Thought-Provoking Documentaries

Thought-Provoking Documentaries

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Thought-Provoking Documentaries
  • The Pearl Button

    Movie

    Directed by Patricio Guzmán • Documentary • 2014 • Chile, Spain, France • Spanish with English subtitles
    Featuring Patricio Guzmán

    Winner of the Silver Bear for Best Screenplay at the Berlin Film Festival, "The Pearl Button" explores the supernatural landscape of Chile. With its 2,670 miles of c...

  • Ever Deadly

    Movie

    Directed by Tanya Tagaq, Chelsea McMullan • Documentary • 2022 • Canada • English, Inuktitut with English subtitles
    Featuring Tanya Tagaq, Laakkuluk Williamson, Bathory Mary Gillis

    "Ever Deadly" weaves together intimate concert footage of Tanya Tagaq alongside moving personal reflections, stunni...

  • Acasa, My Home

    Movie

    Directed by Radu Ciorniciuc • Documentary • 2020 • Romania, Germany • Romanian with English subtitles
    Featuring Gica Enache, Vali Enache, Rica Enache

    Winner of the World Cinema Documentary Special Jury Award for Cinematography at the Sundance Film Festival, this documentary follows a family with...

  • Out of My Head

    Movie

    Directed by Susanna Styron • Documentary • 2018 • US • English
    Featuring Paul Auster, Joan Didion, John Lewis

    A filmmaker seeking treatment for her daughter's migraine attacks discovers a confounding neurological disease and learns why a devastating condition, afflicting nearly a billion people ...

  • Manufactured Landscapes

    Movie

    Directed by Jennifer Baichwal • Documentary • 2007 • Canada • English
    Featuring Edward Burtynsky

    Internationally acclaimed for his large-scale photographs of “manufactured landscapes”—quarries, recycling yards, factories, mines and dams—Edward Burtynsky creates stunningly beautiful art from civi...

  • The Super 8 Years

    Movie

    Directed by Annie Ernaux, David Ernaux-Briot • Documentary • 2022 • France • French with English subtitles
    Featuring Annie Ernaux, David Ernaux-Briot

    The French writer and 2022 Nobel Prize awardee Annie Ernaux, whose novels and memoirs have gained her a devoted following, opens a treasure trove ...

  • Sisters with Transistors

    Movie

    Directed by Lisa Rovner • Documentary • 2021 • UK • English
    Featuring Laurie Anderson, Jean-Michel Jarre, Kim Gordon

    "Sisters with Transistors" is the remarkable untold story of electronic music’s female pioneers, composers who embraced machines and their liberating technologies to utterly trans...

  • When the Beat Drops

    Movie

    Directed by Jamal Sims • Documentary • 2018 • US • English
    Featuring Anthony Davis

    Drop into the electric and subversive underground dance scene known as bucking. As voguing exploded out of the ballroom scene of NYC, bucking was boldly pioneered in the clubs of the Deep South as a new form of se...

  • The French

    Movie

    Directed by William Klein • Documentary • 1982 • France • English, French with English subtitles
    Featuring Arthur Ashe, Bjorn Borg, Jimmy Connors

    Go behind the scenes of the 1981 French Open with photographer and filmmaker William Klein, who was the first to be granted full, exclusive access to...

  • 'Til Kingdom Come

    Movie

    Directed by Maya Zinshtein • Documentary • 2021 • US • English
    Featuring Pat Robertson, Yael Eckstein, John Hagee

    In this provocative look at strange political bedfellows, Israeli filmmaker Maya Zinshtein investigates the political alliance between American evangelicals, Israel’s right wing, and...

  • Keep Quiet

    Movie

    Directed by Sam Blair, Joseph Martin • Documentary • 2016 • UK, Hungary • Hungarian with English subtitles
    Featuring Casanad Szegedi

    As vice-president of Hungary’s far-right extremist party, Csanad Szegedi espoused anti-Semitic rhetoric and Holocaust denials. But his life was upended when his gr...

  • Mantra: Sounds Into Silence

    Movie

    Directed by Georgia Wyss • Documentary • 2018 • Spain, France, Greece, India, US, UK • English
    Featuring Krishna Das, Snatam Kaur, Deva Premal

    A feature-length documentary exploring the growing musical and social phenomenon of chanting, "Mantra: Sounds into Silence" shares the stories of people ...

