Documentary movies

Beto a beekeeper is the guide in this poetic documentary on a Western Sierra Madre village in Mexico: where elders tend to animals while youth are in school, some of them rehearsing for a production of Romeo and Juliet.

A filmic reflection on the way in which cinema taught us to live romantic love during the 20th century, building an impossible ideal within our personal relationships. Cinema taught viewers how they had to see it, worse, it showed directors how they had to film it. Based on quotations from early cinema films, Contar el amor discusses the role of sex and violence as central themes in our increasingly broad but, at the same time, less pluralistic audiovisual universe.

A young film director returns to Venezuela, inspired to make a film based on his father's life in the Amazon jungle (La Fortaleza, Jorge Thielen Armand). He casts Father to play himself. What starts as an act of love and ambition — filmmaking to more deeply understand the self, and the other — spirals into a process which confronts Father’s struggles with addiction and his life devoid of his son. EL FATHER PLAYS HIMSELF holds a steady lens to the way the act of cinema unearths, binds, heals and destroys.

An intimate and revealing autoethnographic documentary about uprootedness, motherhood, love of film, friendship and freedom. Two filmmakers who have been best friends since childhood, both part of the Cuban diaspora, share their intimate and emotional journey while they try to find themselves and each other in a foreign land.

Every morning Krilli prepares the myriad ingredients required to make the lobster soup at the Bryggjan café, a tiny eatery in Iceland’s dullest town. His wife helps him in the kitchen and yearns to return to Rejkyavik. In the café, Krilli’s brother Alli sits with the old fishermen, the last boxer in Iceland and the translator of Don Quixote into Icelandic. Every day they find a new answer to the world’s problems. Once a month the neighbours meet at the Bryggjan café to remember those who died in Grindavik and pronounce their names. Four crazy musicians play jazz. A few lost tourists turn up at the fishing harbour and are captivated by the atmosphere in the café. Real people, they think. A real place. On the other side of the mountain is the Blue Lagoon, the island’s great attraction. People from all over the world come in fascination to see the volcanoes, the ice and the genesis of the Earth.

Havana, spring 1971: The poet Heberto Padilla has just been set free and appears before the Cuban Writers' Union where he pronounces a statement of "heartfelt self-criticism", declares himself to be a counterrevolutionary agent and throws accusations of complicity at many of his colleagues present at the event, among them, his wife. A month previously, his arrest under the accusation of endangering the security of the Cuban state had mobilised prominent intellectuals all over the world, who wrote a letter to Fidel Castro calling for the release of the poet, whose only sin had been to dissent through his poetic work. The writer's mea culpa, the recording of which is shown for the first time to the public, marks the narrative line of a story including the testimonies of Gabriel García Márquez, Julio Cortázar, Mario Vargas Llosa, Jean-Paul Sartre, Jorge Edwards and Fidel Castro.

The early days of the future genius of Spanish cinema Luis García Berlanga, from his birth in Valencia in 1921 to his departure to Madrid in 1947 to become a filmmaker.

What would happen if you met someone who has the power to change your entire life and destiny? This documentary tells the story of five people who assure audiences that He is alive and has brought them back to life.

The last year in the life of Diego Maradona told by friends, family and former companions reveals his deep humanity. In the midst of the Covid 19 pandemic, a Maradonian funeral sends him away amid tears, songs and tear gas.

Weeks after the nationwide COVID-19 lockdown, seven migrant labourers, on the verge of starvation, decided to go to their village just like millions of others.

An account of the life and artistic career of Raffaella Carrà (1943-2021), Italian pop star and television personality, told through the voices of those who knew her best.

In Venezuela, amidst a backdrop of poverty, murder, and corruption, the El Sistema youth orchestra offers children hope and the opportunity to pursue a life of art in spite of the harshness of the society around them. Yet the country’s spiraling collapse and political repression threatens the musicians’ dreams of a better life.

Three working-class teenage girls in a port city in Bangladesh escape daily hardships and stifling family lives by riding waves on their surfboards and grabbing hold of the fleeting and thrilling sense of freedom that brings.

The Rocket is a century-old paddle steamer with regular sailings from the Bangladeshi capital Dhaka, transporting passengers to various destinations along the river. This double-decker vessel has clearly seen better days, but it’s still a popular means of transport for passengers from all walks of life.

Screen icon Charlotte Rampling has fascinated the world of cinema, fashion and photography with her mysterious and almost inaccessible beauty. A major figure in genre and auteur films, she is unclassifiable: between presence and absence, shyness and audacity, she's always hypnotic, magnetic and fascinating. From her film debut in the mid-1960s in England, to her unconventional career path, through the tragic loss suicide of her older sister that will irremediably mark her acting, this film is a dive into the existential quest of a complex actress, whose every facet is discovered through her roles. Through a conversation with the actress herself, along with personal archives and extracts from her films, this documentary raws a dazzling portrait of her life and career.

Preparing for a role, an actress holds conversations with pregnant young girls. Throughout the process, the girls lay out the stories of their own lives on camera, changing the course of the production of the film.

Iván Bilbao has just spent 5 years in prison. Upon his release, he is reunited with his wife Yamila, his daughter Luz, and Chascomùs, his hometown, where his reputation is notorious. Eager to settle down, he resumes boxing and pawnbroking. Pedro Speroni films this chaotic return up close, underscored by tight, uppercut-like editing work.

He was born in Granada, the only city in the world with an explosive name. At the age of ten he joined the Falange because he wanted to play the drum. His biggest musical influences have been Holy Week and his first host, the one he was given at birth. It was produced at the age of sixteen. A little later he began using drugs to escape. he should have died before thirty. For forty years he has hit the drums as life has hit him, with all his might.

A history of Argentine horror cinema, from its beginnings in 1934 to present day. It is a path of defeat, dead-end streets and triumphs, where the protagonists will lead us through the lesser known hallways of local horror.

Eight foreign characters recall their exploits and fears in Malaga, a paradise city that starts a revolution on July 18th 1936, as the military coup is stopped by popular rebellion, until February 9th 1937, when Mussolini troops take Malaga and put it under the rule of Franco. Seven months that shape the stark tale of a besieged city, the first capital to be conquered in Spanish Civil War and a prelude of WW2.

A vision from Limbo, where the canoeist of the eternal lake floats in his boat, between sleep and wakefulness. When he sleeps, he dreams of the everyday of a parallel time. when he wakes up, the same song haunts him again and again. his boat, “ara” (time, in guarani) travels through time like a shooting star.