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Icarus Films

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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Icarus Films
  • Donna Haraway: Story Telling for Earthly Survival

    Directed by Fabrizio Terranova • Documentary • With Donna Haraway • 2017 • 81 minutes

    Feminist thinker and historian of science Donna Haraway is best known as the author of two revolutionary works: the essay "A Cyborg Manifesto" and the book Primate Visions. Both set out to upend well-establishe...

  • Double Life, a Short History of Sex in the USSR

    Directed by Ināra Kolmane • Documentary • 2017 • 52 minutes

    The October Revolution ushered in an era of sexual freedom and liberation from bourgeois conventions. Satisfying sexual needs had to be "as simple as drinking a glass of water," according to feminist Alexandra Kollontai who was at the f...

  • Chantal Akerman's Down There

    Directed by Chantal Akerman • Documentary • 2006 • 78 minutes

    According to director Chantal Akerman, she never planned to make a film in Israel. She was convinced that neutrality does not exist and that her subjectivity would get in her way. She was sure she would only be able to reflect on 'the...

  • Dreams Rewired

    Directed by Manu Luksch, Martin Reinhart and Thomas Tode • Documentary • With Tilda Swinton • 2015 • 85 minutes

    Tilda Swinton's hypnotic voiceover and a treasure trove of rare archival footage culled from hundreds of films from the 1880s through the 1930s-much of it previously unseen-combine to ...

  • El Sicario, Room 164

    Directed by Gianfranco Rosi and Charles Bowden • Documentary • 2011 • 84 minutes

    The term sicario goes back to Roman Palestine, where a Jewish sect, the Sicarii, used concealed daggers (sicae) in their murders of Romans and their supporters. In modern language, a sicario is a professional killer...

  • El Velador

    Directed by Natalia Almada • Documentary • 2011 • 72 minutes

    Martin, the night watchman, arrives with the setting sun in his rumbling blue Chevrolet. The cemetery mascots, EI Negro y La Negra, chase his truck down the road and greet him with wagging tails. The sound of construction fades away as...

  • Electric Signs

    Directed by Alice Arnold • Documentary • 2012 • 58 minutes

    New screen-based sign systems are putting TV-style advertising into the public domain in cities around the globe. These electronic signs are re-shaping urban environments and re-defining areas of public space by intensifying the commerci...

  • Eternity Has No Door of Escape

    Directed by Arthur Borgnis • Documentary • 2017 • 80 minutes

    "Outsider art" challenges established historical categories and transcends artistic movements. A translation of the French term art brut, a phrase coined by the painter and sculptor Jean Dubuffet in the aftermath of World War II, this ...

  • Everything Must Fall

    Directed by Rehad Desai • Documentary • 2018 • 85 minutes

    Can a diverse group of college kids find common ground with their school’s faculty and janitorial staff to bring the school administration to its knees? Can they banish a nation’s crippling student debt, guarantee workers benefits and liv...

  • Family Business

    Directed by Tom Cohen • Documentary • 1982 • 90 minutes

    Part of the acclaimed Middletown series.

    Howie Snyder is an archetype: a retired Marine colonel in his mid 40s, he is an American entrepreneur struggling to make his business succeed.

    Howie's Shakey's Pizza franchise in Muncie, Indiana em...

  • Far from Vietnam

    Directed by Jean-Luc Godard, Joris Ivens, William Klein, Claude Lelouch, Chris Marker, and Alain Resnais • Documentary • 1967 • 115 minutes

    Initiated and edited by Chris Marker, FAR FROM VIETNAM is an epic 1967 collaboration between cinema greats Jean-Luc Godard, Joris Ivens, William Klein, Clau...

  • Fate of a Salesman

    Directed by Ben Crosbie and Tessa Moran • Documentary • 2013 • 27 minutes

    Fate of a Salesman is an intimate portrait of a way of life on the verge of disappearing. In its 60th year of business, Men's Fashion Center in Washington, DC has come to represent identity, legacy and redemption for sales...

