Locked away from society in an apartment on the Lower East Side of Manhattan, the Angulo brothers learn about the outside world through the films that they watch. Nicknamed ‘The Wolfpack’, the brothers spend their childhood reenacting their favorite films using elaborate home-made props and costumes. Their world is shaken up when one of the brothers escapes and everything changes.
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An intimate documentary that follows Tig Notaro, a Los Angeles based comedian, who just days after being diagnosed with invasive stage II breast cancer changed the course of her career with a poignant stand-up set that became legendary overnight. It explores Tig's extraordinary journey as her career ignites and as her life unfolds in grand and unexpected ways, all the while continuing to battle a life-threatening illness and falling in love.
Shibati, the last old area of Chongqing, the biggest city in China, is about to disappear. Zhou Hong, 7 years old, little prince of the streets, and Mrs Xue Lian, 70, godmother of the migrant workers, have to leave their beloved life in this charming neighborhood, to be rehoused in one of the thousands anonymous towers of the faraway suburb.
The stories of four Hispanic immigrants living in New York City.
An unconventional point of view on one of the most successful Italian bands: Elio e le Storie Tese.
The chilling story of the charismatic Dr. Kermit Gosnell and the squalid abortion clinic he operated for years in Philadelphia despite many pleas to health authorities to investigate the deaths of women and infants.
'Who the Fuck is That Guy'? The Fabulous Journey of Michael Alago tells the astonishing story of a gay Puerto Rican kid growing up in a Hasidic Brooklyn neighborhood, who got on the subway one day and began a musical odyssey that helped shape the musical landscape across N.Y.C. and around the world. Directed by Drew Stone and produced by Michael Alex the film tells the incredible story of a cherished New York City icon. From rubbing elbows with N. Y. scene makers as an teenager at Max's Kansas City and CBGB, to being the architect of a rock 'n' roll renaissance as the 19 year-old talent booker at the legendary Ritz, to making history as a 24 year-old A&R exec, signing the biggest metal band in a generation in Metallica, Michael Alago was on fire.
A directionless, young campus bus driver and a punk rock Samoan security guard named Pineapple form an unlikely kinship as they navigate the unpredictable late shift shit show known as the "drunk bus." Together, they break out of their endless loop and into a world of uncertainty, excitement and incredibly poor decision-making.
Over a 5-year period in Bridgend in Wales, 79 people, many of them teenagers, committed suicide without leaving any clue as to why. This is the starting point for this mysterious social drama.
When the Pfeffermans face a life-changing loss, they begin a journey hilarious and melancholy, brazen and bold. As they face this new transition, they confront grief and come together to celebrate connection, joy, and transformation.
Set in the Mojave Desert, the film follows a broken-down comedian playing clubs across the Southwest, working his way to Los Angeles to meet his estranged daughter.
The Inguri River forms a natural border dividing Georgia from Abkhazia. One of the spring floods has created a little island in the middle of the river, as if made for the cultivation of corn. At least, this is the belief of an old peasant, whose sunburned face resembles the landscape he has trodden for dozens of years.
Inspired by Steven Blush's book "American Hardcore: A tribal history" Paul Rachman's feature documentary debut is a chronicle of the underground hardcore punk years from 1979 to 1986. Interviews and rare live footage from artists such as Black Flag, Bad Brains, Minor Threat, SS Decontrol and the Dead Kennedys.
Following a breakdown and suicide attempt, an aging actor becomes involved with a much younger woman but soon finds that it's difficult to keep pace with her.
An in-depth look at the torture practices of the United States in Afghanistan, Iraq and Guantanamo Bay, focusing on an innocent taxi driver in Afghanistan who was tortured and killed in 2002.
A hilarious introduction, using as examples some of the best films ever made, to some of Slovenian philosopher and psychoanalyst Slavoj Žižek's most exciting ideas on personal subjectivity, fantasy and reality, desire and sexuality.
With exclusive access to his extraordinary unseen and unheard personal archive including hundreds of hours of audio recorded over the course of his life, this is the definitive Marlon Brando cinema documentary. Charting his exceptional career as an actor and his extraordinary life away from the stage and screen with Brando himself as your guide, the film will fully explore the complexities of the man by telling the story uniquely from Marlon's perspective, entirely in his own voice. No talking heads, no interviewees, just Brando on Brando and life.
