In June 2013, Laura Poitras and reporter Glenn Greenwald flew to Hong Kong for the first of many meetings with Edward Snowden. She brought her camera with her.
Self
In 2009, Iranian Canadian journalist Maziar Bahari was covering Iran's volatile elections for Newsweek. One of the few reporters living in the country with access to US media, he made an appearance on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart, in a taped interview with comedian Jason Jones. The interview was intended as satire, but if the Tehran authorities got the joke they didn't like it - and it would quickly came back to haunt Bahari when he was rousted from his family home and thrown into prison.
An optician grapples with the Indonesian mass killings of 1965-1966, during which his older brother was exterminated.
GOING CLEAR intimately profiles eight former members of the Church of Scientology, shining a light on how they attract true believers and the things they do in the name of religion.
A film that exposes the shocking truth behind the economic crisis of 2008. The global financial meltdown, at a cost of over $20 trillion, resulted in millions of people losing their homes and jobs. Through extensive research and interviews with major financial insiders, politicians and journalists, Inside Job traces the rise of a rogue industry and unveils the corrosive relationships which have corrupted politics, regulation and academia.
Programming prodigy and information activist Aaron Swartz achieved groundbreaking work in social justice and political organizing. His passion for open access ensnared him in a legal nightmare that ended with the taking of his own life at the age of 26.
Follow three professional video game players as they overcome personal adversity, family pressures, and the realities of life to compete in a $1,000,000 tournament that could change their lives forever.
An upbeat and humorous account of the hard life under police protection led by Italian writer Roberto Saviano since the publication in 2006 of Gomorrah, his controversial book about the Camorra, the ruthless organization that has dominated the criminal underground in Naples for centuries.
Scientists Richard Dawkins and Lawrence Krauss travel the globe promoting a scientific worldview and the rational questioning of religious belief.
The idea is simple / A married woman and a single man meet / They love, they argue, fists fly / A dog strays between town and country / The seasons pass / The man and woman meet again / The dog finds itself between them / The other is in one, / the one is in the other / and they are three / The former husband shatters everything / A second film begins: / the same as the first, / and yet not / From the human race we pass to metaphor / This ends in barking / and a baby's cries / In the meantime, we will have seen people talking of the demise of the dollar, of truth in mathematics and of the death of a robin." - JLG
After the murder of his beloved wife, a man in search of redemption is set adrift in a world where nothing is as it seems. On his journey, he befriends slacker Jimmy "The Finn", becomes involved in rescuing his neighbor Colette from her own demons, and gets entangled in a web of deceit full of unexpected twists and turns.
A group of young boys develops a crush on a girl, leading to jealousy toward her boyfriend. They scheme to disrupt their relationship, and when the boyfriend catches one of them spying, he punishes him harshly. In retaliation, the boys attempt to make the girl doubt her boyfriend's love.
Max is a handsome young man who, after a fateful tryst with a German soldier, is forced to run for his life. Eventually Max is placed in a concentration camp where he pretends to be Jewish because in the eyes of the Nazis, gays are the lowest form of human being. But it takes a relationship with an openly gay prisoner to teach Max that without the love of another, life is not worth living.
Marisa, a 20-year-old German girl, hates foreigners, Jews, cops, and everyone she finds guilty for the decline of her country. She provokes, drinks, fights and her next tattoo will be a portrait of Adolf Hitler. But Marisa's convictions begin to crumble when she meets a young Afghan refugee, and she learns that the black and white principles of her gang are not the only way.
Four young people navigate the suburban wonderland of metro-Detroit looking for love and adventure on the last weekend of summer.
A documentary about the development and spread of the virtual currency called Bitcoin.
When Patrick Moote's girlfriend rejects his marriage proposal at a UCLA basketball game on the jumbotron, it unfortunately goes viral and hits TV networks worldwide. Days after the heartbreaking debacle, she privately reveals why she can’t be with him forever: Patrick’s small penis size. "Unhung Hero" follows the real life journey of Patrick as he boldly sets out to expose this extremely personal chapter of his life confronting ex-girlfriends, doctors, anthropologists and even adult film stars. From Witch-Doctors in Papua New Guinea to sex museums in Korea, Patrick has a lot of turf to cover on his globe trotting adventure to finally answer the age old question: Does size matter?
