“It started with the Army of Guardians patrolling the streets,” says Mitra Khalatbari, “constantly restricting, humiliating, and beating young people.” As she remembers the beginnings of resistance in her home country, the Iranian journalist is at once proud and sad. For as her memories bring her back to the elections of 2009 and the cruel oppressions that followed, Khalatbari, like other interviewees in The Green Wave, is stunned by the betrayal and brutality of her government, the government that not so many years ago was born of resistance to another inhumane regime. Ali Samadi Ahadi’s remarkable documentary underscores the horrific irony that the current Islamic Republic was born, in 1979, in response to the Shah’s abuses, and also makes clear the many contexts of the crisis, the history that made it possible and the lack of international that has allowed the crisis to persist. The first film of at the Human Rights Watch Film Festival in DC, The Green Wave screens on 18 April, followed by a Q&A with Faraz Sanei, of Human Rights Watch Middle East.

See PopMatters’ review.

“In 1997, I was fixing a plate of food in the kitchen,” says Master Sgt. Jerry Ensminger, “Getting ready for the evening news.” What he heard on the TV changed everything: a scientific report linked birth defects and childhood cancers to water contamination at Camp Lejeune, where he and his family had lived. “I dropped my plate, right there. I mean, it was like God was saying to me, ‘Here is a glimmer of hope, that you will find your answer.’” Ensminger’s question concerned the death of his nine-year-old daughter, Janey, some 14 years earlier. She’d had leukemia, and throughout her illness and after her passing, he wondered why.

“Once upon a time,” Marathon Boy begins, “In a faded corner of India, a poor man and a slum-boy captured the hearts and souls of the rural masses.” The fairy tale structure evoked by this phrasing is reinforced by the documentary’s particulars: the child Budhia Singh, born into desperate poverty in a Bhubaneswar slum, is sold by his mother Sukanti to a door peddler, and then to Biranchi Das and his wife Gita, keepers of a judo hall. The boy reveals a talent and a passion for running, which Biranchi encourages and exploits: by the time Budhia is four years old, he has run in some 48 marathons, appeared in a number of commercials, and been celebrated around the nation. Almost immediately, their story takes expected and unexpected turns, triumphs and betrayals that lead eventually to murder.

Thanks to Oscilloscope Laboratories, the legacy of dance-punk band LCD Soundsystem will live on. Known for singles like “Daft Punk is Playing at My House” and “All My Friends”, LCD Soundsystem gave their last performance as a group in February of 2011. They released three albums, LCD Soundsystem, Sound of Silver, and This Is Happening, which reached it to the Billboard Top 10. Filmmakers Dylan Southern and Will Lovelace document the band’s history in Shut Up and Play the Hits, which made its premiere at this year’s Sundance Film Festival, and ran an encore presentation at the SXSW Festival.

It was announced last week that Oscilloscope Laboratories has acquired the North American rights to the film and intends to screen it in limited nationwide engagements this upcoming summer. Produced by Lucas Ochoa and Thomas Benski of Pulse Pictures, Shut Up and Play the Hits charts LCD Soundsystem frontman James Murphy’s journey from the band’s explosive farewell performance at Madison Square Garden to the following morning. The band’s history is exceptional in that Murphy made the calculated choice to disband LCD Soundsystem when it was at its prime, ensuring that it would “go out on a high note”. This choice left fans clamoring for more—a desire that Shut Up and Play the Hits is sure to help fulfill.

Below, check out the official trailer for Shut Up and Play the Hits, coming to select theaters this summer, and relive the glory days.

Nanni Moretti’s Habemus Papam (We Have a Pope) tells a story about shirking official responsibility. The first 10 minutes solemnly chronicle a papal election at the Vatican, complete with a long procession of chanting cardinals assembled for a Conclave and a pious crowd waiting in the St. Peter’s Square to welcome the new pope. Then signs of levity appear: cardinals fidget, try to peek at each other’s secret ballots, and silently pray to God to save them from being chosen. Respectful of faith, but skeptical about the pomp and ritual of the Catholic Church, the film lays out how the cardinals are constrained and also shaped by traditions. They can’t leave until the entire ceremony is completed, and out-of-town representatives are denied access to museums and donuts. Moretti plays a psychoanalyst who is invited to ease the pope’s anxiety, but they’re granted no privacy: the cardinals listen intently to every word of their sessions. This means the doctor can’t ask the required questions, not about the pope’s childhood, his mother, secret desires, or crises of faith. The film takes up the happy absurdity and political commentary that are familiar from other Moretti movies as the pope escapes to the streets of Rome, leaving the psychiatrist stuck with the Conclave. His search for a way out becomes the film’s major metaphor.

See PopMatters’ review.