Kartemquin Films Movies

Every school day, African-American teenagers William Gates and Arthur Agee travel 90 minutes each way from inner-city Chicago to St. Joseph High...

Three young men bond together to escape volatile families in their Rust Belt hometown. As they face adult responsibilities, unexpected revelations...

On October 22, 1963, more than 250,000 students boycotted the Chicago Public Schools to protest racial segregation. Many marched through the city...

The surprising and entertaining life of renowned film critic and social commentator Roger Ebert (1942-2013): his early days as a freewheeling...

Physicist Ted Hall is recruited to join the Manhattan Project as a teenager and goes to Los Alamos with no idea what he'll be working on. When he...

A documentary about neighborhood people creating change. Produced for the MacArthur Foundation by Kartemquin Films, this piece features six vignettes...

Takes audiences behind the scenes of the new golden age of children’s picture books —a time when all children can see characters who look...

In 1995 Director Steve James (Hoop Dreams) returned to rural Southern Illinois to reconnect with Stevie Fielding, a troubled young boy he had been an...

At age 10, aspiring pianist Norman Malone is paralyzed on his right side after being attacked by his father. Over the next several decades he masters...

Brash boxer Cassius Clay burst into the American consciousness in the early 1960s, just ahead of the Civil Rights movement. His transformation into...

Director Steve James returns to his home town of Hampton, Virginia to tell the story of how the trial of a young basketball star left a city divided.

The Interrupters tells the moving and surprising stories of three Violence Interrupters — former gang members who try to protect their Chicago...

Van Jones navigates increasingly tense and isolating political and racial divides in his attempt to become a “bridge builder” during the...

In a time when the world needs greater cross-cultural understanding, WUHAN WUHAN is an invaluable depiction of a metropolis joining together to...

Yingying Zhang, a 26-year-old Chinese student, comes to the U.S. to study. In her detailed and beautiful diaries, the aspiring young scientist and...

Filmmaker Judith Helfand's searing investigation into the politics of “disaster” – by way of the deadly 1995 Chicago heat wave, in...

During the Great Recession, joblessness exceeds 20 percent east of the Anacostia River in Washington, DC. City of Trees follows the intimate stories...

While touring the U.S. in a brightly painted school bus, the psychedelic rock collective Anonymous Artists of America stops to hold a performance at...

At 31, filmmaker Joanna Rudnick faces an impossible decision: remove her breasts and ovaries or risk incredible odds of developing cancer. Armed with...

The Hamilton Wood Type Museum in Two Rivers, WI personifies cultural preservation, rural re-birth and the lineage of American graphic design. At...