Icarus Films
Since 1978, Icarus Films has been a leading distributor of documentary films in North America. Led by longtime president Jonathan Miller, we work with independent producers worldwide to release 30-50 new films a year, and represent a collection of well over 1,000 titles.
Each year we release six to eight feature documentaries to theatrical audiences. We've recently released films including the Brazilian documentary In the Intense Now, the Serbian documentary The Other Side of Everything and, as a co-release with KimStim, the fiction feature film from Indonesia, Marlina the Murderer in Four Acts.
In 2012, Icarus Films acquired The dGenerate Films Collection, the leading source for contemporary, independent films from mainland China. Our recent releases from this collection including Wang Bing's 'Til Madness Do Us Part, Bitter Money and the forthcoming co-release with Grashopper Film, Dead Souls.
We are also proud to have partnered with Bullfrog Films and established Docuseek, which offers a subscription video-on-demand (SVOD) service focused on meeting the needs of colleges and universities for online access to essential documentary content. Currently Docuseek has over 1400 titles available, of which 550 come from the Icarus Films collection.
After 40 years in business, Icarus Films is proud to be active in traditional and new media, and to work with new talent as well as “old masters.” We value meeting the needs of activists, educators, and service providers, as well as challenging audiences, and programmers, with original creative works.
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To Tell the Truth: The Strategy of Truth
Directed by David Van Taylor • Documentary • 2012 • 56 minutes
THE STRATEGY OF TRUTH: DOCUMENTARY GOES TO WAR (1933-1945)
The Strategy of Truth explores the role of film as propaganda during World War II, and the different forms it took in the US, the UK, and Germany. It also raises the central...
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To Tell the Truth: Working for Change
Directed by Cal Skaggs • Documentary • 2012 • 56 minutes
Working for Change explores the birth of the social documentary, featuring interviews with several of the people who helped define and shape the form.
While newsreels carried novelty and feel-good stories, left-leaning filmmakers such as ...
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Today
Directed by Su Friedrich • Documentary • 2022 • 57 minutes
TODAY opens with filmmaker Su Friedrich’s left foot stretched out in front of her as she lies in bed. Overhead, a ceiling fan whirs. Friedrich takes another deep breath and says to no one in particular, “Try to pay attention to the momen...
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Tosca's Kiss
Directed by Daniel Schmid • Documentary • 1984 • 87 minutes
Meet the inhabitants of the "Casa di Riposa" in Milan, the world's first nursing home for retired opera singers, founded by composer Giuseppe Verdi in 1896.
In his documentary film Tosca's Kiss, which has developed an underground cult...
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Trinkets and Beads
Directed by Christopher Walker • Documentary • 1996 • 52 minutes
After twenty years of devastating pollution produced by oil companies in the Amazon basin of Ecuador, a new kind of oil company - Dallas based MAXUS - promises to be the first company to protect the rainforest, and respect the peop...
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Under the Sun
Directed by Vitaly Mansky • Documentary • 2015 • 110 minutes
After years of negotiation the Russian director Vitaly Mansky was invited by the North Korean government to make a film about one girl and her family, in the year she prepares to join the Children's Union, on the 'Day of the Shining St...
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The Unreturned Soldiers In Malaysia
Directed by Shohei Imamura • Documentary • 1971 • 45 minutes
In Malaysia, Imamura follows one false lead after another as he tries to locate unreturned Japanese who had given up the culture of their birth to integrate with Malaysian society. These wrong turns take the filmmaker on a tour through...
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The Unreturned Soldiers In Thailand
Directed by Shohei Imamura • Documentary • 1971 • 50 minutes
Imamura has better luck in Thailand, where he brings together three unreturned soldiers to discuss their experiences during the war and after.
The three men—a farmer named Fujita and two doctors: Toshida and Nakayama—have responded ve...
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Users
Directed by Natalia Almada • Documentary • 2022 • 81 minutes
Users begins with a mother’s question–will my children love the perfect machines more than they love me, their imperfect mother? She pushes the button and a smart crib lulls her crying baby to sleep, flawlessly every time. This questio...
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The Virgin, the Copts and Me
Directed by Namir Abel Messeeh • Documentary • 2011 • 85 minutes
A non-believer born in Egypt and raised in France by his Copt parents, filmmaker Namir Abdel Messeeh has a complicated relationship with his ethnoreligious heritage. THE VIRGIN, THE COPTS AND ME is playful and warm personal account...
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We All Fall Down
Directed by Gary Gasgarth • Documentary • 2009 • 65 minutes
This timely and informative documentary chronicles the history of America's mortgage finance system, from its origins in the 1930s, when the federal government first made available long-term, fixed-rate loans to new American homeowners,...
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What If Marx Was Right?
Directed by Ilan Ziv • Documentary • 2014 • 53 minutes
'Paradoxically, we can't really learn that much about socialism or communism or the future from Marx. We can learn a great deal about how capital works.' - Marx historian David Harvey
When the communist systems of the 20th century crumbled...
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What's For Dinner?
Directed by Jian Yi • Documentary • 2013 • 29 minutes
Meat is now central to billions of people's daily meals. The environmental, climate, public health, ethical, and human impacts are enormous and remain largely undocumented. 'What's For Dinner?' explores this terrain in fast-globalizing China ...
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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...
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Zone of Silence
Directed by Karel Ducasse • Documentary • 2007 • 40 minutes
Zone of Silence brings together the voices of five Cuban creators - poet Pedro Juan Guttierez, film director Fernando Perez, musician Frank Delgado, film critic and professor Gustavo Arco, and poet and playwright Anton Arrufat - in a wi...
