Curated collection
For when “What have you been watching lately?” needs a better answer. Added some conversation starters, no need for thanks, just invite me to the wedding.
This collection is for anyone who wants to skip the small talk and jump straight into a good story. Pick one for your date and it might just give you both something genuine to laugh about or debate together.
13 documentaries
“My feelings for you are like Jiro's dreams of sushi. Intimate, artistic and full of soul”
Revered sushi chef Jiro Ono strives for perfection in his work, while his eldest son, Yoshikazu, has trouble living up to his father's legacy.
“A beautiful film about caring for something even when the world feels impossible.” (Aw)
Against the darkening backdrop of New Delhi's apocalyptic air and escalating violence, two brothers devote their lives to protecting one casualty of the turbulent times: the bird known as the black kite.
"Can there ever be one definitive version of a relationship? My feelings for you are definitive though"
Canadian actress and filmmaker Sarah Polley investigates certain secrets related to her mother, interviewing a group of family members and friends whose reliability varies depending on their implication in the events, which are remembered in different ways; so a trail of questions remains to be answered, because memory is always changing and the discovery of truth often depends on who is telling the tale.
"I wish I was like the camera in Cameraperson, but I'd be capturing your pretty eyes"
As a visually radical memoir, CAMERAPERSON draws on the remarkable footage that filmmaker Kirsten Johnson has shot and reframes it in ways that illuminate moments and situations that have personally affected her. What emerges is an elegant meditation on the relationship between truth and the camera frame, as Johnson transforms scenes that have been presented on Festival screens as one kind of truth into another kind of story—one about personal journey, craft, and direct human connection.
"Does doing something impossible make it beautiful? The impossibility of you is beautiful <3"
On August 7th 1974, French tightrope walker Philippe Petit stepped out on a high wire, illegally rigged between New York's World Trade Center twin towers, then the world's tallest buildings. After nearly an hour of performing on the wire, 1,350 feet above the sidewalks of Manhattan, he was arrested. This fun and spellbinding documentary chronicles Philippe Petit's "highest" achievement.
“Can paying attention make ordinary life feel extraordinary? You make ordinary things feel extraordinary”
Composed of intimate and unencumbered moments of people in a community, this film is constructed in a form that allows the viewer an emotive impression of the Historic South - trumpeting the beauty of life and consequences of the social construction of race, while simultaneously a testament to dreaming.
"What does it really mean to protect something you love? Also I love you. Ok please continue."
The Indigenous Uru-eu-wau-wau people have seen their population dwindle and their culture threatened since coming into contact with non-Native Brazilians. Though promised dominion over their own rainforest territory, they have faced illegal incursions from environmentally destructive logging and mining, and, most recently, land-grabbing invasions spurred on by right-wing politicians like President Jair Bolsonaro. With deforestation escalating as a result, the stakes have become global.
"A lot can happen in three minutes you know"
The story of the only three minutes of footage —a home movie shot by David Kurtz in 1938— showing images of the Jewish inhabitants of Nasielsk (Poland) before the beginning of the Shoah.
"Let's talk about masculinity, loneliness, social expectation"
In a country where eligible men greatly outnumber women, three perpetual bachelors join an intensive seven-day dating camp led by one of China’s most sought-after dating coaches in what may be their last-ditch effort to find love.
"Let's talk about the strange beauty of dedicating yourself to something most people never notice"
In the dense forests of the Eastern Himalayas, moths are whispering something to us. In the dark of night, two curious observers shine a light on this secret universe.
"I feel strongly about algorithmic discrimination, data, and who gets harmed when technology is treated as neutral"
Exploring the fallout of MIT Media Lab researcher Joy Buolamwini's startling discovery that facial recognition does not see dark-skinned faces accurately, and her journey to push for the first-ever legislation in the U.S. to govern against bias in the algorithms that impact us all.
Drop a little street-level philosophy into your next dinner conversation.
Examined Life pulls philosophy out of academic journals and classrooms, and puts it back on the streets. Offering privileged moments with great thinkers from fields ranging from moral philosophy to cultural theory, Examined Life reveals philosophy's power to transform the way we see the world around us and imagine our place in it.
Let Werner Herzog explain the internet and take all the credit.
Werner Herzog's exploration of the Internet and the connected world.