New: Documentaries

The sixty-or-so most recent documentaries released on OVID.

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  • Becoming Animal

    Directed by Emma Davie, Peter Mettler • Documentary • 2018 • 79 minutes

    An inspired collaboration between filmmakers Emma Davie (I Am Breathing) and Peter Mettler (The End of Time) and radical writer and philosopher David Abram ("The Spell of the Sensuous"), Becoming Animal is an urgent and imme...

  • Though I Am Gone

    Directed by Hu Jie • Documentary • 2007 • 68 minutes

    Pioneering filmmaker Hu Jie uncovers the tragic story of a teacher beaten to death by her students during the Cultural Revolution.

    In 1966, the Cultural Revolution exploded throughout China, as Mao's Red Guards persecuted suspected Rightists....

  • Sirens

    Directed by Rita Baghdadi • Documentary • With Lilas Mayassi, Shery Bechara • 2022 • 80 minutes

    SIRENS intimately chronicles the lives and music of Slave to Sirens, a band made up of five young metalheads whose burgeoning fame is set against the backdrop of the Lebanese revolution. Its members w...

  • Counting (Jem Cohen)

    Directed by Jem Cohen • Documentary • 2015 • 111 minutes

    In fifteen linked chapters shot in locations ranging from Moscow to New York to Istanbul, Counting merges city symphony, diary film, and personal/political essay to create a vivid portrait of contemporary life. Perhaps the most personal of...

  • Fiddlin’

    Directed by Julie Simone • Documentary • With Presley Barker, Wayne C. Henderson, Kitty Amaral • 2019 • 88 minutes

    Sister filmmakers Julie Simone and Vicki Vlasic return to their Appalachian roots to film at the world's oldest Fiddler's Convention. With multiple generations jamming together, Fid...

  • Martha: A Picture Story

    Directed by Selina Miles • Documentary • With Martha Cooper, Os Gemeos, Shepard Fairey • 2019 • 81 minutes

    In 1970s New York, photographer Martha Cooper captured some of the first images of graffiti at a time when the city had declared war on it. Decades later, Cooper has become influential to t...

  • The Apocalyptic is the Mother of All Christian Theology

    Directed by Jim Finn • Documentary • With Linda Montano, Usama Alshaibi, Jim Finn, Begüm Malkoçlar • 2023 • 64 minutes

    A psychedelic portrait of the founding theorist of Christianity. The story of Paul the Apostle’s life, ideology and influence is told by piecing together 20th Century 16mm and ...

  • Radioactive: The Women of Three Mile Island

    Directed by Heidi Hutner • Documentary • 2023 • 77 minutes

    In this thrilling feminist documentary, indomitable women fight back against the nuclear industry to expose one of the worst cover-ups in U.S. history.

    RADIOACTIVE: The Women of Three Mile Island is an award-winning film about the 1979 ...

  • Museum of the Revolution

    Directed by Srđan Keča • Documentary • 2021 • 91 minutes

    “The wind got up in the night and took our plans away,” reads the proverb in the opening titles of Museum of the Revolution. The words are a reference to the 1961 plan to build a grand museum in Belgrade as a tribute to Socialist Yugoslavi...

  • Looking For Sunshine: The Life of an Olympic Skier

    Directed by Niccolo Castelli • Documentary • 2019 • 94 minutes

    A year in Lara Gut’s universe, from the victory of the Alpine Ski World Cup Overall title in 2016 to the comeback after an injury at the peak of her career.

    A documentary about a young woman and a champion trying to find her way a...

  • Jump Shot: The Kenny Sailors Story

    Directed by Jacob Hamilton • Documentary • With Kenny Sailors, Stephen Curry, Kevin Durant • 2022 • 79 minutes

    From EP Stephen Curry, the award-winning film Jump Shot celebrates the true story of Kenny Sailors, the forgotten basketball legend who introduced the jumpshot, became a 2-time collegia...

  • Stewart Udall: The Politics of Beauty

    Directed by John de Graaf • Documentary • 2022 • 78 minutes

    Stewart Lee Udall was the most prominent and effective Secretary of the Interior in American history.

