Roger Ross Williams

Land of the Lost Sidekicks

Roger Ross Williams

A short, bringing all of the side kick characters in Walt Disney's animated films expressing their importance.

God Loves Uganda

Roger Ross Williams

A powerful exploration of the evangelical campaign to infuse African culture with values imported from America's Christian Right. The film follows American and Ugandan religious leaders fighting sexual immorality and missionaries trying to convince Ugandans to follow biblical law.

Life, Animated

Roger Ross Williams

Owen Suskind, Ron Suskind

At three years old, a chatty, energetic little boy named Owen Suskind ceased to speak, disappearing into autism with apparently no way out. Almost four years passed and the only stimuli that engaged Owen were Disney films. Then one day, his father donned a puppet—Iago, the wisecracking parrot from Aladdin—and asked “what’s it like to be you?” And poof! Owen replied, with dialogue from the movie. Life, Animated tells the remarkable story of how Owen found in Disney animation a pathway to language and a framework for making sense of the world.

Music by Prudence

Roger Ross Williams

Farai Mabhande, Prudence Mabhena

Music by Prudence tells a self-empowering story of one young woman's struggle who, together with her band, overcomes seemingly insurmountable odds and, in her own voice conveys to the world that disability does not mean inability. In addition to its sheer emotional punch, Music by Prudence has become the cornerstone of an advocacy campaign and has been embraced by the UN, Human Rights Watch and the disability community as an unprecedented portrayal advocating for the rights of persons with disabilities. Prudences poignant, inspiring and irreverent message of hope has received an amazing response from press and audiences all across North America, and has won the Academy Award for Best Documentary Short and several other awards as it continues drawing in more audiences.

Traveling While Black

Roger Ross Williams

An immersive virtual reality documentary experience about the risks faced by blacks on the road in mid 2Oth Century America, and the safe spaces as listed in the famous guide, The Green Book, where they could eat and sleep.

The Apollo

Roger Ross Williams

Pharrell Williams, Дже́йми Фокс

The history of New York City's Apollo Theater in Harlem is given the full treatment.

Cassandro

Roger Ross Williams

Gael García Bernal, Roberta Colindrez

Saúl Armendáriz, a gay amateur wrestler from El Paso, rises to international stardom after he creates the character Cassandro, the “Liberace of Lucha Libre.” In the process, he upends not just the macho wrestling world but also his own life.

American Jail

Roger Ross Williams

In this deeply personal film, director Roger Ross Williams sets out on a journey to understand the complex forces of racism and greed currently at work in America's prison system.

Take Back the Harbor

Kristi Jacobson, Roger Ross Williams

On New York's Governor's Island, an unprecedented program has the ambitious goal of restoring oysters and their environmental benefits back to New York Harbor. This documentary highlights the teenagers at a public high school that teaches stewardship of the waterways alongside math and English.

blackface

Roger Ross Williams

A week before the Sinterklaas festivities on December 5, global news channel CNN is digging into the Zwarte Piet controversy with a short documentary. Blackface was made by Oscar-winning documentary maker Roger Ross Williams who said his friends in America had been shocked the first time they saw a photograph of Sinterklaas’ helper.