Documentary Movies 2017 List

With Michal Marczak

After Kris breaks up with his long-time girlfriend, anything seems possible and Warsaw is his playground. Along with best friend Michal, handsome and wide-eyed, they roam the metropolis at night, floating from party to party, dancing until dawn in makeshift clubs and city squares. With only instinct and desire as their guides, big ideas intermingle with drugs and sex and one thing seamlessly gives way to another. However, when Kris falls for Michal’s ex-girlfriend, the indomitable and alluring Eva, the relationship between the two best friends falls apart. Determined to find his true self Kris navigates between his memories and future hopes soon realizing that his crusade to understand life has starting to overshadow living it.

With Barnaby Clay

A deep look into the mind of one of rock’s greatest living photographers: Mick Rock. Rock’s work with some of the most accomplished personalities of the past forty years—David Bowie, Queen, Blondie, Lou Reed and Iggy Pop—created many of the images that would come to define them.

With Todd Wider • Jedd Wider

Follows the true life tale of Linda Bishop, a mentally-ill homeless woman who spent four months alone in an abandoned farmhouse, living off of rainwater and apples, waiting for God to save her, during one of the coldest winters on record.

With Joe Caterini • Chris Collins • Susan Porretta • Anthony Bourdain • Amy Entelis • Vinnie Malhotra

Covers the life of Jeremiah Tower, who became one of America’s first celebrity chefs, and includes interviews with Anthony Bourdain, Mario Batali, Martha Stewart and Ruth Reichl.

With David Fairhead

Explores the faltering start of the program to the Mercury and Gemini missions, the tragic Apollo 1 fire and the Moon landings.

With Ryan Suffern

In a forgotten massacre during Guatemala’s decades-long civil war, a young boy was spared, only to be raised by one of the very soldiers who killed his family. Nearly 30 years after the tragedy, it will take a dedicated team—from a forensic scientist to a young Guatemalan prosecutor—to uncover the truth and bring justice to those responsible… by finding the missing boy named Oscar.

With John Krasinski • Phil Chapman • Roy Conli • Lu Chuan • Brian Leith

Born in China follows the stories of three animal families, transporting audiences to some of the most extreme environments on Earth to witness some of the most intimate moments ever captured in a nature film. A doting panda bear mother guides her growing baby as she begins to explore and seek independence. A two-year-old golden monkey who feels displaced by his new baby sister joins up with a group of free-spirited outcasts. And a mother snow leopard—an elusive animal rarely caught on camera—faces the very real drama of raising her two cubs in one of the harshest and most unforgiving environments on the planet.

With John Ridley

Takes a unique and in-depth look at the years and events leading up to the city-wide violence that began April 29, 1992, when the verdict was announced in the Rodney King case.

With Robert Hammond • Corey Reeser • Jessica Van Garsse • Jennifer Carchman

Citizen Jane: Battle for the City is a story about our global urban future, in which nearly three-fourths of the world’s population will live in cities by the end of this century. It’s also a story about America’s recent urban past, in which bureaucratic, “top down” approaches to building cities have dramatically clashed with grassroots, “bottom up” approaches. The film brings us back mid-century, on the eve of the battles for the heart and soul of American cities, about to be routed by cataclysmically destructive Urban Renewal and highway projects.

The film details the revolutionary thinking of Jane Jacobs, and the origins of her magisterial 1961 treatise The Death and Life of Great American Cities, in which she singlehandedly undercuts her era’s orthodox model of city planning, exemplified by the massive Urban Renewal projects of New York’s “Master Builder,” Robert Moses. Jacobs and Moses figure centrally in our story as archetypes of the “bottom up” and the “top down” vision for cities.

They also figure as two larger-than-life personalities: Jacobs—a journalist with provincial origins, no formal training in city planning, and scarce institutional authority—seems at first glance to share little in common with Robert Moses, the upper class, high prince of government and urban theory fully ensconced in New York’s halls of power and privilege. Yet both reveal themselves to be master tacticians who, in the middle of the 20th century, became locked in an epic struggle over the fate of the city.

With Melanie Laurent • Cyril Dion

In 2012, “Nature” published a study led by more than 20 researchers from the top scientific institutions in the world predicting that humankind could disappear between 2040 and 2100. It also said that it could be avoided by drastically changing our way of life and take appropriate measures.

Shortly after giving birth to her first child, French actress and director Mélanie Laurent became increasingly aware of the dangers and the state of urgency that her son will face in the future. Along with friend and activist Cyril Dion and their crew, she decided to travel the world in search of solutions that can help save the next generations. The result is Tomorrow, an inspiring documentary that presents concrete solutions implemented throughout the world by hundred of communities.

With Brett Berns • Bob Sarles • Joel Selvin

Music meets the Mob in this biographical documentary, narrated by Stevie Van Zandt, about the life and career of Bert Berns, the most important songwriter and record producer from the sixties that you never heard of. His hits include “Twist and Shout”, “Hang On Sloopy”, “Here Comes The Night” and “Piece Of My Heart.” He helped launch the careers of Van Morrison and Neil Diamond and produced some of the greatest soul music ever made.

With David Salzberg • Christian Tureud

Follows female war reporter Alex Quade’s daring missions to tell soldiers' stories during a series of unprecedented embeds with Conventional Forces and US Special Ops Forces at the height of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

With Daniel Raim

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.