New: Documentaries

The sixty-or-so most recent documentaries released on OVID.

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  • Before Summer Ends

    Directed by Maryam Goormaghtigh • Documentary • 2017 • 80 minutes

    After five years of studying in Paris, Arash is fed up with France. Haunted by feelings of unhappiness and despair, the sensitive Iranian student firmly believes that the French are a breed of their own. His friends Hossein and As...

  • Looking for Horses

    Directed by Stefan Pavlović • Documentary • 2021 • 88 minutes

    ‘Looking for Horses’ is a film about a friendship between the filmmaker and a fisherman, who lost his hearing during the Bosnian civil war and retreated to a lake to live in solitude. The filmmaker, son of Bosnian parents, struggles t...

  • Museum of the Revolution

    Directed by Srđan Keča • Documentary • 2021 • 91 minutes

    “The wind got up in the night and took our plans away,” reads the proverb in the opening titles of Museum of the Revolution. The words are a reference to the 1961 plan to build a grand museum in Belgrade as a tribute to Socialist Yugoslavi...

  • Little Palestine, Diary of a Siege

    Directed by Abdallah Al-Khatib • Documentary • 2021 • 89 minutes

    The district of Yarmouk (Damascus, Syria) sheltered the biggest Palestinian refugee camp in the world from 1957 to 2018.

    When the Syrian revolution broke out, the regime of Bashar Al-Assad saw Yarmouk as a refuge of rebels and ...

  • Penelope, My Love

    Directed by Claire Doyon • Documentary • 2021 • 88 minutes

    ‘For 18 years, I have been filming Pénélope, a young adult with autism. One day I opened the cupboard that contained DV tapes and Super 8 reels. My eyes almost popped out. These images had to be brought together. Penelope, My Love traces...

  • The Upsetter: The Life and Music of Lee Scratch Perry

    Directed by Adam Bhala Lough, Ethan Higbee • Documentary • With Lee “Scratch” Perry, Bob Marley, Peter Tosh, Paul McCartney, The Clash, Bunny Wailer, Marcus Garvey, Carl Bradshaw, Eve, Benicio Del Toro • 2008 • 95 minutes

    THE UPSETTER tells the wild, weed-fueled story of Lee “Scratch” Perry — a ...

  • Marcus

    Directed by Patrick Savey • Documentary • With Marcus Miller, Herbie Hancock, George Benson, Miles Davis • 2014 • 97 minutes

    Patrick Savey plunges us into Marcus’s world, capturing the New York roots of the legendary bass player, following his path like the pebbles of Tom Thumb, as he meets mast...

  • House of Cardin

    Directed by P. David Ebersole, Todd Hughes • Documentary • With Pierre Cardin, Rodrigo Basilicati, Jean-Paul Gaultier • 2020 • 97 minutes

    A rare peek into the mind of a genius, an authorized feature documentary chronicling the life and design of Pierre Cardin. A true original, Mr. Cardin has gra...

  • The Last Tourist

    Directed by Tyson Sadler • Documentary • With Dr. Jane Goodall, Lek Chailert, Elizabeth Becker • 2022 • 100 minutes

    Travel is at a tipping point. Tourists around the world are unintentionally destroying the very things they’ve come to see. From the Caribbean, to the streets of Delhi, and remote ...

  • Violette Leduc, In Pursuit of Love

    Directed by Esther Hoffenberg • Documentary • 2013 • 57 minutes

    After decades of working in relative obscurity, author and memoirist Violette Leduc exploded onto the French literary scene in 1964 with the publication of her taboo-breaking memoir The Bastard. Engaging frankly with her experience ...

  • When Banana Ruled

    Directed by Mathilde Damoisel • Documentary • 2017 • 52 minutes

    Bananas are everywhere: Americans eat nearly 10 billion of them per year, consuming more pounds of bananas than apples and oranges combined.

    WHEN BANANA RULED tells the story of the men who made bananas the most ubiquitous fruit in...

  • The Great Basin

    Directed by Chivas DeVinck • Documentary • 2023 • 91 minutes

    Chivas DeVinck works his way up from the soil to the stars to find out what constitutes Nevada outside of Las Vegas. Milieus, places and people are intertwined in a collage. The magnetic core of the whole is the subterranean water from...

