Poetic Documentary Movies

Filmed over nearly five years in twenty-five countries on five continents, and shot on seventy-millimetre film, Samsara transports us to the varied...

Takes us to locations all around the US and shows us the heavy toll that modern technology is having on humans and the earth. The visual tone poem...

A paralysingly beautiful documentary with a global vision—an odyssey through landscape and time—that attempts to capture the essence of...

A woman narrates the thoughts of a world traveler, meditations on time and memory expressed in words and images from places as far-flung as Japan,...

Commissioned to make a propaganda film about the 1936 Olympic Games in Germany, director Leni Riefenstahl created a celebration of the human form....

A documentary of insect life in meadows and ponds, using incredible close-ups, slow motion, and time-lapse photography. It includes bees collecting...

A documentary shot by filmmakers all over the world that serves as a time capsule to show future generations what it was like to be alive on the 24th...

A day in the city of Berlin, which experienced an industrial boom in the 1920s, and still provides an insight into the living and working conditions...

A visual montage portrait of our contemporary world dominated by globalized technology and violence.

May Pang lovingly recounts her life in rock & roll and the whirlwind 18 months spent as friend, lover, and confidante to one of the towering figures...

Commissioned to make a propaganda film about the 1936 Olympic Games in Germany, director Leni Riefenstahl created a celebration of the human form....

Avant-Drag! paints portraits of ten drag artists of varying gender expressions and sexualities who take to the streets of Athens to query,...

An exploration of technologically developing nations and the effect the transition to Western-style modernization has had on them.

What starts off as a conventional travelogue turns into a satirical portrait of the town of Nice on the French Côte d'Azur, especially its...

For years I've been looking for the means to capture everyday life just as it is perceived through a glance from the street. Twenty years ago, you...

What is a film if not a therapeutic act? Wa(te)r is a poetiс reflection on my 2022–2023 diary entries, poured from one medium to...

Shot under extreme conditions and inspired by Mayan creation theory, the film contemplates the illusion of reality and the possibility of capturing...

In 1952, Haanstra made Panta Rhei , another view of Holland through the eyes of a painter and filmmaker. Its poetic images of water, skies and clouds...