THE DEPARTMENT is a feature documentary which takes us inside the never-before-seen child protection system at work in NSW. Filmed in an observational style, it follows caseworkers across the state as they navigate the complexities of keeping children safe in families experiencing domestic violence, addiction, poverty, mental health issues and intergenerational trauma.
Someone's Daughter, Someone's Son (2024)
Now a successful filmmaker, Lorna Tucker was once a teenage runaway sleeping rough on the streets of London. For this frank, forceful and inspiring documentary, she returns to her former haunts and speaks to current and former homeless people about why, twenty-five years later, record numbers of people are still reduced to living on Britain's streets.
Land Without Bread (1933)
An exploration —manipulated and staged— of life in Las Hurdes, in the province of Cáceres, in Extremadura, Spain, as it was in 1932. Insalubrity, misery and lack of opportunities provoke the emigration of young people and the solitude of those who remain in the desolation of one of the poorest and least developed Spanish regions at that time. (Silent short, voiced in 1937 and 1996.)
Megacities (1998)
Megacities is a documentary about the slums of five different metropolitan cities.
Pier Paolo Pasolini: An Italian Journey (2018)
In the summer of 1959, as a magazine correspondent, writer and filmmaker Pier Paolo Pasolini (1922-75) traveled along the Italian coast. In 1963, he documented the sexual behavior of the Italians. In the winter of 1970-71, he witnessed the hardships of the most impoverished Italian population suffering from the boot of state power. After these three trips, he came to the conclusion that Italian society had changed drastically for the worse over the years.
The Corporate Coup D'État (2018)
A democracy should protect its most vulnerable citizens, but increasingly the United States is failing to do so. This investigation blends the insights of experts with the experiences of citizens of the Rust Belt in the Midwest where the steel industry once flourished, but where closures and outsourcing have left urban areas desolate. It is here where Donald Trump finds some of his most fervent supporters.
Shado'man (2013)
In Freetown, the capital of Sierra Leone, a group of friends lives on the streets. They call themselves the Freetown Streetboys, even though there are some women among them as well. Suley, Lama, David, Alfred, Shero and Sarah have all faced enormous physical and psychological challenges, and have been abandoned by the world around them. Without commentary and in poetic, cinematic images, the camera records the dark environment that they inhabit. The group shares their heartrending stories of the precarious nature of life in this complex country. But there is also room for everyday personal struggles, such as starting relationships, how to bring up children (or not), and sex.
Working But Poor - The Middle Class in Crisis (2023)
Citizens across Europe who used to belong to the lower middle class have fallen into poverty. An in-depth investigation into the precariat, a new social class of financially insecure citizens who, although they are employed, find it very difficult to make ends meet.
Coach Zoran and His African Tigers (2014)
Documentary following Serbian football coach Zoran Đorđević as he helps form South Sudan's first national football team.
Art From the Streets (2006)
Award winning feature documentary about an art program for homeless people.
Pages of Hope (2024)
Homeless man Robert (Bobby) Webb discovers the art of filmmaking, turning pages of his life into a heartfelt reel. Through his journey he finds hope and new meanings in unexpected aspects of his life as he relives them.
Los posibles (2013)
Santiago Mitre co-directs his first movement following The Student together with choreographer Onofri Barbato. Although it would have been more accurate to say “his first film-story-adventure-movie-great movie following The Student”, the word movement fits perfectly in Los posibles, the most overwhelmingly kinetic work Argentine cinema has delivered in many, many years. The film deals with the adaptation of a dance show directed by Onofri together with a group of teenagers who came to Casa La Salle, a center of social integration located in González Catán, trying to find some refuge from hardship. Already entitled Los posibles, the piece opened in the La Plata Tacec and was later staged in the AB Hall of the San Martín Cultural Center. Now, it dazzles audiences out of a film screen, with extraordinary muscles and a huge heart: Los posibles is a rhapsody of roughen bodies and torn emotions. Precise and exciting, it’s our own delayed, necessary, and incandescent West Side Story.
Children in Crisis: The Story of CHIP (2024)
In the midst of a catastrophic steel industry collapse, a remarkable grassroots community effort leads to a national healthcare program that helps more than 200 million children...and counting.
The Journey (1987)
Peter Watkins' global look at the impact of military use of nuclear technology and people's perception of it, as well as a meditation on the inherent bias of the media, and documentaries themselves.
Kolt 15 GAP (1971)
Funny story of an unemployed metalworker, self-proclaimed Marxist, his views and whereabouts.
Picture Proof (2023)
Examines the intergenerational impact of addiction by chronicling the love, labor, loss, and uncertainty of one woman’s struggle to live a life of sobriety. Weaving together moments of glee, fulfillment, acceptance, sorrow, and disappointment, this documentary takes an intimate look at the bonds that hold one family together and a disease that threatens to tear them apart.
20 Cans of Chunky Beef Soup (2003)
Documentary tells the story of Maxim Vakhmin, a veritable alleycat of a man. Revered as both an angel and a devil, Maxim (once known as a successful artist in his native Russia) is losing friends and finding new ones as a homeless person in the USA.
Paper Cannot Wrap Up Embers (2007)
During the last half-century, Cambodia has witnessed genocide, decades of war and the collapse of social order. Now, documentary filmmaker Rithy Panh looks at an irreparable tragedy that is less visible, yet no less pervasive: the spiritual death that results when young women are forced into prostitution. Angry and impassioned, PAPER CANNOT WRAP UP EMBERS presents the searing stories of poor Asian women whose lives were violated and their destinies destroyed when their bodies were turned into items of sexual commerce.
Uncomfortably Comfortable (2021)
In the spring of 2018, the filmmaker Maria Petschnig befriended Marc who at that time was living in his car in Brooklyn for more than a year, while also holding a day job. Petschnig started to record his life and struggle, his thoughts, routines, etc. over the course of two years.