I Touched All Your Stuff follows Christopher Kirk, a computer technician from Michigan who met a mysterious Japanese-Colombian woman, whom he only refers to as "V", in Brazil. V seduced him into a long-distance relationship where they chatted over the internet and, soon enough, he agreed to book her a flight so that they could meet in Los Angeles where she was meeting a mysterious "friend." He suspected that she might be a prostitute, but he thought that wasn't very likely. Little did he know until much later that she was actually involved in the drug smuggling business, or at least that's what he tells the camera and filmmakers from jail. What he does know for sure, through his online surveillance of her, is that she has many boyfriends from all around the world. When he learned of that and confronted her, she manipulated him into forgiving him and making him think that he's her true love. Co-directors Maíra Bühler and Matias Mariani withhold key information about Kirk until the last 20 minutes or so of the doc, so they string you along as you listen to Kirk provide his side of the story which makes him look like a naive, gullible and emotionally needy person who has a lot of growing up to do. They, therefore, essentially turn the doc into a quietly suspenseful mystery instead of a provocative/investigative one that would've dug up something truly revealing. In other words, they put the burden on you to listen to Kirk and then make up your own mind about him based on his friends' testimony about about how he's a pathological liar. How much of what Kirk says is the truth and how much of it is a lie? Again, that's up to you to decide. Perhaps the most revealing or surprising thing you'll learn where the title of the doc comes from. I Touched All Your Stuff works best as a simple cautionary tale against seductive con artists. It would make for an interesting double feature with Catfish and (Dis)Honesty. Cinema Slate opens it at Cinema Village. My Voice, My Life, directed by Ruby Yang, is the kind of doc that appeals more to the heart and soul than to the mind. It centers on teenagers at a Hong Kong school for the under-privileged who come together to put on a musical show. Some of the teenagers have physical handicaps, i.e. blindness, while others have behavioral issues that had impeded them from doing well in school in the past. It's quite poignant to watch as each teenager struggles to overcome the limitations of both their physical and mental impediments to accomplish something meaningful in their lifes. Yang shows jumps back and forth between each teenager as she shows their battles as they prepare for the show. There's not much in terms of exposition, so you don't learn a lot about the teenagers, although you do briefly find out how one of them became blind and how another led a troubled childhood. Ultimately, you're left with more questions than answers, like, "What more can be done to better protect troubled/disabled youth?" or "How do we find the resources to open more schools like the one featured in the film?" It would have been interesting to explore the stressful daily lives of the teachers as well to make the doc well-rounded---each day probably takes an emotional toll on them to a certain degree. Despite the doc's lack of insight, there's no denying how well it tugs at your heartstrings. If you don't at least get misty-eyed during the footage of the show itself toward the end, you must be made out of stone. My Voice, My Life opens at Cinema Village via CINEMAflix.

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The Second Mother
Directed by Anna Muylaert