    Stewart Udall: The Politics of Beauty is a feature documentary that examines the trajectory of Udall’s life from his childhood throug...

  • Before Summer Ends

    Directed by Maryam Goormaghtigh • Documentary • 2017 • 80 minutes

    After five years of studying in Paris, Arash is fed up with France. Haunted by feelings of unhappiness and despair, the sensitive Iranian student firmly believes that the French are a breed of their own. His friends Hossein and As...

  • Looking for Horses

    Directed by Stefan Pavlović • Documentary • 2021 • 88 minutes

    ‘Looking for Horses’ is a film about a friendship between the filmmaker and a fisherman, who lost his hearing during the Bosnian civil war and retreated to a lake to live in solitude. The filmmaker, son of Bosnian parents, struggles t...

  • Little Palestine, Diary of a Siege

    Directed by Abdallah Al-Khatib • Documentary • 2021 • 89 minutes

    The district of Yarmouk (Damascus, Syria) sheltered the biggest Palestinian refugee camp in the world from 1957 to 2018.

    When the Syrian revolution broke out, the regime of Bashar Al-Assad saw Yarmouk as a refuge of rebels and ...

  • Penelope, My Love

    Directed by Claire Doyon • Documentary • 2021 • 88 minutes

    ‘For 18 years, I have been filming Pénélope, a young adult with autism. One day I opened the cupboard that contained DV tapes and Super 8 reels. My eyes almost popped out. These images had to be brought together. Penelope, My Love traces...

  • The Upsetter: The Life and Music of Lee Scratch Perry

    Directed by Adam Bhala Lough, Ethan Higbee • Documentary • With Lee “Scratch” Perry, Bob Marley, Peter Tosh, Paul McCartney, The Clash, Bunny Wailer, Marcus Garvey, Carl Bradshaw, Eve, Benicio Del Toro • 2008 • 95 minutes

    THE UPSETTER tells the wild, weed-fueled story of Lee “Scratch” Perry — a ...

  • Marcus

    Directed by Patrick Savey • Documentary • With Marcus Miller, Herbie Hancock, George Benson, Miles Davis • 2014 • 97 minutes

    Patrick Savey plunges us into Marcus’s world, capturing the New York roots of the legendary bass player, following his path like the pebbles of Tom Thumb, as he meets mast...

  • House of Cardin

    Directed by P. David Ebersole, Todd Hughes • Documentary • With Pierre Cardin, Rodrigo Basilicati, Jean-Paul Gaultier • 2020 • 97 minutes

    A rare peek into the mind of a genius, an authorized feature documentary chronicling the life and design of Pierre Cardin. A true original, Mr. Cardin has gra...

  • The Last Tourist

    Directed by Tyson Sadler • Documentary • With Dr. Jane Goodall, Lek Chailert, Elizabeth Becker • 2022 • 100 minutes

    Travel is at a tipping point. Tourists around the world are unintentionally destroying the very things they’ve come to see. From the Caribbean, to the streets of Delhi, and remote ...

  • 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...

  • The Great Basin

    Directed by Chivas DeVinck • Documentary • 2023 • 91 minutes

    Chivas DeVinck works his way up from the soil to the stars to find out what constitutes Nevada outside of Las Vegas. Milieus, places and people are intertwined in a collage. The magnetic core of the whole is the subterranean water from...

  • Rojek

    Directed by Zaynê Akyol • Documentary • 2023 • 127 minutes

    The Islamic State group consumed the attention of the West for years. They were despised, feared, and by some, embraced. But who were they? Filmed in prisons and detention camps, this engrossing documentary turns the camera on men and wo...

  • Violette Leduc, In Pursuit of Love

    Directed by Esther Hoffenberg • Documentary • 2013 • 57 minutes

    After decades of working in relative obscurity, author and memoirist Violette Leduc exploded onto the French literary scene in 1964 with the publication of her taboo-breaking memoir The Bastard. Engaging frankly with her experience ...