Curated collection
Documentaries to make the table go silent.
Dinner going a little too well? Fix that.These documentaries come with uncomfortable facts, questionable ethics, and just enough existential dread to derail the conversation before dessert.
9 documentaries
“So… how much of your personality do you think the algorithm picked for you?”
This documentary-drama hybrid explores the dangerous human impact of social networking, with tech experts sounding the alarm on their own creations.
“Cute steak. Want to talk about its carbon footprint?”
Follow the shocking, yet humorous, journey of an aspiring environmentalist, as he daringly seeks to find the real solution to the most pressing environmental issues and true path to sustainability.
“Anyway, how confident are we that chicken is a good idea?”
In FRONTLINE’s “The Trouble with Chicken,” correspondent David E. Hoffman investigates how and why the standards and laws around Salmonella have failed to keep up with the increasing danger posed by some strains of the bacteria.The film looks closely at one of the largest Salmonella poultry outbreaks on record, when chicken from Foster Farms sickened more than 600 people over 16 months. Delving into the complex world of food safety, the investigation reveals a seeming contradiction: even though hundreds of people were falling ill, Foster Farms was still meeting the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s (USDA) standards for Salmonella contamination.
“So… anyone want to say where their outfit came from?”
This is a story about clothing. It’s about the clothes we wear, the people who make them, and the impact the industry is having on our world. The price of clothing has been decreasing for decades, while the human and environmental costs have grown dramatically. The True Cost is a groundbreaking documentary film that pulls back the curtain on the untold story and asks us to consider, who really pays the price for our clothing?
“How certain are you that your normal waking consciousness is the correct version of reality?”
Terence McKenna's True Hallucinations is an experimental documentary about the chaos at La Chorrera, the imagination, time, the Logos, belief, hope, madness, and doubt. Created by Peter Bergmann, this project is an expansion of ideas first presented in "The Transcendental Object At The End Of Time".
“Do you think there’s anything in this kitchen that isn’t slowly poisoning us?”
Unraveling one of the biggest environmental scandals of our time, a group of citizens in West Virginia take on a powerful corporation after they discover it has knowingly been dumping a toxic chemical — now found in the blood of 99.7% of Americans — into the local drinking water supply.
“Could you sit across from the person who killed someone you loved and forgive them?”
An Indonesian man with a communist background named Ramli was brutally murdered when the "Communist" purge occurred in 1965. His remaining family members lived in fear and silence until the making of this documentary. Adi, a brother of his, decided to revisit the horrific incident and visited the men who were responsible for the killings and one survivor of the purge. These meetings uncovered sadistic details of the murders and exposed raw emotions and reactions of the killers' family members about what happened in the past - much to Adi's disappointment.
“When does breaking the law become the morally right thing to do?”
Defying the state legislature that outlawed abortion, the Catholic Church that condemned it, and the Chicago Mob that was profiting from it, the members of “Jane” risked their personal and professional lives to support women with unwanted pregnancies. In the pre-Roe v. Wade era — a time when abortion was a crime in most states and even circulating information about abortion was a felony in Illinois — the Janes provided low-cost and free abortions to an estimated 11,000 women.
“Do you think you’d know if you were the bad guy?”
In this chilling and groundbreaking documentary, former Indonesian death squad leaders reenact their real-life mass killings in the style of various film genres. As they recreate their past atrocities, the line between reality and performance blurs, exposing the lingering impact of Indonesia's 1965-66 anti-communist purge and the unsettling psychology of its perpetrators.