City Hall

Master documentarian Frederick Wiseman (Ex Libris, Titicut Follies) delves into the inner workings of Boston City Hall. With great patience, he deconstructs the mechanisms of a big city, showing a myriad of conflicts, ideologies, and power struggles, as well as its day-to-day operations.

Downstream to Kinshasa

Almost two decades after they got injured in the Six-Day War in Congo, a group of outraged civilians journey to the capital by boat to protest against the indifference toward them. This intimate film follows their odyssey from up close and is completely devoid of self-pity.

El Sicario Room 164

A chilling confession, hard to watch at times, by a hired assassin who decided to retire after 20 years in a drug cartel. Since then, a quarter million dollars has been offered for his head. Winner of the 2011 Docaviv's BEST INTERNATIONAL FILM AWARD.

Fuocoammare (Fire at Sea)

Samuele, 12, plays make-believe on the tiny Italian island of Lampedusa. The sea that supports his family carries thousands of African refugees, who are trying to cross to Europe in dilapidated boats.

Gorbachev. Heaven

Former Soviet ruler Mikhail Gorbachev is now a good-humored, nostalgic 90-year-old man. Filmmaker Vitaly Mansky (Putin’s Witnesses) sits down for personal conversations with him and joins him in private moments, his camera filling the gaps when things are left unsaid.

In the Same Breath

When the virus started taking lives by the hundred-thousands, the Chinese and later American authorities insisted: “there is no reason for concern.” Using rare on-the-ground footage from China, the filmmaker, who had witnessed the horror firsthand, asks: where, if at all, can citizens believe their leaders?

Inside the Red Brick Wall

The underground Collective of Hong Kong Documentary Filmmakers covered the 2019 student protests from an unusual angle: they joined the protesters, marched shoulder to shoulder with them and spent tense weeks trapped beside them under a police siege, oscillating between hope and despair.

Letter to the Editor

Composed entirely of photographs from printed editions of The NY Times over 40 years, Letter to the Editor is the heartfelt musings of a news junkie, and an elegy for the death of the printed newspaper in the digital age.

Listen to the Beat of Our Images

The story of the space center in French Guiana is pieced together from archive footage, which coalesces into memories—simultaneously personal and collective.

MLK/FBI

Martin Luther King frightened White America, and the FBI—who surveilled, wiretapped, and photographed him for years—easily dug up dirt to discredit him. Sam Pollard exposes the machinations that helped White America in its war against the Black Messiah.

My Uncle Tudor

The filmmaker carefully makes her way through her picturesque family home, slowly illuminating disturbing childhood memories.

Notturno

Gianfranco Rosi (Fire at Sea) spent three years filming in Syria, Iraq, Lebanon, and Kurdistan. His beautiful film exposes the human core shared by people and places that have been shaped by war.

President

The 2018 elections in Zimbabwe were supposed to be fair and transparent. Camilla Nielsson (Democrats) joins Nelson Chamisa, the candidate who dares to run against the acting president, on a long and perilous road as he tries to expose election fraud.

Sabaya

Thousands of Yezidi women and girls taken by ISIS are still held captive in a Syrian refugee camp. Brave men and women risk their lives trying to save them. Even after a successful secret rescue operation, the freed "Sabaya" have a long road ahead of them: the road to recovery.

Silence of the Tides

The powerful landscape of northern Europe's Wadden Sea is ever-changing: darkness and light, high tide and low, storms and stillness—and amid all that: tens of thousands of birds, fish, and mammals, including humans, all come and go, repeating fragile cycles. This breathtaking nature is the backdrop for everyday dramas.

Silent Voice

Khavaj cannot speak. He fled Chechnya when his brother, having found out that Khavaj was gay, threatened to murder him. His mother keeps leaving him tormented voicemail messages, but there is nothing he can do—to start anew, he must break away from his past completely.

Taming the Garden

A capricious billionaire demands to uproot giant century-old trees and transplant them to his mansion's garden. The complex engineering feat is about to change the Georgian landscape and the lives of its villagers. This human ecological drama tells the story with uniquely stunning cinematography.

The Communion of My Cousin Andrea

Andrea is unsure about God's existence, but one thing she does know: the communion ceremony needs a serious glam-up.

The Last Hillbilly

America sees them as poor, ignorant, and racist, but Brian Ritchie, his family, and his neighbors—the last Appalachian settlers—are not afraid of being called hillbillies. Doting on their tradition, they fear the dramatic changes happening in their lives and cope with them using unexpected, almost poetic insight.

The Truffle Hunters

Deep in the forests of Italy's north-western Piedmont region, a group of eccentrics follows keen-nosed dogs in search of treasure: rare and expensive truffles. A humorous film about refined tastes, culinary traditions, and true indulgence.

This Rain Will Never Stop

Andriy, whose family fled Syria and came to Ukraine, surviving one war only to end up in another, volunteers with the Red Cross. His story threads through this visually arresting film, tenderly weaving through images of people and places marked by war.