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
  • 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

    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...

  • 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 ...

  • 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 ...

  • 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...

  • 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.

    ...

  • 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...

  • 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 ...

  • 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 ...

  • Highwater Trilogy

    Directed by Bill Morrison • Documentary • 2006 • 31 minutes

    A short film that was part of the evening-length program "Shelter".

  • 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: ...

  • 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: ...

  • 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...

  • 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 ...

  • 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...

  • 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...

  • 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...

  • 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...

  • 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...