#documentary

#documentary

From reproductive rights to climate change to Big Tech, The Independent is on the ground when the story is developing. Whether it's investigating the financials of Elon Musk's pro-Trump PAC or producing our latest documentary, 'The A Word', which shines a light on the American women fighting for reproductive rights, we know how important it is to parse out the facts from the messaging.

But it wasn't a given Bowers would compose the score for Proudfoot's feature debut, " The Eyes of Ghana." "Because it's a lot of work, right? It's like, 'OK, it's six months of my life,' Proudfoot told IndieWire during an interview at the 2025 Middleburg Film Festival. "When you decide, 'OK, this project feels like it's part of my body of work,' it's a big decision, one that I take seriously.

Hot off a sold-out premieres in the San Rafael, Ojai and Los Angeles, we're thrilled to bring The Man Who Saves the World? to SF! Are you tired of traditional feature documentaries? Executive produced by comedy legends Danny McBride and Peter Farrelly, acclaimed director Gabe Polsky captures the extraordinary journey of Patrick McCollum - a fearless, free-spirited seeker traveling through the Amazon on a mission to inspire unity and peace.

The Invisible Mammal tells the captivating story of a dedicated team of women scientists as they strive to protect North America's bats against a deadly disease rapidly spreading across the continent. The film, directed by San Francisco filmmaker Kristin Tièche and produced by Matthew Podolsky (Sea of Shadows) follows a team of women bat biologists into underground habitats as they work to save a rapidly disappearing species: the little brown bat.

During fighting between Israel and Hezbollah, Nouhad was forced to flee her home in southern Lebanon. While others speak of loss and destruction, the 81-year-old speaks of her beloved olive grove her life's work and a symbol of resilience amid the chaos. But when the Israeli military rains down white phosphorus, burning her beloved trees, she must confront the unbearable truth of losing not just her land, but a part of herself.

If you're programming your own little horror film festival in the run-up to Halloween, and Tobe Hooper's stone-cold classic The Texas Chain Saw Massacre from 1974 is part of the lineup, then this would make a handy follow-up for a night's viewing. It's not a making-of movie, although there are snippets of insight into the production's process; nor is it a meta-commentary at the rather sprawling level of Room 237, the delirious doc about The Shining.

STATEN ISLAND, N.Y. - There are more than 5,600 players competing in NCAA Division 1 men's basketball. To play at this level, you need a rare combination of size, skill and intelligence. West Brighton resident Liam Murphy certainly qualifies. Standing 6 foot, 7 inches, Murphy possesses elite height and a lethal touch from long range. Now in his final year of eligibility, he has signed with Purdue University - ranked as the nation's top team in the preseason.

This film shows the reality of Israeli occupation and oppression against Palestinians - but that truth apparently didn't fit the narrative that big U.S. streamers wanted to promote. We talked to MUBI for months, and initially thought our film had found its home, but in the end we learned that they were accepting a huge investment from Sequoia Capital.

On Oct. 13, Swift announced her long-awaited Eras Tour documentary, The End of an Era, a six-part series that promises an "intimate look" at the experience of carrying out the historic tour. Gracie Abrams, Sabrina Carpenter, Ed Sheeran, and Florence Welch are a few of the familiar faces you'll spot along the way. You can also count on plenty of delightful behind-the-scenes moments - including, as seen in a trailer, a peek at Swift's post-show routine of drawing a bath, ordering room service, and watching "tons of TV" before she can fall asleep.

We are in a time of distress. We are in a time of total degradation of democracy. Orwell wrote that the degradation of language is the condition for the degradation.

I do feel like there was history and I think a lot of it was your experience of what that ultimately meant for a relationship; that it could put extra strain when you're eating, sleeping, breathing each other in that way,

The gig will be the band's first performance together since a five-night run at the London Palladium in 2019.

There are celebrity-studded Spotlights aplenty: Rose Byrne in If I Had Legs I'd Kick You; Tonatiuh in Kiss of the Spiderwoman; Zoey Deutch in Richard Linklater's Nouvelle Vague; former Bay Area resident Eva Victor in Sorry, Baby; Joel Edgerton, star of the Sundance fave Train Dreams; and the unforgettable Jessie Buckley from Hamnet, the fest's opener that's guaranteed to not leave one dry eye in the house.

