My favourite documentaries
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- DirectorSébastien LifshitzStarsYannPierreBernard RomieuSeveral elderly homosexual men and women speak frankly about their pioneering lives, their fearless decision to live openly in France at a time when society rejected them.
- DirectorAva DuVernayStarsMelina AbdullahMichelle AlexanderCory BookerAn in-depth look at the prison system in the United States and how it reveals the nation's history of racial inequality.
- DirectorEster GouldReijer ZwaanStarsMadonnaLuis CamachoJose GuitierezWhat does it take to express yourself? The surprising and moving story of Madonna's most famous troupe of dancers.
- DirectorKortney Ryan ZieglerStarsKylar BroadusLouis Mitchell
- DirectorRob EpsteinJeffrey FriedmanStarsLily TomlinTony CurtisSusie BrightA documentary surveying the various Hollywood screen depictions of homosexuals and the attitudes behind them throughout the history of North American film.
- DirectorRichard LowensteinLynn-Maree MilburnStarsJames AndrewsMatthew ConnellDana MiltinsProvocateur, artist, performer: Peter Vanessa "Troy" Davies was a chameleon. Using layers of identity at will, Davies charmed his way through a lifetime of secrets and lies, prostitution, art, HIV, abuse, incest and gender subversion, leaving a legacy of unanswered questions, influential performances and reams of enigmatic home video.
- DirectorLiz GarbusStarsNina SimoneLisa Simone KellyRoger NupieA documentary about the life and legend Nina Simone, an American singer, pianist, and civil rights activist labeled the "High Priestess of Soul."
- DirectorGabriel BaurStarsDiane TorrDréd GerestantDel La Grace VolcanoA film journey through a universe of female masculinity. A legendary Drag King Night in New York is the point of departure for an odyssey to transgendered worlds, where women become men - some for a night, others for their whole lives. What motivates them? What changes take place? What do they dream of? The drag kings of New York meet in clubs and change lustfully into their male alter egos, parodying them and exploring male eroticism and power strategies. In London we see women experiment with hormones to become new men and 'cyborgs'. Masculinity and transformation as performance, subversion or existential necessity.
- DirectorJane MagnussonHynek PallasStarsTomas AlfredsonWoody AllenWes AndersonA group of filmmakers visit Ingmar Bergman's house on the remote Swedish island of Faro to discuss his legacy.
- DirectorIván OsnovikoffBettina PerutCinematic observational film about an environmentally protected salt flat exploited as a mine while the last native inhabitants watch from their run-down towns how the wealth is extracted from their ancestral lands.
- DirectorRaoul PeckStarsSamuel L. JacksonJames BaldwinMartin Luther KingWriter James Baldwin tells the story of race in modern America with his unfinished novel, Remember This House.
- DirectorWerner HerzogStarsWerner HerzogRichard LopezMichael PerryConversations with death row inmate Michael Perry and those affected by his crime serve as an examination of why people - and the state - kill.
- DirectorPeter SempelStarsNina HagenNina C. AliceAngelyneNinaHagen was born in East Berlin in 1955, migrated to the West in the mid-70's and became a New Wave Punk rock star in 1978, singing in a screechy growl that shaded into an operatic coloratura.
- DirectorHubert SauperA modern odyssey into the heart of Africa at the historic moment when Sudan, the continent's largest country, is being divided into two separate states.
- DirectorRobin ShuffieldStarsThomas SankaraA documentary film about Thomas Sankara, former president of Burkina Faso. Sankara was known as "the African Che", and became famous in Africa due to his innovative ideas, his devastating humor, his spirit and his altruism.
- DirectorFradiqueStarsKalaf EpalangaElisângela RitaIndependence begins with memories of the colonial situation in Angola, reveals the first steps in the struggle and covers the main settings where it took place. From 1961 to 1974, the war in Angola spread from the bush areas in the North and Cabinda to the flood plains in the East, involving many, many people, the guerrillas and those that supported them. Meanwhile, prisons and prison camps were full of political prisoners. Using military endeavour as well as economic and legal reforms, Portugal managed to prolong a war that it could not win.
