Source:  Los Angeles Times What might your attempted indoctrination look like if you were kidnapped by radical Islamists? Or your television viewing habits after Sharia law took over your town? “Jihadists” from French filmmaker François Margolin and Mauritanian Muslim...

Source:  The Hollywood Reporter Most people are familiar with Stieg Larsson through his hugely successful "Girl With the Dragon Tattoo" novels and their subsequent Swedish and Hollywood film adaptations. But while Henrik Georgsson's documentary about Larsson's life...

Source:  TheWrap There’s a right-wing candidate who unexpectedly rose to power on a wave of nationalist anger despite a history of making rude and racist comments.  A woman from a left-wing party vying to become the country’s first female leader.  Cries to not just...

Source:  The Guardian Marielle Franco, a Brazilian LGBT and human rights activist, was killed in March 2018. Her widow, Monica Benicio, has continued her fight for better treatment of the poor, the LGBT community, and black Brazilians. Franco's murder has still not...

Source:  AP Day after day Nabil al-Hakimi, a humanitarian official in Taiz, one of Yemen’s largest cities, went to work feeling he had a “mountain” on his shoulders. Billions of dollars in food and other foreign aid were coming into his war-ravaged homeland, but...

Source:  Los Angeles Times “Inside Syria’s Deadly Dynasty,” a fascinating two-hour special that's available on the National Geographic network, documents the rise of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad from an unassuming London eye doctor to a brutal dictator who is...

Source:  The Hollywood Reporter An on-the-ground view of one of the great global tragedies of our time, "Still Recording" is two hours of the Syrian civil war distilled from 450 that Saeed Al Batal, Ghiath Ayoub, and six other videographers shot between 2011 and...

Source:  Vox Colombia is currently dealing with a massive wave of refugees coming from Venezuela. A severe economic crisis under current President Nicolás Maduro is causing them to flee; inflation rates are sky high, and there isn’t enough food in the country....

Source:  Los Angeles Times Shraysi Tandon’s sobering debut documentary, “Invisible Hands,” takes a no-nonsense approach to exploring child labor and trafficking practices throughout the world. There’s no way to depict these subjects on film that are not horribly...

Source:  The Hollywood Reporter "Is it possible to forgive?" That question, asked in Ofra Bloch's "Afterward," feels particularly relevant in these politically charged times seemingly marked more than ever by hatred and resentments. In his cinematic debut, the...

Source:  Variety “Vote for Kibera,” winner of the audience prize at this year's Ji.hlava Documentary Film Festival, is the result of two years of working outside the box, says director Martin Pav. When Czech non-profit worker Eva Krutilkova approached him, Pav was...

Source:  Deadline Deep in the credits for the documentary "Of Fathers and Sons" comes a startling notation—a mention of the firm that supplied kidnapping and ransom insurance. That’s an indication of just how dangerous the project was for director Talal Derki, who...

Source:  The Guardian Thousands of Central American migrants headed towards Mexico City on Monday after three weeks of walking, pleading for rides, and depending on the solidarity of Mexicans of modest means. One group of at least 1,000 caravan participants headed out...

Source:  Variety With relations between North Korea and the West in the spotlight, National Geographic is launching a series looking at the ruling Kim family, which has controlled the secretive Asian nation for three generations. U.K.-based 72 Films is producing the...

Source:  VICE In February 2012, Sunday Times war correspondent Marie Colvin and photographer Paul Conroy illegally snuck into the Syrian city of Homs to cover what would turn out to be one of the bloodiest sieges of the civil war. They embedded themselves on the front...

Source:  Screen Daily Agbogbloshie is a wetland outside Accra, Ghana, and is a dumping site for the world’s unwanted electronics that really does look like hell on earth. The 6,000 men, women, and children who live there – among the emaciated goats and grazing cattle...

Source:  The New York Times What does it take to make a nation reconsider its self-image? That’s the question lying at the heart of the Austrian documentarian Ruth Beckermann’s informative and unnerving “The Waldheim Waltz.” Using mostly contemporaneous material — TV...

Source:  Los Angeles Times A tale of rape and massacre will move the world only so much. Nadia Murad has learned this. There are miles of mass graves, millions of refugees. Only some are heard. But Murad, whose power comes from a brokenness inside, will not let her...

Source:  HBO In 2014, 276 Nigerian schoolgirls were kidnapped from a school in Chibok, Nigeria and hidden in the vast Sambisa forest for three years by Boko Haram, a violent Islamic insurgent movement. A year ago, 82 girls were released. "Stolen Daughters: Kidnapped...

Source:  The Hollywood Reporter Werner Herzog has directed documentaries all over the world. His latest is not his most visually striking since it's composed primarily of talking heads, but it's certainly one of his most pertinent and fascinating. "Meeting Gorbachev"...