Tagged Documentary

How much does a person need to live? And how much does it cost – materially and psychologically, in terms of the immediate present and future possibilities – to be poor? The Cost of Living makes no delay...

In 1995 members of the doomsday cult Aum Shinrikyo (now named Aleph) deposited bags of sarin gas along Tokyo’s subway line during rush hour. It was an act of domestic terrorism that killed 13 people and has...

The Fight is a film of great baseline competence and only scant insight. As a document of four emblematic battles brought by the American Civil Liberties Union against the Trump administration—respectively...

Abbas Fahdel's documentaries often center around humanitarian crises and the immense human suffering that warfare causes, most notably with his epic two-parter Homeland that explored life in Iraq before and...

Everyday Greyness is the story of Magda, a young Polish woman in recovery from drug addiction. Magda has been living at a treatment centre where, along with a small group of others, she has given up her life...

As the ninth largest country in the world, Kazakhstan stretches far across the border between Asia and Europe, bringing together a huge range of ethnicities and cultures into a remarkably diverse society. It...

An overarching theme of this film may be the media publishing industry as a whole, but it is essentially an intimate observation of the press trade at its roots: the newspaper kiosk. In a wealthy area of...

There is no such thing as unskilled labour—only unseen, or unappreciated. Inspired by the Atlanta Washing Society of 1881, where African American laundresses united for better pay and agency, The Washing...

From the cramped quarters of New York’s Chinatown where individual beds are rented, Your Day is My Night artfully brings hidden immigrants into the light. The film follows a handful of people from this close...

In 1991, eight intrepid volunteers ventured into the infamous "Biosphere 2". Spaceship Earth opens with footage from this moment: a cacophony of noise, cheers and waves are freely exchanged. These people are...

Influence, the story of Lord Timothy Bell and his hugely powerful, extremely controversial PR company Bell Pottinger, often feels more like the origin story for a Bond villain than an investigative...

Jeff Bezos’ sinister, late-capitalist empire has long cast a shadow over the book industry, yet in a year when independent bookshops and trade fairs have been forced to shut, its shadow looms larger than...

Alyx Ayn Arumpac assesses the Filipino government’s war on drugs, in this pivotal and terrifying examination of the impact on life in the region. When Rodrigo Duterte is voted in as the president of the...

The transcendent debut from Portuguese director Catarina Vasconcelos partly looks back at how Beatriz meets Henrique, and subsequently marry on Beatriz’s 21st birthday. Henrique is often away, serving as a...

This film was previously reviewed in May 2018 as part of our Cannes Film Festival coverage. The Dead and the Others is a complex creation from directors Joao Salaviza and Renee Nader Messora, which can’t...