- DirectorAlanis ObomsawinStarsJack BurningHerbie BarnesAlanis ObomsawinA film account about the military 1990 siege of a Native American reserve near Oka, Quebec, Canada and its causes.
- DirectorMary Olive SmithStarsCatherine Hamlin"A Walk to Beautiful" tells the story of five women in Ethiopia suffering from devastating childbirth injuries. Rejected by their husbands and ostracized by their communities, these women are left to spend the rest of their lives in loneliness and shame. We follow each of these women on their journey to a special hospital in Addis Ababa where they find solace for the first time in years, and we stay with them as their lives begin to change. Through the intimate experiences all five share, we are no longer in the heart of Africa-we are in the hearts of these women. The trials they endure and their attempts to rebuild their lives tell a universal story of hope, courage, and transformation.
- DirectorMo ScarpelliStarsAsalif TewoldAlem Sebisibe AyitenfsuAbinetThe simple life in his mother's hut off the grid set against the huge TVs in the apartment blocks where the other children live. Asalif adapts to the changes to his familiar surroundings with growing autonomy. He becomes Anbessa, the lion.
- DirectorJohn RoweMatthew Miller SkowFor many generations people in the Omo Valley (tribal southwest Ethiopia) believed some children are cursed and that these 'cursed' children bring disease, drought and death to the tribe. The curse is called 'mingi' and mingi children are killed. Lale Labuko, a young educated man from the Kara tribe was 15 years old when he saw a child in his village killed and also learned that he had 2 older sisters he never knew who had been killed. He decided one day he would stop this horrific practice. Filmed over a five year period we follow Lale's journey along with the people of his tribe as they attempt to change an ancient practice.
- DirectorAvishai MekonenShari Rothfarb MekonenIn 1984, the Beta Israel, a secluded 2,500-year-old community of observant Jews in the northern Ethiopian mountains, fled a dictatorship and began a secret and dangerous journey of escape. Co-director Avishai Mekonen, then a 10-year-old boy, was among them. 400 MILES TO FREEDOM follows his story as he breaks the 20 year silence around the brutal kidnapping he endured as a child in Sudan during his community's exodus out of Africa, and in so doing explores issues of immigration and racial diversity in Judaism.
- DirectorKeren ShayoSwedish-Eritrean radio host Meron Estefanos produces her weekly program at home in Stockholm where she broadcast, devoted entirely to the hundreds of Eritrean refugees held hostage in the Egyptian Sinai Desert. The Bedouins kidnap Eritreans making their way to Israel and demand large ransoms from their families. We follow Meron in her attempts to turn the tide by calling the hostages and kidnappers alike during her radio show. The film focuses on the stories of two hostages: A) Hiriyti was pregnant when she got kidnapped. We hear the young woman talking with her husband Amaniel in Tel Aviv, who is doing everything he can to free his wife and their baby from the torture camp. B) The ransom for 20-year-old Timnit has been paid, but her brother haven't heard anything from her since her flight to the Egyptian-Israeli border. The battle for Hiriyti's release and the search for Timnit takes Meron to Sinai. There, she stumbles on the marks left by the many atrocities.
- DirectorWerner HerzogStarsMichael GoldsmithWerner HerzogAugustine AssematDocumentary examining Bokassa's rule in the Central African Republic using the testimony of witnesses and visits to key sites.
- DirectorNeil GelinasStarsChris BoyesJack BoyesSteve BoyesA passionate conservation biologist brings together a river bushman fearful of losing his past and a young scientist uncertain of her future on an epic, four-month expedition across three countries, through unexplored and dangerous landscapes, in order to save the Okavango Delta, one of our planet's last pristine wildernesses.
- DirectorRichard PakleppaDocumentary about the beginnings of Namibia's armed struggle against South Africa.