Documentary
List activity
82 views
• 0 this weekCreate a new list
List your movie, TV & celebrity picks.
65 titles
- DirectorMads BrüggerStarsUlrich Løvenskjold LarsenMads BrüggerAlejandro Cao de Benos de Les y PérezA real-life undercover thriller about two ordinary men who embark on an outrageously dangerous ten-year mission to penetrate the world's most secretive and brutal dictatorship: North Korea.
- DirectorJuris PodnieksPortrayal of rebellious teenagers growing up under Communist rule in Latvia.
- DirectorWerner HerzogStarsWerner HerzogThis film surveys the disaster of the Kuwaiti oil fields in flames, with little narration and scarcely any interviews. Hell on Earth is presented in such transcendent visions and music that one can only be fascinated by it.
- DirectorJacob YoungStarsWattie GreenDorsey WhiteJerry WhiteThis documentary short, produced for West Virginia public TV's "Different Drummer" series, introduces us to Jesco White, a hard-living, tap-dancing Boone County resident whose repeated run-ins with the law have interfered with his dream of becoming as renowned a "mountain dancer" as his late father, D. Ray White. We meet Jesco's three distinct personalities; the gentle and loving Jesse, the violent and dangerous Jesco, and the extremely strange Elvis. We also encounter various members of Jesco's family, all nearly as eccentric as Jesco himself. You will ask, "Are these people for real?" Yes, they are.
- DirectorDusan HanákPictures of the Old World is an unquestioned masterpiece of European documentary cinema, with existential radicalism that offers a contrast to the shallowness of hundreds of other documentary films showing images from the outskirts of civilization. The outskirts here are a Slovakian town in the Tatra Mountains. Though censored for 17 years, Dusan Hanáks poetic visual essay is not a political or even social film. It goes to far deeper and more fundamental levels of human experience. Inspired by the photographs of Martin Martinek, the films power lies in its unusual portraits of people whose raw visual beauty radiates from their very souls. Some, like the village cosmos aficionado or the disabled old man who climbs stairs on his knees, are hard to forget.
- DirectorColin M. DayStarsBen EineGlen E. FriedmanKelly 'Risk' GravalInternationally known graffiti artist, Banksy, left his mark on San Francisco in April 2010. Little did he know that this act of vandalism would spark a chain of events that includes one of his rats being removed from a wall, Museums ignorantly turning down a free Banksy street work, and a NY gallerist who has made it his business model to remove Banksy street works from all over the globe doing whatever it takes to get the rat in his possession.
- DirectorAlex GibneyStarsDavid SangerEmad KiyaeiEric ChienA documentary focused on Stuxnet, a piece of self-replicating computer malware that the U.S. and Israel unleashed to destroy a key part of an Iranian nuclear facility, and which ultimately spread beyond its intended target.
- DirectorIryna TsilykStarsDanylo DydenkoGanna GladkaOlena GladkaTo cope with the daily trauma of living in a war-zone, Anna and her children are making a film together about their life in the most surreal surroundings.
- DirectorChris MarkerStarsAmilcar CabralFlorence DelayArielle DombasleA woman narrates the contemplative writings of a seasoned world traveler, focusing on contemporary Japan.
- DirectorBenjamin ReeStarsKarl Bertil-NordlandBarbora KysilkovaØystein SteneAn artist befriends the thief who stole her paintings. She becomes his closest ally when he is severely hurt in a car crash and needs full time care, even if her paintings are not found. But then the tables turn.
- DirectorJohan GrimonprezBased on the book of The Shadow World, this feature length documentary is an investigation into the multi-billion dollar international arms trade.
- DirectorRahul JainA portrait of daily life of the workers in an Indian textile factory, revealing its beauty as well as its shameful working conditions.
- DirectorRahul JainExplores the dramatic consequences of India's growing economy, capturing not only a city in crisis but magnifying our collective climate realities.
- DirectorÁlvaro F. PulpeiroUnder shadows cast by colossal oil refineries, emerging from the desert like chrome cathedrals, SO FOUL A SKY presents a journey through several frontier lands of Venezuela - the world's first petrostate - now shaken by the worst political and humanitarian crisis South America has experienced in the 21st century. While storm clouds gather in the skies, sleepy soldiers patrol the Caribbean Seas, migrants drift through lugubrious border posts between Brazil and Venezuela, and smugglers venture across the hostile Guajira Desert, trafficking the last remaining barrels of embargoed gasoline. All is enveloped by scrambled radio newsreels fired from both sides of the ideological struggle ripping the capital apart. This is a film portraying pirates and pilgrims, orphaned children of a land that they have made their own without planting flags or imposing anthems; anarchic just like the hovering storm clouds threatening to put an end to the limbo all inhabit.
