Observational Cinema Movies

What really happens inside the walls of an American high school? Famed documentarian Frederick Wiseman answers that question in this peek inside...

When Sara and Samar return to their coastal Indian hometown for their grandfather’s funeral, the siblings drift through quiet rituals and the...

Tibetan Buddhist search for the meaning of death in an unforgiving Himalayan landscape and stir compassion by uncovering human truths

The diary of Takuya Ogushi, a 18 years old Japanese, who begins his new life as a sumo wrestler.

Daily life in a Benedictine monastery follows resolution of conflict between personal needs and the institutional and organizational priorities of...

In March 2023, despite a flush of police raids and arrests in the struggle against Cop City in Atlanta, the Weelaunee Food Autonomy Festival gathered...

A mixture of documentary and fiction as seen through the eyes of a non-participant observer, this drama presents the life of the fisherman Maldonado....

The young director, Gael Metroz, takes the road alone, camera in hand, in the footsteps of Nicolas Bouvier. He discovers that the East is no longer...

What does it mean to belong to a place, a country? In a south Tel Aviv elementary school, that question is addressed head-on by a fourth-grade class...

They pass each other everyday, obscured by the crowds. They will always be there, always crossing paths, alone.

Follow the people who live and work in the Panama Canal Zone and glimpse into both the operation of the Canal and the various governmental agencies...

Tracing the process through which cattle and sheep become consumer goods, Frederick Wiseman's deep dive depicts the processing and transportation of...

The personal collaboration between Kiran Acharya and Clint Mansell is an early combination of documentary film and augmented reality.

A nighttime montage of strangers drifting through the city, People Like Ghosts is an experimental visual poem exploring modern isolation, silent...

A boy stands in a field, flying his kite.

Nai Nai follows the story of a Chinese immigrant grandmother, Chu-Ming Wu. Known as “Nai Nai,” Chu-Ming has always been a woman of...

“Olive” is a short documentary that follows Olive Hagemeier, an energetic woman, on her daily routine of salvaging, repackaging and...

Across the seasons, the film gives an account of life and work and the animals and visitors at Zurich Zoo, an institution that is one of the leading...