In her signature serious-yet-quirky connect-the-dots style, Peabody Award winning filmmaker Judith Helfand takes audiences from the deadly 1995 Chicago heat disaster deep into one of our nation’s biggest growth industries – disaster preparedness. Along the way she forges inextricable links between extreme weather, extreme wealth disparity and extreme racism, daring to ask: What if a zip code was just a routing number, and not a life-or-death sentence.

Razing Liberty Square (Work-in-Progress) tells a dramatic story fueled by a long history of housing policies that have left this once prominent African-American community trapped within an unrelenting cycle of poverty leaving it up to a group of strong women to lead the fight against what is rapidly becoming the newest form of covert racial injustice, climate gentrification.

On the anniversary of Hurricane Katrina chances are good you won’t hear about the enormous impact this disaster had on people with disabilities. So, we went to New Orleans and asked people with disabilities what happened. The answer was simple and sad: There was no plan to rescue them. During Katrina, people with disabilities were denied the right to be rescued. It’s time for change.

The Ironbound district of Newark, New Jersey, is one of the most toxic neighborhoods in the country. Maria Lopez, a Honduran-American resident there, is waging a war for environmental justice. The Sacrifice Zone follows Maria as she leads a group of warriors who are fighting to break the cycle of poor communities of color serving as dumping grounds, so the rest of us can live in comfortable ignorance.

We Still Here introduces the incredible youth of Palomas navigating the aftermath of Hurricane Maria which brought an unprecedented level of devastation to Puerto Rico that has affected the present and future of an island already in crisis. In the lush mountains of Comerío, 24-year-old Mariangelie Ortiz leads a group of young residents who never thought they would become the leaders of their community, nonetheless find themselves traveling to Washington DC to protest in front of FEMA. Follow them in this coming of age story to find their power and begin creating a sustainable future for themselves and their community.

As a proposed pipeline threatens to disrupt communities and ecosystems across North Carolina, a group of diverse activists rises up to challenge construction. The new film Robeson Rises documents their journey.

Note: This film will be featured as part of screening events in partnership with the North Carolina Humanities Council. Visit the “Screenings” tab to see these upcoming events.