American Factory
In 2014, a Chinese billionaire opened a Fuyao factory in a shuttered General Motors plant in Dayton, Ohio. For thousands of locals, the arrival of this multinational car-glass manufacturer meant regaining their jobs—and dignity—after the recession left them high and dry. American Factory takes us inside the facility to observe what happens when workers from […]
Ascension
Mesmerizing in its imagery, Ascension is an impressionistic portrait of China’s growing class divide through staggering observations of labor, consumerism and wealth. The film is structured in three parts, ascending through the levels of the capitalist structure: workers running factory production, the middle class selling to aspirational consumers, and the elites reveling in a new […]
Bisbee ’17
Cameraperson
Drawing on footage she’s shot over the course of 25 years, documentary cinematographer Kirsten Johnson searches to reconcile her part in the thorny questions of permission, power, creative ambition and human obligation that come with filming the lives of others. (Ambulante)
Casting Jonbenet
A film that examines both our collective memory and the performative nature of nonfiction filmmaking, CASTING JONBENET is a gripping, stylized exploration of the world’s most sensational child-murder case, the still unsolved death of six-year-old American beauty queen, JonBenet Ramsey. Created over the course of 15 months, filmmaker Kitty Green traveled to the Ramsey’s Colorado […]
The Cave
Oscar nominee Feras Fayyad (“Last Men in Aleppo”) delivers an unflinching story of the Syrian war with his powerful new documentary, The Cave. For besieged civilians, hope and safety lie underground inside the subterranean hospital known as the Cave, where pediatrician and managing physician Dr. Amani Ballour and her colleagues Samaher and Dr. Alaa have […]
The Challenge
Falconry has a history that stretches back over 40 centuries. In the West it was a prevailing passion of the medieval aristocracy, but its prestige continues undiminished in contemporary Arab culture. Three years of observing this form of hunting in the field have made it possible to capture the spirit of a tradition that today […]
City of Ghosts
Director Matthew Heineman returns with another immersive documentary from the front lines of one of the most dangerous places on Earth. In City of Ghosts, Heineman focuses his camera on the heroic citizen-journalists of Raqqa is Being Slaughtered Silently (RBSS), who take great risks in order to document Islamic State atrocities in their home city. […]
Cold Case Hammarskjöld
In 1961, United Nations secretary-general Dag Hammarskjöld’s plane mysteriously crashed, killing Hammarskjöld and most of the crew. With the case still unsolved 50-plus years later, Danish journalist, filmmaker, and provocateur Mads Brügger (The Red Chapel, The Ambassador) leads us down an investigative rabbit hole to unearth the truth. Scores of false starts, dead ends, and […]
Collective
What begins as a seeming exposé into a tragic accident gradually turns into something deeper and more shocking in this heartrending and revelatory documentary about state neglect and corruption. In October 2015, a devastating fire broke out at the Bucharest nightclub Colectiv, killing 27 people that night; in the following weeks, while the country was […]