Films about Films

Films about Films

Go behind-the-scenes with these films about films. From acclaimed filmmakers exploring Bergman's remote Swedish home to Chantal Akerman dissecting her filmmaking process, these films pull back the curtain on the history of cinema, how films are made, and what they mean.

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Films about Films
  • Bernadette Lafont: And God Created the Free Woman

    Directed by Esther Hoffenberg • Documentary • With Bernadette Lafont, Bulle Ogier • 2016 • 66 minutes

    Sex symbol, feminist icon, devoted mother: French actress Bernadette Lafont was a multi-faceted performer, who refused to be boxed into one role.

    In BERNADETTE LAFONT: AND GOD CREATED THE FREE ...

  • At the Drive-In

    Directed by Alexander Monelli • Documentary • 2017 • 80 minutes

    Unable to purchase a $50,000 digital projector, a group of quirky film fanatics in rural Pennsylvania fight to keep a dying drive-in theater alive by screening only vintage 35mm film prints and working entirely for free. At The Driv...

  • Ciné-Guerrillas: Scenes from the Labudović Reels

    Directed by Mila Turajlić • Documentary • 2023 • 94 minutes

    At an Algerian museum, Serbian filmmaker Mila Turajlić is struck by an exhibit featuring an old film camera. It belonged to a Yugoslav cameraman, celebrated as a hero in Algeria. His name is Stevan Labudović, he is 87, and he lives in B...

  • Non-Aligned: Scenes from the Labudović Reels

    Directed by Mila Turajlić • Documentary • 2023 • 100 minutes

    Filmmaker Mila Turajlić was born in Belgrade, and grew up singing patriotic songs extolling Yugoslav leader Josep Broz Tito. The images that populated her “Yugoslavia of the mind” came largely from government newsreels—and the most ico...

  • A Daughter’s Tribute to Her Father: Souleymane Cissé

    Directed by Fatou Cissé • Documentary • With Souleymane Cissé, Martin Scorsese, Costa-Gavras, Baba Diop • 2022 • 73 minutes

    A Daughter’s Tribute to Her Father: Souleymane Cissé is the story of a filmmaker as told by his daughter. Through interviews with his friends, family, and collaborators, th...

  • Love Express: The Disappearance of Walerian Borowczyk

    Directed by Kuba Mikurda • Documentary • With Bertrand Bonello, Neil Jordan, Patrice Leconte, Slavoj Žižek, Terry Gilliam, Andrzej Wajda • 2018 • 76 minutes

    How does a filmmaker go from creating cutting-edge work and competing in Cannes to being labelled a failed erotic filmmaker? The debut docu...

  • Hal (a film about Hal Ashby)

    Directed by Amy Scott • Documentary • With Hal Ashby, Norman Jewison, Haskell Wexler • 2018 • 90 minutes

    Although Hal Ashby directed a remarkable string of acclaimed, widely admired classics throughout the 1970s—HAROLD AND MAUDE, THE LAST DETAIL, SHAMPOO, COMING HOME, BEING THERE—he is often ove...

  • The Celluloid Bordello

    Directed by Juliana Piccillo • Documentary • With Annie Sprinkle, Carol Leigh, David Henry Sterry • 2021 • 86 minutes

    Since the dawn of cinema, sex workers have served as muses to movie-makers. From the early white slavery pictures like The Girl Who Went Astray from 1900 to countless dramas and ...

  • From the Journals of Jean Seberg

    Directed by Mark Rappaport • Documentary • With Mary Beth Hurt • 1995 • 97 minutes

    From the Journals of Jean Seberg is a profoundly illuminating exploration of Jean Seberg’s career from the brilliant filmmaker Mark Rappaport (Rock Hudson’s Home Movies). Mary Beth Hurt (The Age of Innocence) por...

  • Wim Wenders' Story of His Early Years

    Directed by Marcel Wehn • Documentary • With Wim Wenders, Peter Handke, Robby Müller • 2007 • 96 minutes

    In intimate conversations Wim Wenders talks about his sheltered upbringing in post-war Germany. The film follows him on a journey into the past that takes him to Paris, where he lived as a yo...

  • Searching for Ingmar Bergman

    Directed by Margarethe von Trotta • Documentary • With Liv Ullmann, Olivier Assayas, Ruben Östlund • 2018 • 99 minutes

    On the 100th anniversary of his birth, internationally renowned director Margarethe von Trotta examines Ingmar Bergman’s life and work with a circle of his closest collaborators...

