This documentary film tells the dramatic story of Richard and Mildred Loving, an interracial couple living in Virginia in the 1950s, and their landmark Supreme Court Case, Loving v. Virginia, that changed history.

This is not a documentary about the making of Midnight Cowboy. It is about a humane and groundbreaking masterpiece and the flawed but gifted people who made it. It is about a troubled era of cultural ferment, social and political change, about broken dreams and strivers, then and now. It is about an era that made a movie and a movie that made an era.

Recy Taylor, a 24-year-old black mother and sharecropper, was gang raped by six white boys in 1944 Alabama. Common in Jim Crow South, few women spoke up in fear for their lives. Not Recy Taylor, who bravely identified her rapists. The NAACP sent its chief rape investigator Rosa Parks, who rallied support and triggered an unprecedented outcry for justice. The film exposes a legacy of physical abuse of black women and reveals Rosa Parks’ intimate role in Recy Taylor’s story.

Of all the great ballerinas, Tanaquil Le Clercq may have been the most transcendent. With a body unlike any before hers, she mesmerized viewers and choreographers alike - her elongated, race-horse physique became the new prototype for the great George Balanchine. Her unique style, humor and authenticity redefined ballet for all dancers who followed. Amazingly, she was the muse to not one great artist but two; both George Balanchine and Jerome Robbins loved her as a dancer and a woman. Balanchine married her and Robbins created his famous version of Afternoon of a Faun for Tanny. Tanaquil Le Clercq was the foremost dancer of her day until it suddenly all stopped. On a tour of Europe, she was struck down by polio and paralyzed. She never danced again.

In BY SIDNEY LUMET, film legend Sidney Lumet (1924-2011) tells his own story in a never-before-seen interview shot in 2008 produced by the late filmmaker Daniel Anker. With candor, humor and grace, Lumet reveals what matters to him as an artist and as a human being. The documentary film features clips from Lumet's films - 44 films made in 50 years - including 12 ANGRY MEN (1957), THE FUGITIVE KIND (1960), SERPICO (1973), DOG DAY AFTERNOON (1975), THE VERDICT (1982), to name only a very few. Filmmaker Nancy Buirski (Afternoon of a Faun, The Loving Story) combines these elements to create a portrait of the work and life of one of the most accomplished and influential directors in the history of cinema. BY SIDNEY LUMET illustrates the spiritual and ethical lessons at the core of his work. First and foremost a storyteller, Lumet's strongly moral tales capture the dilemmas and concerns of a society struggling with essentials: how does one behave to others and to oneself?