Stop-motion photography blends with extreme slow-motion in Clair's first and most 'dada' film, composed of a series of zany, interconnected scenes. We witness a rooftop chess match between Marcel Duchamp and Man Ray, a hearse pulled by a camel (and chased by its pallbearers) and a dizzying roller coaster finale. A film of contradictions and agreements.
American: The Bill Hicks Story is a biographical documentary film on the life of comedian Bill Hicks.
Sam, a soldier who had served in Afghanistan and Iraq, meets Amira when he visits her uncle, Bassam, who had served as Sam's Iraqi translator. Bassam and Sam have a special bond due to their time together in the war. Initially Amira does not trust him because he was an American soldier and her brother was killed by a bomb from American troops in the war. Sam's cousin, Charlie, asks Sam to help him with illegal hedge funds unbeknownst to Sam at the time. Amira is staying with her uncle Bassam since her father died. She sells bootlegged films on the street corner but is forced to stay with Sam after getting busted; immigration officials begin pursuing her. As the film progresses, Sam and Amira fall in love.
In a school where the meeting seems more complete sampling of teachers and professors stupid airhead, there is the class of Peter, repeating in life, which is the "grandfather" to the far more young companions concerning jokes and vulgarity. Even outside the school walls, in the family or in the streets of the village where he lives, Peter is not far behind and his antics continue to freewheel.
"What if someone wrote your biography? Would there be horns and halos involved?"
A shocking 2 hour full length movie from B.A. Brooks that will change the way you look at our leadership within America's government and military today.
A coast guard captain on a small Greek island is suddenly charged with saving thousands of refugees from drowning at sea.
A fascinating documentary focusing on backstage realities of art and business during the British synthesizer band's 1988 American tour.
A behind-the-scenes documentary about the Clinton for President campaign, focusing on the adventures of spin doctors James Carville and George Stephanopoulos.
A compilation of found footage from musicals, home movies, animated shorts, educational films, commercials, and propaganda set against pop music from the Third Reich, Hitler's Hitparade presents audiences with an unprecedented experiential collage of Nazi Germany.
Jazz in Love tells the story of Jazz, a young man from Davao whose dream wedding is within reach: his boyfriend of 11 months has proposed. Because no law allows him to get married in the Philippines, he must fly to Germany, his boyfriend's home country, and tie the knot there. One of the things that stand in his way is his inability to speak Deutsch, and to address that he must temporarily relocate to Manila for language lessons. Meanwhile, his parents remain completely unaware of the radical changes that his life is about to undergo.
A humorous and heartwarming documentary feature, CYBER-SENIORS chronicles the extraordinary journey of a group of senior citizens as they discover the world of the Internet through the guidance of teenage mentors. Their exploration of cyberspace is catapulted to another level when 89 year-old Shura decides to create a YouTube cooking video. A spirited video competition for the most “views" evolves as the cyber-seniors’ hidden talents and competitive spirits are revealed. CYBER-SENIORS provides insight into the wonderful things that can happen when generation gaps are bridged, proving you are never too old to get "connected."
From a school band from Essen to an internationally celebrated thrash metal legend: To mark Kreator's 40th anniversary in 2024, frontman Mille Petrozza plans to re-record his greatest hits at the famous Hansa Studios in Berlin together with greats from the metal scene such as Metallica, Sepultura, Slayer, Anthrax and many more. With exclusive private archive material, the story of Kreator is told for the first time.
Four years after a military coup overthrew the Brazilian government in 1964, all civil rights were suspended and torture became a systematic practice. Using a mix of fiction and documentary this extraordinary film is a searing record of personal memory, political repression and the will to survive. Interviews with eight women who were political prisoners during the military dictatorship are framed by the fantasies and imaginings of an anonymous character, portrayed by actress Irene Ravache.
