Top Rated Documentary Movies on Kanopy - Page 126

Let There Be Drums!

2022

Let There Be Drums!

2022
6.7
Through conversations with the world's greatest drummers, director Justin Kreutzmann explores the importance of music in bringing people together.
Jean-Michel Basquiat, artiste absolu

2022

Jean-Michel Basquiat, artiste absolu

2022
6
The life and work of New York artist Jean-Michel Basquiat have been marked by a long quest for identity, by his Haitian and Puerto Rican family origins and by a founding trip to Africa. To portray this major painter of the 20th century, who died in 1988 at only 27 years old, is also to evoke the place of black American artists in the conservative and racist America of the Reagan years.
Children of Las Brisas

2022

Children of Las Brisas

2022
5.5
In Venezuela, amidst a backdrop of poverty, murder, and corruption, the El Sistema youth orchestra offers children hope and the opportunity to pursue a life of art in spite of the harshness of the society around them. Yet the country’s spiraling collapse and political repression threatens the musicians’ dreams of a better life.
THE QUEST: Nepal

2022

THE QUEST: Nepal

2022
8.3
'THE QUEST: Nepal' is an epic journey to deeper understand and climb the most iconic mountain on earth, Everest, and to unveil the fascinating culture, history and nature of Nepal. From experiencing Mt. Everest like never before to witnessing remarkable rarely seen stories from one of the most unique countries in the world, 'THE QUEST: Nepal' is truly a one-of-a-kind cinematic journey like no other, and one which embodies the incredible human spirit of adventure that lives inside us all!
Fashion Reimagined

2023

Fashion Reimagined

2023
5.7
Fashion designer Amy Powney is at the peak of her career, but she’s troubled by her industry’s wasteful practices. Fashion Reimagined follows her transformative global journey to create a collection that’s sustainable on every level.
Lakota Nation vs. United States

2022

Lakota Nation vs. United States

2022
5.3
Poet Layli Long Soldier crafts a searing portrait of her Oyate’s connection to the Black Hills, through first contact and broken treaties to the promise of the Land Back movement, in this lyrical testament to resilience of a nation.
H2: The Occupation Lab

2022

H2: The Occupation Lab

2022
8.7
Segregated, highly surveilled, heavily filmed and intensely guarded: H2 uncovers the ways in which a single neighborhood in Hebron fuels the entire Israeli-Palestinian conflict. 54 years of military occupation, told through the story of a one-kilometer long street.
Merchant Ivory

2024

Merchant Ivory

2024
7.7
The first definitive feature documentary to lend new and compelling perspectives on the partnership, both professional and personal, of director James Ivory, producer Ismail Merchant, and their primary associates, writer Ruth Prawer Jhabvala and composer Richard Robbins. Footage from more than fifty interviews, clips, and archival material gives voice to the family of actors and technicians who helped define Merchant Ivory’s Academy Award-winning work of consummate quality and intelligence. With six Oscar winners among the notable artists participating, these close and often long-term collaborators intimately detail the transformational cinematic creativity and personal and professional drama of the wandering company that left an indelible impact on film culture.
This Stolen Country of Mine

2022

This Stolen Country of Mine

2022
8
Chinese mining in Ecuador’s mountains sets the stage for an epic battle between eco-guerrillas and a corrupt government in an intensely dramatic feature by former CPH:DOX winner Marc Wiese.
Only in Theaters

2022

Only in Theaters

2022
5.7
ONLY IN THEATERS, a film by actor/director Raphael Sbarge, is an intimate and moving journey taken with the Laemmle family, spanning nearly three years of challenges, losses, and personal triumphs. Laemmle Theatres, the beloved 84-year-old arthouse cinema chain 3rd generation family business in Los Angeles, is facing seismic change and financial pressure. Yet the family behind this multigenerational business – whose sole mission has been to support the art of film – is determined to survive.
Riveted: The History of Jeans

2022

Riveted: The History of Jeans

2022
5
Riveted: The History of Jeans reveals the fascinating and surprising story of this iconic American garment. At any given moment, half the people on the planet are wearing them. They have become a staple of clothing the world over, worn by everyone from presidents and supermodels to farmers and artists. More than just an item of apparel, America’s tangled past is woven into the indigo blue fabric. From its roots in slavery to its connection to the Wild West, youth culture, the civil rights movement, rock and roll, hippies, high fashion and hip-hop, jeans are the canvas on which the history of American ideology and politics is writ large.
Earth Emergency

