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Thought-Provoking Documentaries

Thought-Provoking Documentaries

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Thought-Provoking Documentaries
  • 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...

  • The Decent One

    Movie

    Directed by Vanessa Lapa • Documentary • 2014 • Austria • German with English subtitles
    Featuring Tobias Moretti, Sophie Rois

    On May 6th 1945, soldiers of the US Army occupied the Heinrich Himmler family home in Gmund Germany where they discovered hundreds of private letters, documents, diaries ...

  • 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...

  • King: A Filmed Record… Montgomery to Memphis

    Movie

    Directed by Sidney Lumet, Joseph L. Mankiewicz • Documentary • 1970 • US • English
    Featuring Martin Luther King Jr., Harry Belafonte, Ruby Dee

    Nominated for Best Documentary at the Academy Awards, this monumental film follows Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. in his rise from regional activist to worl...

  • Steak (R)evolution

    Movie

    Directed by Franck Ribiere • Documentary • 2015 • France • French with English subtitles
    Featuring Jacques Abbatucci, Marcos Bassi, Joe Beef

    A global pursuit (with layovers in Japan, Argentina, Brazil, France, Spain, the U.S. and other countries) for the best steak in the world, "Steak (R)evolut...

  • The Queen

    Movie

    Directed by Frank Simon • Documentary • 1968 • US • English
    Featuring Jack Doroshow, Andy Warhol, Edie Sedgwick

    More than 40 years before “RuPaul's Drag Race", this ground-breaking documentary about the 1967 Miss All-American Camp Beauty Pageant introduced audiences to the world of competitive d...

  • Finding Fela

    Movie

    Directed by Alex Gibney • Documentary • 2014 • US • English
    Featuring Bill T. Jones, Paul McCartney, Questlove

    ​​Directed by Academy Award winner Alex Gibney, “Finding Fela” tells the story of Fela Anikulapo Kuti's life and how he created a new musical movement, Afrobeat, which he used to expres...

  • Vita Activa: The Spirit of Hannah Arendt

    Movie

    Directed by Ada Ushpiz • Documentary • 2015 • Israel, Canada • English, Hebrew, German with English subtitles
    Featuring Alison Darcy, Angela Winkler

    This spirited and thought-provoking documentary about German-Jewish philosopher Hannah Arendt dives into rare, archival footage to offer a portrait...

  • On Broadway

    Movie

    Directed by Oren Jacoby • Documentary • 2020 • US • English
    Featuring Helen Mirren, Ian McKellen, Hugh Jackman

    As theatergoers prepare for the return of Broadway after COVID, an all-star cast, including Hugh Jackman, Helen Mirren, James Corden, Viola Davis, and Ian McKellen, tell the story of th...

  • Museum Town

    Movie

    Directed by Jennifer Trainer • Documentary • 2019 • US • English
    Featuring Meryl Streep, Nick Cave, James Turrell

    With appearances by artists ranging from James Turrell to David Byrne and narration by Meryl Streep, this documentary uncovers the history of how MASS MoCA became the largest museum ...