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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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...
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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...
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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...
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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 ...
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From The Other Side
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...
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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...
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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...
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Ghost Trip
Directed by Bill Morrison • Drama • 2000 • 23 minutes
Ghost Trip is a rare example of live-action fictional filmmaking from Morrison. This supernatural road-movie follows an unidentified driver (played by singer-songwriter Slink Moss) as he moves through highways, railways, abandoned homesteads ...
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Ghosts of Attica
Directed by Brad Lichtenstein • Documentary • With Susan Sarandon • 2001 • 90 minutes
Attica. Like Watergate and Vietnam, it is an icon of recent history. Gov. Rockefeller's brutal re-taking of the prison - a nine-minute, 1600-bullet assault that took the lives of 29 inmates and 10 guards - put ...
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Gringo Trails
Directed by Pegi Vail • Documentary • 2013 • 79 minutes
Are tourists destroying the planet-or saving it? How do travelers change the remote places they visit, and how are they changed? From the Bolivian jungle to the party beaches of Thailand, and from the deserts of Timbuktu, Mali to the breath...
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Guanape Sur
Directed by Janos Richter • Documentary • 2010 • 27 minutes
Guanape Sur. A barren rock island off the coast of Peru. No soil, no water. Nothing is growing here.
Around its shores a restricted area has been established. The island serves hundreds of thousands of sea birds as a breeding ground.
...
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Guns and Mothers
Directed by Thom Powers • Documentary • 2003 • 53 minutes
Two advocacy groups, The Million Moms and the Second Amendment Sisters, are diametrically opposed on gun control, but they agree on one point: mothers will and should have a voice in determining gun control policy in America. GUNS and MOT...
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H2Omx
Directed by Jose Cohen • Documentary • 2013 • 82 minutes
Built on a basin surrounded by mountains and with little drainage, Mexico City is facing a water crisis driven by geography, population, and history. With a growing population, a depleted aquifer, and 40 percent of the water being brought ...
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Hamou-Beya, Sand Fishers
Directed by Andrey Samoute Diarra • Documentary • 2012 • 72 minutes
The Bozo of Mali are people of the water. For generations, they have lived along the banks of the Niger river, fishing for their livelihood. But climate change and drought have brought lower water levels and fewer fish, driving ...
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Highwater Trilogy
Directed by Bill Morrison • Documentary • 2006 • 31 minutes
A short film that was part of the evening-length program "Shelter".
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Hotel Terminus - Part I
Directed by Marcel Ophuls • Documentary • 1988 • 114 minutes
"Making this film was like an intense fight for the survival of memory itself."—Marcel Ophuls
A brilliant and epic Academy Award-winning examination of the Nazi SS officer Klaus Barbie, the infamous "Butcher of Lyon", HOTEL TERMINUS: ...
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Hotel Terminus - Part II
Directed by Marcel Ophuls • Documentary • 1988 • 107 minutes
"Making this film was like an intense fight for the survival of memory itself."—Marcel Ophuls
A brilliant and epic Academy Award-winning examination of the Nazi SS officer Klaus Barbie, the infamous "Butcher of Lyon", HOTEL TERMINUS: ...
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Hotel Terminus - Part III
Directed by Marcel Ophuls • Documentary • 1988 • 46 minutes
"Making this film was like an intense fight for the survival of memory itself."—Marcel Ophuls
A brilliant and epic Academy Award-winning examination of the Nazi SS officer Klaus Barbie, the infamous "Butcher of Lyon", HOTEL TERMINUS: T...
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How Putin Came to Power
Directed by Tania Rakhmanova • Documentary • 2005 • 52 minutes
In August 1999, Vladimir V. Putin, head of Russia's Federal Security Service (FSB), successor to the KGB, was appointed Prime Minister. On December 31st of that year, Boris Yeltsin announced that Putin would succeed him as President ...
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I Am Somebody
Directed by Madeline Anderson • Documentary • 1970 • 30 minutes
In 1969, black female hospital workers in Charleston, South Carolina went on strike for union recognition and a wage increase, only to find themselves in a confrontation with the state government and the National Guard. Featuring An...
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I Don't Belong Anywhere: The Cinema of Chantal Akerman
Directed by Marianne Lambert • Documentary • 2015 • 67 minutes
I DON'T BELONG ANYWHERE: THE CINEMA OF CHANTAL AKERMAN explores some of the Belgian filmmaker's 40 plus films, and from Brussels to Tel Aviv, from Paris to New York, it charts the sites of her peregrinations.
An experimental filmma...
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Ice
Directed by Robert Kramer • Drama • With Robert Kramer, Leo Braudy, Tom Griffin, Paul McIsaac • 1969 • 128 minutes
ICE is an innovative independent thriller, shot in New York City, which centers on a revolutionary group plotting to attack a fascistic political regime. Using a fictitious war with...
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Imaginary Feasts
Directed by Anne Georget • Documentary • 2014 • 70 minutes
IMAGINARY FEASTS explores how in Nazi concentration cmaps, Soviet Gulags and Japanese prison camps, starving prisoners shared and recorded favorite meals and recipes. By examing how these objects of survival, the film shows quiet acts of...
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In Search of Memory
Directed by Petra Seeger • Documentary • With Eric Kandel • 2008 • 95 minutes
'Memory is everything. Without it we are nothing,' says neuroscientist Eric Kandel, winner of the Nobel Prize for his groundbreaking research on the physiology of the brain's storage of memories. As he explains, memory...