Documentaries: The Complete List
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- DirectorChris MarkerStarsAmilcar CabralFlorence DelayArielle DombasleA woman narrates the contemplative writings of a seasoned world traveler, focusing on contemporary Japan.★★★★★
- DirectorAbbas KiarostamiStarsHossain SabzianMohsen MakhmalbafAbolfazl AhankhahThe true story of Hossain Sabzian, a cinephile who impersonated the director Mohsen Makhmalbaf to convince a family they would star in his so-called new film.★★★★★
- DirectorMohsen MakhmalbafStarsShaghayeh DjodatBehzad DoraniFeizola GashghaiMakhmalbaf puts an advertisement in the papers calling for an open casting for his next movie. However when hundreds of people show up, he decides to make a movie about the casting and the screen tests of the would-be actors.★★★★★
- DirectorWerner HerzogStarsWerner HerzogScott RowlandStefan PashovFilm-maker Werner Herzog travels to the McMurdo Station in Antarctica, looking to capture the continent's beauty and investigate the characters living there.★★★★★
- DirectorLixin FanStarsChanghua ZhangYang ZhangSuqin ChenA couple embarks on a journey home for Chinese new year along with 130 million other migrant workers, to reunite with their children and struggle for a future. Their unseen story plays out as China soars towards being a world superpower.★★★★★
- DirectorWang BingMan with No Name is an intimate portrait of an anonymous man living in a deserted wasteland in an unnamed part of China. He lives in an underground cave, in a harsh and otherworldly landscape that seems to be entirely cut off from civilization.★★★★★
- DirectorForugh FarrokhzadStarsForugh FarrokhzadEbrahim GolestanHossein MansouriSet in a leper colony in the north of Iran, The House is Black juxtaposes "ugliness", of which there is much in the world as stated in the opening scenes, with religion and gratitude.★★★★★
- DirectorRon FrickeStarsBalinese Tari Legong DancersNi Made Megahadi PratiwiPuti Sri Candra DewiFilmed over nearly five years in twenty-five countries on five continents, and shot on seventy-millimetre film, Samsara transports us to the varied worlds of sacred grounds, disaster zones, industrial complexes, and natural wonders.★★★★★
- DirectorMojtaba MirtahmasbJafar PanahiStarsJafar PanahiIgiMrs. GheiratIt's been months since Jafar Panahi, stuck in jail, has been awaiting a verdict by the appeals court. By depicting a day in his life, Panahi and Mojtaba Mirtahmasb try to portray the deprivations looming in contemporary Iranian cinema.★★★★★
- DirectorWerner HerzogStarsWerner HerzogThis film surveys the disaster of the Kuwaiti oil fields in flames, with little narration and scarcely any interviews. Hell on Earth is presented in such transcendent visions and music that one can only be fascinated by it.★★★★★
- DirectorWerner HerzogStarsWerner HerzogJörg Schmidt-ReitweinEdward LachmanHerzog takes a film crew to the island of Guadeloupe when he hears that the volcano on the island is going to erupt. Everyone has left, except for one old man who refuses to leave. Herzog catches the eeriness of an abandoned city, with stop lights cycling over an empty intersection.★★★★★
- DirectorShôhei ImamuraStarsShigeru TsuyuguchiYoshie HayakawaShôhei ImamuraPlastics salesman Oshima disappeared without a word to anyone, and has been missing for two years. Shohei Imamura and his crew follow Oshima's fiancé Yoshie and actor Shigeru Tsuyuguchi as they investigate the disappearance.★★★★
- DirectorMalik BendjelloulStarsRodriguezStephen 'Sugar' SegermanDennis CoffeyTwo South Africans set out to discover what happened to their unlikely musical hero, the mysterious 1970s rock n roller, Rodriguez.★★★★
- DirectorTonino GuerraAndrei TarkovskyStarsTonino GuerraLora JabloskinaAndrei TarkovskyAcclaimed Russian director Andrei Tarkovsky and his screenwriter Tonino Guerra travel all over Italy to scout locations for the film Nostalghia.★★★★
- DirectorKrzysztof KieslowskiPeople of different age, profession and social status answer two simple questions: who they are and what they want from life.★★★★
- DirectorChris MarkerStarsChris MarkerKumiko MuraokaWhile filming the Olympics, a filmmaker encounters a Japanese girl. Manchurian born and French educated, she's an intriguing anomaly. He films her around Tokyo, as she speaks of Japan, being Japanese and her unique perspective on life.★★★★
