Documentary
Years

Popular Documentary Movies

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
Cassandro, the Exotico!
Cassandro, the Exotico!
After 26 years of spinning dives and flying uppercuts on the ring, Cassandro, the star of the gender-bending cross-dressing Mexican wrestlers known as the Exoticos, is far from retiring. But with dozens of broken bones and metal pins in his body, he must now reinvent himself.
Cassandro, the Exotico! 2018
Chained Girls
Chained Girls
This exploitation classic purports to expose the secrets of the 1960s lesbian underworld.
Chained Girls 1965
On the Starting Line
On the Starting Line
A portrait about a Cuban family and Jenni, a professional 100 m sprinter…
On the Starting Line 2019
Indianara
Indianara
Bigger-than-life revolutionary, Indianara and her group lead a fight for the survival of transgender people in Brazil. She gathers her forces for one last battle against the attacks from her political party and the totalitarian threat to come.
Indianara 2019
The Gold Machine
The Gold Machine
Inspired by the writings of Iain Sinclair, a father and daughter trace the footsteps of their colonialist ancestor to the Peruvian jungle. Their journeys flip between continents and centuries to produce an original mediation – part documentary, part fiction – on fate, family and the search for Eldorado.
The Gold Machine 2022
The Young Observant
The Young Observant
In a prestigious hotel school, Luca learns the art of service. How much of his own freedom and adolescence must the young man give up to work at serving customers?
The Young Observant 2020
Anatolian Trip
Anatolian Trip
Eager in spirit for a better world, an amateur rock band from bohemian Istanbul embarks on an impromptu tour to mainland Turkey, in hopes of sharing their music and love with fellow countrymen.
Anatolian Trip 2018
Newborns
Newborns
Laxmi Agarwal, a human rights activist and a survivor of acid violence, gazes back at us, as we contemplate together, the meaning of memory and loss. What does it mean to survivors of acid violence? What does it mean to people in their environment? How do the two world-views interact? What do concepts of 'fear', 'power', 'innocence' and 'beauty' mean to us? The Newborns attempts to provide a lens to the survivors of acid violence, to look forward and gaze back. They take us through the ennui of their domestic and public spaces in a nameless dystopian city, its factories, houses and motels, and its promises, never honored.
Newborns 2014
Recorder: The Marion Stokes Project
Recorder: The Marion Stokes Project
Marion Stokes secretly recorded television 24 hours a day for 30 years from 1975 until her death in 2012. For Marion taping was a form of activism to seek the truth, and she believed that a comprehensive archive of the media would be invaluable for future generations. Her visionary and maddening project nearly tore her family apart, but now her 70,000 VHS tapes are being digitized and they'll be searchable online.
Recorder: The Marion Stokes Project 2019
For Lucio
For Lucio
A visual and sonorous journey into the poetic and irreverent imagery of the Italian singer, Lucio Dalla.
For Lucio 2021
The Tree House
The Tree House
In 2045, a filmmaker lands on Mars and tries to make a film. “Home… Far away from home”, he recalls faces of people, thus a collection of moving images emerge.
The Tree House 2019
Our Defeats
Our Defeats
By going back into the cinema of the 1968 era and going forward with present-day interviews of young people who replay excerpts of films jumping out from the past, Our Defeats draw the portrait of our current relations with politics. Our Defeats, or do we keep enough forces to confront ourselves with the chaos of today?
Our Defeats 2019
Burning Man: Beyond Black Rock
Burning Man: Beyond Black Rock
BURNING MAN: BEYOND BLACK ROCK goes behind the scenes of a social revolution to explore the philosophy that fuels it, the social contract that drives it, and the transcendent experience that makes it a worldwide cultural force. Granted unprecedented access to the inner workings of the Burning Man organization, the filmmakers spent 18 months with the founders, organizers, artists and participants to document the full complexity and diversity of the Burning Man community. But, true to its title, the film goes beyond the city they raise in the desert - revealing the Burning Man's plans to bring its unique culture to the rest of the world. BEYOND BLACK ROCK tells, for the first time ever, the real story of Burning Man - from the inside out.
