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Zeitgeist Films Movies - Sort: Most Popular

Portrait of Amy Renner Amy Renner

Last modified: Jan. 22, 2024

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Movie fans know the work of Harold and Lillian Michelson, even if they don’t recognize the names. Working largely uncredited in the Hollywood system, storyboard artist Harold and film researcher Lillian left an indelible mark on classics by Alfred Hitchcock, Steven Spielberg, Mel Brooks, Stanley Kubrick, Roman Polanski and many more.

Documentary

  • 3.3

62%

38%
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The revolutionary 20th-century dance troupe known as the Ballets Russes began as a group of Russian refugees, who never danced in Russia, and became not one but two rival dance troupes. 'Ballets Russes' begins with the company's Diaghilev-era in turn-of-the-century Paris -- when artists such as Nijinsky, Balanchine, Picasso, Miro, Matisse and Stravinsky united in an unparalleled collaboration. The film then explores the company's halcyon days of the 1930s and '40s, when the Ballets Russes toured America, astonishing audiences schooled in vaudeville with artistry never before seen, The company's demise came in 1950s and '60s when rising costs, rocketing egos, outside competition and internal mismanagement ultimately brought the revered Ballets Russes to its knees.

R Documentary 2 hrs, 0 mins

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For decades, the Schwinn-riding Bill Cunningham, cultural anthropologist, has been obsessively and inventively chronicling fashion trends and high society charity soirées for the New York Times Style section.

Documentary 1 hr, 24 mins

  • 3.1

25%

75%

A month after receiving a fatal diagnosis in January 2015, Oliver Sacks sat down for a series of filmed interviews in his apartment in New York City. For eighty hours, surrounded by family, friends, and notebooks from six decades of thinking and writing about the brain, he talked about his life and work, his abiding sense of wonder at the natural world, and the place of human beings within it. Drawing on these deeply personal reflections, as well as nearly two dozen interviews with close friends, family members, colleagues and patients, and archival material from every point in his life, this film is the story of a beloved doctor and writer who redefined our understanding of the brain and mind.

Documentary

  • 2

50%

50%
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Starting from its roots in 1960s antiwar and civil rights protests, the film details major developments in women's art through the 1970s and explores how these pioneering artists resulted in what is now widely regarded as the most significant art movement of the late 20th century.

NR Documentary 1 hr, 23 mins

  • 3.2

60%

40%

A hotel maid's growing interest in chess is nurtured by her American employer.

Drama 1 hr, 36 mins

  • 4.1

52%

48%
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Set in a richly exaggerated 17th-century England, Peter Greenaway’s witty, stylised, erotic country house murder mystery catapulted him to the forefront of international art cinema. Adorned with intricate wordplay, extravagant costumes and opulent photography, Greenaway’s first narrative feature weaves a labyrinthine mystery around the maxim “draw what you see, not what you know.” An aristocratic wife (Janet Suzman) commissions a young, cocksure draughtsman (Anthony Higgins) to sketch her husband’s property while he is away—in exchange for a fee, room and board, and one sexual favor for each of the twelve drawings. As the draughtsman becomes more entrenched in the devious schemings in this seemingly idyllic country home, curious details emerge in his drawings that may reveal a murder.

Drama 1 hr, 44 mins

86%

14%

Featuring the voice performances of international stars Cate Blanchett, Diane Kruger, Connie Nielsen, Sebastian Koch, Thomas Kretschmann, Gustaf Skarsgård and Josh Radnor, this film interweaves an unsolved 1930s murder mystery with stories of present day Galapagos pioneers (a handful of Europeans, Americans and Ecuadoreans who settled idiosyncratically on the Islands between the 1930s and 1960s).

Biography Crime 2 hrs, 0 mins

  • 4

11%

89%

After the sudden death of her father, 8-year-old Simone shares a secret with her mother Dawn. She’s convinced her father speaks to her through the leaves of her favourite tree and he’s come back to protect them. But the new bond between mother and daughter is threatened when Dawn starts a relationship with George, the plumber, called in to remove the tree’s troublesome roots.

Drama Romance 1 hr, 40 mins

How far do you have to travel to find yourself? And what sacrifices are you willing to make to get there? Veiga Grétarsdóttir is the first person in the world to attempt to kayak the 1,300 mile circumference of Iceland, counter-clockwise and against the current, an achievement that has been compared to climbing K2. Veiga’s personal journey is no less remarkable. She was born 44 years ago as a boy in a fishing village on the far west coast of Iceland. By the age of 38 Veigar had a wife and family but decided that she could no longer live as a man and decided to undergo gender reassignment. The inner struggle for Veigar to become Veiga was a journey as difficult if not more so than the solo kayak expedition she undertakes. These two stories of conflict and struggle are intertwined as the film follows her amazing 103 day journey around Iceland, with the magical, rugged coastline of the country a backdrop to the story of Veiga’s transition.

NR Documentary 1 hr, 28 mins

  • 4

80%

20%

In 1970, Jeffrey Kagel walked away from the American dream of rock 'n' roll stardom, turning down the chance to record as lead singer for the band soon-to-be the Blue Oyster Cult. Instead, he sold all his possessions and moved from the suburbs of Long Island to the foothills of the Himalayas in search of happiness and a little-known saint named Neem Karoli Baba. One Track Heart: The Story of Krishna Das follows his journey to India and back, witnessing his struggles with depression and drug abuse, to his eventual emergence as Grammy-Nominated Krishna Das, world-renowned spiritual teacher and chant master.

