Comrades in Dreams (2006), Forgiving Dr. Mengele (2006), Buck (2011), Nico-Icon (1995), Shoah (1985), River (2015), Kanehsatake: 270 Years of Resistance (1993), The Onion Field (1979) ... Let's take a look at the ranked list of the best Non-fiction movies.
Storyline: Filmmakers (and brothers) Albert and David Maysles follow four employees of a company that makes expensive, ornate, illustrated bibles as they attempt to sell the items door-to-door to less-than-interested customers, who are mainly poor or lower-middle-class Catholics with little money to spend on pretty Bibles.—Gary Dickerson <slug@mail.utexas.edu>
Plot Keywords: documentary, american film, 1960s, real life, social observation, working class, american dream ...
Movie Details Click Here !Storyline: A retelling of Sir Ernest Shackleton 's ill-fated expedition to Antarctica in 1914-1916, featuring new footage of the actual locations and interviews with surviving relatives of key expedition members, plus archived audio interviews with expedition members, and a generous helping of the footage and still photos shot on the expedition.—Jon Reeves <jreeves@imdb.com>
Plot Keywords: adventure, documentary, history, survival, legendary, expedition, courage ...
Movie Details Click Here !Storyline: 'National Geographic' photographer James Balog was once a skeptic about climate change. But through his Extreme Ice Survey, he discovers undeniable evidence of our changing planet. In 'Chasing Ice,' we follow Balog across the Arctic as he deploys revolutionary time-lapse cameras designed for one purpose: to capture a multi-year record of the world's changing glaciers. Balog's hauntingly beautiful videos compress years into seconds and capture ancient mountains of ice in motion as they disappear at a breathtaking rate. Traveling with a young team of adventurers by helicopter, canoe and dog sled across three continents, Balog risks his career and his well-being in pursuit of the biggest story in human history. As the debate polarizes America and the intensity of natural disasters ramp up around the world, 'Chasing Ice' depicts a heroic photojournalist on a mission to gather evidence and deliver hope to our carbon-powered planet—Anonymous
Plot Keywords: documentary, climate change, environment, photography, nature, science, global warming ...
Movie Details Click Here !Storyline: In 1968, in 1/500th of a second Eddie Adams photographed a Saigon police chief, General Nygoc Loan, shooting a Vietcong guerrilla point black. Some say that photograph ended the Vietnam war. The photo brought Eddie fame and a Pulitzer, but Eddie was haunted by the man he had vilified. He would say, "Two lives were destroyed that day, the victim's and the general." Other's would say three lives were destroyed. Eddie Adams, like most artists, was tortured by his need for perfection. Nothing he did ever satisfied him. He carved out many careers shooting covers for Life, Time, and even Penthouse. Yet, somehow, he was always pulled back into documenting wars, 13 all together. Finally he hit the wall and couldn't take it anymore. He began shooting celebrities because "It doesn't take anything from you." Eddie was comfortable with kings and coal miners. During his time with Parade magazines he photographed Clint Eastwood, Louis Armstrong, Mother Teresa, and Pope John Paul.—Isaac Hagy
Plot Keywords: war, vietnam war, documentary, history, journalism, photography, media ...
Movie Details Click Here !Storyline: This documentary highlights the historical contexts that gays, lesbians, bisexuals and transgenders have occupied in cinema history, and shows the evolution of the entertainment industry's role in shaping perceptions of LGBT figures. The issues addressed include secrecy -- which initially defined homosexuality -- as well as the demonization of the homosexual community with the advent of AIDS, and finally the shift toward acceptance and positivity in the modern era.
Plot Keywords: documentary, lgbtq+, film history, hollywood, film industry, historical, adaptation ...
Movie Details Click Here !Storyline: Using a wealth of different sources, Robert Greenwald investigates the motives and pretexts of the administration of former President George W. Bush for going to war in Iraq after 9/11. Greenwald's film dissects the different catalysts leading to the war, from the media's treatment of the issue to the practice of "data mining." A panel of experts lend their voices to this examination, including CIA analysts, a former CIA director, previous ambassadors and a weapons inspector.
Plot Keywords: documentary, war, politics, investigation, truth, u.s. government, media ...
