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Thought-Provoking Documentaries

Thought-Provoking Documentaries

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Thought-Provoking Documentaries
  • 5 Broken Cameras

    Movie

    Directed by Emad Burnat, Guy Davidi • Documentary • 2011 • France, Israel, Palestine • Hebrew and Arabic with English subtitles
    Featuring Emad Burnat

    An extraordinary work of cinematic and political activism, this Academy Award-nominated film is a firsthand account of nonviolent resistance in a ...

  • The Blues Under the Skin

    Movie

    Directed by Robert Manthoulis • Documentary • 1973 • France • English
    Featuring Buddy Guy, B.B. King, Walter “Furry” Lewis

    In the early 1970s, music documentarian Robert Manthoulis traveled to the Mississippi Delta to capture the remnants of the authentic American blues. Virtually unseen in the ...

  • The Pervert's Guide to Ideology

    Movie

    Directed by Sophie Fiennes • Documentary • 2013 • UK, Ireland • English
    Featuring Slavoj Žižek

    Cultural theorist superstar Slavoj Žižek re-teams with director Sophie Fiennes (“The Pervert’s Guide to Cinema”) for another wildly entertaining romp through the crossroads of cinema and philosophy. Wi...

  • Mom & Dad's Nipple Factory

    Movie

    Directed by Justinsuperstar • Documentary • 2024 • US • English
    Featuring Brian Johnson, Randi Johnson, Justinsuperstar

    From Executive Producer Mayim Bialik, when Randi is diagnosed with breast cancer, her introverted husband Brian, a traditional family man, transforms their modest Midwest home ...

  • Oscar Micheaux: The Superhero of Black Filmmaking

    Movie

    Directed by Francesco Zippel • Documentary • 2021 • US, France • English
    Featuring Chuck D, John Singleton, Morgan Freeman

    Oscar Micheaux was the most influential African American filmmaker of the first half of the 20th century, a self-taught artist who funded, produced, and released more than 4...

  • Close to Vermeer

    Movie

    Directed by Suzanne Raes • Documentary • 2023 • Netherlands • Dutch with English subtitles
    Featuring Pieter Roelofs, Anna Krekeler, Jonathan Janson

    Go behind the scenes of the largest Vermeer exhibition ever, mounted in early 2023 at the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam. Capturing the imagination of the...

  • Bombshell: The Hedy Lamarr Story

    Movie

    Directed by Alexandra Dean • Documentary • 2017 • US • English
    Featuring Mel Brooks, Peter Bogdanovich, Diane Kruger

    What do the most ravishingly beautiful actress of the 1930s and 40s and the inventor whose concepts were the basis of cell phone and bluetooth technology have in common? They are ...

  • Studio 54

    Movie

    Directed by Matt Tyrnauer • Documentary • 2018 • US • English
    Featuring Ian Schrager Steve Rubell, Norma Kamali

    A haven of hedonism, glitz, and glamour, the infamous New York nightclub Studio 54 was the ultimate escapist fantasy until it imploded in financial scandal. With unprecedented access a...

  • Beyond the Visible – Hilma af Klint

    Movie

    Directed by Halina Dyrschka • Documentary • 2019 • Germany • English, German, Swedish with English subtitles
    Featuring Johan af Klint, Julia Voss, Ulla af Klint

    The subject of a 2018 awe-inspiring retrospective at the Guggenheim Museum, Hilma af Klint was an abstract artist before the term even ...

  • Brainwashed: Sex-Camera-Power

    Movie

    Directed by Nina Menkes • Documentary • 2022 • US • English
    Featuring Julie Dash, Penelope Spheeris, Rosanna Arquette

    This eye-opening documentary from the Sundance Film Festival explores the sexual politics of cinematic shot design and its connections to the twin epidemics of sexual abuse/assau...

  • Soundtrack to a Coup d'Etat

    Movie

    Directed by Johan Grimonprez • Documentary • 2024 • Belgium, France, Netherlands • English, French, Dutch, Russian with English subtitles
    Featuring Louis Armstrong, John Coltrane, Dizzy Gillespie

    This 2025 Oscar® nominee for Best Documentary Feature and Sundance award winner tells the story of t...

  • The Disappearance of My Mother

    Movie

    Directed by Beniamino Barrese • Documentary • 2019 • Italy • English, Italian with English subtitles
    Featuring Benedetta Barzini

    An iconic fashion model who was a muse to Warhol and Dalí in the 1960s, and a radical feminist in the 1970s, Benedetta Barzini is fed up with all the roles life has im...

