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Year
Popular Documentary Movies
Upstage
A documentary on Goshen High School, a school in Upstate New York, and its theater program which has a vast history spanning over 60 years. The film explores Paul Wright, the founder of Goshen's theater program, and the history of the program up until the cancellation of the 2020 musical of Beauty and the Beast. This film takes a deep dive into the process of how Goshen High School musicals are produced and what makes this theater program so special
Map without Island
The film shows demonstrations against building the second airport in Jeju Island the performances of environmentalists very closely and in detail, by which it develops a desperate love story.
Zinder
Unemployed youths, many looking to leave the country for want of better options, are swelling the ranks of gangs that sow violence in Zinder, in Niger. Aïcha Macky explores the origins of the radicalization that is spreading through her hometown and the prospects for escaping it.
Charlene White: Empire's Child
Charlene White embarks on a deeply personal journey to uncover the roots of her connection to the British Empire in a bid to find out if we can ever truly emerge from its shadow. Charlene travels across Britain and Jamaica on a genealogical journey to investigate her own heritage and the relationship between the Empire and her family. By piecing together broken familial records and going back in time to the very start of the British Empire, she makes some surprising discoveries about how the British Empire has shaped her family’s lives and asks what it is to be Black and British.
Roof of Leaves
Constantin, Sarah and Gregor live in a polyamorous relationship. Their intimate confession is not just a demonstration of a free relationship between three people. The lovers, who have intimate conversations, sing, tease each other, or remain silent together, give a glimpse into the life of a social unit that takes questions of trust and tolerance to extremes. A polyamorous relationship can sometimes be even more solid than a couple because it goes beyond the familiar. It represents an experimental space where safe boundaries are abandoned and a gateway is opened to a frighteningly unrestrained universe where established patterns of behavior do not apply. It is a chance to free oneself from inner demons and be renewed within. To find ourselves, we must first lose ourselves.
NoCare: An American Healthcare Story
During the winter holiday season at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, Percy Malone sold his Arkansas pharmacy chain to the highest bidders, adding further disruption to the small towns served.
Within
The film unfolds in Geneva, in the district around the Vernets barracks. It delves into the spaces of life and the encounters with its inhabitants. These domestic chronicles evolve between the military barracks at the edge of the blocks of flats and the insane asylum which had occupied the space in the past. Through these chronicles and the history of the place, the question arises for each spectator: what, then, is my place within?
Pocket of Russia
The film restores the panorama of the centuries. Journalistic narration with extensive use of artistic reconstructions, computer graphics, animation shows that the business tradition in the region was not interrupted. She manifests herself in different ways in different eras. A key trick used by different types of screen technologies is animation. Monuments to great people, buildings, industrial structures, landscapes of the Volga and Oka, film and photo chronicles are transformed, change in time and space, acquire a different dimension in order to somehow interact with the present, enter into a dialogue with descendants.
The Plastic House
Constructing a solitary reality by imagining what life would be like after the passing of her parents, director Allison Chhorn's intricate docu-fiction chronicles her own process carrying on work in the family's titular 'plastic house'.
Revue Cinema: Reel Communities
The Revue Cinema, which opened in 1912 and briefly closed down for ten months in 2006, is now the oldest cinema in Toronto. By transforming itself into a not-for-profit organization and building a solid connection with its community, the Revue Cinema provides an excellent example of how indie cinemas seek to provide much more than mere entertainment: they enrich the community and anchor its history. During the lockdown of the COVID-19 pandemic, Roy Zheng—documentary filmmaker and culture researcher—dove into Revue Cinema’s massive archive and virtually interviewed 34 observers of its ongoing legacy. This research culminated into a 50-minute linear documentary that explores Revue’s past, present and foreseeable future. Revue Cinema: Reel Communities will guide you into this 108-year journey. - ROY ZHENG
Baracoa
In their small village in the Cuban countryside, Leonel (9) and Antuán (13) have been friends for their entire lives. But Antuán will move to Habana at the end of the summer and these holidays might be the last they ever spend together.
Transparent, I am.
In the year 2020, when the world was forced to ‘change’, I wanted to confirm what changed and what did not change in me. The white mask I wore became the screen projecting my past. My family is sometimes hurt, but support me as I suffer from schizophrenia. We live today while looking for the answer to ‘Who are we?’
Eshu Yangi
A private meeting with the Afro-Brazilian deity Eshu is symbolised through visual abstractions of home images, readings on the subject, memories of a carnival and reflections associated with quantum physics. Entirely produced in isolation during the COVID-19 pandemic in Brazil.
Botanical
An experimental film which combines the artificial with the living, live action with animation, and explores the peculiar world of planet Botanical where pigs and camels grow from people's ears, cacti grow from people's teeth and violets from their nails. It's a creation of childish imagination which takes the form of a magic mountain landscape. It presents a space of liberty where you can escape from the dull and limited reality that resembles a greenhouse in a botanical garden.
Tonight with Arlo Parks
A new "Variety Show Special" starring one of the world's most exciting new artists, plus special guests Romy (The xx), Dave Okumu and Glass Animals. Including first ever performances from Parks' acclaimed debut album 'Collapsed In Sunbeams', the film features conversations, poetry and collaborations, all existing in a magical world of iconic, stylish and gradually unravelling environments.
Gaisras Virš Mūsų
A music band was filmed in its sensitive change period before and after the creation of their second album.
Enchantment
Voice splinters recovered from different archives recall, with images entirely shot in 16mm and super8, dark and further scenarios, blots difficult to erase.
The Death of My Two Fathers
After putting it off for twenty years, filmmaker Sol Guy finally confronts the six tapes his father recorded before dying. Using those tapes as a framework, Guy recounts his family’s story—and his own—for his two teenage kids.