Burning Man: Beyond Black Rock 2005
Meanwhile on Earth
Meanwhile on Earth
When we die, there are still some practicalities that need to be taken care of before our time among the living is finally over. In Meanwhile on Earth we enter the world around our end station, an industry of death. It is a place where the existential meets the mundane, the sacred meets the profane.
Meanwhile on Earth 2020
Your Day Is My Night
Your Day Is My Night
Immigrant residents of a “shift-bed” apartment in the heart of New York City’s Chinatown share their stories of personal and political upheaval. As the bed transforms into a stage, the film reveals the collective history of the Chinese in the United States through conversations, autobiographical monologues, and theatrical movement pieces. Shot in the kitchens, bedrooms, wedding halls, cafés, and mahjong parlors of Chinatown, this provocative hybrid documentary addresses issues of privacy, intimacy, and urban life.
Your Day Is My Night 2014
Sam Klemke's Time Machine
Sam Klemke's Time Machine
In 1977, Sam Klemke began obsessively filming and documenting his life on film. Over the next 35 years we see Sam grow from an optimistic teen to a self-important 20 year old, into an obese, self-loathing 30-something and onwards into his philosophical 50s.
Sam Klemke's Time Machine 2015
Divorce Iranian Style
Divorce Iranian Style
DIVORCE IRANIAN STYLE unfolds inside an Iranian divorce court, providing a subtle and intimate look at the lives of women in a country stereotypically associated with fanaticism and oppression. Astute and beautifully observed, the film reveals the ingenuity and humour with which Iranian women negotiate the restrictions of their society.
Divorce Iranian Style 1998
The Great Wall
The Great Wall
‘The Great Wall has been completed at its most southerly point.’ So begins Kafka’s short story ‘At the Building of the Great Wall of China’, and so, at Europe’s heavily militarised south-eastern frontier, begins this film. In the shadow of its own narratives of freedom, Europe has been quietly building its own great wall. Like its famous Chinese precursor, this wall has been piecemeal in construction, diverse in form and dubious in utility. Gradually cohering across the continent, this system of enclosure and exclusion is urged upon a populace seemingly willing to accept its necessity and to contribute to its building.
The Great Wall 2015
The Future Tense
The Future Tense
Staged as a series of voiceover sessions, written with gloriously off-balanced precision and dipped in the color green, THE FUTURE TENSE unfolds as a poignant tale of tales, exploring the filmmakers’ own experiences in aging, parenting, mental illness, along with the brutal history that lies submerged beneath Ireland’s heavy, moist earth.
The Future Tense 2022
Love Infinity - When The Sun Goes Quiet
Love Infinity - When The Sun Goes Quiet
Oscar-winning artist and costume designer for Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon Tim Yip turns his lens on a dream of East London, bringing together iconic artists like Gilbert and George, Vivienne Westwood, Jonny Woo, Pandemonia, Andrew Logan, and Daniel Lismore.
Love Infinity - When The Sun Goes Quiet 2022
The Supper
The Supper
Five ex-political prisoners meet secretly in a country house one afternoon in 1974 on the same day that Salvador Puig Antich is executed, to talk about their experiences in prison.
The Supper 1974
Celluloid Man
Celluloid Man
Indian documentary about Indian film history and P. K. Nair, the founder of the National Film Archive of India and guardian of Indian cinema. He built the archive can by can in a country where the archiving of cinema was considered unimportant.
Celluloid Man 2012
Z32
Z32
A former Israeli soldier participated in a mission of retribution in which two Palestinian policemen were killed. He seeks forgiveness for what he did. His girlfriend does not think it is so simple and raises questions that he is not yet able to cope with. The soldier willingly testifies before the camera as long as his identity is not revealed. The filmmaker, while seeking a solution to protect the identity of the soldier, questions his own political and artistic conduct.
Z32 2009
Divinely Evil
Divinely Evil
In a salmon-coloured drawing room, a writer of sadomasochist literature now in her seventies narrates her turbulent, sexually explicit life story, once as her pseudonym and once as herself. What makes up a true biography, the real or the imaginary?