  • Taking Venice

    Movie

    Directed by Amei Wallach • Documentary • 2023 • US • English
    Featuring Christo, Alice Denney, Shirin Neshat

    In 1964, at the height of the Cold War, a group of political and art world insiders embark on a plan to make Robert Rauschenberg the winner of the Grand Prize at the Venice Biennale. Deftl...

  • Desperate Souls, Dark City and the Legend of Midnight Cowboy

    Movie

    Directed by Nancy Buirski • Documentary • 2023 • US • English
    Featuring Bob Balaban, Brian De Palma, Jon Voight

    This is not a documentary about the making of "Midnight Cowboy". It is about a humane and groundbreaking masterpiece and the flawed but gifted people who made it. It is about a trouble...

  • Grace Jones: Bloodlight and Bami

    Movie

    Directed by Sophie Fiennes • Documentary • 2018 • UK, Ireland • English
    Featuring Grace Jones, Sly Dunbar, Robbie Shakespeare

    Sophie Fiennes’s electrifying documentary is a journey through the public and private worlds of mega-icon Grace Jones that contrasts musical sequences with intimate perso...

  • Chef Flynn

    Movie

    Directed by Cameron Yates • Documentary • 2018 • US • English
    Featuring Flynn McGarry, Meg McGarry

    While many of his peers were still playing with toys, Flynn McGarry was creating remarkable gastronomic delights. Enjoying unwavering support from his artist mother Meg, he devoted himself entirely...

  • The Price of Everything

    Movie

    Directed by Nathaniel Kahn • Documentary • 2018 • US • English
    Featuring Jeff Koons, Jerry Saltz, Jeffrey Deitch

    "The Price of Everything" examines the role of art and passion in today’s money-driven, consumer-based society. Featuring collectors, dealers, and a rich range of artists from Jeff Ko...

  • Obit.

    Movie

    Directed by Vanessa Gould • Documentary • 2017 • US • English
    Featuring Bruce Weber, Margalit Fox, William McDonald

    The first documentary to explore the world of obituary writers, "Obit." focuses on the legendary team at 'The New York Times', who approach their work with journalistic rigor and ...

  • Fire at Sea

    Movie

    Directed by Gianfranco Rosi • Documentary • 2016 • Italy • Italian with English subtitles
    Featuring Samuele Pucillo, Mattias Cucina, Pietro Bartolo

    An Academy Award nominee for Best Documentary Feature and winner of the top prize at the Berlin International Film Festival, "Fire at Sea" takes pla...

  • Of Fathers and Sons

    Movie

    Directed by Talal Derki • Documentary • 2018 • Syria, Germany, Lebanon • Arabic with English subtitles
    Featuring Tia Alkerdi, Yara Ibrahim, Abu Osama

    Academy Award Nominee and winner of the Grand Jury Prize at Sundance, "Of Fathers and Sons" follows filmmaker Talal Derki as he travels to his hom...

  • Oliver Sacks: His Own Life

    Movie

    Directed by Ric Burns • Documentary • 2020 • US • English
    Featuring Oliver Sacks, Temple Grandin, Atul Gawande

    A month after receiving a fatal diagnosis, esteemed neurologist Oliver Sacks sat down for a series of interviews in his apartment in New York City. For eighty hours, surrounded by famil...

  • A Bigger Splash

    Movie

    Directed by Jack Hazan • Documentary •1974 • UK • English
    Featuring David Hockney

    In this intimate and innovative film about artist David Hockney, director Jack Hazan creates an improvisatory narrative-nonfiction hybrid. The result is at once a time capsule of hedonistic gay life in the 1970s an...

  • Capital in the Twenty-First Century

    Movie

    Directed by Justin Pemberton • Documentary • 2020 • New Zealand • English, French with English subtitles
    Featuring Thomas Piketty, Francis Fukuyama, Joseph Stiglitz

    Based on the international bestseller by rock-star economist Thomas Piketty, this captivating documentary is an eye-opening journey...

  • Heartworn Highways

    Movie

    Directed by James Szalapski • Documentary • 1976 • US • English
    Featuring Guy Clark, Townes Van Zandt, David Alan Coe

    In the mid-‘70s, filmmaker James Szalapski documented the then-nascent country music movement that would become known as “outlaw country.” Inspired, in part, by newly-long-haired...