- StarsCamille VirolleaudArnaud MartinBetty BerrA series in which the auteur interrogates a boy and a girl from two families in an attempt to get back to the origins of language and movement.★★★★
- DirectorKirby FergusonThe first installment of an ambitious four-part documentary on the history and cultural significance of sampling and collaborative creation.★★★★
- DirectorDziga VertovStarsMikhail KaufmanElizaveta SvilovaA man travels around a city with a camera slung over his shoulder, documenting urban life with dazzling invention.★★★★
- DirectorTellerStarsTim JenisonPenn JilletteMartin MullInventor Tim Jenison seeks to understand the painting techniques used by Dutch Master Johannes Vermeer.★★★★
- DirectorJean RouchStarsOumarou GandaGambiPetit Touré"I, a Negro" depicts young Nigerien immigrants who left their country to find work in the Ivory Coast, in the Treichville quarter of Abidjan, the capital. These immigrants live in squalor in Treichville, envious of the bordering quarters of The Plateau (the business and industrial district) and the old African quarter of Adjame. The film traces a week in these immigrants' lives, blurring the line between their characters' routines and their own. Every morning, Tarzan, Eddy Constantine and Edward G. Robinson seek work in Treichville in hopes of getting the 20 francs that a bowl of soup costs them. They perform menial jobs as dockers carrying sacks and handy labor shipping supplies to Europe. At night, they drink away their sorrows in bars while dreaming about their idealized lives as their "movie" alter-egos, alternatively as an FBI Agent, a womanizing bachelor, a successful boxer, and even able to stand up to the white colonialists that seduce away their women. These dream-like sequences are shot in a poetic mode. Each day is introduced by an interstitial voice of god omniscient narration from Jean Rouch, providing a universal thematic distance to the movie's events. The film is book-ended by a narration directed at both Petit Jules and the audience from Edward G. Robinson fondly looking back on his childhood in Niger and concluding that his life is worthy of his dreams.★★★★
- DirectorWeijun ChenStarsCheng ChengLuo LeiXu XiaofeiDemocracy in China exists, that is, in a primary school in Wuhan where a grade 3 class can vote who they want as class monitor.★★★★
- DirectorFrank PavichStarsAlejandro JodorowskyMichel SeydouxH.R. GigerThe story of cult film director Alejandro Jodorowsky's ambitious but ultimately doomed film adaptation of the seminal science fiction novel.★★★★
- DirectorWim WendersStarsChris Thomas KingKeith B. BrownJames HughesThe dramatic tension in the blues between the sacred and the profane by exploring the music and lives of three of director Wim Wenders's favorite blues artists.★★★★
- DirectorAlain ResnaisStarsMichel BouquetReinhard HeydrichHeinrich HimmlerThe history of Nazi Germany's death camps of the Final Solution and the hellish world of dehumanization and death contained inside.★★★★
- DirectorKore-eda HirokazuAn elementary school in Japan begins an experimental program that frames the students' curriculum around one single project: the raising of a calf from adolescence to adulthood. Through their work with the calf, the students learn about math, biology, nutrition and numerous other subjects. But after multiple years of investing energy and emotion into their beloved pet, the students begin to realize that the final days of their project may provide them with the hardest and most important lesson of all.★★★★
- DirectorJean-Luc GodardJoris IvensWilliam KleinStarsAnne BellecKaren BlanguernonFidel CastroIn seven different segments, Godard, Klein, Lelouch, Marker, Resnais, and Varda show their sympathy and support for the North Vietnamese army during the Vietnam War.★★★★
- DirectorWerner HerzogStarsDieter DenglerWerner HerzogEugene DeatrickGerman-American Dieter Dengler discusses his service as a U.S. naval pilot in the Vietnam War. Dengler also revisits the sites of his capture and eventual escape from the hands of the Viet Cong, recreating many events for the camera.★★★★
- DirectorKazuo HaraStarsKenzo OkuzakiRiichi AikawaMasaichi HamaguchiA documentary following Kenzo Okuzaki, a 62-year-old WW2 veteran notorious for his protests against Emperor Hirohito, as he tries to expose the needless executions of two Japanese soldiers during the war.★★★★