A look at the events leading up to the Taliban's attack on the young Pakistani school girl, Malala Yousafzai, for speaking out on girls' education and the aftermath, including her speech to the United Nations.
Deep Web gives the inside story of one of the most important and riveting digital crime sagas of the century -- the arrest of Ross William Ulbricht, the 30-year-old entrepreneur convicted of being 'Dread Pirate Roberts,' creator and operator of online black market Silk Road. As the only film with exclusive access to the Ulbricht family, Deep Web explores how the brightest minds and thought leaders behind the Deep Web and Bitcoin are now caught in the crosshairs of the battle for control of a future inextricably linked to technology, with our digital rights hanging in the balance.
Documentary about the musical and social phenomenon of Brazilian funk (or Carioca Funk), a style derived from Miami Bass, based on repetitive bass drum loops and lyrics full of sexual and violent overtones, not directly related to American funk/soul music. This style emerged in the slums and poor neighborhoods of Rio de Janeiro, and is deeply associated with the lower social classes, but is gradually being accepted on higher social circles. The film is specially interested in women's participation, focusing on its major female stars.
A young pair from Stuttgart fly to Shanghai to hop aboard the textile business of his father while she prepares for the birth of their son. A story about the ever more common movement of Germans into the East for professional gain.
In this documentary by Coline Serreau, known for her feature film Why Not?, a selection of Frenchwomen in characteristically no-win situations discuss what they are experiencing and answer, if only by implication, the question: "What do women want?"
Commissioned to make a propaganda film about the 1936 Olympic Games in Germany, director Leni Riefenstahl created a celebration of the human form. This first half of her two-part film opens with a renowned introduction that compares modern Olympians to classical Greek heroes, then goes on to provide thrilling in-the-moment coverage of some of the games' most celebrated moments, including African-American athlete Jesse Owens winning a then-unprecedented four gold medals.
Commissioned to make a propaganda film about the 1936 Olympic Games in Germany, director Leni Riefenstahl created a celebration of the human form. Where the two-part epic's first half, Festival of the Nations, focused on the international aspects of the 1936 Olympic Games held in Berlin, part two, The Festival of Beauty, concentrates on individual athletes such as equestrians, gymnasts, and swimmers, climaxing with American Glenn Morris' performance in the decathalon and the games' majestic closing ceremonies.
Filmmaker Molly Gandour, in her mid-20s, returns to her childhood home in Indiana to speak with her parents in depth for the first time about her sister's death from cancer sixteen years earlier. The filmmaker comes of age as she weaves a deeply observed portrait of a family unearthing a long ago loss. Unflinching and poignant, Peanut Gallery shows us how we can transform when we begin to fill the silences between those closest to us.
This documentary chronicles Johnny Cash's 1970 visit to the White House, where Cash's emerging liberal ideals clashed with Richard Nixon's policies.
Each one of the 15 lighthouses around the island of Puerto Rico tells the story of the lighthouse keepers, wives or daughters that lived in them. Additional testimonies by architects, historians, biologists and fishermen take us on a trip of beauty, hope, perseverance around them, as we witness the magnificence of its structures and its magical surroundings. Some lighthouses are active, some have been restored, others have been abandoned but all have a unique story to tell.
"The Apology" explores the lives of former "comfort women," the more than 200,000 girls forced into sexual slavery during World War II. Today, they fight for reconciliation and justice as they struggle to make peace with the past.
Bartolomé, a teacher in a multigrade school on the mountains of Chiapas in Mexico, knows well that pedagogy is not based on textbooks and cannot fit behind the four walls of a classroom. A true sower of knowledge unravels his philosophy and method and becomes a beacon of hope for the creation of a humanistic model of education based on curiosity and love for the outside world.
British documentary filmmaker Chloe Ruthven’s grandparents were aid workers in Palestine. Growing up, she had avoided getting too involved in the subject, recalling how mention of the country made all the adults in her life angry. In her forties, after revisiting her grandmother’s book on the subject, she starts to research a documentary on the effects of foreign aid in the area and is shocked at the continued reliance on it there. Along the way she meets Lubna, a Palestinian woman who acts as her driver and fixer, and who is fiercely critical of Western aid efforts in her country. What begins as a quest to better understand her family history turns into a deeply emotional account of two women trying to understand one another. Ruthven’s determination to focus her film on deeply subjective analysis results in a unique joining of the acutely personal and complexly political. (Source: LFF programme)
Russian avant-garde filmmaker Sergei Eisenstein and German playwright Bertolt Brecht recount the brief portions of their lives they spent in Hollywood trying to make art that was both radical and popular.