  • Finally Got the News

    Directed by Stewart Bird, Rene Lichtman and Peter Gessner • Documentary • 1970 • 55 minutes

    FINALLY GOT THE NEWS is a forceful, unique documentary that reveals the activities of the League of Revolutionary Black Workers inside and outside the auto factories of Detroit. Through interviews with th...

  • The Five Demands

    Directed by Greta Schiller and Andrea Weiss • Documentary • 2023 • 74 minutes

    THE FIVE DEMANDS is a riveting story about the student strike that changed the face of higher education forever. In April 1969, a small group of Black and Puerto Rican students shut down the City College of New York, a...

  • Fold Crumple Crush: The Art of El Anatsui

    Directed by Susan Vogel • Documentary • 2011 • 53 minutes

    Filmed over three years in Venice, Nsukka, and the United States, this is a powerful portrait of Africa's most widely acclaimed contemporary artist El Anatsui. FOLD CRUMPLE CRUSH: THE ART OF EL ANATSUI gives an insider's view of the artis...

  • For the Best and for the Onion!

    Directed by Elhadj Magori Sani • Documentary • 2008 • 52 minutes

    "I am singing about onion farming, bringing both suffering and joy." So sings an onion farmer as he works his field Galmi, in Niger. Beside him stands Yaro, a fellow farmer who knows all too well the hope and sorrow his livelihood ...

  • Forever (Heddy Honigmann)

    Directed by Heddy Honigmann • Documentary • 2006 • 95 minutes

    Through a leisurely tour of the world-famous Père-Lachaise cemetery in Paris, the final resting place for legendary writers, composers, painters and other artists from around the world, FOREVER provides an unusually poignant, emotiona...

  • Forgotten World

    Directed by Terri Ella • Documentary • 2015 • 52 minutes

    Snaking north through eastern South Africa, the Mpumalanga Escarpment is dotted by mysterious stone structures-stone-lined roads, terraces, and the nested circular patterns-left behind by a now-vanished civilization.

    FORGOTTEN WORLD featu...

  • Foucault Against Himself

    Directed by Francois Caillat • Documentary • With Michel Foucault • 2014 • 52 minutes

    From the history of madness, to sexuality and pleasure in classical antiquity, to the law and penal institutions, the breadth of Michel Foucault's thought was astonishing.

    One of the leading intellectuals of t...

  • France (Les Habitants)

    Directed by Raymond Depardon • Documentary • 2015 • 84 minutes

    The vintage camping trailer making its way along France’s secondary highways looks utterly unremarkable. But once Raymond Depardon parks it—in front of stores, businesses, and town squares across the country—it become the location fo...

  • Free Lunch Society

    Directed by Christian Tod • Documentary • With Frances Fox Piven, Emmanuel Saez, Charles Alan Murray • 2017 • 92 minutes

    That basic income is a powerful idea is indisputable: land, water and air are gifts of nature. They are different from private property that humans create by their individual ...

  • From The Other Side (Chantal Akerman)

    Directed by Chantal Akerman • Documentary • 2002 • 99 minutes

    With her unmistakable style Chantal Akerman ("Arguably the most important European director of her generation."—J. Hoberman, The Village Voice) explores the border between the United States and Mexico.

    For years immigrants passed thr...

  • Future of Mud

    Directed by Susan Vogel • Documentary • 2007 • 58 minutes

    Through the story of a mason in Djenne, Komusa Tenapo, and his family, this documentary examines an African tradition of mud architecture in Mali. The environmental genius of these ancient construction techniques thick walls with tiny win...

  • Gabo: The Creation of Gabriel Garcia Marquez

    Directed by Justin Webster • Documentary • 2015 • 90 minutes

    How did a boy from a tiny town on the Caribbean coast become a writer who won the hearts of millions? How did he change our perception of reality with his work?

    The answers lie in the incredible story of Gabriel Garcia Marquez, the 19...