Movie Details Click Here !Storyline: In the city of Istanbul, there are more than just human inhabitants. There are also the stray domestic cats of the city who live free but have complicated relationships with the people themselves. This film follows a selection of individual cats as they live their own lives in Istanbul with their own distinctive personalities. However, with this vibrant population, is the reality of an ancient metropolis changing with the times that may have less of a place for them.—Kenneth Chisholm (kchishol@rogers.com)
Plot Keywords: documentary, cats, animals, urban life, human-animal bond, independent film, heartwarming ...
Movie Details Click Here !Storyline: Forty year old documentary filmmaker Ross McElwee has a penchant for filming everything around him. Following the announcement of his impending marriage to his film-making partner Marilyn Levine - marriage something that he and his family never thought would happen for him - McElwee turns on the camera to film life as it happens in respect to this new phase in his life. Both in real terms (as it applies to himself and those around him) and philosophical terms, McElwee discusses, through self-narration, life, death, love, family and babies.—Huggo
Plot Keywords: documentary, autobiographical, family, marriage, death, grief, reflection ...
Movie Details Click Here !Storyline: Documents one year in the life of Nanook, an Eskimo (Inuit), and his family. Describes the trading, hunting, fishing and migrations of a group barely touched by industrial technology. Nanook of the North was widely shown and praised as the first full-length, anthropological documentary in cinematographic history.—<xaviermartin@hotmail.com>
Plot Keywords: documentary, silent film, arctic, expedition, survival, nature, hunting ...
Movie Details Click Here !Storyline: A longtime sex advice columnist gains popularity against the backdrop of a ban on comprehensive sex-education in schools in several Indian states.
Plot Keywords: documentary, sex education, india, sexuality, aging, taboo, society ...
Movie Details Click Here !Storyline: This documentary presents a sobering reminder of the racial tensions that gripped America not so long ago. In Mississippi during the '50s, a black teenager named Emmett Louis Till, who is from Chicago and visiting his great-uncle, whistles at a white woman in public. Not too long afterward, he is kidnapped and murdered. The filmmakers revisit the public outrage that follows, revealing Till's family as being particularly brave for standing up to white racism when it was clearly unsafe to do so.
Plot Keywords: documentary, history, racial discrimination, american history, murder case, social justice, racial violence ...
Movie Details Click Here !Storyline: After 1986, a restricted zone was erected at a radius of 30km around Chernobyl. More than 100.000 people have been evacuated from there, but some have remained or returned. "Pripyat" follows four protagonists who live or work in this zone.
Plot Keywords: documentary, history, disaster, soviet union, environment, science, investigation ...
Movie Details Click Here !Storyline: A historical account of military policy regarding homosexuals during World War II. The documentary includes interviews with several gay WWII veterans.—Travis <mtharris@erols.com>
Plot Keywords: documentary, history, war, lgbtq+, homosexuality, world war ii, discrimination ...
Movie Details Click Here !Storyline: This Ain't California is a celebration of the lust for life, a contemporary documentary trip into the world of roller boarding in the German Democratic Republic. A coming-of-age tale of three teenagers and their passionate love for a sport on the crumbling tarmac of the streets in the German Democratic Republic, which was considered very ill-fitting. The punk fairy tale is a story of the subversive powers of fun in that part of Germany, which had lost touch with its citizens. The film follows its three heroes from their childhood in the seventies through their teenage rebellion in the eighties, ending in the last summer of their life in the German Democratic Republic in 1989, when their life changed forever, and follows them to 2011.—Anonymous
Plot Keywords: documentary, youth culture, rebellion, 1980s, communism, freedom, coming of age ...
Movie Details Click Here !Storyline: Shin Dong-Huyk was born on November 19, 1983 as a political prisoner in a North Korean re-education camp. He was a child of two prisoners who had been married by order of the wardens. He spent his entire childhood and youth in Camp 14, in fact a death camp. He was forced to labor since he was six years old and suffered from hunger, beatings and torture, always at the mercy of the wardens. He knew nothing about the world outside the barbed-wire fences. At the age of 23, with the help of an older prisoner, he managed to escape. For months he traveled through North Korea and China and finally to South Korea, where he encountered a world completely strange to him.—Anonymous
Plot Keywords: documentary, concentration camp, human rights, survivor, interview, true story, dictatorship ...
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