Movies: Observational cinema

Nai Nai follows the story of a Chinese immigrant grandmother, Chu-Ming Wu. Known as “Nai Nai,” Chu-Ming has always been a woman of control. But her grasp of reality and the control of her own mind is slipping away. Told through the lens of her grands...

Sean Dunne's observational documentary of a 2016 Donald Trump Rally....

Paris, summer 1960. Anthropologist and filmmaker Jean Rouch and sociologist and film critic Edgar Morin wander through the crowded streets asking passersby how they cope with life's misfortunes....

Takes us to locations all around the US and shows us the heavy toll that modern technology is having on humans and the earth. The visual tone poem contains neither dialogue nor a vocalized narration: its tone is set by the juxtaposition of images and...

Nearly thirty years after making his surrealist La Formula Secreta, director Rubén Gámez returned to filmmaking with this impressionistic portrait of modern-day Mexico. Reminiscent in some ways of Godfrey Reggio’s Koyaanisqatsi, Tequila appears to be...

"In Chile, when the sun rises, it had to climb hills, walls and tops before reaching the last stone of the Cordillera. In my country, the Cordillera is everywhere. But for the Chilean citizens, it is an unknown territory. After going North for Nostal...

In 1829 the naturalist Alexander von Humboldt attempted a russian-siberian expedition. Humboldt travelled to obtain a clear view of nature, people and life in this immense country. 2019 naturalists and humanists attempted a transdisciplinary expediti...

Tibetan Buddhist search for the meaning of death in an unforgiving Himalayan landscape and stir compassion by uncovering human truths...

The diary of Takuya Ogushi, a 18 years old Japanese, who begins his new life as a sumo wrestler....

A story of life and death, featuring Lozinski's six-year-old son Tomaszek and elderly people spending time on the benches of a Warsaw park. Riding his scooter, Tomaszek asks the elderly very adult, though basic, questions, which they are happy to ans...

A group of friends gathers to celebrate the end of 2023 and the beginning of 2024. Captured through a cellphone camera, the film showcases their various interactions while highlighting the artistic and cultural influences that shape their lives....

A woman meditates on her life in an 80-minute unbroken zoom shot....

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“Olive” is a short documentary that follows Olive Hagemeier, an energetic woman, on her daily routine of salvaging, repackaging and redistributing food, and occasional other types of “waste”, across Atlanta, GA. Presented in a quiet observational sty...

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A mixture of documentary and fiction as seen through the eyes of a non-participant observer, this drama presents the life of the fisherman Maldonado. After his wife Celia leaves him, we watch his lonely life in a series of cyclical everyday activitie...

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What does it mean to belong to a place, a country? In a south Tel Aviv elementary school, that question is addressed head-on by a fourth-grade class and their teacher. The children are asylum seekers whose families mostly do not have a legal status i...

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