Browse popular Documentary movies
I came back to the city I thought I knew — Los Angeles. My only savior became a tape recorder. Click. Start. Red light glow. Using short ends of 16mm, I went out with my DP while the streets were empty, and tried to capture the lonely beauty in five days time. In turn, I found myself. Here is my love letter to the place I can’t seem to shake.
Patrícia was born with a condition that made it impossible for her to give birth, but the paths of life led her to meet Emanuel and Cléber, her children at heart.
With his soaring falsetto and magnetic yet understated stage presence, Jimmy Somerville burst onto the 1980s new wave scene, making the world dance to songs rooted in struggle and resilience. From the harsh realities of Glasgow’s working-class neighborhoods to the challenges of growing up gay in a hostile world, and the devastating impact of the AIDS crisis, Somerville transformed pain into anthems of freedom. First with Bronski Beat, then The Communards, and later as a solo artist, he became both rebel and diva—the unmistakable voice of a generation fighting for equality. Through intimate stories from those who have stood by him for four decades, this portrait reveals a rare artist who has never wavered in his convictions.
Tilda Swinton guides us through the life of cult British musician Patrick Wolf, weaving together archive and animation to illuminate a singular artistic journey.
Libreville, Gabon, Africa, 2016. Christ Olsen Mickala, a young boxer, trains tirelessly during the day and earns his living by night as a bouncer in nightclubs. At the same time, the combat of the presidential elections is taking place. As Christ hopes to succeed, a whole country hopes that a democratic transition finally triumphs.
In the Cold War years of the 1970s, an American patrol boat meets a Soviet ship off the east coast of the United States for talks about fishing rights in the Atlantic. In the midst of this, while Russian commanders are aboard the U.S. Coast Guard vessel where the talks are being held, a Lithuanian sailor jumps across the ten feet of icy water separating the boats. Crash-landing on the deck of the American ship, he desperately begs for asylum. Though they try, the Americans ultimately fail to provide protection and the Soviets are allowed to capture him and brutally return him to their vessel. Thus begins a stranger-than-fiction story of imprisonment, discovery, fame, and freedom. Through rare archival footage and a dramatic first-person re-enactment of that fateful day by Simas Kudirka, the would-be defector himself, this tale of one of the biggest Cold War muddles takes us on a journey of uncanny twists of fate, and the emotional sacrifices of becoming a universal symbol of freedom.
Invisible Film reimagines Peter Watkins’s Punishment Park (1971), a radical anti-war film banned in both the UK and the US after the Vietnam War. Melik Ohanian replaces its images with a single static shot of a 35mm projector screening the censored film in daylight in the San Bernardino desert—its original location. Projected without a screen, the image disappears into the desert air, turning cinema itself into both subject and ghost.
What happened to those vedettes who represented the mexican cabaret’s exotic beauty in the ‘70s and ‘80s? Four decades after the end of their roles, they tell their stories with dignity.
Documentary about a "transportation commando" in Germany with the goal to deport 200 people to Albania...
CERN, the world's largest physics laboratory, is also a society in itself. A mythological microcosm and science's answer to the Tower of Babel, with its many thousand employees as an indispensable element among cables and computers. The researchers speak the same esoteric and nerdy language. But their physical trials are not the only experiments in the human anthill. CERN is also a utopian experiment in collaboration across cultures, where the world's most advanced technology meets the world's sharpest—and some of the quirkiest—minds.
The 1970s Pittsburgh Steelers, as re-told by horror filmmaker and former Pittsburgh resident George A. Romero.
In January 1972, during General Lanusse's dictatorship in Argentina, a group of revolutionary activists occupied the National Development Bank, just meters from the Government House, expropriating 450 million pesos (approximately 10 million dollars today) for their cause. This was made possible by Oscar Serrano and Ángel Abus—activists and bank employees—who spent two years preparing what would become the biggest blow to the dictatorship's finances. Forty years later, Oscar and Ángel, along with a group of actors, recreate those events that changed their lives. In this dialogue between generations, the young people transform their perspective on activism and commitment during those years. Narrated through several cinematic layers, Seré Millones (I Will Be Millions) offers an innovative story that blends humor, rigorous historical research, and the epic spirit of the era.
They come here to wash, to stay clean. Some are in distress, others run out of hot water. The bath-showers are their ephemeral refuge, before returning to the city, to the street. Here we recover strength and cause. Yet violence is never far away. A bad look, an insult, a sudden gesture. The staff of the bath-showers, prevents slippage. Out of the world, it's a whole world.
Four young men on the trip of their lives from Norway to Magaluf – the Mecca of party tourism. “Mågalúf” is a poetic and philosophical documentary film which tries to understand human behaviour and social mechanisms.
The Institute of National Remembrance, Fish Ladder and Juice present “The Unconquered” – an animated film that shows the fight of Poles for freedom, from the first day of World War II to the fall of communism in 1989.
During the COVID-19 pandemic, filmmaker Vytautas Oškinis shared a home with his grandfather, former head of state Vytautas Landsbergis. Their quiet domestic life is punctuated by political commentary and the sounds of piano and flute. As Landsbergis revisits his most important documents and works before his fragile memory fades, Oškinis’s camera captures a story about the bond forming between generations, and about a spirited, creative mind residing in a body increasingly resistant to it. Their artistic collaboration culminates in a joint appearance on the contemporary opera stage in the film’s finale.