- DirectorChris MarkerStarsGilles QuéantDirector Chris Marker begins by recounting his childhood dream of visiting the city of Peking, a city he was once only able to admire in books. The viewer is taken on a journey through this city, as if experiencing it from the mind and through the eyes of Marker.★★★★
- DirectorNaomi KawaseStarsUno KawaseNaomi KawaseMitsuki KawaseNaomi Kawase raises her voice in anger, blaming her foster mother for threatening to abandon her as a young girl. The camera reveals Kawase's impatience when coming to terms with her foster mother's senility, and at the same time dwells on her aging naked body with a subtle sense of affection. Twelve years after shooting 'Katatsumori (1994)', her first film about the foster mother, Kawase made 'Tarachime' to document the decline of one life at the beginning of another - during the making of the film, Kawase's son was born.★★★★
- DirectorWill AndersonStarsWill AndersonTobias FeltusVitalij SicinavaA 'behind-the-scenes' look at an Animator/Filmmaker as he struggles with his character.★★★★
- DirectorWeijun ChenStarsShenyi MaMei LeiNingning MaA portrait of a Chinese family living with and dying of HIV/AIDS.★★★★
- DirectorWerner HerzogStarsThe Dalai LamaLama Lhundup WoeserTakna Jigme SangpoWheel of Time is Werner Herzog's photographed look at the largest Buddhist ritual in Bodh Gaya, India.★★★★
- DirectorWerner HerzogStarsWerner HerzogAnna HitchVissarionWhat is faith and religion to Russians after the fall of communism? We get the insight into the Russian Orthodox church as well as different folk and shamanic beliefs.★★★★
- DirectorJohn MaloofCharlie SiskelStarsVivian MaierJohn MaloofDaniel ArnaudA documentary on the late Vivian Maier, a nanny whose previously unknown cache of 100,000 photographs earned her a posthumous reputation as one of the most accomplished street photographers.★★★★
- DirectorRyan WhiteStarsFreda KellyPaul McCartneyJohn LennonA documentary in which Freda Kelly looks back at her career as lifelong secretary for The Beatles.★★★★
- DirectorWim WendersStarsChishû RyûWerner HerzogYûharu AtsutaMoved by the work of director Yasujirô Ozu, Wim Wenders travels to Japan in search of the Tokyo seen in Ozu's films.★★★★
- DirectorWim WendersStarsCompay SegundoIbrahim FerrerRubén GonzálezAging Cuban musicians whose talents had been virtually forgotten following Castro's takeover of Cuba, are brought out of retirement by Ry Cooder, who travelled to Havana in order to bring the musicians together, resulting in triumphant performances of extraordinary music, and resurrecting the musicians' careers.★★★★
- DirectorJean-Luc GodardJean-Pierre GorinStarsMarlon BrandoMoshe DayanJames DeanLetter to Jane (1972) is a postscript film to Tout va bien directed by Jean-Luc Godard and Jean-Pierre Gorin and made under the auspices of the Dziga Vertov Group. Narrated in a back-and-forth style by both Godard and Gorin, the film serves as a 52-minute cinematic essay that deconstructs a single news photograph of Jane Fonda in Vietnam. This was Godard and Gorin's final collaboration.★★★★
- DirectorWerner HerzogStarsWerner HerzogJean ClottesJulien MonneyWerner Herzog gains exclusive access to film inside the Chauvet caves of Southern France and captures the oldest known pictorial creations of humanity.★★★★
- DirectorRon FrickeCarefully picked scenes of nature and civilization are viewed at high speed using time-lapse cinematography in an effort to demonstrate the history of various regions.★★★★
- DirectorJean-Luc GodardAnne-Marie MiévilleStarsJean-Luc GodardThe movie incorporates footage of fedayeens taken for an aborted pro-Palestinian film which had been abandoned when subjects were killed. Here and Elsewhere takes its name from the footage it shows of the fedayeens and of a French family.★★★★
- DirectorMohsen MakhmalbafStarsGhafour BarahouyiMaryam OzbakMohsen MakhmalbafDocumentary showing the life of children of the Afghan villages bordering Iran, and how their life and culture were affected by Taliban regime.★★★★
- DirectorChantal AkermanStarsNatalia ChakhovskaiaA look at life in Eastern Europe after the collapse of the Soviet Union.★★★★
- DirectorWerner HerzogStarsFini StraubingerM. BaaskeElsa FehrerThrough examining Fini Straubinger, an old woman who has been deaf and blind since adolescence, and her work on behalf of other deaf and blind people, this film shows how the deaf and blind struggle to understand and accept a world from which they are almost wholly isolated.★★★★