- DirectorMahdi FleifelStarsMahdi FleifelAn intimate, and often humorous, portrait of three generations of exile in the refugee camp of Ein el-Helweh, in southern Lebanon. Based on a wealth of personal recordings, family archives, and historical footage, the film is a sensitive, and illuminating study of belonging, friendship, and family in the lives of those for whom dispossession is the norm, and yearning their daily lives.
- DirectorCharles de LauzirikaStarsHarrison FordDaryl HannahMichael DeeleyThe definitive three-and-a-half hour documentary about the troubled creation and enduring legacy of the science fiction classic Blade Runner (1982), culled from 80 interviews and hours of never-before-seen outtakes and lost footage.
- DirectorRoland JofféStarsSam WaterstonHaing S. NgorJohn MalkovichA journalist is trapped in Cambodia during tyrant Pol Pot's bloody 'Year Zero' cleansing campaign, which claimed the lives of two million 'undesirable' civilians.
- DirectorRax RinnekangasStarsPekka MilonoffAndrei GozakJoseph StalinThe architect Konstantin Melnikov (1890 - 1974) designed his Utopian home, an icon of modern architecture, in the center of Moscow in the late 1920's. When Joseph Stalin prohibited modern architecture in Soviet Union, Melnikov was denied his right to work as an architect and was in practice placed under house arrest for years. This film tells the amazing story of the MelnikovHouse and the fate of an architect imprisoned in his Utopian house.
- DirectorAlex PritzStarsNeidinha BandeiraBitaté Uru Eu Wau WauWhen a network of Brazilian farmers seizes a protected area of the Amazon rainforest, a young Indigenous leader and his mentor must fight back in defense of the land and an uncontacted group living deep within the forest.
- DirectorSara DosaStarsMiranda JulyKatia KrafftMaurice KrafftIntrepid scientists and lovers Katia and Maurice Krafft died in a volcanic explosion doing the very thing that brought them together: unraveling the mysteries of volcanoes by capturing the most explosive imagery ever recorded.
- DirectorMarion NeumannThe film traces possible alliances with the fungal reign. As if in an uprising of spores, the encounters of the film explore the theme of renewal, and question what connects us when the world seems to be falling apart.
- DirectorAliona van der HorstStarsSana ValiulinaTurn Your Body to the Sun tells the incredible story of a Soviet prisoner of war. Sixty years later his daughter Sana is tracing the path of her silent father.
- DirectorClaude LanzmannStarsSimon SrebnikMichael PodchlebnikMotke ZaïdlClaude Lanzmann's epic documentary recounts the story of the Holocaust through interviews with witnesses - perpetrators as well as survivors.
- DirectorJohn WebsterStarsKimmo SädeahoSami AhtolaKristiina MarinIn this Finnish cinema classic, three vacuum cleaner salesmen go door-to-door selling dreams of dust-free homes and personal ambitions in a bleak Finland hit by the worst recession in history.
- StarsPaolo MacchiariniBosse LindquistJohannes WahlströmThree-part series looking at the downfall of synthetic organ transplant surgeon Paolo Macchiarini.
- DirectorPatricio GuzmánStarsGaspar GalazLautaro NúñezLuís HenríquezA documentary about two different searches conducted in the Chilean Atacama Desert: one by astronomers looking for answers about the history of the cosmos, and one by women looking for the remains of loved ones killed by Pinochet's regime.
- DirectorMichael PalmieriDonal MosherStarsDonDanael MosherDesi MosherOctober Country is a beautifully filmed portrait of an American family struggling for stability while haunted by the ghosts of war, teen pregnancy, foster care and child abuse. With rarely seen intimacy, sensitivity and respect, this vibrant documentary examines the forces that unsettle the working poor and the violence that lurks beneath the surface of American life.
- DirectorSimeon HutnerTrevor LaurenceTells the little-known story of Reverend Gary Davis, the great American ragtime, blues and gospel guitarist. Tracing his journey from the tobacco warehouses of the rural south to the streets of Harlem, and onto the 1960s folk music scene, the film tells the story of a blind street musician and itinerant preacher who rose out of abject poverty to become celebrated as an American master.
