New Releases from New Day Films - Winter, 2025-26
The four new films in our Winter 2025-26 “New Releases” presentation are remarkable for their portrayals of protagonists drawn from groups that have been among the most unfairly targeted in these recent, most challenging times: immigrants, Blacks, the poor and trans folk. Disparate stories all, they are vivid narratives that portray those fighting for their rights, each with the goal of creating a society that is inclusive and fair, with rights and respect for all. The films’ storylines each depict journeys of sustained struggle, with the challenges steep, the antagonists formidable, and risks monumental. The films each emphasize, in their own unique way, the need for being committed to struggle over the long haul, for stamina and resilience, and present what is possible when one keeps their “eyes on the prize.” Like all the titles in the New Day Films catalog, our new additions illuminate, inspire and challenge.
We invite you to watch trailers and learn more about these films:
An Unsettling Force
By Dara Kell, 47 min.
An Unsettling Force follows poor and low-wealth people across the United States as they organize to confront a moral crisis of survival. Anchored by the work of Revs. William J. Barber II and Liz Theoharis, the film documents a renewed, multiracial, interfaith Poor People’s Campaign that insists poverty is not inevitable, but structured—and therefore changeable. Through intimate access to grassroots organizing, direct action, and collective learning, the film reveals how people most impacted by injustice build power together, not by waiting on politicians, but by pushing relentlessly for dignity, care, and a more just society.
Watch the trailer:
SEAT 31: ZOOEY ZEPHYR
By Kimberly Reed and Claire Jones, 14 min.
After Zooey Zephyr’s expulsion from Montana’s Legislature for defending transgender medical care, she made a nearby bench her “office.” The first transgender Legislator in Montana, Zephyr seems to be an expert in emotional jujitsu, transforming insults and injury into positive energy that fuels her as a happy warrior and lets her not only survive, but thrive. Seat 31 is a guide for anyone stuck in our politicized and polarized world who still wants the fundamental thing we see in others to be, quite simply, their humanity. Director Kimberly Reed’s intimate filmmaking transforms this shocking political moment into a portrait of trans and queer joy.
Watch the trailer:
Space to Breathe
By Jordan Flaherty, Walidah Imarisha, Juicebox P. Burton and Roger Guenveur Smith, 21 min.
Space to Breathe is a daring Afrofuturist depiction of a future world without prisons or police. The year is 2070 and Sojourner is a young genderqueer filmmaker who sets out to understand how this abolition came to be, through history's archives on the movements of the early 21st Century. A hybrid of science fiction and documentary, the film envisions a future world if today’s mass movements, such as defunding the police and abolishing prisons, were to become successful.
Watch the trailer:
The Iron Triangle: Willets Point and the Remaking of New York
By Prudence Katze, 82 min.
In 2013, during the last year of the Bloomberg Administration, New York City’s government advances plans for a “dynamic” high-end entertainment district that would completely wipe out this historic industrial core. After years of being targeted for (failed) redevelopment plans dating back to the days of Robert Moses,the workers and residents of Willets Point– home to hundreds of immigrant-run, auto repair shops that thrive despite a lack of municipal infrastructure support– unite with a band of activists, and together race against the clock to forestall their impending eviction.