- DirectorChantal AkermanA documentary examining the effect of a man dragged to death on the residents in Jasper, Texas.★★★★
- DirectorKazuo HaraStarsKazuo HaraMiyuki TakedaSachiko KobayashiIn this uncomfortably intimate film, documentary filmmaker Kazuo Hara visits his ex-girlfriend Miyuki and records her new relationships.★★★★
- DirectorJean-Luc GodardStarsPierre GuyotatRonald ChammahCommissioned by the heads of the 2000 Cannes Film Festival to make an opening-night short commemorating cinema as it enters its second full century, Godard instead offers up a 17-minute barrage of re-edited footage of wars and Nazi atrocities, interspersed with clips of Maurice Chevalier in "Gigi" and Godard's own "À bout de souffle."★★★★
- DirectorChantal AkermanA documentary examining the effect of a man dragged to death on the residents in Jasper, Texas.★★★★
- DirectorYannick BellonChris MarkerStarsPierre ArditiThrough photos made by the French photographer Denise Bellon, a personnal history of France.★★★★
- DirectorFrederick WisemanShot in Frederick Wiseman's trademark blank style - no narration, no music, and minimal editing - this four hour documentary follows a cross-section of the small Maine city's workers, from lobstermen and tugboat operators working the picturesque coast to teachers, hospital workers and shopkeepers in the sleepy downtown center.★★★★
- DirectorAgnès VardaStarsLouis AragonMichel PiccoliElsa TrioletThe story of a poet's (Louis Aragon) love for his wife, the writer Elsa Triolet.★★★★
- DirectorYasujirô OzuStarsKikugoro OnoeKinjirou OnoeShigeru OnoeA short documentary about a great Kabuki dancer.★★★★
- DirectorLiz GarbusStarsF. Murray AbrahamElizabeth BanksAdrien BrodyModern day celebrities interpret excerpts from memoirs written by people who knew Marilyn Monroe as well as her recently discovered personal journals and letters.★★★★
- DirectorLouis LumièreWorkers leaving the Lumière factory for lunch in Lyon, France in 1895; a place of great photographic innovation and one of the birth places of cinema.HONORABLE MENTION
- DirectorWim WendersStarsPina BauschRegina AdventoMalou AiraudoA tribute to the late German choreographer Pina Bausch, as her dancers perform her most famous creations.
- DirectorMichel GondryStarsNoam ChomskyMichel GondryRichard FeynmanA series of interviews featuring linguist, philosopher and activist Noam Chomsky done in hand-drawn animation.
- StarsJohn NashRobert SpitzerJerome WakefieldThe many ways in which Western notions of personal and political freedom are changing in the 21st Century are explored in this three-part documentary from writer and filmmaker Adam Curtis.
- DirectorSusumu Hani
- DirectorOmar AmiralayA documentary about the impact of newly introduced political reforms on a rural village in Syria - a place plagued with tribalism, ignorance and evil.
- DirectorAgnès VardaStarsBill BrentHuey P. NewtonStokely CarmichaelA short film of interviews and protests at a rally to free Huey P. Newton.
- DirectorLionel RogosinStarsRay SalyerGorman HendricksFrank MatthewsBy focusing on the lives of three down-and-out alcoholic transients, the film creates a wrenching portrait of the tragic hopelessness of life on "The Bowery" in New York City.
- DirectorKamran ShirdelIt's a short documentary about prostitutes zone in Tehran which called "Shahre no" before Iran's revolution on 1979. based on interviews with it's inhabitants
- DirectorPaul Thomas AndersonStarsJonny GreenwoodEhtisham Khan AjmeriNihal KhanMusician Jonny Greenwood travels to Rajasthan, where he performs with a multitude of Indian musicians.
- DirectorNoriaki TsuchimotoA documentary about the plight of the victims of Minamata disease, which was caused by the ingestion of fish containing abnormal amounts of mercury released into the sea by a fertilizer factory owned by the Chisso company.
- DirectorBennett MillerStarsTimothy 'Speed' LevitchTimothy "Speed" Levitch, an eccentric New York City tour bus guide, takes tourists around the island of Manhattan and shares an archive of beautifully distorted information about the city.
- DirectorBert SternAram AvakianStarsLouis ArmstrongMahalia JacksonChuck BerryThe highlights of the 1958 Newport Jazz Festival.
- DirectorChantal AkermanStarsChantal AkermanImpersonal and beautiful images of Akerman's life in New York are combined with letters from her loving but manipulative mother, read by Akerman herself.