Boatman

Life, death, and more meet and mix on the Ganges in Varanasi. Gianfranco Rosi (Fire at Sea) goes on a boat tour on the sacred river and meets them all: tourists, believers, fraudsters and innocents, the starving and the sated, merchants and priests, children, and of course, the dead.

Buck

Opposing traditional violent and oppressive training techniques, Buck Brannaman developed a horse training approach based on communication and mutual trust, which affects horse owners no less than it affects horses.

City Hall

Master documentarian Frederick Wiseman (Ex Libris, Titicut Follies) delves into the inner workings of Boston City Hall. With great patience, he deconstructs the mechanisms of a big city, showing a myriad of conflicts, ideologies, and power struggles, as well as its day-to-day operations.

Dayton Diaries

The glorious history of Dayton, Ohio, did not protect it from the great epidemic—the opioid plague. Shimon Dotan explores the city, gets to know its people, hears their stories, and patiently weaves them into a deep, compassionate portrayal of a crumbling city.

El Sicario Room 164

A chilling confession, hard to watch at times, by a hired assassin who decided to retire after 20 years in a drug cartel. Since then, a quarter million dollars has been offered for his head. Winner of the 2011 Docaviv's BEST INTERNATIONAL FILM AWARD.

Final Account

They weren’t the big monsters—they were the rank-and-file Germans who ran the Nazi machine's routine operations: bakers, drivers, cleaners, accountants, soldiers. The last of the old Nazis give a very intimate account, revealing what they knew, what they repressed, and how come they didn't say “no."

Fuocoammare (Fire at Sea)

Samuele, 12, plays make-believe on the tiny Italian island of Lampedusa. The sea that supports his family carries thousands of African refugees, who are trying to cross to Europe in dilapidated boats.

Gorbachev. Heaven

Former Soviet ruler Mikhail Gorbachev is now a good-humored, nostalgic 90-year-old man. Filmmaker Vitaly Mansky (Putin’s Witnesses) sits down for personal conversations with him and joins him in private moments, his camera filling the gaps when things are left unsaid.

Gunda

Gunda and her little ones have a complex and heartwarming emotional life. Director Victor Kossakovsky (Aquarela) follows Gunda the sow and her newborn piglets as they explore the world. Filmed without commentary in stunning black and white, the piglets display the qualities of real stars.

Her Socialist Smile

Helen Keller was deaf and blind, but she refused to be mute. After learning to talk, she became an activist and a strong voice for workers’ rights. Her socialist beliefs are laid out in this eye-opening documentary essay.

In the Same Breath

When the virus started taking lives by the hundred-thousands, the Chinese and later American authorities insisted: “there is no reason for concern.” Using rare on-the-ground footage from China, the filmmaker, who had witnessed the horror firsthand, asks: where, if at all, can citizens believe their leaders?

Leibovitch in Ma'alot

Three philosophers: Prof. Yeshayahu Leibovitch, Dr. Israel Eldad and Dr. Menahem Brinker drive to a small town in the northern Galilee to discuss the "Crisis of Zionism".

Letter to the Editor

Composed entirely of photographs from printed editions of The NY Times over 40 years, Letter to the Editor is the heartfelt musings of a news junkie, and an elegy for the death of the printed newspaper in the digital age.

Life, Animated

Owen, 23, learned everything he knows about the world from animated Disney movies. When he was first diagnosed as autistic, no one imagined that he would learn to talk or to function on his own. Disney's animated movies became his key to a world that was otherwise locked.

MLK/FBI

Martin Luther King frightened White America, and the FBI—who surveilled, wiretapped, and photographed him for years—easily dug up dirt to discredit him. Sam Pollard exposes the machinations that helped White America in its war against the Black Messiah.

My Father and Me

Director Nick Broomfield (Marianne & Leonard, screened at Docaviv) dedicates this distinctly personal film to his father, photographer Maurice Broomfield. The father’s comprehensive body of work documenting the lives of British factory workers is interwoven with the story of a complicated yet inspiring father-son relationship.

My Psychedelic Love Story

The 1960s High Priest of LSD became “public enemy number one” in the seventies and led the US authorities on a merry chase around the world. Joanna Harcourt-Smith, his lover, tells Errol Morris all about it: the intrigue, the politics, the shady deals, and the sex.

Notturno

Gianfranco Rosi (Fire at Sea) spent three years filming in Syria, Iraq, Lebanon, and Kurdistan. His beautiful film exposes the human core shared by people and places that have been shaped by war.

Our Beds Are Burning

A documentary essay about the intellectual history of fascism. Writings and speeches of radical right-wing ideologues, quoted by actors, staged in contemporary situations in Israel, in Hebrew, at relevant locations, accompanied by archive footage and period music.

President

The 2018 elections in Zimbabwe were supposed to be fair and transparent. Camilla Nielsson (Democrats) joins Nelson Chamisa, the candidate who dares to run against the acting president, on a long and perilous road as he tries to expose election fraud.

Searchers

How does one find love in a catalog? Pacho Velez (The American Sector, Manakamana) joins a diverse set of New Yorkers searching for their special someone on dating apps and websites. It's a bumpy ride, but they refuse to give up their dream.

Silence of the Tides

The powerful landscape of northern Europe's Wadden Sea is ever-changing: darkness and light, high tide and low, storms and stillness—and amid all that: tens of thousands of birds, fish, and mammals, including humans, all come and go, repeating fragile cycles. This breathtaking nature is the backdrop for everyday dramas.

The Filmmaker's House

The investors would rather see him direct a show about serial killers, but Marc Isaacs prefers to film a small-scale film about simple people. The plot thickens when a group of odd strangers gathers in his home. Then, in a second plot twist, the camera pulls back to reveal an unexpected truth.

The Good Soldier

An inside look at the work of Breaking the Silence, an organization of former soldiers who collect testimonies of those who served in the occupied territories. Directed by Silvina Landsmann, whose observational films examine institutions and organizations (‘Hotline’, ‘Soldier/Citizen’, ‘Post-Partum’).

The Sparks Brothers

How can one rock band be successful, underrated, hugely influential, and criminally overlooked all at the same time? Take a musical odyssey through five weird and wonderful decades with brothers Ron and Russell Mael, celebrating the inspiring legacy of Sparks: your favorite band’s favorite band.

Truman & Tennessee: An Intimate Conversation

The intense, turbulent conversation between Truman Capote and Tennessee Williams went on for most of their lives. Their portraits are stitched together from letters, diaries, interviews, and unforgettable scenes from their work, including A Streetcar Named Desire, Breakfast at Tiffany's, and Cat on a Hot Tin Roof.

Two Minutes to Midnight

An all-women  government of a fictitious country must take a stand on an imminent nuclear threat from a foreign nation. The film is the final stage of the hybrid-experimental project “What if Women Ruled the World.”

When We Were Bullies

How easily do we turn into bullies? Fifty years after a schoolyard incident, the filmmaker searches for answers.