Documentary
Years

Popular Documentary Movies

Still Processing
Still Processing
A box of stunning family photos awakens grief and lost memories as they are viewed for the first time on camera.
Still Processing 2021
Ramona
Ramona
Preparing for a role, an actress holds conversations with pregnant young girls. Throughout the process, the girls lay out the stories of their own lives on camera, changing the course of the production of the film.
Ramona 2023
Boom for Real: The Late Teenage Years of Jean-Michel Basquiat
Boom for Real: The Late Teenage Years of Jean-Michel Basquiat
Exploring the pre-fame years of the celebrated American artist Jean-Michel Basquiat, and how New York City, its people, and tectonically shifting arts culture of the late 1970s and '80s shaped his vision.
Boom for Real: The Late Teenage Years of Jean-Michel Basquiat 2018
Corporate Responsibility
Corporate Responsibility
Images of Argentinian companies and factories in the first light of day, seen from the inside of a car, while the director reads out documents in voiceover that reveals the collusion of the same concerns in the military dictatorship’s terror.
Corporate Responsibility 2020
The Last Time I Saw Macao
The Last Time I Saw Macao
Part memoir, part city symphony, part noir-ish B-movie adventure, the new feature from critically acclaimed film-making duo João Pedro Rodrigues and João Rui Guerra da Mata (To Die Like a Man) is a sensual, shape-shifting ode to one of the world's most mythic, alluring and exoticized cities.
The Last Time I Saw Macao 2012
My Stuff
My Stuff
Twentysomething Petri got over a break-up by pushing his credit card limit in order to buy stuff. Still, after three years, the anxiety remains, so all things must go into a storage container. For a year, Petri allows himself to retrieve only one item per day. New life begins naked next to a radiator.
My Stuff 2013
Feast
Feast
In FEAST, perpetrators, victims and their spectators become involved in a dramatic reconstruction of the Groningen HIV case. The film tells a story about power and surrender, the reversibility of truth and the desire to come home somewhere.
Feast 2021
The Makes
The Makes
An adaptation of Michelangelo Antonioni’s notes on un-made films published in “That Bowling Alley on the Tiber.” Starring French film critic Philippe Azoury in the role of “The Critic.”
The Makes 2009
Guerrilla: The Taking of Patty Hearst
Guerrilla: The Taking of Patty Hearst
A documentary on the curious American domestic terrorist group, infamous for the 1974 kidnapping of Patty Hearst.
Guerrilla: The Taking of Patty Hearst 2004
The Endless Film
The Endless Film
Based on the remains of never-completed Argentine features from the archives of the film museum in Buenos Aires. The film is, as it were, a parallel film history: an essay like a cinematographic Frankenstein, that blows new life into images that once seemed unsuccessful and pointless.
The Endless Film 2018
Robinson in Space
Robinson in Space
Robinson is commissioned to investigate the unspecified "problem of England." The narrator describes his seven excursions, with the unseen Robinson, around the country. They mainly concentrate on ports, power stations, prisons, and manufacturing plants, but they also bring in various literary connections, as well as a few conventional landscapes.
Robinson in Space 1997
I Am
I Am
In the City of Angels, despair and heartache are the daily mail -- delivered with painful regularity whether we want them or not. Through I AM, we join an eclectic cast as they try to untangle themselves from the web of sin. All along the way, they are each joined by a mysterious companion -- ever present with a loving guidance without judgment for their actions. The more they attempt to fix their lives, the deeper they sink into chaos, pain, and loss. In addition, we discover that sin is a matrix connecting even the most remote of strangers to one another. It is at this breaking point when we see the presence of this companion was no accident. He was the ever-loving constant who refused to abandon His people -- even when they abandoned Him.
I Am 2010
A German Youth
A German Youth
At the end of the 1960s the post-war generation began to revolt against their parents. This was a generation disillusioned by anti-communist capitalism and a state apparatus in which they believed they saw fascist tendencies. This generation included journalist Ulrike Meinhof, lawyer Horst Mahler, filmmaker Holger Meins as well as students Gudrun Ensslin and Andreas Baader.
A German Youth 2015
Above and Below
Above and Below
Above and Below is a rough and rhythmic roller coaster ride seating five survivors in their daily hustle through an apocalyptic world. A journey of challenges and beauty in uncomfortable places: Rick & Cindy, Godfather Lalo in the flood channels deep down under the shiny strip of Sin City. Dave in the dry and lonesome Californian desert and April in simulation for a Mars mission in the Utah desert. Through the hustle, the pain and the laughs, we are whisked away to an unfamiliar world, yet quickly discover the souls we encounter are perhaps not that different from our own.
Above and Below 2015
Cycling the Frame
Cycling the Frame
In 1988, Tilda Swinton toured round the Berlin Wall on a bicycle - starting and ending at the Brandenburg Gate - accompanied by filmmaker Cynthia Beatt. As Swinton travels through fields and historic neighborhoods, past lakes and massive concrete apartment buildings, the Wall is a constant presence.
