Your Source for Documentary News
Your Source for Documentary News
World
The U.N. recently called what’s happening in Yemen “the largest humanitarian crisis in the world.” Watch Frontline’s “Inside Yemen.”
Source: PBS Children describing the sounds bombs make as they fall. Streets covered with rotting garbage. Doctors and nurses who have gone months without pay, at hospitals struggling to care for an influx of cholera patients and malnourished infants. “People are not...
Vox Mini-Doc: The Middle East’s Cold War, Explained
Source: Vox The Middle East is one of the most complex regions in the world. Since the 20th century, it has experienced several wars, uprisings, and invasions. Today there are four failing states and three ongoing wars. While the Islamic State may be close to defeat,...
In “Olancho,” first-time filmmakers explore the unseen face of the drug trade in Honduras
Source: The Film Stage Anyone who’s lived in Honduras and left will tell you the thing they miss the most about the country are baleadas, a simple dish made out of a warm wheat tortilla filled with refried red beans and grated cheese. Some, like "Olancho" director...
Animated doc “Liyana” takes an in-depth look at the lives of five orphaned children in Swaziland
Source: The Hollywood Reporter In the feature that received the LA Film Festival's Documentary Prize, a group of orphans in Swaziland create a character and set her on a heroic quest. Read the story at The Hollywood...
“Last Men in Aleppo” premieres tonight on most PBS stations
Source: PBS. After five years of war in Syria, the remaining citizens of Aleppo are getting ready for a siege. Through the eyes of volunteer rescue workers called the White Helmets, "Last Men in Aleppo" allows viewers to experience the daily life, death, and...
Vox Mini-Doc: The growing North Korea nuclear threat, explained
Vox writes "on July 4, 2017, North Korea held a test launch of their new missile, the Hwasong-14. It’s an intercontinental ballistic missile, or ICBM, meaning it has a very long range and is designed to carry a nuclear weapon." "Analysts determined that the Hwasong-14...
Sundance-backed political documentary caught in censorship nightmare
IndieWire writes "the Indian political documentary “An Insignificant Man” has played at more than 30 film festivals all over the world since premiering at last year’s Toronto International Film Festival. But in India — the one country where the documentary is bound to...
“City of Ghosts” is an urgent and timely Syria documentary
Source: Entertainment Weekly. The civil war in Syria has now been blazing for six years. Nearly half a million people have been killed. Roughly 11 million have been displaced. The end is nowhere in sight. The only hope at this point is to get the word out to the rest...
NY Times Critic’s Pick: “Mali Blues,” Making Music in the Face of Jihadists
Source: The New York Times. The takeover of northern Mali between 2012 and 2013 by radical Islamist forces got a powerful fictionalized treatment in the widely acclaimed 2014 film “Timbuktu,” directed by Abderrahmane Sissako. An issue touched on in that picture was...
Mini-Doc: How North Korea Became a Crisis
Source: The Atlantic. To understand how the standoff between North Korea and the rest of the world has become so dire, it helps to go back to the founding of North Korea nearly 70 years ago, explains Mark Bowden in The Atlantic’s short video. ...
NY Times Op-Docs: Meet Ali Alamedy, an Iraqi artist who has fled to Turkey in “Rebuilding in Miniature”
Watch the mini-doc at The New York Times.
”The Babushkas of Chernobyl” captures the essence of a small, estranged, and exceptionally strong community
Source: Point of View Magazine. The world’s most catastrophic nuclear power plant accident, the Chernobyl disaster, occurred on April 26 1986 in Pripyat, in the former Ukrainian Republic of the USSR. Due to an emergency shutdown, nuclear reactor number 4 blew up,...
“If You Meant to Kill Me” tells the untold, unjust story of would-be honor killing victims in Jordan
Read the story at Lenny Letter.
Short documentary uses VR to tell humanitarian tale of Syrian boy
Source: Variety. Virtual reality isn’t the first concept that comes to mind when discussing documentaries made for humanitarian causes, but the experience of one group of filmmakers proves the format can be a valuable tool. “When I first came across VR, I found it...
“Nowhere to Hide” takes viewers inside Iraq’s triangle of death
Source: Victoria Advocate. Kurdish/Norwegian filmmaker Zaradasht Ahmed (“Road to Diyarbakir”) takes viewers directly into Iraq’s “triangle of death,” an area south of Baghdad that has become known as one of the most dangerous and inaccessible places in the world. The...
30th season of POV to spotlight the Syrian war and global refugee crisis
Source: realscreen. PBS’s indie doc strand POV will start its 30th season with three feature films and two shorts about the Syrian war and global refugee crisis. Kicking off the special series is the feature documentary “Dalya’s Other Country,” which follows a young...
How ISIS Came to Be: Four Frontline docs to watch
Watch them at Frontline.
What does real resistance look like? Ask the Maya protagonists of “500 Years”
Sources: Variety and Remezcla. Pamela Yates has been chronicling the plight of the Maya people in Guatemala for over 30 years now. In 1983 she released “When the Mountains Tremble,” which included Nobel Peace Prize winner Rigoberta Menchu’s firsthand account of the...
Interview: Filmmaker Costa Botes on the Making of “Act of Kindness”
Read the interview at Documentary Drive.
“The Apology” is an Enraging and Sorrowful Documentary about World War II’s Comfort Women
Source: The Film Stage. Grandma Gil from South Korea, Grandma Cao from China, and Grandma Adela from the Philippines are just three of the 200,000 women who found themselves kidnapped and forced into sexual slavery by the Imperial Japanese Army during World War II....