The Ta'ang or Palaung people, an ethnic minority living in the mountainous area between Myanmar's Kokang region and China's Yunnan province, have historically suffered many forced migrations due to war. When their survival is threatened again in 2015, thousands of them flee across the border. Filmmaker Wang Bing accompanies them and becomes a privileged witness to a human story that is both a modern reportage and a mythical epic.
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China's Lost Pyramids (2010)
In China, there exists an astonishing place. A burial ground to rival Egypt’s Valley of the Kings, where pyramid tombs of stupendous size are full of astonishing riches. In 221 BC, China's first Emperor united warring kingdoms into a nation that still exists today. To memorialise this achievement, he bankrupted the national treasury and oppressed thousands of workers to build one of the world’s biggest mortuary complexes. China's second dynasty, the Han, inherited the daunting challenge of building larger tombs to command respect and establish their right to rule without running the nation into the ground. Although no Han emperor's tomb has been opened, the tombs of lesser Han aristocrats have revealed astonishing things: complete underground palaces (including kitchens and toilets) and at least one corpse so amazingly well-preserved some believe Han tomb-builders knew how to "engineer immortality".
Seeing Through the Darkness (2025)
The film follows five people who lost their sight in armed conflicts, gathering fragments of their present-day lives. Through an enveloping sound composition, veiled archival material, footage shot by the protagonists themselves, and a sensitive visual approach, the film explores memory, perception, and our relationship to the visible. Steering away from spectacle, it invites us to hear what often goes unheard, and to feel differently. In an age saturated with images, this documentary offers a sensory experience where listening becomes a gesture of resistance and human reconnection.
Refugee Poetry (2016)
The Kurdish Iraqi poet and actor Zeravan Khalil travels with his dog through an Alpine gorge after fleeing from IS war and genocide. As he remembers the abomination, he writes a poem with the title “You drive me mad” in Kurmanji Kurdish. In his home country, Yazidic Kurds are forbidden to work in his profession. Then he eats his apple and wanders through Europe’s middle with more hope.
10 Questions for the Dalai Lama (2006)
How do you reconcile a commitment to non-violence when faced with violence? Why do the poor often seem happier than the rich? Must a society lose its traditions in order to move into the future? These are some of the questions posed to His Holiness the Dalai Lama by filmmaker and explorer Rick Ray. Ray examines some of the fundamental questions of our time by weaving together observations from his own journeys throughout India and the Middle East, and the wisdom of an extraordinary spiritual leader. This is his story, as told and filmed by Rick Ray during a private visit to his monastery in Dharamsala, India over the course of several months. Also included is rare historical footage as well as footage supplied by individuals who at great personal risk, filmed with hidden cameras within Tibet.
Touring Civil War Battlefields (1987)
See the actual battlefields as they were and as they are today. No battlefields have greater appeal than the meticulously preserved meadows and forests where four heroic encounters of the Civil War were decided. Relive the story behind each conflict as thousands reenact the battles.
Warehoused (2017)
An estimated 12 million people live in refugee camps worldwide and only 0.1% are resettled, repatriated, or integrated into normal society each year. The feature-length documentary.
Iron Butterflies (2023)
This lesson in political revelation focuses on the shooting down of the Malaysian passenger jet MH17 over eastern Ukraine in 2014. A meticulous, investigative exposé that lays bare the mechanisms of Russian warfare.
Maria's Story (1991)
It is El Salvador, 1989, three years before the end of a brutal civil war that took 75,000 lives. Maria Serrano, wife, mother, and guerrilla leader is on the front lines of the battle for her people and her country. With unprecedented access to FMLN guerrilla camps, the filmmakers dramatically chronicle Maria's daily life in the war.
Borderlands (2023)
Fleeing the 1980 Civil War in El Salvador, Dora Rodriguez, among a group of twenty-five asylum seekers, were abandoned by their guide and left to fend for themselves in the relentless Sonoran desert of Arizona.
March of the Penguins (2005)
Every year, thousands of Antarctica's emperor penguins make an astonishing journey to breed their young. They walk, marching day and night in single file 70 miles into the darkest, driest and coldest continent on Earth. This amazing, true-life tale is touched with humour and alive with thrills. Breathtaking photography captures the transcendent beauty and staggering drama of devoted parent penguins who, in the fierce polar winter, take turns guarding their egg and trekking to the ocean in search of food. Predators hunt them, storms lash them. But the safety of their adorable chicks makes it all worthwhile. So follow the leader... to adventure!!
The Last of the Sea Women (2024)
On the shores of Jeju Island, a fierce group of South Korean divers fight to save their vanishing culture from looming threats.
The Wars of the Roses: A Bloody Crown (2002)
Using historically-accurate, battle-filled re-enactments and interviews with expert historians and noted authors, this two-part documentary series brings to vivid life the captivating true stories behind Britain's bloody civil wars.
A Day on the Grand Canal with the Emperor of China or: Surface Is Illusion But So Is Depth (1988)
Director Philip Haas and artist David Hockney invite you to join them on a magical journey through China via a marvelous 72-foot long 17th-century Chinese scroll entitled The Kangxi Emperor's Southern Inspection Tour (1691-1698), scroll seven . As Hockney unrolls the beautiful and minutely detailed work of art, he traces the Emperor Kangxi’s second tour of his southern empire in 1689.
Intercepted (2025)
Intercepted is a journey through Ukraine that reveals the banality of evil behind the Russian invasion with the shocking juxtaposition of two realities: the Ukrainians who have been suffering and resisting the war violence, and the Russian military, and civilians, who have been perpetrating it.
I Am Big Bird: The Caroll Spinney Story (2015)
A documentary about Caroll Spinney who has been Sesame Street's Big Bird and Oscar the Grouch since 1969. At 78-years-old, he has no intention of stopping.
Maidan (2014)
A chronicle of the civil uprising against the regime of Ukrainian president Viktor Yanukovych that took place in Kyiv in the winter of 2013/14. The film follows the progress of the revolution: from peaceful rallies, half a million strong in the Maidan square, to the bloody street battles between protesters and riot police.
A Hero's Death (2001)
It was the biggest escape in the history of the Berlin Wall: in one historic night of October 1964, 57 East-Berliners try their luck through a tunnel into West Berlin. Just before the last few reach the other side, the East German border guards notice the escape and open fire. Remarkably, all the refugees and their escape agents make it out of the tunnel unscathed, but one border guard is dead: 21-year-old officer Egon Schultz.