Documentary
Years

Popular Documentary Movies

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
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
Aribada
Aribada
In the middle of the Colombian coffee region, Aribada, the resurrected monster, meets Las Traviesas, a group of indigenous transwomen from the Emberá tribes. The magical, the dreamlike and the performative coexist in their unique world - an aesthetic and spiritual universe in which documentary and fiction merge into a transcultural narrative. Enchanted by the beauty and power of their jais (spirits), Aribada decides to join Las Traviesas in creating their own trans*futurist community.
Aribada 2022
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
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
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
The Cat, The Reverend and The Slave
The Cat, The Reverend and The Slave
Markus is a furry: the animal that lies dormant within him is a cat. Benjamin is a modern minister: he preaches sermons in a virtual church. Kris is a Gorean Master: he controls his slaves' sex lives from his bedroom... A documentary about three emblematic Second Life communities.
The Cat, The Reverend and The Slave 2010
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
Aidez l'Espagne
Aidez l'Espagne
The Colegio de Arquitectos de Catalunya commissioned Pere Portabella to make this film for the Joan Miró retrospective exhibit in 1969. There were heated discussions on whether it would be prudent to screen the film during the exhibit. Portabella took the following stance: "either both films are screened or they don't screen any" and, finally, both Miro l'Altre and Aidez l'Espagne were shown. The film was made by combining newsreels and film material from the Spanish Civil War with prints by Miró from the series "Barcelona" (1939-1944). The film ends with the painter's "pochoir" known as Aidez l'Espagne.
Aidez l'Espagne 1969
Le Sabotier du Val de Loire
Le Sabotier du Val de Loire
This is October 1955. The place is a village in Loire-Atlantique, La Chapelle-Basse-Mer, where an old clog-maker works and lives with his wife and their adopted son. The clog-maker's meticulous craft is described with love and close attention to detail. On the other hand, forthcoming death pervades the quiet everyday life of the elderly couple.
Le Sabotier du Val de Loire 1956
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
IWOW: I Walk on Water
IWOW: I Walk on Water
At night, the streets of Harlem are haunted by lost souls. Bodies that drift around in the darkness and bear the weight of the past on their shoulders. The Haitian man Frenchie is one of them, and his accentuated stutter bears witness to exile and years of abuse. But he is more than just that in Khalik Allah's new, hypnotic film opus, which turns the American tradition of social realist street photography into its own art form.
IWOW: I Walk on Water 2020
Apiyemiyekî?
Apiyemiyekî?
Apiyemiyekî? addresses the genocide of the Waimiri-Atroari people in 1970s, when during the Brazilian dictatorship indigenous lands in the mid-west were invaded for the construction of the national road BR-174 and the installation of a mining company. Illustrations about the period, created by the indigenous population, including children, reveal a traumatic history, referring us to the present day.
Apiyemiyekî? 2020
Jeny303
Jeny303
A site of activism and bloodshed, Building 303 was an icon of Bogotà. Now demolished, the university—and its political graffiti—haunts this spectral short, intruding on a portrait of a recovering addict. Laura Huertas Millán’s film is one of ruin and survival, inspired by its “living works of art.”
Jeny303 2018
The Absent Stone
The Absent Stone
In 1964 a colossal pre-Hispanic monolith was taken from the town of San Miguel Coatlinchan in the state of Mexico and brought to the National Museum of Anthropology in Mexico City. Since then, the absence of the monolith has been present in the memories of the inhabitants, as well as in endless reproductions and ripostes.
The Absent Stone 2013
A Storm Was Coming
A Storm Was Coming
Ësáasi Eweera, one of the last kings of the Bubi people of Equatorial Guinea and a threat to Spanish colonial rule, died in suspicious circumstances. A century later, the case is reopened: a formalist detective story and an indictment of colonialism.
A Storm Was Coming 2020
Bom
Bom
Malana, a remote village in the Himalayas, isolated from outside civilization for thousands of years has been fostering a primitive existence in harmony with nature and a unique model of democracy of consensus. They have also been producing some of the best quality hashish in the world. A real life story of transition, this ancient civilization being invaded and obliterated by the modern democracy. Narrated in an epic structure, a visual essay from the edge of the world with a message of trust, peace and eternal unity.
Bom 2011