Frans Bromet goes in search of his family history and discovers that Hermanus Bromet was a well-known slave trader in Suriname. Should he feel guilty for what his ancestor did? How do you deal with a burdened family past?
Social & External
In 2013, three women emerged from a flat in Brixton. They had been held there for decades by Aravindan Balakrishnan, a revolutionary Maoist who controlled the women with brainwashing techniques and tales of a sinister, world-controlling machine he called 'Jackie'.
When Ines died, she left a very particular legacy, 10 books that read 'For my children'; it was the story of her life. Marked by a youth idyllic love, Ines was forced to marry a violent and womanizer man with whom she had 20 children. In the 50s, she managed to get divorce and 20 years after her death, Luisa, great-granddaughter of INES, reads, rescues and makes visible her history.
A moving recording of the late writer and renowned jazz singer Abbey Lincoln is captured in this new film from Brooklyn-born director Rodney Passé, who has previously worked with powerhouse music video director Khalil Joseph. Reading from her own works, Lincoln’s voice sets the tone for a film that explores the African American experience through fathers and their sons.
“Don’t end up alone like I did.” This plea expressed by her grandmother before passing, haunts Tatiana, a single, 40-year-old documentary filmmaker. Filled with questions about what it means to “not end up alone,” Tatiana explores her grandma Teresa’s life: an imposing woman who owned an iconic movie theater, divorced three times and challenged the Dominican social norms of her era. The filmmaker embarks on a journey through family archives, old films and hundreds of letters, constructing —or trying to deconstruct— a story about love, expectations and solitude.
During the last forty years, the photographer Sebastião Salgado has been travelling through the continents, in the footsteps of an ever-changing humanity. He has witnessed the major events of our recent history: international conflicts, starvations and exodus… He is now embarking on the discovery of pristine territories, of the wild fauna and flora, of grandiose landscapes: a huge photographic project which is a tribute to the planet's beauty. Salgado's life and work are revealed to us by his son, Juliano, who went with him during his last journeys, and by Wim Wenders, a photographer himself.
No profession, no say, no freedom of expression. Life as a prince consort is not exactly pleasure taxing. No constitution ascribes any function to the husband of a queen. Nowhere does it say what he must or must not do. A life in the shadow of the crown. Can that go well?
A fascinating account of the presidency of Andrew Jackson, who was both one of America's great presidents and a borderline tyrant. The seventh president shook up the glossy world of Washington, DC with his "common-man" methods and ideals, but also oversaw one of the most controversial events in American history: the forced removal of Indian tribes, including the Cherokees, from their homes.
Paul Grignon's 47-minute animated presentation of "Money as Debt" tells in very simple and effective graphic terms what money is and how it is being created
Inspired by the powerful true story of the Igbo Landing of 1803, where a group of enslaved Africans chose the ocean over slavery. This poetic film follows African freediver Tatiana Mendes as she confronts her own inner turmoil beneath the surface. Through the discipline of freediving, she dives into more than just water. She descends into inherited trauma, ancestral memory, and the quiet violence of modern life.
At the edge of the Yangtze River, not far from the Three Gorges Dam, young men and women take up employment on a cruise ship, where they confront rising waters and a radically changing China.
The free, almost naive view from the perspective of a child puts the "68ers" in a new, illuminating light in the anniversary year 2008. The film is a provocative reckoning with the ideological upbringing that seemed so progressive and yet was suffocated by the children's desire to finally grow up. With an ironic eye and a feuilletonistic style, author Richard David Precht and Cologne documentary film director André Schäfer trace a childhood in the West German provinces - and place the major events of those years in completely different, smaller and very private contexts.
On the military road construction site, on the pastures of Lessinia, writer Carlo Stuparic wrote to his brother Giani. The film celebrates his memory.
Jeffery Robinson's talk on the history of U.S. anti-Black racism, with archival footage and interviews.
Avelino Chillarón was 12 or 13 years old when he realized that his surnames and those of his cousins didn't match, so he decided to ask his uncle. This is how he learned that, although his father and aunt were siblings, they didn't have the same father, so he and his cousins didn't share the same grandfather. In this way, Avelino realized that there was a part of his family he didn't know. The protagonist of this story feels partially mutilated from a part of his family history, a part that was taken away from him by a regime that established, over the years, a long period of widespread social amnesia about a series of corpses and missing persons throughout the spanish geography.
Fear and fascination arise in Muriel Grey when she remembers the figure of her father, who passed away when she was still very young. Thirty years after his death, Muriel will tell us the story of José Carlos Grey, a Black Holocaust survivor, freedom fighter in the Spanish Civil War and the French Resistance, and one of the only Black men known to have been imprisoned at the Mauthausen concentration camp in Austria.
While searching for her grandmother, the director comes across the story of three brothers who are torn between the fronts of political ideologies in the Third Reich and divided Germany: "the third brother" is the filmmaker's grandfather, who, in confronting her father, tries to overcome decades of speechlessness and, in the process, to understand where in the past her father's sense of family fell by the wayside.
My mother has died. Her name was Maria. Her children, we, Raúl and Santiago, discover among the objects left by our mother hundreds of photographs from our maternal grandfather, from REGINA -our great-aunt-, from our mother, from our father... And through those photographs, and with the help from an old camera -my grandfather's inheritance-, I, -along several trips to the places where those photographs were taken-, seek to recover and not lose my memory... that of my family. In the end, we will have to think on our memory and on what we have preserved and lost.
