Walter L. Cohen Senior High School, a post-Katrina school in New Orleans is one of the most dangerous high schools in America. Inside: America’s Toughest High School, follows three students and one first-year teacher as they reveal their unvarnished accounts of life at this turbulent High School. Violent parties, deadly gang rivalries and threats against teachers are commonplace, through personal video diaries and intimate interviews we are offered a rare glimpse into school life in the murder capital of America. Among those followed are a popular young man hoping to beat the odds and earn a college scholarship, a young mother struggling to graduate after two years away from the classroom, an 11th-grader whose studies take little precedence over life in the hood, and a new teacher hoping to empower students to graduate, or in some cases, simply survive. Although the odds are stacked against them, as homicide rates are skyrocketing, nearly one in six Cohen girls have babies or are pregnant and only 25 percent of Cohen seniors will make it to college. Teachers and community members remain hopeful that these students are making small steps towards something greater.

In a remote outpost in south-central Afghanistan known as Firebase Cobra, a group of soldiers stand in the breach between the rule of law and the rule of terror. They are Green Berets, part of an elite division of the U.S. Army Special Forces, charged with protecting local civilians from the wrath of the Taliban. These elite soldiers navigate an unforgiving landscape, never certain from one minute to the next if they will make it back to the base alive. The program provides a rare, up-close look at the sacrifices, challenges and deadly risks that American soldiers face on the front lines every day. The film is narrated by producer and director Steven Hoggard, who offers an intimate firsthand account of life on the base and under attack, including his own injuries from the deadly blast. The film also documents daily life for these soldiers, including the mundane passing of time inside the base; the danger-filled missions to surrounding villages; and even a historic gathering of tribal leaders seeking assistance against the Taliban who invaded their homes.

Inside: LA Gang Wars is an honest, first-person account of the lives of young gang members caught up in a gang war in Los Angeles. Unlike other gang films that rely on gang histories and experts, this insightful documentary focuses on active gang members who are trying to survive in the underbelly of LA. Our story follows two teen members and two OG’s (gang elders) who document their own lives with home video diaries. By handing the cameras over to the gang members themselves, we have gained unprecedented access into an underground world. Along the way, viewers meet Father Stan Bosch, a priest who has devoted his life to saving these kids from self-destruction. We witness the death of two brothers involved in the war, and watch as one of our teenage gang bangers miraculously escapes gang life.

Youth can be a minefield: sex, drugs, violence, and peer pressure. In Salt Lake City, one group has an extreme way of dealing with it. They call themselves the ‘Straight Edge’. The police may class them as a gang, they aren’t like any other gangs you know. With them, it’s no sex, no drugs, no alcohol and no smoking. But don’t call them angels, they’re anything but. They are rebels against a society where anything goes. We go Inside Straight Edge to uncover the roots of this youth phenomenon and reveal what draws thousands of young people to this extreme ideology. We travel with members of a militant offshoot of Straight Edge who also reject eating meat and use of animal products, homosexuality, abortion, and masturbation. The lead ‘clean sweeps’ where they attack people smoking and drinking in public!

Whale Hunters follows one crew of Inupiaq Eskimo whalers as they engage in the annual spring bowhead hunt on thinning sea ice near Barrow, Alaska, and risk all to capture and kill an animal they both hunt and revere. Above the Arctic Circle, men paddling fragile, sealskin boats hunt a 60-ton animal. The beast they seek is a mystery of the deep. Now, bowhead whales are thriving but the hunt is endangered. And as the Arctic melts, a tradition that has lasted for millennia may be coming to an end. ‘Inside: Whale Hunters’ depicts one crew of Inupiaq Eskimo whalers - “people of the ice whale,” as they engage in the annual spring bowhead hunt on thinning ice sheets off Barrow, Alaska. They risk all to capture and kill an animal they both hunt and revere - an animal without which Inupiaq Eskimo culture as we know it might not exist.