Rafea: Solar Mama

Straight from the front lines in Iraq, THE WAR TAPES is the first war movie filmed by soldiers themselves. These soldiers bypassed Pentagon supervised media to share their experience like never before. Funnier, spicier, and more gut wrenching than news reports, this is Operation Iraqi Freedom as filmed by Sergeant Steve Pink, Sergeant Zack Bazzi and Specialist Mike Moriarty. Steve is a wisecracking carpenter who aspires to be a writer. Zack is a Lebanese-American university student who loves to travel and is fluent in Arabic. Mike is a father who seeks honor and redemption. Each leaves a woman behind - a girlfriend, a mother and a wife. Through their candid footage, these men open their hearts and take us on an unforgettable journey, capturing camaraderie and humor along with the brutal and terrifying experiences they face. These soldiers got the story that 2,700 embedded reporters never could.

A pregnant single mother, with two children in foster care, embraces her Bay Area community as she fights to reclaim her family.

Little Tree is an 8-year-old Cherokee boy, who, during the time of the depression, loses his parents and starts to live with his Indian grandma and grandpa and learn the wisdom of the Cherokee way of life.

A family embarks on an annual tormenting journey along with 200 other million peasant workers to reunite with their distant family, and to revive their love and dignity as China soars as the world's next super power.

With great wit and insight, New York City filmmaker Nina Davenport documents her quest to have a baby as a single mother over forty. Davenport's film taps into the zeitgeist topic of how the modern family is being re-imagined. (TIFF)

One day Sammy and his younger sister Ellie happen upon a cabin where Alice, a young, partially deaf girl with epilepsy is being kept by her abusive stepfather. The three soon become friends and hope to get Alice an education and help her escape from the torture she undergoes daily. However, Alice's stepfather soon finds out about the friendship Alice has struck up and punishes her brutally. This story of friendship and youth shows that everyone is human and deserves to be treated so, no matter their disability or weakness.

If you ever find yourself traveling down Interstate 49 through Missouri, try not to blink—you may miss Rich Hill, population 1,396. Rich Hill is easy to overlook, but its inhabitants are as woven into the fabric of America as those living in any small town in the country. This movie intimately chronicles the turbulent lives of three boys living in said Midwestern town and the fragile family bonds that sustain them.

A once reluctant homeschool family sells their home and everything in it, packs up in an RV and travels the country to tell the story of the millions of American families who are a part of the Homeschool Revolution. After talking with education experts, homeschooling pioneers, and regular families at every step in their home education journey, they learn come away convinced that it's time for America to bring their children home. The movie follows host, Yvette Hampton, as she travels the country with her family talking with education experts, curriculum developers, college and university faculty and administrators, and homeschooling families at every stage in the process, from kindergarten to college graduation and beyond. As viewers follow Yvette on this journey and share in her challenges and victories as a homeschool mom, they will gather the necessary resources and encouragement to homeschool their own children with excellence.

Hidden camera footage augments this perilous high-stakes journey as we embed with families attempting to escape oppression, ultimately revealing a world most of us have never seen.

Tells the parallel stories of nine-year-old Carlitos and his mother, Rosario. In the hopes of providing a better life for her son, Rosario works illegally in the U.S. while her mother cares for Carlitos back in Mexico.

Elnora Comstock is the badly abused daughter of Katherine Comstock, who blames her because her father was drowned while on the way home the night she was born. She finds her comfort with Margaret and Westley Sinton, a childless neighboring couple, who help her with her school costs, as does the wealthy Mrs. Parker, who takes an interest in the talented young girl. She meets and falls in love with Phillip Ammon, the nephew of Dr. Ammon, but learns that he is already engaged. The money that Elnora has saved for her college education is stolen, and when Mrs. Comstock goes to retrieve it from a suspect, she also learns of the duplicity of her husband, who had been courting a neighboring woman on the night he drowned. She begs forgiveness of Elnora, and the romance of Elnora and Phillip also begins to flourish.

A recently orphaned young Kurdish-French woman travels to Iraqi Kurdistan to find her mother's village, likely destroyed during the Anfal genocide. On her journey she meets two American film students who are traveling to remote villages screening Charlie Chaplin films. They decide to help her search, an undertaking that brings them to the war-weary Mount Qandil, dubbed by the locals the Kurdish Bermuda Triangle, along the Iraqi-Turkish-Iranian borders.

Hollywood actress Lindsay Lohan travels to India to investigate the issue of child trafficking. As the capital Delhi prepares to host the Commonwealth Games, she talks to young boys just rescued from factories in the slums. When she learns that many have been sent away with traffickers by their own parents, Lindsay sets off to find out why. In West Bengal, parents, child victims, and a former trafficker share their stories and reveal the desperate poverty which fuels this cruel trade in children. As India's economy is booming, Lindsay asks what can be done to stop this abuse.