An exploration of Soviet director Sergei Eisenstein's notes and drawings for a science fiction movie that he pitched to Paramount in 1930 about the residents of a skyscraper with walls and floors of clear glass.
The saga of a movie treatment written by German playwright Bertolt Brecht during his unhappy stint in Hollywood based on a Life Magazine article about a farm family who win a week's stay in a model home at the Ohio State Fair, with the catch that they will be on display to the public.
Set deep in the traditional territory of Tahltan First Nation, Northern British Columbia’s Red Chris gold and copper mine is the backdrop to a lyrical tapestry of landscapes and diverse personal stories from the land. Language preservation initiatives and mining opposition evoke emotional tones as the story swells with ravishing images of wilderness as a rough and untamed beauty. A thoughtful shift from Wild’s traditional narrative style of radical point of view documentary, "KONELĪNE" is a meditation on nature, culture, and economy as experienced by those who live and work on the land.
A true Canadian iconoclast, acclaimed transgender country/electro-pop artist Rae Spoon revisits the stretches of rural Alberta that once constituted “home” and confronts memories of growing up queer in an abusive, evangelical household.
Michael White might just be the most famous person you’ve never heard of. A notorious London theatre and film impresario, he produced over 300 shows and movies over the last 50 years. Bringing to the stage the risqué productions of Oh! Calcutta!, The Rocky Horror Show and to the screen Monty Python’s The Holy Grail, as well as introducing Merce Cunningham, Pina Bausch and Yoko Ono to London audiences, he irrevocably shaped the cultural scene of the 1970s London. Playboy, gambler, bon vivant, friend of the rich and famous, he is now in his eighties and still enjoys partying like there’s no tomorrow. In this intimate documentary, filmmaker Gracie Otto introduces us to this larger-than-life phenomenon. Featuring interviews with 50 of his closest friends including Anna Wintour, Kate Moss, John Waters and Barry Humphries and, of course, the man himself, Otto pays a vibrant tribute to a fascinating entertainer.
‘You have no choice about being here, you’ll have no choice about when you leave’ proclaims a woman in Xiaolu Guo’s latest film, a documentary about the personal and physical journeys of the people of London’s East End. Herself an immigrant to the area, Guo’s sensitive character studies hint at an affinity with the push and pull of feelings of alienation, a theme she has previously explored as a filmmaker (She a Chinese, LFF 2009) and novelist (A Concise Chinese-English Dictionary for Lovers). This empathy is also apparent in her playful stylistic approach that layers Warhol-esque news reports, archival material and a soundtrack including Linton Kwesi Johnson and Fela Kuti, to comment on the human cost of capitalism. The resulting film is both a penetrating portrait of a frenetic place that feels deeply authentic, and a powerful piece of protest film.
When Marvin Hamlisch passed away in August 2012 the worlds of music, theatre and cinema lost a talent the likes of which we may never see again. Seemingly destined for greatness, Hamlisch was accepted into New York’s Juilliard School as a 6-year-old musical prodigy and rapidly developed into a phenomenon. With instantly classic hits ‘The Way We Were’ and ‘Nobody Does It Better’ and scores for Hollywood films such as The Swimmer, The Sting and Sophie’s Choice and the Broadway juggernaut A Chorus Line; Hamlisch became the go-to composer for film and Broadway producers and a prominent presence on the international Concert Hall circuit. His streak was staggering, vast, unprecedented and glorious, by the age of 31 Hamlisch had won 4 Grammys, an Emmy, 3 Oscars, a Tony and a Pulitzer prize: success that burned so bright, it proved impossible to match.
Taşkafa is a real dog and also a legend on the streets of Istanbul. John Berger begins Taşkafa’s story, reading from his novel, King, the story of the disappearance of a community told from a dog’s perspective. The area’s ordinary people – taxi drivers, shopkeepers, street traders – care deeply about the welfare of the city’s street dogs and they tell us stories about Taşkafa and their other canine neighbours. The animals are a symbol of community living, where people (and dogs) look out for each other, but this is a community in transition; one from which dogs are starting to be expelled. Eccentric, amusing and very warm, the film is a powerful indictment of the impact of global politics and the economic appropriation of public space but, even more, it is a tribute to both the spirit of resistance and to city life that can accommodate people and dogs together.