2021

Earth Emergency

2021
6.7
This revealing film examines how human activity is setting off dangerous warming loops that are pushing the climate to a point of no return - and what we need to do to stop them. With captivating illustrations, stunning footage and interviews with leading climate scientists as well as support from Greta Thunberg and Jane Fonda, "Earth Emergency" adds the missing piece of the climate puzzle.
Sirens

2022

Sirens

2022
6.8
True to their name, Slave to Sirens — the first and only all-woman thrash metal band in the Middle East — are utterly magnetic. Amid a backdrop of political unrest and the heartbreaking unraveling of Beirut, five bandmates form a beacon of expression, resistance, and independence. Director Rita Baghdadi follows founders and guitarists Lilas Mayassi and Shery Bechara as their tenderness, and sometimes bitterness, for one another grows in ways both unexpected and deeply moving. Joined by vocalist Maya Khairallah, bassist Alma Doumani, and drummer Tatyana Boughaba, these women negotiate their emotional journeys through young adulthood in tumultuous circumstances with grace, raw passion, and a ferocious commitment to their art. Their grit is tested as they grapple with the complexities of friendship, sexuality, and the destruction around them.
The Hermit of Treig

2022

The Hermit of Treig

2022
7
After 40 years of solitude, a spirited elderly hermit tackles ill health, a declining memory, and questions whether he can live out his last years in the wilderness he calls home.
Descending the Mountain

2021

Descending the Mountain

2021
7
What happens if you give magic mushrooms (psilocibine) to experienced Zen practitioners who have never used drugs? What does that teach us about the mystical experience of oneness with nature? Based on these questions, psychiatrist Franz Vollenweider and Zen master Vanja Palmers set up a legal science experiment in a monastery at the top of Mount Rigi in Switzerland. Exactly 50 years after the magic mushrooms were officially banned, a new story begins in what is now called the “psychedelic renaissance”. While in 2021 most studies with psychedelics mainly focus on their promising medical applications, Frans and Vanja are already going a step further. Can the combination of meditation and psilocibin help humanity get out of the mess we have created on ourselves and the planet with our neo-liberal society?
Milked

2021

Milked

2021
9.3
A young activist goes deep into dairy land where he takes on the giants of New Zealand's most powerful industry, and reveals how the sacred cash-cow industry has been milked dry. His journey exposes not only the sustainability crisis and the dangerous denial of impending agricultural disruption, but also what New Zealand and other countries can do to change their fate.
The Click Trap

2024

The Click Trap

2024
9
Digital advertising algorithms curate content precisely for users. Major tech firms claim to restrict disinformation yet still profit from harmful content, raising ethical concerns about democracy and online capitalism.
A Wicked Eden

2021

A Wicked Eden

2021
7
Goddess Snow and her close friends Ceara Lynch, Princess Rene, Astro Domina, Princess Meggerz and Sarah DiAvola have built a supportive underground punk scene of fetish content creators, empowering each other, their clients, fans and the rest of the adult population to engage in the fight for a shame-free, consensual, and safe exploration of one’s sexuality. Dancing between the worlds of online fetish content creation, and in-person domination sessions, Goddess Alexandra Snow has built a thriving empire which supports the empowerment of women, sex workers, and anyone who has ever felt like a misfit.
William The Conqueror

2015

William The Conqueror

2015
5.8
Blending drama with the explanations of passionate historians and specialists, this enriched historical reconstruction traces 60 years in the life a man who transformed the Middle Ages and laid the foundation of modern Europe, William The Conqueror.
The Ants and the Grasshopper

2021

The Ants and the Grasshopper

2021
7.3
Anita Chitaya has a gift: she can help bring abundant food from dead soil, she can make men fight for gender equality, and maybe she can end child hunger in her village. Now, to save her home in Malawi from extreme weather, she faces her greatest challenge: persuading Americans that climate change is real. Traveling from Malawi to California to the White House, she meets climate sceptics and despairing farmers. Her journey takes her across all the divisions that shape the USA: from the rural-urban divide, to schisms of race, class and gender, and to the American exceptionalism that remains a part of the culture. It will take all her skill and experience to help Americans recognise, and free themselves from, a logic that is already destroying the Earth.