Documentary Movies

Those who knew iconic funnyman John Candy best share his story, in their own words, through never-before-seen archival footage, imagery, and interviews.

The story of my grandmother's first encounter with a "caboclo," a spirit rooted in Afro-Brazilian traditions, is passed down from generation to generation. Like an invocation, it becomes the narrative matrix for other visions and accounts, especially among the women in the family. Beyond the visible spectrum, Aparição reflects on vision as a collective sense.

Torremolinos, province of Málaga, Spain, autumn 1981. In the basement of a pub frequented by foreigners, five young self-taught people found a musical group that in less than a year conquers the charts: Danza Invisible, one of the best bands in the history of Spanish pop music, was born.

A Vietnamese documentary on human suffering and the meaning of kindness.

An anthropology student and her companion, a film student, want to direct a documentary about a community of hunter-gatherers in Argentina. The difference between the well-off young urbanites and the filmed subjects appears in the first shooting moments already: the sound recorder obsessed with the loss of his Swiss Army knife, incongruous yoga sessions in the middle of a miserable village, tedious explanations causing perplexity and quiet irony on the part of the Wichi, whose full collaboration is still required for this project that intends to ‘increase the visibility’ of a traditional way of life threatened by land disputes...

Everyone has their own Sulev Nõmmik. To whom the director Sulev Nõmmik, to whom Kärna Ärni alias Ernst Kern, some remember him as a ballet dancer, others as a satirist. What these parts mean together and whether the whole can be divided, the film tries to answer.

This documentary offers a deeply intimate look at extraordinary teenager Billie Eilish. Award-winning filmmaker R.J. Cutler follows her journey on the road, onstage, and at home with her family as the writing and recording of her debut album changes her life.

In a remote corner of Santiago de Cuba, a family of Haitian origin celebrates the goddess Erzulie in prayer and dance. The family shares the pain resulting from the tragic history of Haitian migrants who work in the Cuban sugar industry.

Documentary about the Alcântara Family, descendants of Mestre Afonso who keep their roots alive in the streets and on stage.

Take a look back and enjoy the highlights from the FC Barcelona tour of Japan and South Korea.

A batch of 110 love letters exchanged by two lovers in the 1950s, discovered in Mato Grosso do Sul, is the starting point for this film.

"The wound and the knife" is several things, or at least three: a documentary, a fiction and an essay. A documentary about the creative process of the last 5 years of the artist Emilio García Wehbi, a series of fictional scenes that dialogue with his work and a kind of essay on the body. In this sense, the staging is situated in the fragment, not only in the fragments of Wehbi's works, but also in the fragments of the bodies that make up those works. Thus, a little adrift and with a puzzle structure, in "The wound and the knife" I manifest a constant will to jump into the void, in this way the film denies itself as a closed work, but rather, what what it tries to be is a draft, the single notes that survived my own process.

Facing the death of his country’s glaciers and the loss of his beloved grandparents, Icelandic writer Andri Snær Magnason turns his archives into a time capsule to hold what is slipping away — family, memory, time, and water.

This historic film, completed in 1995 by filmmaking duo Tareque Masud and Catherine Masud tells the true story of a troupe of singers traveling through the refugee camps and zones of war during the Bangladesh Liberation War in 1971. The film blends documentary and fictional genres in a musical structure to tell the story of the birth of a nation and the ideals of secularism and tolerance on which it was founded. The filmmakers combined footage of the cultural troupe and their activities, shot by American filmmaker Lear Levin in 1971, with historic footage collected from archives around the world, to create “Muktir Gaan” (Song of Freedom).

Among the many victims of the military dictatorship that raged in Brazil from 1964 to 1985, a small group of guerilla fighters – Chael, Roberto, Reinaldo and Dora – got arrested, tortured, some of them killed or forced into exile. Before and after their arrest, during their torture sessions, the police photographed them. Together with the official reports, these photos are the material Anita Leandro worked on from the inside to bring these four people’s fate out of oblivion.

Year 2016 - Decommunisation is spreading across Ukraine. In the Lviv region, in the very heart of Bandera's territory, there is the town of Chervonohrad, famous for being the first Soviet place where a statue of Lenin was torn down. However, even 26 years later, there is a heated debate between the proponents of different ideologies. We see the opposite poles of Ukrainian society in front of us: a choir of the Russian community named The Living Memory, and a singing couple of OUN-URA nationalists called the Undefeated. What they have in common is the Chervonohrad People's House. The story is about the deep, implicit processes which actually stand behind the torn-down monuments, and about the way two parallel universes collide in the Chervonohrad People's House.

In Curitiba, the group that leads music label Meia-Vida is responsible for a secret portion of the city, hidden behind secluded apartments, dimly lit rooms and crooked, labyrinthine songs, responsible for one of the most fascinating musical movements in the country.

The life and work of poet Antonio Gonçalves da Silva, better known as Patativa do Assaré, one of the most recognized and celebrated popular poets of national poetics. A look at the political side of his acts, the writing process of his poems and their importance for Brazilian culture, narrated through testimonials given, at various times, by their family, friends and admirers.

In the south of Chile on the Chiloé Island, Carlos Ruiz works as an operator in an industrial cannery. He is one of the cogs that makes the machine turn, except when he is a machine himself, like when he delivers blows on the punching-ball. A machine that dreams of glory. Because in his other life, Carlos is little-by-little becoming “the Guru”, who ceaselessly trains in what little leisure time he has so that he can win his match.