Projects in categories: Documentary

Synopsis

Striving to build a successful life in London, Reza places an ad in a peculiar newspaper and discovers the Iranian community hidden in plain sight. Official Selection BFI London Film Festival 2024

Synopsis

This film follows comedian Janey Godley on her 2023 Not Dead Yet Tour, after her diagnosis for ovarian cancer. Janey tours with her best mate Shirley, and daughter comedian Ashley Storrie. Intercut with her stand up we tell the story of her extraordinary life, told with her trademark take-no-prisoners honesty and dark humour. Janey grew up in poverty in Glasgow’s East End, her mother was an alcoholic. As a child Janey was sexually abused by her uncle. Janey tells the story of her mother's horrific murder, when Janey was 21, revisiting the river where her mother’s body was found. Age 19 Janey married into a notorious family of Glasgow gangsters, running a successful pub for them. When she and her husband fell out with his family Janey reinvented herself as a comedian. Janey talks about the sense of freedom tinged with guilt that she experienced when she became a comic, choosing to work away from her young daughter. Throughout the film Janey deals with the grim reality of stage 3 cancer, along with the highs and lows of touring, ending in an emotional show at Glasgow's 3,000-seater SEC. Official selection Glasgow International Film Festival 2024 - World premiere

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A quest to find the truth behind a thirty year old memory, along the way connecting the dots between family, community, the power of place and the concept of home.

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Filmed over a period of 10 years, this is the story of how a group of courageous fishermen in India’s Gulf of Kutch join forces with an NGO in Washington, DC to take on one of the world’s most powerful institutions, the World Bank Group. For years, the fishermen of the Gulf of Kutch in Gujarat and their social movement MASS have been battling coal-fired power plants that threaten their livelihoods and traditional way of life by polluting the water and the countryside. Then, in 2015, their fight took an international dimension when US lawyers at EarthRights International took on their case to file the first-ever lawsuit against the World Bank’s private lending arm, the International Finance Corporation. One of the most destructive power plants in the Gulf of Kutch is owned by Indian multinational Tata, who received funding from the IFC. The IFC claims absolute legal immunity but the fisherman challenge this in ever higher courts. In 2018 the case makes its way to the US Supreme Court. Will the fishermen be able to change international law to hold the IFC to account – and save their livelihoods? Official Selection Big Sky Documentary Film Festival 2024 - World premiere

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A journey into the historical and tactile entanglements between sheep’s wool, migrant plant seeds and the River Tweed. Official Selection Official Selection International Film Festival Rotterdam (IFFR) 2024 - World premiere

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June 1967, Lake Geneva Switzerland. A ball of energy named Claude Knobs embarks on one of the most exciting musical adventures of our time, one that shaped the history of live music forever. Over 50 years later the story of the Montreux Jazz Festival and its visionary creator is told in this ground breaking documentary by those who experienced it. Using unseen archive material and brand new interviews the film takes the viewer back in time to hear the trumpet of Miles Davis, the piano of Nina Simone and the guitar of BB King echo through 5 decades of candid recollections by dozens of the festival’s star performers and industry insiders. Never before has a documentary of this magnitude been made on the history of the Montreux Jazz Festival, offering a breath- taking panorama of half a century of music history and performances from some of the 20th century’s most important and greatest musical icons. Official Selection Tribeca Film Festival 2024 - World premiere

Synopsis

A fun pastiche of chaotic, brash, self-deprecating and clueless 1990s/2000s British reality TV, TOPS sees self-proclaimed future award-winning filmmaker Ames Pennington present their landmark faux-documentary. Casting themselves as an invasive TV presenter, Ames goes on a satirical odyssey through the lives and homes of four unique individuals, exploring the crucial question that defines the transmasc experience: “What TOP did you want to wear after TOP surgery?” Official Selection BFI Flare: London LGBTQIA+ Film Festival 2024 - World premiere Official Selection Kashish Pride Film Festival 2024 - International premiere

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Documentary focused on life in Kyiv since the beginning of the war in Ukraine Official Selection Berlin International Film Festival 2024 - Berlin Special - World premiere

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When a pioneering band stays true to their roots and follows their own path, the outcome is ‘bigger than words and wider than pictures’. Over 25 years and 10 studio albums—using brute sonic force mixed with subtlety and grace—Mogwai have defined their own musical genre. Described as “The blueprint for what an independent group should be” (John Doran, The British Masters), Mogwai built a cult following by staying true to their sound and true to their roots. The film takes us on a journey from their very beginnings, in the mid 1990s, to the band writing and rehearsing their tenth studio album in their hometown of Glasgow, Scotland in 2020 - a record made during lockdown. While at first seemingly impossible to make, they ultimately made history with it. Official selection SXSW Film Festival 2024 - 24 Beats Per Second - World premiere

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Steven McRae is principal dancer at London's royal ballet. In the middle of a performance his Achilles heel ruptured. Refusing to see this as the end of his career, he sets out to return to the pinnacle of his art. A journey into the demanding world of dance and the daily life of a man fighting, both physically and mentally, to regain control of his destiny. Official selection FIPADOC 2024 - French premiere

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Never-before-seen home movies and extraordinary personal archives reveal how Christopher Reeve went from unknown actor to iconic movie star as the ultimate screen superhero. He learned the true meaning of heroism as an activist after suffering a tragic accident that left him quadriplegic and dependent on a ventilator to breathe. Official Selection Sundance Film Festival 2024 - Premieres - World premiere Official Selection BFI London Film Festival 2024

Synopsis

On January 28th 1985, the stage was set for the annual American Music Awards. Some of the biggest names in pop – Diana Ross, Stevie Wonder, Bruce Springsteen, Lionel Richie and Tina Turner - were gathered in Hollywood for the most prestigious night in the music calendar. When the awards show ended, the artists reconvened at a top-secret recording studio, to sing what would become the legendary global pop song ‘We Are The World,’ in aid of poverty relief in Africa. Over the next twelve hours, egos were tested, tempers frayed, and pressure mounted, as 46 superstars raced against the clock to pull off the most audacious feat in recording history. Told through incredible behind-the-scenes archive and interviews with music royalty, this is the extraordinary story of the greatest night in pop… Official Selection Sundance Film Festival 2024 - World premiere