A Bay
The Baía de Guanabara is not just any bay: the metropolitan area of Rio de Janeiro has sprawled around it. Its waste water threatens the rich ecosystem, planes roar along the approach corridors above. These filmic explorations on the margins of the megacity portray various environments that are all connected to the bay in a specific way. The people here are micro-wage earners making a modest living.
Telenovela Grey-Scale in Color
Born in Belgrade and raised in Barcelona, Filip starts to ask himself one, at first sight, very simple question: where am I actually from? Together with Asha, an Ethiopian girl who has an even more complicated life story, he strays to distant places where they have flashbacks from Latino soap operas – Telenovelas.
They Answer Our Own Gaze
Spanish choreographer Lali Ayguade is unable to enter Korea and to give scheduled performances due to the spread of COVID-19. In a situation where it is impossible to meet the dancers in person, Lali creates movements one by one with the dancers in Korea through online video conferences.
The Faithful: The King, The Pope, The Princess
A lollipop officially licensed by the Vatican sparks filmmaker Annie Berman's 20-year exploration of fandom, memorabilia, and legacy within the orbits of three cultural icons: Pope John Paul II, Elvis Presley, and Diana, Princess of Wales.
Les rêves ne meurent jamais
Dreams never die tells the extraordinary story of Yannick Bestaven, winner of the last Vendée Globe. The film is also enriched with portraits of personalities who have realized their dreams: Daniel Auteuil, Isabelle Autissier, Philippe Croizon, Bixente Lizarazu, Thomas Pesquet, Charline Picon, Erik Orsenna and many others. In this particular context, this documentary is a real "hymn to life" that will make the eyes of young and old children shine!
Dropstones
After leaving an abusive husband, Sonya returns to Fogo Island, a place and way of life she previously could not wait to escape. Now, working as a server at a fancy tourist hotel, she is raising her two sons alone, back where she started. Filmed against magnificent backdrops and stunning vistas, Dropstones captures a year in the life of a family pulling together to weather snowstorms, first jobs and family barbecues. As the matriarch of the family, Sonya's mission to raise Luke and Sean as "two good men" proves difficult at times, especially when balancing the demands of a seasonal job with single parenting. Despite the many high-pitched arguments, Sonya takes the time to show affection and love to her boys, always ready to listen to Sean's recommended technology upgrades and Luke's school woes. A coming-of-age story that takes the time to connect to place, identity and tradition.
Mandatory Training
A short, socially critical mosaic shot on 16mm film explores how much the way of thinking has changed in Western society in the past few decades, wondering whether equality and diversity are a matter of course, or whether they are still just meaningless words. Patrick Tarrant’s film juxtaposes excerpts from White magazines from the past century and mechanical voice-over segments of an online learning module on equality, inclusion and diversity for present-day employees. – Ji.hlava IDFF 2021 "Mandatory Training is a slightly ornery reaction to being forced to complete computer-based training and tests on matters that range from the banal to the ideological. For better or worse, if you answer wrongly on a question relating to race or gender, for example, you can, as the module explains, keep repeating the test until you pass." – Patrick Tarrant
Diary of Gabrielle Street
When the French authorities closed their borders, landed their planes, confined their citizens to their homes, spreading the police on the streets. I was in Paris. Without any planning, the memory coming from Palestine began to flow and merge with the diaries I live here, and the virus began to awaken other viruses, which made me spontaneously, as a Palestinian citizen, besieged in the most beautiful Parisian neighbourhood (Montmartre), busy documenting aspects of diaries and memories in a period of time that changed the face of the scientist.
In the Realm of Death & Dreaming
Does consciousness continue after death, or is it lights out? Director Johanna Lunn guides viewers on a personal journey to find answers by exploring stories of near-death experiences, deathbed visions, and more. She speaks with leading clinicians and researchers who have spent their careers studying these experiences and the nature of consciousness. Their stories are revealed with humour and compassion.
In a Small House
A documentary cartoon about the relationship of two people who are forced to travel the world.
Beyond the White
In Northern Russia, a few dozen people still live in their traditional houses surrounded by water, stone, and sand. Cut off from vital infrastructure, almost forgotten by regional governance, these people have to cope with their everyday struggles.
EVEN MORE AMERICAN GRAFFITI
Shot with a microscope, we follow a few hours in the lives of doomed pond microbes as they are each decimated by a growing air-bubble.
Happyhappy Divorceparty
Why is there a wedding anniversary and no divorce anniversary? My parents divorced after 15 years of marriage. 2020 marks the 15th year since their divorce. The daughters want to throw their mother a fancy party to celebrate her 15th anniversary of divorce.
The Truth
The largest post-war industrial disaster in the Netherlands takes place on 13 May 2000 - fireworks storage S.E. explodes in Enschede. Firework. Many people are injured, a residential area is wiped out and 23 people die. How could such a disaster take place in a tightly organized country like the Netherlands? In De Waarheid, average in-depth interviews, zoom in on the decisions and behavior of those involved around the fireworks disaster in Enschede, in order to reveal the ones that provide insight into how this fragile balance manifests itself. Via the owner of the fireworks storage, an involved firefighter and the licensing municipal officials and the mayor, we reach the leader of the investigation commission, the chief public prosecutor and the minister of the interior who had to deal with the disaster. After all, it is the citizen whose house is destroyed who appeals to common sense.
Spirit Film
Tracing the figure of the spirit through Philippine film, Raya Martin enlists archives, apps and AI to work against the colonial gaze, and wonders, amid the restrictions of lockdown, ‘how do we watch movies without cinema?’