Movies: Observational documentary

Nanny, cook or sex slave. For a long time, the mistaken belief that the women in the terrorist organization Islamic State were condemned to blind obedience was held up. But appearances are deceptive. Some of them join the terrorist militia of their o...

An epic aerial journey covering the whole length of China’s Great Wall. Across 2500km, for the first time ever, this triumph of Ming dynasty architecture has been captured in its entirety from the air. With expert narration from William Lindesay, off...

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

Markus Becker is hit by a car, dragged along, his head bashed on a curb and he falls into a coma. The doctors don’t believe that the 45-year-old will survive the next five to ten days. His father makes preparations for the funeral. Markus’ brother Mi...

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 figure skater seeks wisdom from a local sage to cure her diabetes....

They have no roots, no seeds, no flowers, but mosses show immense survival capacities and can suspend their biological activity for long periods. Today, researchers are exploring the exceptional resistance of these archaic organisms. British ecologis...

When an academic unearths a forgotten history, residents of the small township of Pukekohe, including kaumātua who have never told their personal stories before, confront its deep and dark racist past....

When Danish filmmaker Lea Glob first portrayed Apolonia Sokol in 2009, she appeared to be leading a storybook life. The talented Apolonia was born in an underground theater in Paris and grew up in an artists’ community—the ultimate bohemian existence...

Averroès and Rosa Parks: two units of the Esquirol Hospital, which - like the Adamant - are part of the Paris Central Psychiatric Group. From individual interviews to «carer-patient» meetings, the filmmaker focuses on showing a form of psychiatry tha...

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....

Why does Doris Dörrie have a bag on her head in the interview? Consistent in the sense that in her works she always poses the question of how we want to be perceived. Dörrie takes us through the most important stages of her life, her films, her work ...

The loss of biodiversity is highly alarming: our planet is currently experiencing the greatest extinction since the age of the dinosaurs. This film documents the extinction of species currently happening around the world. But it also highlights hopef...

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...

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Since the year 2000, there have been several waves of suicides among the indigenous population of the Colombian Amazon. I discovered that the men commit suicide because of love sorrow. Their wives leave them for white men. The latter think that the I...

In 2001, satellite imagery captured a mysterious “thermal anomaly” on an unexplored volcano at the ends of the Earth. What lies inside could provide new clues to help predict volcanic eruptions around the globe. But the island is so remote with condi...

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...

The White Planet or in French, La Planète Blanche, is a 2006 documentary about the wildlife of the Arctic. It shows interactions between marine animals, birds and land animals, especially the polar bear, over a one year period. The fragility of the ...

Svitlana, a Russian-speaking Ukrainian, examines the colonised part of her consciousness and tries to find answers to the question of how Soviet totalitarianism and Russification influenced the relationships within her family....