Observational Documentary Movies

Tobacco, climate change, pesticides,... Never has scientific knowledge seemed so vast, detailed and shared. And yet it appears to be increasingly...

Wet’suwet’en leaders unite in a battle against the Canadian government, corporations, and militarized law enforcement to safeguard their...

Handheld skate video meets hardcore social realism in a sensational film with the energy of a three-chord punk song and an unruly group of street...

MENTAL is a feature-length documentary that observes the complex world of an outpatient mental health clinic in Japan, interwoven with patients,...

Explores the meaning of fame and influence in the digital age through an innovative social experiment. Following three Los Angeles-based people with...

In the year following the 9/11 terrorist attacks, young journalist Claude Baechtold finds himself in the war zone of Afghanistan. Not entirely...

The moral dimension of humanity's interaction with nonhuman animals and the industries that profit from their exploitation, as informed by world...

In 2001, satellite imagery captured a mysterious “thermal anomaly” on an unexplored volcano at the ends of the Earth. What lies inside...

After a 20-year long fruitless search in the Cameroonian forest, Frenchman Michel Ballot is on the verge of giving up his lifelong quest to find the...

Employing methods of direct cinema–observation, limited stylization, and non-intervention–this stark look into the State Prison for the...

Documentary which uses the latest, most detailed imagery to reveal the monthly life cycle of the moon. From Wales to Wyoming, Hong Kong to Croydon,...

A poetic exploration of three subterranean telescopes in remote regions of Canada, Japan, and Antarctica that reveal a new way of perceiving the...

A close examination of the Whakaari / White Island volcanic eruption of 2019 in which 22 lives were lost, the film viscerally recounts a day when...

Journey alongside a young tigress raising her cubs in the fabled forests of India.

When Danish filmmaker Lea Glob first portrayed Apolonia Sokol in 2009, she appeared to be leading a storybook life. The talented Apolonia was born in...

Director Dominique Leclerc spent years depending on medical devices for her survival. Then, looking for alternative solutions, she entered the world...

At an Atlanta abortion clinic besieged by protesters, the director of operations, Tracii, takes necessary risks to safeguard staff and patients.

In 1978, the Amoco Cadiz, a supertanker loaded with 220,000 tons of petrol, ran aground in Brittany, France. The accident caused the biggest oil...

The Dream Is Alive takes you into space alongside the astronauts on the space shuttle. Share with them the delights of zero gravity while working,...

Candid interviews of ordinary people on the meaning of happiness, an often amorphous and inarticulable notion that evokes more basic and...