  • Rojek

    Directed by Zaynê Akyol • Documentary • 2023 • 127 minutes

    The Islamic State group consumed the attention of the West for years. They were despised, feared, and by some, embraced. But who were they? Filmed in prisons and detention camps, this engrossing documentary turns the camera on men and wo...

  • Jump Shot: The Kenny Sailors Story

    Directed by Jacob Hamilton • Documentary • With Kenny Sailors, Stephen Curry, Kevin Durant • 2022 • 79 minutes

    From EP Stephen Curry, the award-winning film Jump Shot celebrates the true story of Kenny Sailors, the forgotten basketball legend who introduced the jumpshot, became a 2-time collegia...

  • Rookies

    Directed by Thierry Demaizière and Alban Teurlai • Documentary • 2023 • 115 minutes

    In the heart of Paris, a prestigious high school takes a daring bet: the integration of a group of talented hip-hop dancers from working-class neighborhoods and diverse backgrounds. ROOKIES follows the new studen...

  • As If It Were Yesterday

    Directed by Myriam Abramovicz and Esther Hoffenberg • Documentary • 1980 • 84 minutes

    Belgium, 1940. Amidst escalating terror and raids on Jewish residents by the occupying Nazi forces, a resistance movement emerges to shelter Jewish children from deportation and extermination. Myriam Abramowicz...

  • Queen of Lapa

    Directed by Theodore Collatos • Documentary • With Luana Muniz • 2021 • 73 minutes

    Larger-than-life actress, cabaret performer, activist, and proud sex professional since the age of eleven, Luana Muniz - arguably one of Brazil's most famous transgender personalities - shaped a new reality in her...

  • Meeting the Man: James Baldwin in Paris

    Directed by Terence Dixon • Documentary • With James Baldwin • 1970 • 27 minutes

    Shot in Paris, a city in which Baldwin lived for nine years after leaving New York — a decision he has described “as a matter of life and death.” The early sequences find Baldwin uncooperative, even hostile to the B...

  • Reflection: A Walk With Water

    Directed by Emmett Brennan • Documentary • 2021 • 79 minutes

    The conditions that make life possible are rapidly changing. Reckoning with this reality on the cusp of another dry season that may very well ravage his community, 30-year old filmmaker Emmett Brennan embarks on a remarkable journey to...

  • James Baldwin: From Another Place

    Directed by Sedat Pakay • Documentary • With James Baldwin • 1973 • 12 minutes

    Set in Istanbul, the film opens with a surprisingly candid scene of Baldwin leisurely awakening in his bedroom. Sedat Pakay, a Turkish filmmaker who studied with Walker Evans, is known for his photographic portraits o...

  • Togoland Projections

    Movie + 1 extra

    Directed by Jürgen Ellinghaus • Documentary • 2023 • 96 minutes

    Shortly before the First World War, the film director Hans Schomburgk embarked with actress Meg Gehrtson on a film expedition to West Africa to shoot adventure films in the then German colony of Togo. Virtually unknown in Togo, the ...

  • NY Export: Opus Jazz

    Directed by Jody Lee Lipes & Henry Joost • Documentary • 2010 • 60 minutes

    In 1958, Jerome Robbins’ “ballet in sneakers,” NY Export: Opus Jazz, became a smash hit when it was broadcast on The Ed Sullivan Show and toured around the world. Set to an evocative jazz score by Robert Prince, the dance...

  • And She Could Be Next

    2 items

    Directed by Grace Lee, Marjan Safinia • Documentary • With Stacey Abrams, Rashida Tlaib • 2020

    In a polarized America, where the dual forces of white supremacy and patriarchy threaten to further erode our democracy, a game-changing transformation is happening at the grassroots. As demographics s...

  • [CENSORED]

    Directed by Sari Braithwaite • Documentary • 2018 • 66 minutes

    Deep in the vaults of the Australian National Archives lie thousands upon thousands of celluloid scraps: scenes that were cut by government censors from films imported into the country between the years of 1958-1971. Peppered through...