Top Rated Documentary Movies on Kanopy - Page 147

Relative

2022

Relative

2022
7.5
A filmmaker unearths a pervasive history of multigenerational trauma in her Italian-American family. As decades of secrets, home movies, and long-avoided conversations surface, a family once bound by tradition forges a new path forward.
Seeking Mavis Beacon

2024

Seeking Mavis Beacon

2024
2
Mavis Beacon Teaches Typing taught millions globally, but the software's Haitian-born cover model vanished decades ago. Two DIY detectives search for the model while posing questions about identity and artificial intelligence.
Esther Newton Made Me Gay

2022

Esther Newton Made Me Gay

2022
1
Esther Newton was drawn to the drag scene as a student in the 1950s. Identifying as both butch lesbian and between genders, she felt a kinship with the queens; what the feminine clothing society expected her to wear felt like a form of drag. Her 1972 book ‘Mother Camp: Female Impersonators in America’ is noted as the first rigorous study of its kind. Now entering her sixth decade writing about queer communities, Newton exudes wisdom and a healthy dose of New York no-nonsense. The film’s amazing archive footage encompasses gay liberation, the feminist sex wars, AIDS activism and life on the safe haven of Fire Island. Her other main passion is dog training, so this illuminating history lesson is peppered with poodles!
Putin: The Return of the Bear in the Dance

2022

Putin: The Return of the Bear in the Dance

2022
6.5
After twenty years in power, Vladimir Putin continues to implement his geopolitical strategy with Russia’s comeback on the big stage of world politics. He already announced his ambitions in 2007 – and still, it seems like the western governments were hit completely unprepared. What is behind this repeat of the Cold War?
Black Patriots: Heroes of the Civil War

2022

Black Patriots: Heroes of the Civil War

2022
7
This one-hour documentary takes viewers through an evolution of African American involvement over the course of the Civil War through the stories of some of the most crucial and significant figures of the day including Harriet Tubman, Robert Smalls, Frederick Douglass, the 1st Kansas Colored Volunteer Infantry Regiment, and the most celebrated regiment of black soldiers during the Civil War, the famed 54th Massachusetts Infantry Regiment.
Shouting Down Midnight

2022

Shouting Down Midnight

2022
1
Both cautionary tale and rallying cry, Shouting Down Midnight recounts how the Wendy Davis filibuster of 2013 galvanized a new generation of activists and reveals what is at stake for us all in the struggle for reproductive freedom.
Mama Bears

2022

Mama Bears

2022
1
Mama Bears is an intimate exploration of two “mama bears”—conservative, Christian mothers who have become fierce advocates for LGBTQ+ people—and a young lesbian whose struggle for self-acceptance exemplifies why the mama bears are so important.
Sell/Buy/Date

2022

Sell/Buy/Date

2022
8
A hybrid doc/narrative following Tony winning performer and comedian Sarah Jones. As a mixed-race Black woman in America, Sarah, alongside the multicultural characters she's known for, explores her own personal relationship to one of the most relevant issues in our current cultural climate: the sex industry, and the surprisingly diverse range of people whose lives it touches. Through interviews and monologues, this film poses the question: how can we as a society have a healthy relationship to sex, power, race and our economy, without exploitation or stigma? The goal is not to prescribe solutions, but to highlight the human faces and voices at the center of this subject.
Oyate

2022

Oyate

2022
7.5
In the wake of the Dakota Access Pipeline Protests, Indigenous People across the nation are using their newfound platform to shed light on the wide array of injustices committed against them for centuries in an effort to wake up the world and embark upon the process of decolonization.
Salt in My Soul

2022

Salt in My Soul

2022
7
Based on Mallory Smith's posthumously published memoir, Salt In My Soul offers a look inside the mind of a young woman trying to live while dying. Diagnosed with cystic fibrosis, Mallory turned to a secret diary to record her thoughts.
Fiddler's Journey to the Big Screen

2022

Fiddler's Journey to the Big Screen

2022
6
The fall of 2021 marked the 50th anniversary of Fiddler on the Roof, the film Pauline Kael (The New Yorker) called "the most powerful movie musical ever made." Narrated by Jeff Goldblum, FIDDLER'S JOURNEY TO THE BIG SCREEN captures the humor and drama of director Norman Jewison's quest to recreate the lost world of Jewish life in Tsarist Russia and re-envision the beloved stage hit as a wide-screen epic. Oscar-nominated filmmaker Daniel Raim puts us in the director's chair and in Jewison's heart and mind, drawing on behind-the-scenes footage and never-before-seen stills as well as original interviews with Jewison, Topol (Tevye), composer John Williams, production designer Robert F. Boyle, film critic Kenneth Turan, lyricist Sheldon Harnick, and actresses Rosalind Harris, Michele Marsh, and Neva Small (Tevye’s daughters). The film explores how the experience of making Fiddler deepened Jewison as an artist and revived his soul.
Donetsk: The Battle for Ukraine