Cycling the Frame 1988
The Night
The Night
In 2019, the night in Hong Kong was still in fascinating beauty and the landscape of everyday life was gradually changing. Travelling the streets, Tsai Ming-liang documented the city's rhythm and ambience, along with an overpass.
The Night 2021
Belleville Baby
Belleville Baby
A long distance call from a long lost lover makes her reminisce about their common past. She remembers the spring when they met in Paris, the riots, the vespa and the cat named Baby. A film about love, time and things that got lost along the way.
Belleville Baby 2013
In the Intense Now
In the Intense Now
A personal essay which analyses and compares images of the political upheavals of the 1960s. From the military coup in Brazil to China's Cultural Revolution, from the student uprisings in Paris to the end of the Prague Spring.
In the Intense Now 2017
Innocence of Memories
Innocence of Memories
Orhan Pamuk – Turkey’s Nobel laureate for Literature – opens a museum in Istanbul. A museum that’s a fiction: its objects trace a tale of doomed love in '70s Istanbul. The film takes a tour of the objects as the starting point for a trip through images, landscapes and the chemistry of the city. A film about Istanbul, love, memory and loss.
Innocence of Memories 2016
Yemen's Reluctant Revolutionary
Yemen's Reluctant Revolutionary
An intimate portrait of Yemen as the revolution unfolds, told through the eyes of tour guide leader Kais, an intelligent commentator on the changing times in Yemen, offering poignant moments of reflection, loss, anger and hope on the unknown road to revolution. Filmed over the course of the past year we see Kais's journey from pro-President to reluctant revolutionary, joining angry protesters in the increasingly bloody streets of Sana'a.
Yemen's Reluctant Revolutionary 2012
Landless
Landless
Since 2015, the Landless Workers Movement has been occupying an indebted sugarcane factory's land to press for its redistribution through land reform. Grandma, P.C. and their encamped fellows struggle to conquer a small share of land where they can settle down and live a self-sustainable life, growing agro-ecological crops in a newly knit peasant community they draw in their dreams.
Landless 2019
Overseas
Overseas
In the Philippines, women get deployed abroad to work as domestic workers or nannies. In one of the many training centers dedicated to domestic work, a group of trainees are getting ready to face both homesickness and the possible abuses lying ahead during a series of role-playing exercises.
Overseas 2019
Fait Vivir
Fait Vivir
Manuk, a 4yo tells the legend of Gypsy Kumbia Orchestra, 18 gypsies between musicians, dancers, and circus actors who invented the show titled 'MAKONDO'
Fait Vivir 2019
Blockade
Blockade
The images comprise only of material Sergei Loznitsa found in the Moscow film archives about the siege of Leningrad during the World War II. By providing the originally silent images with a meticulously reconstructed soundtrack, the scenes from everyday life under siege seem to be set in the present. By not intervening in the montage but giving the scenes room to tell a story, the scenes transcend the specific historic events and lead a new life. They do not evoke memories of the past, but become a breathtaking reanimation of reality.
Blockade 2006
[sic]
[sic]
Artist Eric Baudelaire constructed an ‘imaginary reality’ after a sojourn in Kyoto. In an art bookstore, a girl is responsible for ‘bokashi’: obscuring images. The entire book collection has passed through her hands. She determines what we can and cannot see.
[sic] 2010
Profit Motive and the Whispering Wind
Profit Motive and the Whispering Wind
A visual essay about the progressive tradition of the United States as seen through grave markers and monuments.
Profit Motive and the Whispering Wind 2008
Black Mother
Black Mother
Part film, part baptism, in BLACK MOTHER director Khalik Allah brings us on a spiritual journey through Jamaica. Soaking up its bustling metropolises and tranquil countryside, Allah introduces us to a succession of vividly rendered souls who call this island home. Their candid testimonies create a polyphonic symphony, set against a visual prayer of indelible portraiture. Thoroughly immersed between the sacred and profane, BLACK MOTHER channels rebellion and reverence into a deeply personal ode informed by Jamaica’s turbulent history but existing in the urgent present.
Black Mother 2018
Don't Expect Too Much
Don't Expect Too Much
Documentary about director/artist Nicholas Ray and his time as a University professor
Don't Expect Too Much 2011
The Matador
The Matador
Growing up in Granada, Spain, young David Fandila always dreamed of being a matador. This documentary captures the rise of "El Fandi," one of Spain's most renowned bullfighters, who first entered the ring at age 14. While it's never in doubt that Fandila is at the top of his game, filmmakers Stephen Higgins and Nina Gilden Seavey weigh the significance of bullfighting as a cultural tradition against its inherent danger and cruelty.
