Movies: Observational documentary

In GLOBAL METAL, directors Scot McFadyen and Sam Dunn set out to discover how the West's most maligned musical genre - heavy metal - has impacted the world's cultures beyond Europe and North America. The film follows metal fan and anthropologist Sam ...

"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...

For centuries, many men and women have left everything to dedicate their lives to contemplation. LIBRES, is a journey into the interior of man. We have obtained permission to enter and speak with people who rarely speak, in places that remain closed...

Portrait of Andy Goldsworthy, an artist whose specialty is ephemeral sculptures made from elements of nature....

Follow filmmakers as they capture the epic journey of African elephants across the Kalahari desert. The team faces extreme weather, inaccessible terrain, crocodile-infested waters and close encounters with lions in order to shine a light on these rem...

Jamie Johnson takes the exploration of wealth that he began in Born Rich one step further. The One Percent, refers to the tiny percentage of Americans who control nearly half the wealth of the U.S. Johnson's thesis is that this wealth in the hands of...

This documentary draws on new evidence to reveal that a fire was raging in Titanic's boiler rooms before she left port, that it was kept secret and, it's now believed, that it led to the tragedy...

Billions of years ago, Venus may have harbored life-giving habitats similar to those on the early Earth. Today, Earth's twin is a planet knocked upside down and turned inside out. Its burned-out surface is a global fossil of volcanic destruction, shr...

Ben Fogle spends a week living inside the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone, gaining privileged access to the doomed Control Room 4 where the disaster first began to unfold....

A Gonzo-style exploration that goes beyond everything you thought you knew about the dangers, and promise, of the Darknet. Hackers, Cypherpunks and crypto-anarchists guide us ever deeper down this rabbit hole, uncovering the hidden light at the botto...

Filmmaker Theo Anthony offers a far-ranging look at the biases in how people see things, focusing on the recorded image....

From 1929 to 1939 Edgar Feuchtwanger lived across the street from Adolf Hitler in Munich Germany From his bedroom the young Jewish boy often viewed the Fuumlhrer just across the avenue A schoolboy in Munich at the time Edgar witnessed the rise of Naz...

By exploring the relationship between the watched and the watching, our film uncovers the trauma and hope engendered by the Chinese all-surveilling state and lends a voice to those that stand in resilient defiance of such blatant abuse of power....

For centuries, the Great Pyramids have fascinated Mankind. Patrice Pooyard's The Revelation Of The Pyramids reveals what lies behind the greatest of archaeological mysteries: a message of paramount importance for humanity. From China to Peru, from Eg...

The moral dimension of humanity's interaction with nonhuman animals and the industries that profit from their exploitation, as informed by world religions. A historical explanation of how the current global situation came to be....

Wet’suwet’en leaders unite in a battle against the Canadian government, corporations, and militarized law enforcement to safeguard their territory from gas and oil pipelines....

A teen with autism unlocks a joyous world of self-expression as she shares her voice for the first time using a letter board....

From the first camera to 45 billion cameras worldwide today, the visual sociologist filmmakers widen their lens to expose both humanity's unique obsession with the camera's image and the social consequences that lay ahead....

In the Makarenko public elementary school in the Paris outskirts, children want to learn and to be cheered while teachers know they do not only teach, they also educate. With care, tenacity and efforts, children are trained to become not only respons...

Farrebique, the first feature-length effort of French documentary filmmaker Georges Rouqier, is widely regarded as his finest film. Rouqier concentrates on a single French farm family, following them through the four seasons. As in the works of Rober...