  • Living the Light: Robby Müller

    Directed by Claire Pijman • Documentary • With Robby Müller, Wim Wenders, Jim Jarmusch, Lars von Trier, Steve McQueen • 2018 • 86 minutes

    Director of Photography Robby Müller has inspired generations with his ground-breaking camerawork. For her extraordinary film essay, Living the Light, directo...

  • Creating a Character: The Moni Yakim Legacy

    Directed by Rauzer Alexander • Documentary • With Oscar Isaac, Laura Linney, Michael Stuhlbarg • 2019 • 76 minutes

    What do Jessica Chastain, Kevin Kline, Viola Davis and Anthony Mackie all have in common? They are but a few of the extraordinary actors who have studied under the renowned acting t...

  • Kentridge and Dumas in Conversation

    Directed by Catherine Meyburgh • Documentary • 2009 • 72 minutes

    William Kentridge and Marlene Dumas are two of the most celebrated names in international contemporary art. In Kentridge and Dumas in Conversation, the two South African artists speak frankly about their work, their studio practice...

  • Dykes, Camera, Action!

    Directed by Caroline Berler • Documentary • 2019 • 61 minutes

    Lesbians didn't always get to see themselves on screen. But between Stonewall, the feminist movement, and the experimental cinema of the 1970s, they built visibility and transformed the social imagination about queerness. Filmmakers B...

  • An American in Sophiatown: The Making of Come Back, Africa

    Directed by Lloyd Ross • Documentary • 2007 • 52 minutes

    An American in Sophiatown puts Come Back, Africa into the context of the time it was made ( 1957-1958) - recreating the sense of danger, the intrigues which were necessary to make the film under the nose of the apartheid regime. We come to...

  • Prism

    Directed by Eléonore Yameogo, An van. Dienderen, and Rosine Mbakam • Documentary • 2021 • 78 minutes

    Is the technology of photography and motion pictures inherently racist?

    For PRISM, Belgian filmmaker An van. Dienderen invited Rosine Mbakam, from Cameroon, and Eléonore Yameogo from Burkina Fas...

  • 100 Children Waiting for a Train

    Directed by Ignacio Agüero • Documentary • 1988 • 55 minutes

    100 CHILDREN WAITING FOR A TRAIN poetically tells the story of a group of Chilean children who discover a larger reality - and a different world - through the cinema.

    Each Saturday, Alicia Vega transforms the chapel of Lo Hermida into...

  • Mia Madre

    Directed by Nanni Moretti • Drama • With Margherita Buy, John Turturro • 2016 • 107 minutes

    Acclaimed Italian auteur Nanni Moretti finds comedy and pathos in the story of Margherita, a harried film director (Margherita Buy, A Five Star Life) trying to juggle the demands of her latest movie and a...

  • This is Nollywood

    Directed by Franco Sacchi • Documentary • 2007 • 56 minutes

    First came Hollywood, then Bollywood and now Nollywood, Nigeria’s booming film industry, which released 2000 feature features in 2006 alone. Where else can you shoot a full-length dramatic film for $10,000 in 7 days? Until recently litt...

  • Riddles of the Sphinx

    Directed by Laura Mulvey and Peter Wollen • Drama • With Dinah Stabb, Merdelle Jordine, Rhiannon Tise • 1977 • 92 minutes

    Laura Mulvey, author of the seminal essay Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema, helped to establish feminist film theory as a legitimate field of study. With Peter Wollen, sh...

  • The Calm After The Storm

    Directed by Mercedes Gaviria Jaramillo • Documentary • 2021 • 72 minutes

    After studying abroad, Mercedes returns to Colombia to work on the next film by her father, the famous Víctor Gaviria (The Rose Seller). Fluctuating between admiration and reproach, Mercedes constructs a private diary that ...

  • Marguerite as She Was

    Directed by Dominique Auvray • Documentary • With Marguerite Duras, Jeanne Balibar • 2003 • 61 minutes

    Marguerite Duras (1914-1996) - best-known as the author of The Lover and for the screenplay for Hiroshima, Mon Amour (the classic 1960 New Wave film directed by Alain Resnais) - was one of the ...

  • Dawson City: Frozen Time

    Directed by Bill Morrison • Documentary • 2017 • 120 minutes

    This meditation on cinema’s past from Decasia director Bill Morrison pieces together the bizarre true history of a long-lost collection of 533 nitrate film prints from the early 1900s. Located just south of the Arctic Circle, Dawson Ci...