The Matador 2008
Looking for Light: Jane Bown
Looking for Light: Jane Bown
In the almost six decades that Bown worked for The Observer, she became renowned for insightful, highly individualistic portraits of the famous. Some of these portraits are now regarded as classics of the genre - Samuel Beckett, Queen Elizabeth II, The Beatles, Bertrand Russell, Mick Jagger and Margaret Thatcher. For the first time, she spoke candidly about her career and revealed how her very personal approach to the taking of portraits is informed by a deep sense of loss and abandonment. This private portrait is enhanced by a series of insightful interviews with Jane’s peers, family, colleagues, friends, and of course some of her subjects.
Looking for Light: Jane Bown 2014
The Invisible Frame
The Invisible Frame
In 1988 Cynthia Beatt and the young Tilda Swinton embarked on a filmic journey along the Berlin Wall into little-known territory. The film CYCLING THE FRAME is now an unusual document. 21 years later, in June 2009, Beatt & Swinton re-traced the line of the Wall that once isolated West Berlin. THE INVISIBLE FRAME depicts this poetic passage through varied landscapes, this time on both sides of the former Wall.
The Invisible Frame 2009
Peter and the Farm
Peter and the Farm
Peter Dunning is a rugged individualist in the extreme, a hard-drinking loner and former artist who has burned bridges with his wives and children and whose only company, even on harsh winter nights, are the sheep, cows, and pigs he tends on his Vermont farm. Peter is also one of the most complicated, sympathetic documentary subjects to come along in some time, a product of the 1960s counterculture whose poetic idealism has since soured. For all his candor, he slips into drunken self-destructive habits, cursing the splendors of a pastoral landscape that he has spent decades nurturing.
Peter and the Farm 2016
Further Beyond
Further Beyond
In their debut documentary Christine Molloy and Joe Lawlor take as their point of departure the compelling 18th Century figure, Ambrose O'Higgins, and attempt to retrace his remarkable journey from Ireland to Chile.
Further Beyond 2016
Anbessa
Anbessa
Asalif and his mother defy Ethiopia’s omnipresent modern housing development culture, by continuing to live a life characterised by proximity to nature and rootedness in community. The boy counters the ruptures in his accustomed surroundings and the threat posed by the hyena that haunts his neighbourhood by reinventing himself as a hero: as Anbessa, the lion.
Anbessa 2019
The Settlement
The Settlement
This movie is about a day in life of the settlement for people with mental problems. Located in a peaceful countryside, it conveys an image of a pure, happy place, where people live and work together, in complete harmony. But there is a growing unexplainable feeling of anxiety and hopelessness.
The Settlement 2001
A Dramatic Film
A Dramatic Film
Artist and filmmaker Eric Baudelaire spent four years interacting with the pupils of a film class, at a secondary school in the Parisian suburb of Saint-Denis. Keeping himself on the sidelines, he gives way to the children to express their thoughts and dreams. Their remarks are intuitive, inquisitive, yet passionate and surprisingly mature, concerning rocky and complicated issues, ranging from racism, immigration, and identity, all the way to the possibilities of film as a medium. As time flows almost unnoticed, it is evident that these children have not only become the co-directors of this film but also the heroes of their own lives.
A Dramatic Film 2019
Heroes
Heroes
Köken Ergun spent two years among the droves of tourists, both Turkish and Australian, that gather in Gallipoli to commemorate the soldiers who died there during one of the First World War's biggest battles. 'Heroes' to some, 'martyrs' to others.
Heroes 2019
North Terminal
North Terminal
During the 2020 lockdown, Lucrecia Martel returns to her home in Salta, Argentina’s most conservative region. Here she follows Julieta Laso who, like a muse, introduces her to a group of female artists and defiant people who exchange glances and opinions around a fire.
North Terminal 2022
The Royal Road
The Royal Road
A fascinating and unlikely reinvention story, The Royal Road simultaneously explores cinematic spiritual channeling, the conquest and colonization of Mexico and the American Southwest, fading historical Californian urban landscapes, and the passions found in butch identity to achieve an achingly beautiful and poetic defense of remembering. Probing roads from El Camino Real, to the Boulevard of Broken Dreams, to the road right outside the front door, Olson crafts a deeply intelligent and transcending observation of the human condition that reaches for redemption in the embrace of history, nostalgia, mindfulness, and sheer beauty. If you give yourself over to it, it will crack you wide open.
The Royal Road 2015
Joy of Man's Desiring
Joy of Man's Desiring
Que ta joie demeure is not a documentary about being a slave to the machine, alienation, dehumanisation or exploitation. Sound and image, editing and dramatic structure are merely employed to transpose workshops and factory floors into the cinematic space so as to explore the bizarre environments that workers adapt to and with which they skillfully interact, as if humanity had never done anything else since time immemorial.
Joy of Man's Desiring 2014