2017

Donetsk: The Battle for Ukraine

2017
6.2
A story from the very center of events about the birth of a new country, the Donetsk People's Republic. Filming took place over six weeks from April to May 2014. The camera follows 300 revolutionaries who took over the building of the Regional State Administration in the center of Donetsk and declared the independence of the region. The revolutionaries see themselves as the saviors of their people from the bloodthirsty fascist government based in Kyiv. This is a story about how to make a revolution and what happens after that when you get the power. The heroes of the film are Andrei ("Lenin"), who leaves home and mother to change history; the speaker of the new government, Vladimir, and the head of the internal anti-corruption security service, whose task is to capture and interrogate traitors, fascists and enemies of the Revolution. When the heroes believed they had won, their fates abruptly changed course.
Ghost Workers

2019

Ghost Workers

2019
8
We're at the beginning of an artificial intelligence revolution that promises to change everything. Already, virtual assistants like Siri and Alexa have become a part of our daily life. But in order to run their applications, digital giants like Amazon, Google and Facebook, employ an army of invisible labour. These are disposable workers, paid as little as 10 cents an hour to feed information into computer systems. They receive neither benefits nor contract and normal labor law doesn't apply to them. Whilst millions of men and women are training artificial intelligence for next to nothing, others are being hired and hide out of sight to clean up social networks. We went undercover as one of these web cleaners, working as a content moderator for Facebook. To meet the workers hiding behind your screen, we're taking you to the factory of the future, one of the digital economy's best kept secrets.
The Secret History of the Credit Card

2004

The Secret History of the Credit Card

2004
7
FRONTLINE and The New York Times examine how the credit card industry became so pervasive, so lucrative, and so politically powerful.
The Exiles

2022

The Exiles

2022
8
Brash and opinionated, Christine Choy is a documentarian, cinematographer, professor, and quintessential New Yorker whose films and teaching have influenced a generation of artists. In 1989 she started to film the leaders of the Tiananmen Square pro-democracy protests who escaped to political exile following the June 4 massacre. Though Choy never finished that project, she now travels with the old footage to Taiwan, Maryland, and Paris in order to share it with the dissidents who have never been able to return home.
Monumental Crossroads

2018

Monumental Crossroads

2018
8
Throughout the South of the United States, tempers flare up as confederate monuments are targeted for removal. During a 6000 mile road trip through the former Confederacy, this documentary explores the legacy of Southern Heritage. A myriad of supporters and opponents is met along the way: White, Black, North and South. Each with their own view on what's worth remembering and preserving. Is there a way past these crossroads?
Salaryman

2021

Salaryman

2021
3.5
Tokyo work culture's most compelling and complex protagonist; the Salaryman. A nameless, voiceless, over-worked and under-valued cog in the labour pool, expected to compromise home and social lives. Late nights and intense drinking sessions leave many of them passed out in the city streets. This slick, incisive documentary raises questions around the ethics of our global working practices in a capitalist society.
Becoming Helen Keller

2021

Becoming Helen Keller

2021
8
The life and legacy of Helen Keller, including how she used her celebrity to advocate for human rights and social justice for women, the poor and people with disabilities.
Hunting Bigfoot

2022

Hunting Bigfoot

2022
4
Hunting Bigfoot (2021) A film that skillfully melds the worlds of narrative feature and documentary to capture this portrait of a broken man obsessively pursuing personal and professional redemption in a world where many of those close to him think he's crazy.
The King of North Sudan

2021

The King of North Sudan

2021
8
Danny Abel’s documentary tells the incredible, all-American story of Jeremiah Heaton and his geographical conquest. It all starts in 2014, when Heaton lays claim to 500,000 acres of desert land between Egypt and Sudan; his initial aim is to establish a kingdom so that his daughter can be made a princess. What follows is media attention, a movie deal with Disney, and a shift in motivation: Heaton decides to create a bonafide nation, with industry, a military, and more.