Divinely Evil 2020
The Lebanese Rocket Society
The Lebanese Rocket Society
Lebanon's brief flirtation with space travel in the 1960s becomes a poignant metaphor for the Arab world's utopian dreams in this riveting documentary.
The Lebanese Rocket Society 2012
Bickels [Socialism]
Bickels [Socialism]
The ‘Casa do Povo’ cultural centre in São Paulo, an icon of the secular Jewish workers’ movement: a crumbling theatre flanked by staircases, entryways and corridors. Construction noise drones away in the background, clinking crockery, a broom sweeping over tiled floors, an expressive façade of countless adjustable panes of glass covered by a patina. It’s October 2016 and a group of young people are preparing a preview of Bickels [Socialism]. The venue is to form a prologue to the completed film, which tours 22 buildings in Israel designed by Samuel Bickels, most of which for kibbutzim. Dining halls, children’s houses, agricultural buildings, bright structures inserted into the Mediterranean landscape with great ingenuity. An architecture with a sell-by date: That many are now empty or have been repurposed at best is linked to the decline of the socialist ideals they embody.
Bickels [Socialism] 2016
Le Moulin
Le Moulin
Poetry, literature, painting and old film clips converge in this lyrical, unusually designed film essay about Le Moulin, the Taiwanese poets’ collective which protested in the 1930s against the cultural superiority of the Japanese occupier and the domination of realism in poetry.
Le Moulin 2017
Correspondence
Correspondence
In the form of a filmed epistolary conversation, two young, experienced filmmakers discuss film, present and past family, heritage and maternity. The personal and profound reflections—which are embodied in the graceful images taken day-to-day—are suddenly echoed by the political emergency of a country.
Correspondence 2020
Fire in My Belly
Fire in My Belly
Echoing the precarious times we live in, a newly commissioned documentary Fire In My Belly (2021) offers a compelling take on questions of home, community and crisis in the metropolitan city of London. (Whitechapel Gallery) HD video, colour, sound
Fire in My Belly 2021
Burning Man: Voyage in Utopia
Burning Man: Voyage in Utopia
With a strong emphasis on founder Larry Harvey and temple artist David Best, this video expresses the scale and power of the Burning Man experience. Superb cinematography and editing are combined to make this is one of the most moving Burning Man videos ever produced.
Burning Man: Voyage in Utopia 2007
Bye Bye Africa
Bye Bye Africa
A Chadian film director who lives and works in France (Haroun) returns home upon the death of his mother. He is shocked at the degraded state of the country and the national cinema. The filmmaker decides to make a film dedicated to his mother.
Bye Bye Africa 1999
Dear Babylon
Dear Babylon
The future of social housing is threatened by the AC30 Housing Bill. Set in London's East End, a trio of art students are eager to raise awareness about their neighbourhood especially the lives of tenants and people who work on the estate.
Dear Babylon 2019
Mobilize
Mobilize
A journey by canoe into the city creates a dynamic interconnection between natural and urban spaces, in this evocative short set to a hypnotizing soundtrack by Inuk artist Tanya Taqaq.
Mobilize 2015
Out of Thin Air
Out of Thin Air
The Ladakh Vision Group is shooting a new film: Las-Del (Karmic Connection). The film director is a Buddhist monk while local housewives, policemen and taxi drivers play heroes and villains.
Out of Thin Air 2010
Kokutai
Kokutai
Literalising the titular term roughly translatable as 'body politic', Kokutai explores the fascist aesthetics of Japan's biannual national high school baseball tournaments.
Kokutai 2019
Papirosen
Papirosen
A portrait of Argentine director Gastón Solnicki's family over the course of the second half of the 20th century, Papirosen follows four generations still troubled by a war that’s never spoken of. The film juxtaposes different periods with their native image formats, along with landscapes, characters and international political events, as it focuses on a singular decade of a nouveau riche Argentine Jewish family, and the new generation’s introduction into familiar traumas and vitality.
Papirosen 2014
Glass Life
Glass Life
A dynamic configuration of images and videos overlaid with musings on human existence.
Glass Life 2021