.

This is a film about families immersed in the culture of the vendetta, living - and dying – by the laws of honor. Only Sister Christina is struggling to overcome this violent ritual and the Kanun.

Today, more than 200,000 men, women and children are locked up in North Korea’s concentration camps. Systematic torture, starvation and murder is what faces the inmates. Few survive many years in the camps, but the population is kept stable by a steady influx of new individuals considered to be ‘class enemies’.

A few people have managed to flee the camps to a new life in South Korea. Some of them get together and decide to make an extraordinary and controversial musical about their experiences in the Yodok camp.

Despite death threats and many obstacles, the musical becomes a tour de force for this ensemble of refugees, and for them a possibility opens to talk about their experiences and inspire others to protest the existence of the camps.

Shangri-La to hell in ten years: How did Nepal, a peaceful landlocked country, become home to the most dramatic Maoist insurgency in modern history? Returned: Child Soldiers of Nepal’s Maoist Army tells the personal story of Nepali boys and girls as they attempt to rebuild their lives after fighting in the Maoist People’s Liberation Army during the eleven-year civil war between the insurgents and the Hindu monarch of Nepal.

With the major conflict ended and the Maoists in control of the government, these children are now discarded by the Maoist leadership and forced to return home to communities and families that want nothing to do with them. For many of the them, the return home can be even more painful than the experience of war.

Through the voices of former child soldiers, the film examines why these children joined the Maoists and explores the prevention of future recruitment.

I In some of the poorest parts of Nigeria- where evangelical religious fervour is combined with a belief in sorcery and black magic- many thousands of children are being blamed for catastrophes, death and famine, and branded witches. Denounced as Satan made flesh by powerful pastors and prophetesses, these children are abandoned, tortured, starved and murdered- all in the name of Jesus Christ.

This Dispatches special follows the work of one Englishman, 29-year-old Gary Foxcroft, who has devoted his life to helping these desperate and vulnerable children. Gary’s charity, Stepping Stones Nigeria, raises funds to help Sam Itauma who, five years ago, rescued four children accused of witchcraft. He now struggles to care for over 150 in a makeshift shelter and school in the Niger Delta region called CRARN (Child Rights and Rehabilitation Network). Gary and Sam introduce Dispatches to some of the rescued children who have been through unimaginable horrors.

Our Vivid Stories is an inspiring and moving collection of 9 short films made by young LGBT people during 3 months of intensive digital storytelling workshops.

Devised by filmmaker Dianne Barry with Julie Ballands, the project was a unique collaboration between OurStory Scotland and LGBT Youth Scotland for GoMA’s 2009 exhibition shOUT: LGBT human rights and contemporary art.

The storytellers’ films describe their experiences of coming out, homophobia, and the importance of friends, family and support networks.

For many years, Olaf, Mona and Maria have each been suffering from severe depression. The illness has left them without any interest in life. Suffering from suicidal thoughts, they admit themselves to the psychiatric clinic of the Charité Berlin. They do not shy away from trying controversial treatments such as electroconvulsive therapy. Shadows follows their struggles over two years. A film about hope, the abysses of life, and the brutal cruelty of an illness.

A sanatorium in Tehran occupied by mentally disabled war veterans: one of them, "Mahmood", is under the impression that he has built a doomsday machine which can destroy the world by pressing a button...

Juan Meléndez - 6446 presents the story of a Puerto Rican migrant raised in New York City and accused of murder in the state of Florida. While claiming his innocence, Juan Meléndez was sentenced in five days and put on death row for 17 years, 8 months and 1 day. During his last appeal, an investigator working for Juan’s lawyer found in a box the original transcript of the confession of the real killer- a piece of evidence that the jury never examined. He was exonerated on January 3rd, 2002. Juan Meléndez was sentenced to death for a crime he did not commit. His personal drama serves as counterpoint to the legal, political and public policy issues around the application of the death penalty in the USA and Puerto Rico. Juan Meléndez - 6446 is a story about the power of will over a miscarriage of the justice system.

John La Rose (1927-2006) was a poet, essayist, publisher, filmmaker and Director of the International Book Fair of Radical Black and Third World Books. A cultural and political activist since the 1940s, he was also a co-founder of the Caribbean Artists Movement in 1966 and New Beacon Books. This DVD includes documentation from a tribute evening for him held at Street Level Photoworks in November 2006, and features contributions from Linton Kwesi Johnson, Horace Ove, Jim Kelman, Tom Leonard, Raman Mundair, Alasdair Gray and Roxy Harris.

Session (Sugar Version) considers the mental health of an 18th century slave called Pero who lived and worked in Bristol for his master John Pinney. Pinney's house is now a museum but Pero's room is closed to the public and used to store furniture. In the film, we see the room being cleared to create a space for art therapy sessions between African Caribbean men and Marian Liebmann, a therapist with specialist skills in conflict resolution.

The men who appear in the film all participate in an advocacy and support service called Two Way Street in Bristol for Black and Minority Ethnic people with mental health issues. We watch them working with sugar to make sculptural forms which are then displayed in the house, animating the commodity that fuelled the slave trade in the Caribbean.

Living Queer African is an ongoing multimedia (audio/picture) documentary project which focuses on young, gay Africans living in the diaspora. Homosexuality still isn’t widely accepted in African culture. The project is intended to highlight the ordinary life of young, gay Africans rather than their sexuality, to help viewers gain a better understanding of some of the struggles they face and to help create a debate on gay rights in Africa as a whole.

Le(s)banese is a one-of-a-kind documentary exploring the lives of lesbians in Lebanon. Who are they, where do they hang out, what do they wear, and most importantly, how do they negotiate their desires within a troubled nation like Lebanon? Opening a window to a hidden world, Le(s)banese introduces you to women who are savvy, sexy and confident about themselves.

My father documented himself abusing me throughout the first 16 years of my life. After his death I uncovered his collection; boxes of audiotape, super 8, and over 10,000 photographs.

I am the daughter as well as the filmmaker, presenting this evidence in what I am told is a subtle intellectual investigation that is grotesquely truthful and forthrightly condemning.

In Freedom Park, a squatter settlement in South Africa, a group of HIV-infected former sex-workers create a support network called Tapologo. They learn to be Home Based Carers for their community, transforming degradation into solidarity and squalor into hope

Kevin Dowling, a Catholic bishop involved with Tapologo, questions the official doctrine of the church regarding AIDS and sexuality in the African context.

An alternative feature-length documentary that explores the lives of six black transgender men living in the United States. Through the intimate stories of their lives as artists, students, husbands, fathers, lawyers, and teachers, the film offers viewers a complex and multi-faceted image of race, sexuality and trans identity.

Winner, Audience Choice Award, Best Documentary, Reelout Queer Film & Video Festival. Winner, Isaac Julien Experimental Award, Queer Black Cinema Film & Music Festival. Official Selection 2009: LA Fusion LGBT People of Colour Film Festival 2009, Seattle, Langston Hughes African American Film Festival, London Lesbian and Gay Film Festival.

There will be a Q & A with the filmmaker afterwards.