For documentary storytellers Janay Boulos and Abd Alkader Habak, the sweet message behind their film, “Birds of War,” set amid the perils of the Syrian civil war, is that against all odds, love wins.

When it came to depicting the lives of misfit runaway teens in the twisted drama “BURN,” writer-director Makoto Nagahisa was determined to shoot in Tokyo locations that felt unmistakably authentic to the world he was building.

In “Rock Springs,” a woman relocates to a new town with her family following the death of her daughter’s father. While settling into their remote home, they discover something lurks amid the town’s nearby woods.

In “Kikuyu Land,” Andrew H. Brown explores a land battle in Kenya, shedding light on the legacy of the Indigenous people and the decades of mistreatment they’ve endured at the hands of a corporation profiting from their labor.