One of the most important events in Brazilian history, the Búzios Revolt of 1798 was led by dozens of black men who rose up to overthrow the colonial government, proclaim independence and establish a democratic Republic, free from slavery. The boldness of these men called on the people to make the Revolution and the conspiracy spread to the city of Bahia. The seizure of power is near. But the movement is denounced, the government sets up a Devassa against hundreds of people and four of them are hanged and quartered.
Echo is a youngster who can't quite decide if it's time to grow up and take on new responsibilities-or give in to her silly side and just have fun. Dolphin society is tricky, and the coral reef that Echo and his family call home depends on all of its inhabitants to keep it healthy. But Echo has a tough time resisting the many adventures the ocean has to offer.
Canadian actress and filmmaker Sarah Polley investigates certain secrets related to her mother, interviewing a group of family members and friends whose reliability varies depending of their implication in the events, which are remembered in different ways; so a trail of questions remains to be answered, because memory is always changing and the discovery of truth often depends on who is telling the tale.
A compilation of over 30 years of private home movie footage shot by Lithuanian-American avant-garde director Jonas Mekas, assembled by Mekas "purely by chance", without concern for chronological order.
The story of how Sicilian Mafia boss Tommaso Buscetta (1928-2000), the Godfather of Two Worlds, revealed, starting in 1984, the deepest secrets of the organization, thus helping to convict the hundreds of mafiosi who were tried in the trial held in Palermo between 1986 and 1987.
Scientists examine underground clues from over 250,000 years ago that raise questions about our early relatives — and what it truly means to be human.
Lyrical and powerfully personal essay film that reflects on the deaths of her husband Lou Reed, her mother, her beloved dog, and such diverse subjects as family memories, surveillance, and Buddhist teachings.
Through deeply personal interviews with her siblings and an examination of the photographs, letters, and belongings left behind, Mariska assembles a new portrait of her mother Jayne Mansfield, an extraordinary and complex woman.
From the heights of her modeling fame to her tragic death, this documentary reveals Anna Nicole Smith through the eyes of the people closest to her.
Serial killer Dennis Nilsen narrates his life and horrific crimes via a series of chilling audiotapes recorded from his jail cell.
Marc-André Leclerc, an exceptional climber, has made solo his religion and ice his homeland. When filmmaker Peter Mortimer begins his film, he places his camera at the base of a British Columbia cliff and waits patiently for the star climber to come down to answer his questions. Marc André, a little uncomfortable, prefers to return to the depths of the forest where he lives in a tent with his girlfriend Brette Harrington. In the heart of winter, Peter films vertiginous solos on fragile ice. He tries to make appointments with the climber who is never there and does not seem really concerned by this camera pointed at him "For me, it would not be a solo if there was someone else" . Marc-André is thus, the "pure light" of the mountaineers of his time, which marvel Barry Blanchard, Alex Honnold or Reinhold Messner, interviewed in the film. An event film for an extraordinary character.
Director Michael Apted revisits the same group of British-born adults after a 7 year wait. The subjects are interviewed as to the changes that have occurred in their lives during the last seven years.
Serving life in prison for murdering their parents, Lyle and Erik Menendez speak out in this documentary explaining the shocking crime and ensuing trials.
A documentary on the expletive's origin, why it offends some people so deeply, and what can be gained from its use.
Darwin meets Hitchcock in this documentary. Directors Dan Geller and Dayna Goldfine have created a parable about the search for paradise, set in the brutal yet alluring landscape of the Galapagos Islands, which interweaves an unsolved 1930s murder mystery with stories of present day Galapagos pioneers. A gripping tale of idealistic dreams gone awry, featuring voice-over performances by Cate Blanchett, Diane Kruger, and Gustaf Skarsgard.
Ross McElwee sets out to make a documentary about the lingering effects of General Sherman's march of destruction through the South during the Civil War, but is continually sidetracked by women who come and go in his life, his recurring dreams of nuclear holocaust, and Burt Reynolds.
A detailing of the rise to prominence and global sporting superstardom of six supremely talented young Manchester United football players (David Beckham, Nicky Butt, Ryan Giggs, Paul Scholes, Phil and Gary Neville). The film covers the period 1992-1999, culminating in Manchester United's European Cup triumph.
A documentary detailing the epic Rogues' Gallery of DC Comics from The Joker and Lex Luthor, Sinestro, Darkseid and more, this documentary will explore the Super Villains of DC Comics.
When Allied forces liberated the Nazi concentration camps in 1944-45, their terrible discoveries were recorded by army and newsreel cameramen, revealing for the first time the full horror of what had happened. Making use of British, Soviet and American footage, the Ministry of Information’s Sidney Bernstein (later founder of Granada Television) aimed to create a documentary that would provide lasting, undeniable evidence of the Nazis’ unspeakable crimes. He commissioned a wealth of British talent, including editor Stewart McAllister, writer and future cabinet minister Richard Crossman – and, as treatment advisor, his friend Alfred Hitchcock. Yet, despite initial support from the British and US Governments, the film was shelved, and only now, 70 years on, has it been restored and completed by Imperial War Museums under its original title "German Concentration Camps Factual Survey".
A portrait of the life and career of Robert Downey Sr. (1936-2021), the visionary and fearless US filmmaker — father of actor Robert Downey Jr. — who in the sixties and seventies laid the foundations for countercultural comedy.
A documentary about the making of David Fincher's 2008 film THE CURIOUS CASE OF BENJAMIN BUTTON. Virtually every element in the evolution of the Fincher's film is documented here, from the project's attachment to numerous other directors during the 1990s, to its shoot in 2006 and 2007 in New Orleans, to its complex, CGI-intensive postproduction process.