NR Documentary 1 hr, 12 mins

  • 4

63%

37%

An aspiring rap artist and her streetwise husband, armed with a video camera, show what survival is all about when they are trapped in New Orleans by deadly floodwaters, and seize a chance for a new beginning.

NR Documentary 1 hr, 33 mins

100%

0%

In A Space Program, internationally acclaimed artist Tom Sachs takes us on an intricately handmade journey to the red planet, providing audiences with an intimate, first person look into his studio and methods. The film is both a piece of art in its own right and a recording of Sachs’ historic piece, Space Program 2.0: MARS, which opened at New York’s Park Avenue Armory in 2012.

For Space Program 2.0: MARS, Tom and his team built an entire space program from scratch. They were guided by the philosophy of bricolage: creating and constructing from available yet limited resources. They ultimately sent two female astronauts to Mars in search of the answer to humankind’s ultimate question… are we alone?

NR Documentary

  • 3

45%

55%

During one of their adventures, Cowboy, Indian and Horse discover a strange and fascinating underwater world. While there, a conflict with the habitants is solved with the physical and geographical distribution of the two worlds.

NR Action Adventure

  • 1

27%

73%

In the wilderness of the Bucharest Delta, an abandoned water reservoir just outside the bustling metropolis, the Enache family lived in perfect harmony with nature for two decades, sleeping in a hut on the lakeshore, catching fish barehanded, and following the rhythm of the seasons. When this area is transformed into a public national park, they are forced to leave behind their unconventional life and move to the city, where fishing rods are replaced by smartphones and idle afternoons are now spent in classrooms. As the family struggles to conform to modern civilization and maintain their connection to each other and themselves, they each begin to question their place in the world and what their future might be. With their roots in the wilderness, the nine children and their parents struggle to find a way to keep their family united in the concrete jungle.

Documentary

  • 5

60%

40%

An expressionist work comprised of surreal action involving: a hockey rink that houses a forgotten wax museum, where ghosts of dead lovers stroll; and a beauty salon where a demented doctor, wearing a corset, performs abortions.

Foreign

0%

100%

A half century after its release, Midnight Cowboy remains one of the most original and groundbreaking movies of the modern era. With beguiling performances from Jon Voight and Dustin Hoffman as two loners who join forces out of desperation, blacklist survivor Waldo Salt's brilliant screenplay, and John Schlesinger's fearless direction, the 1969 film became the only X- rated film to ever win the Academy Award for Best Picture. Its vivid and compassionate depiction of a more realistic, unsanitized New York City and its inhabitants paved the way for a generation’s worth of gritty movies with complex characters and adult themes. But this is not a documentary about the making of Midnight Cowboy: it is about the deeply gifted and flawed people behind a dark and difficult masterpiece; New York City in a troubled time of cultural ferment; and the era that made a movie and the movie that made an era. Featuring extensive archival material and compelling new interviews, director Nancy Buirski illuminates how one film captured the essence of a time and a place, reflecting a rapidly changing society with striking clarity.

Documentary

67%

33%

A drama based on the true story of Fahrije, who, like many of the other women in her patriarchal village, has lived with fading hope and burgeoning grief since her husband went missing during the war in Kosovo. In order to provide for her struggling family, she pulls the other widows in her community together to launch a business selling a local food product. Together, they find healing and solace in considering a future without their husbands—but their will to begin living independently is met with hostility. The men in the village condemn Fahrije’s efforts to empower herself and the women around her, starting a feud that threatens their newfound sovereignty—and the financial future of Fahrije’s family. Against the backdrop of Eastern Europe’s civil unrest and lingering misogyny, Fahrije and the women of her village join in a struggle to find hope in the face of an uncertain future.

Drama

  • 4.5

73%

27%

Former Mayor Ed Koch is the quintessential New Yorker. Still ferocious, charismatic, and hilariously blunt, the now 88-year-old Koch ruled New York from 1978 to 1989—a down-and-dirty decade of grit, graffiti, near-bankruptcy and rampant crime. First-time filmmaker (and former Wall Street Journal reporter) Neil Barsky has crafted a revealing portrait of this intensely private man, his legacy as a political titan, and the town he helped transform. His three terms included a fiercely competitive 1977 election; the burgeoning AIDS epidemic; landmark housing initiatives; and an irreparable municipal corruption scandal. Through candid interviews and rare archival footage, Koch thrillingly chronicles the personal and political toll of running the world’s most wondrous city.

Historical Biography 1 hr, 35 mins

  • 3.6

24%

76%

A love story spanning two continents, "Nowhere in Africa" is the extraordinary true tale of a Jewish family who flees the Nazi regime in 1938 for a remote farm in Kenya. Abandoning their once-comfortable existence in Germany, Walter Redlich, his wife Jettel (Juliane Kohler) and their five-year-old daughter Regina each deal with the harsh realities of their new life in different ways. Attorney Walter is resigned to working the farm as a caretaker; pampered Jettel resists adjustment at every turn; while the shy yet curious Regina immediately embraces the country-learning the local language and customs, and finding a friend in Owuor, the farm's cook. As the war rages on the other side of the world, the trio's relationships to their strange environment become increasingly complicated as Jettel grows more self-assured and Walter more haunted by the life they left behind. As they eventually learn to cherish their life in Africa, they also endeavor to find a way back to each other.

R Drama Foreign

40%

60%

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