Short directed by Agnès Varda in 1986 on the occasion of the 50th anniversary of the French Cinematheque.
"Sisters Rising" is the story of six Native American women fighting to restore personal and tribal sovereignty in the face of ongoing colonial violence against indigenous women in the United States. Dawn was in the Army, now she’s a tribal cop in the midst of the North Dakota oil boom that threatens to pull the last threads of her Native culture apart. Patty teaches indigenous women’s self-defense across the Great Plains of her people. Sarah is an attorney and scholar fighting to overturn restrictions on tribal sovereignty and increase legislative protections for Native women. Loreline and Lisa are grassroots advocates working outside of the system to support survivors of violence and influence legislative change. Chalsey is writing the first anti-sex trafficking code to be introduced to a reservation’s tribal court.
Before compiling your next grocery list, you might want to watch filmmaker Deborah Koons Garcia's eye-opening documentary, which sheds light on a shadowy relationship between agriculture, big business and government. By examining the effects of biotechnology on the nation's smallest farmers, the film reveals the unappetizing truth about genetically modified foods: You could unknowingly be serving them for dinner.
In the 1980s and 1990s a wave of murders bloodied the idyllic coastline of Sydney’s eastern suburbs. The victims: young gay men. Disturbing gang assaults were being carried out on coastal cliffs around Sydney, and mysterious deaths officially recorded as "suicide", "disappearance" and "misadventure". Individual stories are woven together by first person interviews and detailed re-enactments, piecing together the facts of these unsolved cases, decades later.
A prescient portrait of late-1970s Washington, D.C., that chronicles the city's creeping gentrification, the systematic expulsion of poor Black residents, and the community response in the form of the Seaton Street Project, in which tenants banded together to purchase buildings.
The Devil Never Sleeps is a “whodunit” documentary about family secrets. Filmmaker Lourdes Portillo received a phone call informing her of the mysterious death of her wealthy Mexican uncle Oscar. Officially ruled a suicide, Portillo’s relatives claimed murder, offering several possible suspects including a business partner, a ranch hand, and Oscar’s young widow who stood to inherit everything. Traveling to Mexico, Portillo attempts to learn the truth about her powerful uncle. Using interviews, old snapshots and home movies, she finds a complicated web of family secrets, intrigue, rumor and betrayal that makes her enigmatic uncle’s murder seem ever more likely, yet ever more obscure. As the Mexican saying goes, “When evil is lurking, the devil never sleeps.”
This documentary from Albert and David Maysles follows the bitter rivalry of four door-to-door salesmen working for the Mid-American Bible Company: Paul "The Badger" Brennan, Charles "The Gipper" McDevitt, James "The Rabbit" Baker and Raymond "The Bull" Martos. Times are tough for this hard-living quartet, who spend their days traveling through small-town America, trying their best to peddle gold-leaf Bibles to an apathetic crowd of lower-middle-class housewives and elderly couples.
Good Grief is a short stop motion animated documentary that explores the lessons we learn from dealing with grief and loss. Five real people share their true stories of losing something precious and what it has taught them about living.
How to combine modernity and fundamentalist Islam. "Saudi Solutions" is a unique and revealing documentary about the lifestyles and attitudes of ambitious career womenin conservative Saudi Arabia - the only country in the Arabworld where women are obliged to cover themselves inabayas and aren't allowed to drive cars. Because of the strong influence of fundamentalist Islam on society, filmingis severely restricted in Saudi Arabia. With unique access to the Kingdom, Backlight had the opportunity to film the daily routines of Saudi working women. This documentaryfeatures a top gyneacologist, a TV news anchor woman, a photographer, and a university professor. It also introducesthe wealthy Prince Al-Waleed, who passionately promotes the acceptance of women into the workforce. He kindly invitesBacklight to his luxury desert camp, but there are no women to be found - only thousands of men.
This documentary on the effect the talent competition "Afghan Star" has on the incredibly diverse inhabitants of Afghanistan affords a glimpse into a country rarely seen. Contestants risk their lives to appear on the television show that is a raging success with the public and also monitored closely by the government.