GET 20% OFF YOUR FIRST YEAR!

Limited time - use promo code: KINOFILM20 at checkout

Thought-Provoking Documentaries

Thought-Provoking Documentaries

Share
Thought-Provoking Documentaries
  • 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 ...

  • The Messenger

    Movie

    Directed by Su Rynard • Documentary • 2015 • France, Canada • English, German, Dutch, French with English subtitles
    Featuring Bill Evans, Erin Byne, Peter Marra

    For thousands of years, songbirds were regarded by mankind as messengers from the gods. Under threat from climate change, pesticides an...

  • Running Off to the Circus: Paul Auster on Film

    Movie

    Directed by Spencer Ostrander, Theodore Rex King • Documentary • 2022 • US • English
    Featuring Paul Auster

    "Running Off to the Circus: Paul Auster on Film" is a career-spanning feature-length interview with the legendary author and director. In Part 1 Auster passionately discusses the formative ...

  • Makala

    Movie

    Directed by Emmanuel Gras • Documentary • 2018 • France • Swahili with English subtitles
    Featuring Kabwita Kasongo, Lydie Kasongo

    Winner of the 2017 Grand Prize and Golden Eye Special Mention for Best Documentary at International Critics Week in Cannes, "Makala" is Emmanuel Gras' powerful testa...

  • Lydia Lunch: The War Is Never Over

    Movie

    Directed by Beth B • Documentary • 2021 • US • English
    Featuring Lydia Lunch, Thurston Moore, Kembra Pfahler

    "Lydia Lunch: The War Is Never Over" by Beth B is the first career-spanning retrospective of Lydia Lunch’s confrontational, acerbic and electric artistry. As New York City’s preeminent No...

  • Lifeline: Clyfford Still

    Movie

    Directed by Dennis Scholl • Documentary • 2019 • US • English
    Featuring Jerry Saltz, David Anfam, Neal Benezra

    Jackson Pollock once said of Clyfford Still, “he makes the rest of us look academic,” Mark Rothko acknowledged him as a “myth-maker” and Clement Greenberg called him “an independent gen...

  • Love, Cecil

    Movie

    Directed by Lisa Immordino Vreeland • Documentary • 2017 • US • English
    Featuring Rupert Everett, David Hockney, Isaac Mizrahi

    Oscar-winning set and costume designer, photographer, writer and painter Cecil Beaton was not only a dazzling chronicler, but an arbiter of his time. From the Bright You...

  • The Last Resort

    Movie

    Directed by Dennis Scholl, Kareem Tabsch • Documentary • 2019 • US • English
    Featuring Edna Buchanan, Gary Monroe

    By the 1970s, a number of New York Jewish retirees had turned from seasonal visitors to year-round residents of South Beach, making Miami home to a population that was primarily over...

  • Anthropocene: The Human Epoch

    Movie

    Directed by Jennifer Baichwal, Edward Burtynsky, Nicholas de Pencier • Documentary • 2019 • Canada • English, Russian, Italian, German, Mandarin, Cantonese with English subtitles
    Featuring Alicia Vikander

    Narrated by Alicia Vikander, this stunning sensory experience and cinematic meditation on h...

  • Landscape Film, Roberto Burle Marx

    Movie

    Directed by João Vargas Penna • Documentary • 2019 • Brazil • Portuguese with English subtitles
    Featuring Roberto Burle Marx, Amir Haddad

    A journey through the art and life of the Brazilian landscape architect and painter best known for the iconic black-and-white mosaic promenades that line Rio ...

  • Dawson City: Frozen Time

    Movie

    Directed by Bill Morrison • Documentary • 2017 • US • English
    Featuring Michael Gates, Kathy Jones-Gates

    Part fever dream, part historical record, this is the bizarre true story of some 533 silent film reels, buried for almost 50 years in a sub-arctic swimming pool, deep in the Yukon permafrost....

  • Jazz on a Summer's Day

    Movie

    Directed by Bert Stern • Documentary • 1959 • US • English
    Featuring Louis Armstrong, Thelonius Monk, Anita O'Day

    Filmed at the 1958 Newport Jazz Festival and directed by renowned photographer Bert Stern, this film features intimate performances by an all-star line-up of musical legends includin...

  • Invisible Valley

    Movie

    Directed by Aaron Maurer • Documentary • 2021 • US • English, Spanish with English subtitles
    Featuring Congressman Raul Ruiz

    "Invisible Valley" weaves together the disparate stories of undocumented farmworkers, wealthy snow- birds, and music festival-goers over the course of a year in California...

  • The Raft

    Movie

    Directed by Marcus Lindeen • Documentary • 2018 • Sweden • English, Swedish, French, German, Japanese, Spanish with English subtitles
    Featuring Daniel Gimenez Cacho, Fe Seymour, Maria Bjornstam

    In the summer of 1973, a young international crew of six women and five men embarked together on an un...

  • M. C. Escher: Journey to Infinity

    Movie

    Directed by Robin Lutz • Documentary • 2021 • Netherlands • English, Dutch, Italian and German with English subtitles
    Featuring Stephen Fry, George Escher

    Equal parts history, psychology, and psychedelia, Robin Lutz’s entertaining, eye-opening portrait of M.C. Escher gives us the man through his...

  • In Case of Emergency

    Movie

    Directed by Carolyn Jones • Documentary • 2020 • US • English
    Featuring Cathlyn Robinson, Michelle Lyon, Rabih Saad

    Following emergency nurses and their patients in seven unique settings across the U.S, this documentary sheds light on the biggest healthcare crises facing Americans today, and the...

  • Film, the Living Record of Our Memory

    Movie

    Directed by Inés Toharia • Documentary • 2023 • Spain, Canada • English, French, Japanese, Catalan, Arabic, Spanish with English subtitles
    Featuring Martin Scorsese, Jonas Mekas, Ousmane Sembene

    This documentary argues for the importance of film preservation through the voices of archivists, cur...