Documentaries

A visionary exploration of the inherent biases in surveillance technology from one of North America’s most fascinating and inventive documentary filmmakers.

Hot Docs award winner Todd Chandler examines disturbing evolutions in today’s USA, where schools operate in the shadow of mass shootings.

This ode to sport and friendship takes us to the world’s largest Syrian refugee camp, where two soccer-obsessed teens see the game as their way out.

Veteran filmmaker Frederick Wiseman offers a fascinating longform insight into the dramas, frustrations and triumphs of local government.

Food lovers won’t be able to resist this tantalising story of a master ramen chef and his legendary Tokyo noodle shop.

Festival favourite Andrea Arnold gets up close and personal with a dairy cow to unveil a surprising and unknown world.

Subtitled A Very Human Tech Doc, this timely documentary exposes the true cost of the gig economy quietly powering our everyday lives.

A guided tour through art history as seen through the female gaze – and a savvy, subversive rejoinder to centuries of representation from the eyes of the male beholder.

Misogynist or champion of women? This expansive portrait of a controversial fashion icon captures both light and shade.

Winning a Special Mention at CPH:DOX, this moving, poignant film is a love letter to a deaf and blind brother from his younger sister.

Ahead of her 100th birthday, Isey and her devoted son James prepare for the party of a lifetime.

Oliver Stone knows who really killed the president. Now, his new documentary sets out to convince you.

A book group of Proust superfans elevate the art of collective reading and sharing to delightful new heights.

Dash Snow epitomised “live fast, die young”, ascending from New York’s fringe to the major international art scene during his brief existence.

This timely, intelligent and emotional examination of state-sanctioned violence reveals a disturbingly universal story.

This sprawling, tender documentary captures the inspiring relationship between an unorthodox German schoolteacher and his culturally diverse teenage class.

Before Thurgood Marshall, Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Rosa Parks, there was Pauli Murray. Remember their name.

Part road movie, part video essay, this lyrical tour-de-force from Angelo Madsen Minax finds catharsis in confronting family drama.

From the director of Golden Bear winner Fire at Sea comes an achingly poetic, humane meditation on life in the shadow of war and the Islamic State.

This tense and timely docu-thriller, which won a Sundance award for vérité filmmaking, plunges into the chaos of Zimbabwe’s first democratic elections.

This Sundance 2020 Audience Award winner is a revelatory, immersive adaptation of Naoki Higashida’s memoir of a neurodiverse life.

An intimate portrait of the life and death of beloved globe-trotting television presenter Anthony Bourdain from the Oscar-winning director of 20 Feet from Stardom.

This daring Sundance Directing Award winner tracks a band of volunteers out to rescue ISIS sex slaves from an infamous Syrian border camp.

In the ruthless world of competitive table-setting, it’s knives at 20 places.

Hot Docs 2020’s Best International Feature Documentary winner offers a dog’s-eye view of life in Istanbul.

Sweep the clouds away with this joyous origin story of your favourite childhood TV show.

Go behind the music at the sunny Caribbean studio that birthed some of the biggest hits of the 1980s.

Artist, outsider, writer, queer activist. David Wojnarowicz was all of these things and more, as Chris McKim captures in his fiery documentary.