New York Times reporter Sydney Schanberg is on assignment covering the Cambodian Civil War, with the help of local interpreter Dith Pran and American photojournalist Al Rockoff. When the U.S. Army pulls out amid escalating violence, Schanberg makes exit arrangements for Pran and his family. Pran, however, tells Schanberg he intends to stay in Cambodia to help cover the unfolding story — a decision he may regret as the Khmer Rouge rebels move in.
This short documentary tells the story of one of the world’s most difficult and bizarre sporting events: The Barkley Marathons. This 100-mile footrace and its 60-hour time limit force athletes to run, crawl and climb an elevation gain equivalent to two treks up Mt. Everest. In nearly thirty years, only fourteen runners, out of over one thousand participants, have finished The Barkley.
Sixteen-year-old Malala Yousafzai was shot in the head by the Taliban for being outspoken about her country’s education system. The Pakistani government spends seven times more on its military than on education. The Taliban banned girls from attending school. Pakistan’s literacy rate is among the lowest in the world, with the number of school aged children who don’t attend school is second highest globally. Malala survived and is now the youngest person to ever be awarded the Nobel peace Prize for her activism for female education. This is the story of Malala’s fight for a right to education and freedom.
Commissioned for the Irish representation at the 55th Venice Biennale in 2013, The Enclave is an immersive, six-screen video art installation by Irish contemporary artist Richard Mosse. Partly inspired by Joseph Conrad’s modernist literary masterpiece Heart of Darkness, the visceral and moving work was filmed in the Democratic Republic of Congo using 16mm colour infra-red film, which captures otherwise invisible parts of the spectrum. The resulting imagery in Mosse’s work is hallucinatory and dream-like with the usual greens of jungle and forest replaced by shimmering violet. The Enclave depicts a complicated, strife-ridden place in a way that reflects its complexity, using a strategy of beauty and transfixion to combat the wider invisibility of a conflict that has claimed so many.
The documentary focuses on the youth movements that overthrew governments in countries such as Georgia, Ukraine, Serbia, Kyrgyzstan and other former socialist countries of Eastern Europe, and shows how, in places where political parties were discredited, student movements financed by U.S. organizations such as the NED, USAID, the National Endowment for Democracy, the International Republican Institute, the International Democratic Institute, Freedom House, and others received the support that helped overthrow their governments, have received the aid that has allowed them to overthrow their governments.
Genuine connections between children and nature can revolutionize our future. But is this discovery still possible in the world's major urban centers? The new chapter of "The Beginning of Life" reveals the transformative power of this concept.
The extraordinary story of comedian Bob Monkhouse's life and career, told through the vast private archive of films, TV shows, letters and memorabilia that he left behind.
The Cistercian monks of Austria are holy men who rise at 4:30 a.m., pray for more than four hours a day and have devoted their lives to God. They're also pop stars. This documentary offers a glimpse at the daily life of the joyous monks of Stift Heiligenkreuz Abbey whose recordings of their ethereal Gregorian chants have turned them into chart-topping music sensations.
Tobacco, climate change, pesticides,... Never has scientific knowledge seemed so vast, detailed and shared. And yet it appears to be increasingly challenged. It is no longer surprising to see private corporations put strategies in place to confuse the public debate and paralyze political decision-making. Overwhelmed by excess of information, how can we, as citizens, sort out fact from fiction? One by one, this film dismantles the workings of this clever manoeuvre that aims to turn science against itself. Thanks to declassified archives, graphic animations and testimonies from experts, lobbyists and politicians, this investigation plunges us into the science of doubt. Along with a team of experts (philosophers, economists, cognitive scientists, political men, or even agnotologists), we explore concrete examples of doubt making and try to understand the whole process and the issues behind it.
After the impressive Gulistan, Land of Roses (VdR 2016), the Kurdish filmmaker Zaynê Akyol returns with these conversations with imprisoned members of the Islamic State, alternating their words with aerial views of the countryside. An unexpected look at a far-reaching current political issue and a film whose subject matter and rhythm create an impressive cinematic object.
In the spring of 1970, between the African Orestiade and The Decameron, Pasolini shot a film for which he wrote a commentary in verses but never finished editing. The film was born as a typical Pasolini intervention: filming the strike of the garbage collectors in Rome, who at the time worked in dramatic health conditions, and filming the humility of their daily work, amidst the waste and scraps of society, in the squares and in the streets. Pasolini also filmed the faces of garbage collectors engaged in claims discussions and the result was an extraordinary anthropological picture of an unknown humanity.
The film consists mainly of interviews with readers of Freud in Brazil and several places in Europe, and touches on topics such as history, translation, culture, language and, especially, Freud himself.
An exploration —manipulated and staged— of life in Las Hurdes, in the province of Cáceres, in Extremadura, Spain, as it was in 1932. Insalubrity, misery and lack of opportunities provoke the emigration of young people and the solitude of those who remain in the desolation of one of the poorest and least developed Spanish regions at that time. (Silent short, voiced in 1937 and 1996.)
A dramatic history of Pu Yi, the last of the Emperors of China, from his lofty birth and brief reign in the Forbidden City, the object of worship by half a billion people; through his abdication, his decline and dissolute lifestyle; his exploitation by the invading Japanese, and finally to his obscure existence as just another peasant worker in the People's Republic.
The social contract: the rules we follow - and some don’t. Breaking Social uncovers the pattern of corruption and kleptocracy erasing the social tissue, followed by social uprisings. In Chile a new turn is taken, with young women in the lead.
Academy Award winning make-up artist Rick Baker reflects on An American Werewolf In London and The Wolfman.
Years after the U.S. invasion of Iraq, a loosely organized insurgency continues to target American and Coalition soldiers, as well as Iraqi security forces and civilians, with devastating results. In this sobering account of the ongoing violence, Ahmed Hashim, a specialist on Middle Eastern strategic issues and on irregular warfare, reveals the insurgents behind the widespread revolt, their motives, and their tactics. The insurgency, he shows, is not a united movement directed by a leadership with a single ideological vision. Instead, it involves former regime loyalists, Iraqis resentful of foreign occupation, foreign and domestic Islamist extremists, and elements of organized crime. These groups have cooperated with one another in the past and coordinated their attacks; but the alliance between nationalist Iraqi insurgents on the one hand and religious extremists has frayed considerably.
Faced with climate change, many countries have embarked on the energy transition. Since the COP21 in 2015, which set demanding targets for reducing greenhouse gases, green energies have been on the rise. The electric car has thus become the mascot of this revolution. But manufacturers remain discreet about the carbon footprint of their cars marked "zero emission". Because not only do they consume electricity that is not always clean, but they also consume rare metals such as cobalt or lithium, the extraction of which causes havoc on the other side of the world. In China, for example, champion of rare metals, in Heilongjiang province, a carpet of toxic dust covers agricultural regions.
Between scenes from his concert in São Paulo's oft-inaccessible Theatro Municipal, rapper and activist Emicida celebrates the rich legacy of Black Brazilian culture.
'Don't build prisons, they cost too much!' In this era of Great Recession, the conservative and tough-on-crime State of Texas takes an unprecedented path by becoming a social justice leader with programs that rehabilitate offenders. Looks like rape, abuse and death are no longer parts of the solution for modern-day Bonnie and Clyde...