- DirectorCristiano AbudMaria de Fátima AugustoAlexandre BaxterA road movie by rail through four Brazilian states, 55 cities and 8.000 km of railways. A documentary, eight directors and six episodes taking place in natural landscapes and urban settings that proposes an anthropological voyage through cities and the lives of the communities alongside the tracks. The trains as conductors of history and the tracks like a way through time. A recording of the past by means of memories and observation of contemporary space based on daily living and the transformation of places provoked by the presence or disappearance of the train. During the 36 days of filming, the directors of Dead End travel over six stretches of railroads in Minas Gerais, Bahia, Espírito Santo and Rio de Janeiro states. They pass through economically developed regions and as well as small towns. Based on testimony on the present and the past, an ample picture of everyday life is drawn in the distinct communities that maintain one point in common - the railroad.
- DirectorJRAgnès VardaStarsAgnès VardaJRJeannine CarpentierDirector Agnes Varda and photographer/muralist J.R. journey through rural France and form an unlikely friendship.
- DirectorSally RubinAshley YorkStarsMichael AptedRonny CoxSam Gleaves"hillbilly" is a documentary film that examines the iconic hillbilly image in media and culture. The film explores more than a hundred years of media representation of mountain and rural people and offers an urgent exploration of how we see and think about rural America.
- DirectorPenny LaneStarsGene TognacciAndy BoswellJohn CausbyThe mostly true story of Dr. John Romulus Brinkley, an eccentric genius who built an empire with his goat-testicle impotence cure and a million-watt radio station.
- DirectorAlain ResnaisStarsMichel BouquetReinhard HeydrichHeinrich HimmlerThe history of Nazi Germany's death camps of the Final Solution and the hellish world of dehumanization and death contained inside.
- DirectorAlexander GlustromStarsStacey RyanAs a centuries-old black community, contaminated and uprooted by petrochemical plants, comes to terms with the loss of its ancestral home, one man standing in the way of a plant's expansion refuses to give up.
- DirectorMarie-Monique RobinStarsAnibal AcostaAlcides Lopez AufrancCarl BernardThe French army was very influential in how modern suppression of independence movements has been and is carried out. This documentary reveals why.
- StarsRaoul PeckJosh HartnettCaisa AnkarsparreThe path to the new world, an unsettling and intricate story of genocides. Conquest, slavery and the fabrication of "Whiteness".
- DirectorDouglas GordonPhilippe ParrenoStarsDavid BeckhamZinédine ZidaneFootball match Real Madrid vs. Villareal, April 23, 2005, from the perspective of soccer superstar Zinedine Zidane.
- DirectorJoop HuiskenJoris IvensRobert MénégozStarsAlex McCrindleErnst BuschPaul RobesonA Communist supported essay film, centering on great rivers of the world such as the Amazon, accompanied by Shostakovich and Paul Robeson music, and also contrasting ways of life under American capitalism and Soviet style socialism.
- DirectorKen LoachStarsEileen ThompsonJulian Tudor HartDai WaltersA documentary on how the spirit of unity, which buoyed Britain during the war years, carried through to create a vision of a fairer, united society.
- DirectorJames MarshStarsIan HolmJeffrey GoldenJo VukelichA series of grisly events that took place in the state of Wisconsin between 1890 and 1900 is dramatized as reported in the Black River Falls newspaper.
- DirectorPenny WoolcockFrom the Sea to the Land Beyond is a film about the British coast made from 100 years of our film heritage stored in the British Film Institute collection, edited by Penny Woolcock with a soundtrack by British Sea Power.
- DirectorCosta-GavrasStarsChristos LoulisAlexandros BourdoumisUlrich TukurGreece in 2015: the economy is in tatters and the country is on the verge of bankruptcy. A new government rebels against the EU's iron-fisted rule and inspires millions of Europeans. Based on the political memoirs of Yanis Varoufakis.
- DirectorAlex GibneyStarsJack AbramoffTom DeLayWilliam BrannerA probing investigation into the lies, greed and corruption surrounding D.C. super-lobbyist Jack Abramoff and his cronies.
- DirectorMalik BendjelloulStarsRodriguezStephen 'Sugar' SegermanDennis CoffeyTwo South Africans set out to discover what happened to their unlikely musical hero, the mysterious 1970s rock n roller, Rodriguez.
- DirectorAlon SchwarzStarsAvigdor FeldmanYoav GelberTeddy KatzIn the war of 1948 hundreds of Palestinian villages were depopulated. Israelis call it 'The War of Independence. Palestinians call it 'Nakba"'. The film examines one village- Tantura and why "Nakba" is taboo in Israeli society.
