カテゴリー: Documentary films
Seafaring friends from Mumbai cope with a changing climate and an unforgiving economy in different ways in Sarvnik Kaur’s poetic, beautifully shot documentary Sarvnik Kaur’s patient, plangent documentary follows two fishers and friends from Mumbai’s Ko…
Two brave women stand up for human rights as hordes of Uzbeks are dragged from their workplaces to pick state cotton, in this compelling documentary exposing farming practices only just outlawedAs a child growing up in Uzbekistan, film-maker Michael Bo…
Years in the making and boasting astonishing footage, All That Breathes tells the extraordinary story of the bodybuilding brothers getting pollution-choked birds flying again. We meet its directorThere is an astonishing moment near the beginning of All…
Documentary maker Matthew Heineman watches a tragedy unfold as he follows the Green Berets supporting the Afghan army in the last months of the war against the TalibanAcclaimed documentary maker Matthew Heineman is known for his remarkable ability to s…
Two Indian brothers dedicate themselves to rescuing birds that are being poisoned by pollution in this complex and quietly beautiful filmShaunak Sen’s documentary is a complex, thoughtful, quietly beautiful film about the ecosystem and human community….
Sombre documentary shot over five years follows two healthcare workers as they deliver babies in a brutally divided societySnow Hnin Ei Hlaing’s documentary is about two midwives – one Buddhist, one Muslim – in Rakhine state in western Myanmar, on the …
A despairing handwring of a film shows the effects of environmental crisis on India’s capital – with images as nightmarish as sci-fiEnvironmental doom is coming: as the planet heats up, it’s all going to get much worse. Nothing new there – but, terrify…
Phil Grabsky and Shoaib Sharifi have followed Mir for two decades in what is almost a brutal companion piece to Richard Linklater’s BoyhoodThis documentary following one boy’s life in Afghanistan feels like a brutal, desperately sad companion piece to …
Cameraman Daniel McGovern copied footage of Hiroshima and Nagasaki devastation to ensure lessons were learnedThe photograph shows devastation in Nagasaki after the atomic bomb: a scorched wilderness where there was once a city. At its centre stands a l…
Meditative documentary All That Breathes is about two brothers’ devotion to protecting black kites against a backdrop of pollution and violence in DelhiThe award-winning documentary All That Breathes is a meditation on life in Delhi through the eyes an…
Eliza Kubarska’s documentary follows the plight of the Nepalis expected to take huge risks to aid western leisure pursuitsLike Jennifer Peedom’s 2015 film, Sherpa, this climbing documentary is more interested in the Nepali ethnic group than the western…
Payal Kapadia’s award-winning film sees artistic creativity go hand in hand with the fight for political freedom in Modi’s IndiaCinephilia is, not surprisingly, a favourite subject of film directors, and it has a tendency to manifest itself on screen i…
This extraordinary tale of the desperate lengths a gay Afghan man was forced to go to in order to escape persecution is a powerful testament to human enduranceThis animated documentary from Danish film-maker Jonas Poher Rasmussen is an irresistibly mov…
Éléonore Weber’s documentary, air-strike footage of pilots on night missions, could work well in a galleryThis hypnotic meditation on modern warfare from Éléonore Weber is an experimental cine-essay that feels closer to a gallery installation than a do…
Michal Sulima follows piano tuner Desmond O’Keeffe’s expedition to transport a piano to a village school high in the HimalayasThe lesson to be learned from Michal Sulima’s documentary is that if you’re planning to transport a piano to a village school …