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Thought-Provoking Documentaries

Thought-Provoking Documentaries

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Thought-Provoking Documentaries
  • How to Come Alive with Norman Mailer

    Movie

    Directed by Jeff Zimbalist • Documentary • 2024 • US • English
    Featuring John Waters, Oliver Stone, Dick Cavett

    Explore the rollercoaster life of America’s most controversial and bestselling author of the 20th Century, Norman Mailer. Prophet, hedonist, violent criminal, literary outlaw, and soci...

  • Truman & Tennessee: An Intimate Conversation

    Movie

    Directed by Lisa Immordino Vreeland • Documentary • 2020 • US • English
    Featuring Jim Parsons, Zachary Quinto

    The brilliant work, personal struggles, and cultural impact of iconic American writers Truman Capote and Tennessee Williams explodes onto the screen in this innovative documentary fea...

  • The Galapagos Affair: Satan Came to Eden

    Movie

    Directed by Dan Geller, Dayna Goldfine • Documentary • 2013 • US • English
    Featuring Cate Blanchett, Sebastian Koch, Diane Kruger

    Darwin meets Hitchcock in this true-crime tale of paradise found and lost. Fleeing conventional society, a Berlin doctor and his mistress start a new life on uninh...

  • Every Little Thing

    Movie

    Directed by Sally Aitken • Documentary • 2025 • Australia • English
    Featuring Terry Masear

    Author and wildlife rehabber Terry Masear has an ambitious goal: to save every injured hummingbird in Los Angeles. But the path to survival is fraught with danger. This heart-expanding Sundance hit intr...

  • Liza: A Truly Terrific Absolutely True Story

    Movie

    Directed by Bruce David Klein • Documentary • 2025 • US • English
    Featuring Liza Minnelli, Michael Feinstein, Alan Cumming

    This exhilarating film explores the dazzling and complex Liza Minnelli, as she rose to stardom in the 1970s, just after the death of her mother Judy Garland. Battling person...

  • 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...

  • The American Nurse

    Movie

    Directed by Carolyn Jones • Documentary • 2013 • US • English
    Featuring Jason Short, Tonia Faust, Naomi Cross

    This heart-warming film follows the paths of five nurses in various practice specialties and explores some of the biggest issues facing America through their work. It is an examination o...

  • 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 ...

  • The Anonymous People

    Movie

    Directed by Greg Williams • Documentary • 2013 • US • English
    Featuring Tara Conner, Don Fertman, Kristen Johnston

    Millions of Americans live in long-term recovery from addiction, yet social stigma and anonymity keep their voices hidden. Advocates—leaders, volunteers, executives, and celebrities...

  • 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 Sorrow and the Pity

    Movie

    Directed by Marcel Ophuls • Documentary • 1972 • France, Switzerland, Germany • French with English subtitles
    Featuring Pierre Mendes France, Sir Anthony Eden, Christian de la Maziere

    Nominated for an Academy Award for Best Documentary, "The Sorrow and The Pity" has been acclaimed as one of the ...

  • 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...

  • The Bridge

    Movie

    Directed by Eric Steel • Documentary • 2005 • US • English
    Featuring Eric Geleynse, Chris Brown, Susan Ginwalla

    “The Bridge” is a visual and visceral journey into one of life's gravest taboos. Director Eric Steel and his crew spent an entire year focusing on San Francisco’s iconic Golden Gate Br...