- DirectorLana WilsonA Buddhist monk asks what we owe one another and provides experiences to help us find answers.
- DirectorTim GrabhamJasper SharpStarsMark PagnellHeather BarnettBryn DentingerThe Creeping Garden is a feature length documentary exploring the work of fringe scientists, mycologists and artists, and their relationship with the extraordinary plasmodial slime mould.
- DirectorSantiago Mohar VolkowNicolás Gutiérrez WenhammarSísifos is a life portrait in an unofficial rehabilitation center in Chiapas, Mexico. These places are non-professional addiction rehabilitation centers and the only alternative for the majority of Mexicans despite sometimes being outside the law. Sísifos is not a journalistic approach to the subject, it rather tries to see addiction as a metaphor for the human condition. The "Anexo" as these places are called, is a space for this meditation and the interns are the subjects where humanity and difficulties of masculinity in Mexico are revealed.
- DirectorDebra ChasnoffThis 1991 Academy Award®-winning documentary uncovers the disastrous health and environmental side effects caused by the production of nuclear materials by the General Electric Corporation.
- DirectorBarbara TrentStarsElizabeth MontgomeryCarlos CantúDiviana IngravalloA film about the true reasons for the 1989 US invasion of Panama and big media complicity in these activities.
- DirectorTsai Ming-liangStarsKang-sheng LeeTsai Ming-liangConversation on filmmaking by director Tsai Ming-liang and actor-director Lee Kang-shen.
- DirectorBen AsamoahStarsAmaOne DollarA group of young Ghanaians turn to internet fraud to help them with a desperate situation.
- DirectorHarun FarockiAndrei UjicaStarsIon CaramitruElena CeausescuNicolae CeausescuThis documentary uses news footage and amateur video to paint a vivid picture of Romania's 1989 revolution and the fall of dictator Nicolae Ceausescu.
- DirectorHarun FarockiA look at production and destruction and the relation between them.
- DirectorUldis BraunsBiruta VeldreLaima ZurginaAn emotional and visually attractive portrait of timeless moments in human life. 235 000 000 was made on the occasion of the 50th anniversary of the 1917 Revolution. Without any commentary, allowing images to speak for themselves to music.
- DirectorAaron AitesAudrey EwellStarsFenrizVarg VikernesEuronymousInterviews and news footage explore the rise of black metal music in Norway in the 1990s, including artists who were involved in suicide, murder and arson.
- DirectorAlexandre O. PhilippeStarsClarke WolfeNicholas CullWilliam LinnAn in-depth voyage into the sci-fi film Alien (1979) with the visionary filmmakers who created it. See how one of the most terrifying movies of all time came to life 40 years ago, inspired by ancient mythology and our universal fears.
- DirectorDeborah StratmanEvolution and extinction from the point of view of rocks. A humid take on minerals, where sci-fi meets sci-fact. The geo-biosphere is a place of evolutionary possibility, where humans disappear but life endures.
- DirectorWim WendersStarsAnselm KieferDaniel KieferAnton WendersAnselm Kiefer is one of the greatest contemporary artists. His past and present diffuse the line between film and painting, thus giving a unique cinematic experience that dives deep into an artist's work and reveals his life path.
- DirectorWalter HeynowskiGerhard ScheumannReconstruction of the last hours in the presidential palace La Moneda during the coup d'état in Santiago de Chile in 1973. Salvador Allende enters his office on September 11th at 7.30 in the morning. In the early afternoon he leaves it - wrapped in a blanket, dead.
- DirectorRon FrickeStarsPatrick DisantoA collection of expertly photographed scenes of human life and religion.
- DirectorEmile de AntonioMary LampsonHaskell WexlerStarsBill AyersKathy BoudinEmile de AntonioIt's the mid 1970s and the Weather Underground Organization (WUO), a radical (and violent) offshoot of the Students for a Democratic Society, explains to leftist filmmakers the difficulties and experiences of being underground and wanted by the federal government.
- DirectorMarcin BorchardtStarsZdzislaw BeksinskiZofia BeksinskaTomasz BeksinskiThe story of an outstanding Polish painter, Zdzislaw Beksinski, and his complicated relationship with his son, Tomek, an extremely popular music journalist who suffered from depression and made numerous attempts to commit suicide.
- StarsCixin LiuDouglas VakochJames BeachamDocumentary series exploring the science behind the science fiction of the award-winning writer Liu Cixin, author of "The Three-Body Problem". The series has been watched by a combined audience of more than 80 million.