The 20 year old Muslim religious law student Ibn Battuta (1304–1368), whose full name was Abu Abdullah Muhammed Ibn Abdullah Al Lawati Al Tanji Ibn Battuta, set out from Tangier, a city in northern Morocco, in 1325, on a pilgrimage to Mecca, some 3,000 miles (over 4,800 km) to the East. The journey took him 18 months to complete and along the way he met with misfortune and adversity, including attack by bandits, rescue by Bedouins, fierce sand storms and dehydration.

An astonishing journey revealing the awesome power of the natural world. Over the course of one single day, we track the sun from the highest mountains to the remotest islands to exotic jungles.

Using live-action wildlife films from the National Geographic and the BBC archives, this animated PBS series tells the warmhearted story of an elephant named Mama Mirabelle, who travels the world filming wildlife movies that she shares with her family and friends back home in the African savanna, including her son Max, Bo the cheetah, a zebra named Karla and three monkey brothers -- Kip, Flip, and Chip.

Thelma Harper and her spinster sister Fran open their home to Thelma's recently divorced son Vinton and his teenage son and daughter. It's quite an adjustment for everyone, especially the cranky, argumentative Thelma.

Viewers are taken on a breathtaking journey through the planets in our solar system. In each episode, see stunning images of each planet including highly detailed images captured by today’s ultra high-tech telescopes. Advanced animation takes you up close and personal with these distant worlds, as we plunge through space to get a better look at the neighbors.

Right now you're hurtling around the sun at 64,000 miles an hour (100,000 kms an hour). In the next year you'll travel 584 million miles, to end up back where you started. Presenters Kate Humble and Dr Helen Czerski follow the Earth's voyage around the sun for one complete orbit, to witness the astonishing consequences this journey has for us all.

June Shannon ('Mama June') gained fame as the mother of young beauty-pageant contestant 'Honey Boo Boo' (Alana Thompson) on various reality shows. With that notoriety came jokes from comedians and people on social media about her weight. Ending her marriage to Sugar Bear and facing health issues, Mama June wants to slim down so she can start a new life with a new body and, she hopes, a new love.

Sue Perkins undertakes an epic, personal journey to the source of India's Ganges river in the Himalayas, meeting hermits and holy men to understand the sacred nature of this river.

Search for Second Earth brings to life, in breathtaking CGI, an epic future journey that our species has already begun: the voyage of an autonomous spacecraft to a planet beyond our Solar System in search of life. Join NASA planetary explorers Gentry Lee and Steve Squyres; and exo-planet hunters Sara Seager, Francois Forget and Natalie Batalha on their quest to find life beyond Earth.

Jennie Marie, a doting wife and mother with a larger-than-life personality, is gifted with the extraordinary ability to talk to the dead. Not only is she a medium, psychic, and fourth generation clairvoyant, but she also has an uncanny gift of connecting with people who are otherwise incapable of communicating for themselves.

Luna the moon guides three friends -- a wombat, a butterfly and a frog -- as they visit new places around the world with their parents' traveling performance troupe.

A unique fusion of blue chip natural history and earth science that explains how our living planet operates. This five-part series shows how the forces of nature drive, shape and support Earth’s great diversity of wildlife.

What happens when a woman falls in love with a guy and wants to marry him… but he has a far more important woman in his life? In this series, the only thing standing between a couple’s true love is a very different kind of “other woman.” These guys are spoiled, coddled and spoon-fed by their overbearing mothers, sending their relationships into serious romantic crisis. Follow four young women as they compete for the affection of their significant others with some very significant mothers!

The documentary series take viewers back to the mid-1990s and tragic events involving the Order of the Solar Temple that shocked the public and caused a stir beyond Québec’s borders. The episodes retrace the compelling and disturbing story, going behind the scenes and revealing details that didn’t make the headlines at the time.

When three generations of women reunite after being estranged for more than two decades, they embark on an enlightening – and surprising – journey toward healing none of them could have imagined as they learn how to find their way back to each other.

Explore the history of activist Afeni Shakur and hip-hop icon Tupac Shakur, two voices that could not be silenced. Told through the eyes of the people who knew them best, this series is an intimate wide-angle portrait of the most inspiring and dangerous mother-son duo in American history, whose unified message of freedom, equality, persecution and justice are more relevant today than ever.

Anthony and Mama Doris embark on a European trip of a lifetime, where they navigate other cultures as well as their mother/son relationship in a mix of chaos, frustration, and heartfelt moments.