For many, Omara Portuondo is best known for her participation in the Buena Vista Social Club; but the nonagenarian has lived many lives before and after the formation of the internationally recognized Cuban group. The new PBS documentary, "Omara: Cuba's Legendary Diva," looks to reexamine and capture the beauty and the chaos of these other many lives.

Nathan Silver's short documentary Carol and Joy radiantly builds upon this lineage, extending his recent first-time work with Carol Kane on Between the Temples -whose warmth and wit anchor the film-into the realm of nonfiction, while reuniting with regular collaborator Sean Price Williams, whose kinetic camerawork mirrors its unruly vitality. Filmed over two afternoons in the New York apartment that Kane shares with her 98-year-old mother, Joy, the film captures a cascade of memory, music and confession.

As well as cast members like Little Nell and Barry Bostwick, the talking heads here include original-stage-version actors, fans, and producers, one of whom really nails why Rocky is such a delight: Rocky was an accident. You can't try to have an accident. This gets to the heart of why this particular phenomenon is special and why so many imitators and projects conceived with the intention of being cult entertainment are doomed to fail

The pursuit of culinary perfection has never been more accessible to viewers than it will be this October. Apple TV+ has just released the official trailer for "Knife Edge: Chasing Michelin Stars," an eight-part documentary series that promises unprecedented access to the emotionally charged, high-stakes world of fine dining. Set to premiere globally on Friday, October 10, this series offers food and beverage professionals and culinary enthusiasts a rare glimpse into what it truly takes to earn, maintain, or elevate Michelin star recognition.

However a 12-hour garda search of the Satchwells' home in June 2017 failed to locate the secret burial site of his wife Tina under the stairs. During the search operation from 7am to 7pm in 2017, the garda team photographed a shoddily built brick wall underneath the stairs. But they did not attempt to excavate it. They did not have the service of a cadaver dog on this occasion, which proved to be crucial in the uncovering of Tina's body.

Warning: If you haven't seen this documentary, this post is FULL of spoilers. If you've seen Unknown Number: The High School Catfish on Netflix, then you know exactly why people can't stop talking about it. Back in 2021, a high school girl and her boyfriend started getting disturbing, anonymous texts that wouldn't stop.

Each episode focuses on a specific aspect of the training, following a handful of students from the Navy and Marines through the highs and lows of their training. That includes practicing dive bombs at break-neck speeds; successfully landing on an aircraft carrier by "catching the wire"; learning the most effective offensive and defensive maneuvers in dogfighting; and, finally, engaging in a freestyle dogfight against a seasoned instructor to complete the program and (hopefully) earn their golden wings.

Nicola and Jana work off the land in Kotevska's home country of Macedonia. In an early scene, they bring literally three tons of potatoes to be sold, only to go home with the unusable crop due to increasing regulation and wholesalers looking for irrational deals. It's not that the earth doesn't support these people in their efforts to continue their generation-spanning work, it's that the system has let them down.

There were 40 hours of interviews. But even with 1,500 pages of transcripts, the subject of this documentary didn't open up about the most mysterious chapters of his life. In fact, he didn't even tell the crew that he'd been battling cancer for six years. And, in 2023, before filming was even finished, Paul Reubens died. Even so, Pee-wee as Himself (HBO Max) is not an unfinished work, and manages to surprisingly explore the rise

It was the story of a plane crash, which, of course, got a lot of attention. But once they actually figured out that four kids were lost in the jungle, it became national, big, big news,

Over a decade ago, filmmaker Mimi Chakarova began following a cohort of young people trying to turn their lives around by becoming firefighters and medics through Bay EMT, a free training program. The result of that relationship-building, , shares their stories and the way they intersect with sweeping social issues like crime, public health, poverty, and inequity in a documentary that has the intimacy of a home video.

And yet this powerful and complex documentary, directed by Brandon Kramer (a distant relative of some of the people involved) and co-produced by Darren Aronofsky, is a reminder that the situation now can't be understood without remembering the Hamas massacre how it was calculated to provoke a rage-filled reaction that would discredit Israel internationally, what it meant and continues to mean within Israel and how the political and ideological connotations of the hostages have themselves evolved.