  • Kaddish

    Movie

    Directed by Steve Brand • Documentary • 1984 • US • English
    Featuring Yossi Klein, Zoltan Klein, Breindy Klein

    The story of the stormy yet loving relationship between writer and Jewish activist Yossi Klein and his father Zoltan, who had survived the Holocaust's devastation of Hungarian Jewry by ...

  • Web Junkie

    Movie

    Directed by Hilla Medalia, Shosh Shlam • Documentary • 2014 • Israel, US • Mandarin with English subtitles
    Featuring Ran Tao

    China is the first country to label internet addiction a clinical disorder. “Web Junkie” exposes a Beijing rehab center where teenagers are being "deprogrammed" and forced...

  • Walk with Me

    Movie

    Directed by Marc J. Francis, Max Pugh • Documentary • 2017 • UK • English
    Featuring Benedict Cumberbatch, Thich Nhat Hanh, Sister Chân Không

    Narrated by Benedict Cumberbatch and featuring unprecedented access, "Walk With Me" takes us deep inside the world-famous monastery of Zen Buddhist master...

  • Trouble the Water

    Movie

    Directed by Carl Deal, Tia Lessin • Documentary • 2008 • US • English
    Featuring Brian Nobles, Wink Rivers, Kimberly Rivers Roberts

    Winner of the Grand Jury Prize at the Sundance Film Festival, this powerful documentary is at once horrifying and exhilarating. “Trouble the Water” takes you inside ...

  • Tower

    Movie

    Directed by Keith Maitland • Documentary • 2016 • US • English
    Featuring Keith Maitland, Susan Thomson, Megan Gilbride

    On August 1, 1966, a sniper from the top floor of the University of Texas Tower opened fire, holding the campus hostage for 96 minutes. Combining archival footage with rotosco...

  • Framing Agnes

    Movie

    Directed by Chase Joynt • Documentary • 2022 • US • English
    Featuring Zachary Drucker, Chase Joynt, Silas Howard

    Winner of the NEXT Innovator Award and Audience Award at the Sundance, "Framing Agnes" is the story of the pioneering transgender woman who participated in an infamous gender study co...

  • The Ballad of Genesis and Lady Jaye

    Movie

    Directed by Marie Losier • Documentary • 2011 • US • English
    Featuring Genesis P-Orridge, Lady Jaye

    This tender portrait of music pioneer Genesis P-Orridge and their partner, dominatrix Lady Jaye, was filmed over the course of seven years and completed following Lady Jaye’s sudden death in 2007....

  • Nationtime

    Movie

    Directed by William Greaves • Documentary • 1972 • US • English
    Featuring Sidney Poitier, Harry Belafonte, Amiri Baraka

    Narrated by Sidney Poitier and Harry Belafonte, "Nationtime" is a report on the National Black Political Convention held in Gary, Indiana in 1972, an event that gathered Black ...

  • Kids for Cash

    Movie

    Directed by Robert May • Documentary • 2013 • US • English
    Featuring Mark Ciavarella, Michael Conahan

    A riveting look behind a notorious scandal that rocked the nation. In the wake of the shootings at Columbine High School, a small town in Luzerne County, Pennsylvania elected a charismatic judge...

  • Born to Fly: Elizabeth Streb vs. Gravity

    Movie

    Directed by Catherine Gund • Documentary • 2014 • US • English
    Featuring Elizabeth Streb, Sarah Callan, Fabio Tavares

    "Born to Fly: Elizabeth Streb vs. Gravity" traces the evolution of Elizabeth Streb's movement philosophy as she pushes herself and her performers from the ground to the sky.

  • Monk with a Camera

    Movie

    Directed by Tina Mascara, Guido Santi • Documentary • 2014 • US • English
    Featuring Nicholas Vreeland, Richard Gere, Khyongla Rinpoche

    Nicholas Vreeland walked away from a life of privilege to become a Tibetan Buddhist monk in 1972. Grandson of legendary Vogue editor Diana Vreeland, and trained ...

  • After Parkland

    Movie

    Directed by Emily Taguchi, Jake Lefferman • Documentary • 2019 • US • English
    Featuring David Hogg, Brooke Harrison, Andrew Pollack

    After the shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in 2018 that killed 17 people and launched a nationwide student movement, filmmakers Emily Taguchi and Ja...