Silverdocs is an annual festival of documentaries from around the world, screened at the American Film Institute’s Silver Theatre. This year's dates: June 16-23. For those who live far away from the Maryland movie palace, or couldn’t score tickets, here’s a sample of what you’re missing.

Mechanical Love

Subject: Efforts to create robots that give comfort to old people, or that look and act just like real people.

Style: With strumming harps and eerie choruses, the film looks at how German nursing home patients are comforted by an interactive robotic seal named Paro and how a child is rather repulsed by her dad's "geminoid" -- a strangely lifelike robotic twin.

Factoid: A robotic cat tested poorly, since people compared it to real cats. The robotic seal was an easier sell.

Something to Think About: When you're 90 years old, do you really want to be playing with a souped-up Tickle Me Elmo? –Marc Silver

Dust

Subject: Dust comes from mining, manufacturing, dry land, falling buildings, outer space, and your own body. Some of it will kill you, and you will never keep your house clean.

Style: Dry descriptions of dust and the many machines that people use to study it pile on top of each other, much like the little flecks that are the film’s protagonists. By the end, you’ll want to buy a Dyson supervacuum or two.

Factoid: Without dust, there would be no clouds.

Something to Think About: You thought Martha Stewart put your house to shame? Some people dust inside their TVs.  –Brad Scriber

 
Journey of a Red Fridge

Subject: To pay for schooling, a porter boy carries a red refrigerator on his back down the mountains of Nepal—stabilized by a band around his forehead and the hefty appliance!

Style: The camera closely follows 17-year-old Hari as he drags the fridge to town, taking occasional breaks for odd porter jobs that provide him food and bed. Along the way, he chats with locals about harvests and weddings and reveals his own thoughts.

Factoid: There are as many as 60,000 child porters in Nepal who carry loads from town to town that average 101 pounds.

Something to Think About: In the poor villages of Nepal, boys like Hari do not fantasize about girls or cars; instead, they dream of building hospitals, improving schools, and finding jobs that will pay enough so they can help their families. –Tammie Smith

Pindorama: The True Story of the Seven Dwarves

Subject: Seven Brazilian brothers and sisters who suffer from dwarfism run the traveling Pindorama circus, named after their late father, Pindoba, a famous clown.

Style: Intimate scenes of the family members at work (performing, rehearsing, setting up/breaking down the big top) and play (drinking, shopping, driving, giving each other good-natured grief) are interspersed with pastoral shots of rural and coastal Brazil. A steady hum of bossa nova and tropicália, plus traditional circus fare, underscores the relaxed, genial mood.

Factoid: The family (nearly) illustrates the 50 percent odds of passed-on dwarfism: A dwarf parent and a regular-sized one had 12 children—seven "little people," five "big."

Something to Think About: According to one Pindoroma principal, “If you aren’t a clown, you’re a knife-thrower.” Words to live by? –Jeremy Berlin

Man on Wire

Subject: In 1974, French tightrope walker Philippe Petit did a 45-minute high-wire dance between the towers of the not-quite-finished World Trade Centers. This was, of course, totally illegal.

Style: In recent interviews with Petit and his conspirators, they still seem shocked that they it pulled off. They filmed some of their preparations at the time—young people frolicking in a meadow and holding logistics meetings, with 23-year-old Petit a wiry ball of concentration and obsession. The filmmakers also used reenactments of the secret operation, when the kids sneaked into the World Trade Center and worked all night to bring joy to the people of New York. (In news footage of the event, even the cops who arrested Petit seem impressed.)

Factoid: Petit's dream began when he was sitting in a dentist's waiting room at age 17 and saw a newspaper article about the plan to build the twin towers.

Something to Think About: It's never once mentioned, but the end of the towers hovers over the film.

-Helen Fields

Kicking It

Subject: Soccer teams from 48 countries compete for the fourth annual Homeless World Cup in Cape Town, South Africa, with reels of highlights and pre- and post-game interviews.

Style: Characters of six different ages from six different countries build a storyline, from 23-year-old Najib, an Afghani whose first kiss comes from the lips of a Team Paraguay supporter, to 62-year-old alcoholic Jesus of Spain, who revisits youthful soccer glory when he laces up for the Homeless Cup.

Factoid: Because of their tremendous run in the 2006 HWC, Russia created a homeless street soccer league—eight teams at film’s end and expanding. (Thanks for the update, narrator Colin Farrell!)

Something to Think About: Troubled Irish goalkeeper Damien returned to Dublin to kick his methadone addiction; his mom let him move back home. Simon, his vivacious teammate, died of an overdose four months after the contest. He had been clean for eighteen months before his relapse.

-Jeff DiNunzio

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