Documentaries

German auteur Wim Wenders’s majestic 3D portrait of compatriot, artworld luminary and friend Anselm Kiefer.

This dryly humorous, Wiseman-esque film about an esteemed Czech art school asks: who gets to decide what art is?

This pulse-racing nonfiction thriller follows the individuals risking their lives to defect from North Korea and the pastor granting them passage.

A mother and two of her daughters are joined by actors to work through their family history and grasp the other two daughters’ heartbreaking choices.

Venture behind the pink tutu with the legendary Sex and the City stylist to discover the creative process that made her a New York icon.

In this surreal and haunting documentary, a Ukrainian filmmaker obsessively sifts through the shrapnel of the MH17 plane crash.

Winner of Rotterdam’s top prize, this moving documentary explores the lives of Cameroonian children at the edge of a war zone.

This poetic, visually striking meditation on growing up under apartheid in South Africa is unlike any documentary memoir you’ve seen before.

Winner of Un Certain Regard’s Best Director and L’Œil d’Or at Cannes, this Moroccan documentary sets out to untangle personal and national secrets.

Abandoned by an indifferent government, a remote Siberian village stands united in the face of a massive forest fire that threatens its future.

Brazil’s modern master returns with a haunting tribute to the film-going experience in this Cannes-touted documentary.

This time capsule of an extraordinary unseen history is a work of documentation and preservation – both of a moment in time and of the moving image.

David Cronenberg, Baz Luhrmann, Claire Denis and a host of directors discuss cinema’s future in this riveting sequel to Wim Wenders’s 1982 classic.

In the southern Estonian woods, a group of women talk and embrace the soul-cleansing power of steam in this Sundance award-winning documentary.

This archival explosion relives the wild and unhinged madness of the turn of the millennium.

From Star Trek to actual space travel, 92-year-old William Shatner has done it all. Alexandre O. Philippe beams us up with this touching tribute.

Deep in the US’s Catskill Mountains of the 50s and 60s sat a refuge for transgender women and cross-dressing men to experience life without fear.

This stirring Sundance Grand Jury Prize winner chronicles the love story of a Chilean couple navigating Alzheimer’s disease.

Three children spread their wings as they farewell their parents and enter a boarding school for students who are blind or have low vision.

An intimate self-portrait of Black model, booking agent and fashion industry changemaker Bethann Hardison’s challenge to the colourist status quo.

Winner of the Berlinale Golden Bear, this empathetic film invites viewers to spend time with the residents of a floating art-therapy centre in Paris.

This Sundance U.S. Documentary Directing Award winner is a revelatory portrait of a hospital chaplain and the people under her care during COVID.

Described by its maker as a “meditation on access and loss”, this trailblazing film reframes cinema from a d/Deaf and hard-of-hearing perspective.