カテゴリー: Documentary films
In the face of many obstacles, a Dalit woman proves her determination to forge a career as a film-makerAfter she took up film-making, Belmaya Nepali had to face disapproval from her husband and her highly patriarchal village in Nepal; but this was only…
An elderly English couple take a 5,000-mile road trip across India and Bangladesh in their Rolls-Royce in this gentle travel documentaryHere’s a gentle, low-stakes travel documentary about a couple’s 5,000-mile road trip across India and Bangladesh in …
This engaging music doc recounts the time the band enjoyed a spiritual summer of love in Rishikesh, and briefly turned the whole world on to IndiaThe memory of the Beatles’ relationship with India is revived in this engaging documentary, and if there i…
India’s only all-women news organisation is the subject of an award-winning documentary. The film-makers explain their inspiring courage and energyA woman explains how a group of four men repeatedly broke into her house and raped her; six times so far….
Beauty technician Sachi and cigarette seller Parveen yearn for ‘freedom lives’ where they can proudly flaunt their relationships with other women in this free-form filmAn unnerving cacophony opens Priya Sen’s Yeh Freedom Life: it plunges straight into …
Observers worry rule change in Chinese city will restrict pro-democracy movement even furtherHong Kong’s censors have been given expanded powers to vet films for national security breaches in the latest blow to the Chinese city’s political and artistic…
This heartfelt documentary focuses on free-ranging dogs and the people on the fringes of Indian society who care for themThe street dogs that feature in this lyrically-shot documentary aren’t strays, exactly; they are the indigenous, free-ranging “pye …
Mundane life meets magical daydreams in a West Bengal village where discarded film footage is turned into toysAn artful hybrid of documentary and fiction, That Cloud Never Left zooms in on quotidian life in Daspara, a small West Bengal village where to…
French documentarian Thomas Balmès checks in with the Himalayan monk he filmed back in 2013 to find him addicted to online romanceIn 2013, French documentary-maker Thomas Balmès made a film called Happiness, about an eight-year-old monk called Peyangki…
Carlos Casas’s film – half documentary, half experimental essay – is a near-wordless evocation of a ‘celebrity’ Sri Lankan elephant’s confrontation with deathCarlos Casas’s Cemetery arrives on the arthouse streaming service Mubi, a slow sensory film wi…
Award-winning documentary Rising Silence preserves the testimony of some of the 200,000 women abducted during the country’s war of independenceIn 1971, during the nine-month war that gave Bangladesh its independence from then West Pakistan, four sister…
A film charting Pat Farmer’s 4,600km dash across India piles on the platitudes, reducing an amazing odyssey to nippy travelogueThe Indian ascetic tradition can add another name to its ranks: former Australian parliamentary secretary and ultra-marathon …