Documentary Movies

Los Nevados

Los Nevados is the first peasant feature film from Venezuela. The magical poetry about humans who endure an almost animal, almost instinctive, almost sad existence, which turns into a complaint.

Clockwork Climate

The Cold War's wildest dreams of climate control have made a spectacular comeback: from the USA to China, 'geo-engineers' promise to make climate change the way we want. And they have found powerful supporters among lobbyists and entrepreneurs. This film is an investigation into the world-wide boom in geo-engineering. How did a pseudo-science with a controversial past become a planet-wide research subject?

Born with a Thunderstorm

The autobiographical texts and letters by film director Manuel Guimarães, and exchanged by him with friends, are the axis for the intimate narrative of his life, social concerns, passion for movies - while revisiting many movies of the 20th century and his complete filmography. One segment documents the epic way directors attempted to bypass official censorship to show their movies out of the country.

Teachers. Holidays in the Occupation

During the full-scale invasion of Ukraine in the spring of 2022, Russian troops occupied the suburbs of the capital for more than a month. This film is dedicated to the educators of the Kyiv region, who did not despair even under shelling, enemy control, and the constant threat to their lives. The viewer will travel through the educational institutions of Hostomel, Irpin, Bucha and Vorzel, to become acquainted with those, who hold, and will be holding in their hands the future of our country.

Guaicurus Street

A red-light district in Belo Horizonte, Brazil. The camera is admitted into a "running house". Love for sale looks like a routine, dreary assembly line exercise here, sometimes almost like a comedy.

The Buddha

This documentary for PBS by award-winning filmmaker David Grubin and narrated by Richard Gere, tells the story of the Buddha’s life, a journey especially relevant to our own bewildering times of violent change and spiritual confusion. It features the work of some of the world’s greatest artists and sculptors, who across two millennia, have depicted the Buddha’s life in art rich in beauty and complexity. Hear insights into the ancient narrative by contemporary Buddhists, including Pulitzer Prize winning poet W.S. Merwin and His Holiness the Dalai Lama. Join the conversation and learn more about meditation, the history of Buddhism, and how to incorporate the Buddha’s teachings on compassion and mindfulness into daily life.

Mujeres olvidadas

Mau Tempo

Slaughterhouses of Modernity

Contemporary cinema’s preeminent chronicler of architecture and its intersection with the ever-present crisis of 20th-century modernity, Heinz Emigholz returns with an alternately mournful and sly treatise on how the presence—and, in some cases, absence—of municipal and communal building architecture is inseparable from capitalist ideology. Focusing mainly on cities and provinces in Argentina, Germany, and Bolivia, Emigholz’s latest film is a work of quiet observation and historical excavation. From slaughterhouses in Salamone to the flooded former spa city of Epecuén to the newly built Humboldt Forum in Berlin, the film demonstrates the effect of capital on public spaces, where creation and destruction go hand in hand, and as always, Emigholz makes the journey one of intellectual force and cinematic beauty.

Lifer

The heroes of the film, a father and a son, seem to have lost their sense of time. Their life flows day by day, from one year to the next. They are separated by space and united by love. Two individuals, who may never see each other again.

Vänner sökes

Ewa, Adam and Björn are alone. They, like thousands of others in Sweden, are missing a friend. They dare to break the taboo and talk about the shame, about the dreams but also about hope. How do you actually go about finding new friends? Documentary filmmaker Gustav Ahlgren published an ad online where he was looking for people who were prepared to talk openly about their situation. He received hundreds of responses. Many live in an ongoing loneliness. Many want to break it. But how?

Kariye

The documentary explores one of Istanbul’s most significant art monuments, tracing nearly 700 years of cultural and artistic history through the mosaics and frescoes of the Kariye Mosque (Chora Church). By combining visual analysis with a distinctive soundscape—from Byzantine hymns and Orthodox prayers to the Islamic call to prayer and Ottoman takbirs—the documentary emphasizes Istanbul’s layered cultural continuity and enduring intercultural dialogue.

Afric Hotel

In the furnace of Algiers, the camera follows and accompanies Ibrahim, Adam, and Ismael, originally from sub-Saharan Africa, in an irregular situation who live in this hotel with the predestined name. They live from odd jobs. One is an elevator operator in a building, the second is a shoemaker and the third works in the construction sector. The other side of immigration from sub-Saharan Africa. Behind the statistics hide people, bodies waiting to be able to start another life elsewhere. A hotel thus becomes a transit point in which stories and hopes mingle, a place which seems suspended in time and space. A static journey waiting for another to begin.

Gladio

In three programmes shown over consecutive weeks in BBC2's Timewatch strand, Allan Francovich interviewed key Gladio players such as Propaganda Due head, Licio Gelli, Italian neofascist and terrorist Vincenzo Vinciguerra, Venetian judge Felice Casson, Italian Gladio commander General Gerardo Serravale, Belgian Senator Roger Lallemand, Belgian gendarme Martial Lekue and former CIA director William Colby. Also included was "hoaxer" Oswald LeWinter.

Eternamente Ágora

Documentary about Jomard Muniz de Britto and starring himself.

Voyeur

Legendary journalist Gay Talese unmasks a motel owner who spied on his guests for decades. But his bombshell story soon becomes a scandal of its own.

Sinterklaas Bestaat

Taxidriver Marcel lives for december: the month where he gets to transform into Saint Nicholas.

Fog Children

Daughters, sons, mothers and fathers want to break the decades-long silence in their families. They search for files, go to archives, rummage through documents and study photo albums. They come up against powerful authorities, prejudices, overburdened families and desperate struggles of mothers for their children.

Dahomey

Thousands of royal artifacts of Dahomey, a West African kingdom, were taken by French colonists in the 19th century for collection and display in Paris. Centuries later, a fraction returned to their home in modern-day Benin. This dramatized documentary follows the journey of 26 of the treasures as told by cultural art historians, embattled university students, and one of the repatriated statues himself.

The Year 1939

An exemplary reconstruction of a historical turning point. Time and again, the images and the remembered stories.