1. Earth: The Power of the Planet
Dr Iain Stewart tells the story of how Earth works and how, over the course of 4.6 billion years, it came to be the remarkable place it is today.
It has an average vote of 7.8 on TMDB.
2. Salesman
This documentary from Albert and David Maysles follows the bitter rivalry of four door-to-door salesmen working for the Mid-American Bible Company: Paul "The Badger" Brennan, Charles "The Gipper" McDevitt, James "The Rabbit" Baker and Raymond "The Bull" Martos. Times are tough for this hard-living quartet, who spend their days traveling through small-town America, trying their best to peddle gold-leaf Bibles to an apathetic crowd of lower-middle-class housewives and elderly couples.
It has an average vote of 7.2 on TMDB.
3. Just Hold Still
In his New York City landscape, Cohen finds inspiration in disturbance. Looking to life for rhythm and to architecture for state of mind, he locates simple mysteries. Just Hold Still is comprised of an interconnected series of short works and collaborations that explore the gray area between documentary, narrative, and experimental genres.
It has an average vote of 5.3 on TMDB.
4. New York Portrait, Chapter III
" latest urban film, New York Portrait, Chapter III, takes on a unique tone in relation to Hutton’s ongoing exploration of rural landscape. The very fact that Hutton is dealing with older footage, with archives of memory more than immediacy, gives it a different texture than his earlier New York films. Hutton always found the presence of nature in the city, not only in his many shots of sky and vegetation, but also in the geometry and texture of the city itself, which seemed to project an independence from the human."
It has an average vote of 8.5 on TMDB.
5. Kurosawa's Way (Kurosawa, la voie)
Eleven major film makers from Europe, America and Asia talk about Akira Kurosawa and discover surprising influences on their own work.
It has an average vote of 5.4 on TMDB.
6. Scar Tissue
Scar Tissue by Su Friedrich is a filmic version of a white canvas or a silent music piece.The fact that Friedrich never really shows the whole body, but rather plays off of body parts could be read as a desire to show less of the people on the screen, so that the viewer's reading can be generalized. If the "characters" existed as people, the images would inevitably read to be telling a story about these people. The legs and torsos do not signify people; it is the experience of these body parts and the rhythm with which they are portrayed that constitute the work.
7. Searching Eva (Searching Eva)
This is the tale of a young woman, growing up in the age of the internet and turning the search for oneself into a public spectacle, allowing kids from all over the world to live their life through hers. Through her fragmented personalities you see the emergence of a new generation, in which the concept of a fixed identity has grown old.
It has an average vote of 5.7 on TMDB.
8. General Idea: Art, AIDS and the fin de siècle
"GENERAL IDEA: Art, AIDS and the fin de siècle is a humorous, informative and ultimately poignant documentary about General Idea. Formed in 1969, they produced art that targeted and mimicked media, consumerism and celebrity, creating a revolutionary new spirit of art making. Interviews with AA Bronson, the sole survivor of the trio, lends personal relevancy to this story of art and sexual politics. GENERAL IDEA: Art, AIDS and the fin de siècle is a tale of love, fame, overwhelming loss and, ultimately, renewal."</p><p> -AGO.net
9. Warrior of Light (Kriegerin des Lichts)
A feature-length documentary on Yvonne Bezerra de Mello, award-winning artist and human-rights activist who has gained international recognition for her work with street children in Rio. The film recounts how a woman turned her back on a wealthy lifestyle, driven into action by the execution of 8 streetkids by military police in 1993. In subsequent years Yvonne's struggle to better the lives of endangered and abandoned children has led her to found "Projeto Uere" a radical project committed to protection and education of kids who live in the streets and slums of Rio which has brought her into conflict with Brazil's wealthy elite.
10. The Pimp and His Trophies (Der Zuhälter und seine Trophäen)
(Der Zuhälter und seine Trophäen)
It has an average vote of 7 on TMDB.
11. The Good Son
The unbelievable story of 22 year old Or, who secretly finances his sex change operation in Thailand by lying to his conservative parents and then returns home as a woman to face her new life, her family and the cost of living her dream
It has an average vote of 3.2 on TMDB.
12. Beyond Boobs
A hilarious and at times provocative film about a middle-aged American single-mother living in Switzerland and her quest to find out if she'll be invisible when she's no longer the woman with the biggest breasts in the room.
It has an average vote of 4.2 on TMDB.
13. The Korean Wedding Chest (Die koreanische Hochzeitstruhe)
Ulrike Ottinger’s provocative mélange of ethnography, stunning tableaux and baroque vignettes was inspired by what she calls the “well-stocked miracle” of Korean wedding chests, assembled according to time-honored customs. This exploration of love and marriage in South Korea looks closely at ancient and present-day rituals, revealing what is old in the new and new in the old. Her inquiry leads us from shamans, temples and priests, to the enchanted maze of 21st-century Seoul, where vendors of medicinal herbs co-exist with high-tech beauty salons for wedding couples and secular marriage palaces. Using film much like a canvas, Ottinger creates a modern fairytale flush with mythological heroes, traditional rites, ancestral symbolism, dreams of eternal love, and a whole lot of Western kitsch. One of her most acclaimed documentaries, it captures the amazing phenomenon of new mega-cities and their contradictory societies caught in a balancing act.
It has an average vote of 5 on TMDB.
14. Afghan Star
This documentary on the effect the talent competition "Afghan Star" has on the incredibly diverse inhabitants of Afghanistan affords a glimpse into a country rarely seen. Contestants risk their lives to appear on the television show that is a raging success with the public and also monitored closely by the government.
It has an average vote of 6.5 on TMDB.
15. The Black Album
The Black Album places scrutiny on the notion of "Black Excellence" in a revisionist take.
16. My Ancestors Were Rogues and Murderers
An exploration of the unique culture of Newfoundland's outports, the film revisits the PR coup that launched the animal rights movement onto the international stage: the 1977 Newfoundland visit, orchestrated by the International Fund for Animal Welfare, of French actress turned animal rights activist Brigitte Bardot to protest the area's ancestral sealing activities. Soon, inhabitants of the island's northern outports we're being introduced to the world as the epitome of brutality.
17. Intolerância.doc (Intolerância.doc)
The film gets into the underworld of crimes involving homophobia, soccer organized fans, and gangs in Sao Paulo city. It shows the team’s work routine of DECRADI, the only unit specialized in this field, as they search for people who have made hate speech into cruel murders.
It has an average vote of 6 on TMDB.
18. Os Cravos e a Rocha (Os Cravos e a Rocha)
On April 25, 1974 the iconoclastic Brazilian filmmaker Glauber Rocha was in Portugal. There, he joined the collective collective film "As Armas e o Povo". With his foreign and peculiar look, he broke the rules of conventional filmmaking.
19. Treyf (Treyf)
TREYF —“unkosher” in Yiddish— is an unorthodox documentary by and about two Jewish lesbians who met and fell in love at a Passover “seder”. With personal narration, real and imagined educational films, and haunting imagery, filmmakers Alisa Lebow and Cynthia Madansky examine the Jewish identity of their upbringings and its impact on their lives.
It has an average vote of 1 on TMDB.
20. The Human Experiment
A documentary that explores the potential dangers of toxic chemicals in consumer products and the recent spike in unexplained health phenomena.
It has an average vote of 6.5 on TMDB.