Projects in categories: Documentary

Synopsis

Forensic Architecture meticulously reconstruct an accident involving a boat full of migrants close to the European coast. The work is based on video material recorded by artist and survivor Amel Alzakout as the boat was sinking.
Official Selection Berlin International Film Festival 2020 - Forum Expanded - World premiere

Synopsis

The Outer Hebrides was long ago once thought of as a place of seers, who were known to have the gift of Second Sight: an ability to foretell future events. These prognostications were revealed to the seer in the form of visions or otherworldly sounds. Sometimes they took the form of portents derived by augury read from animals, bones, or weather patterns foretelling what has yet come to pass.
Using these stories as a starting point, THE TWO SIGHTS, is a portrait of a rapidly changing maritime environment with its acoustic ecology and culture in flux in a time of uncertain futures.
Long take Super 16mm cinematography, interwoven with site-specific field recordings and interviews collected from the disappearing oral histories of several Hebridean communities are collaged to explore the relationship between place narrative, environment, and the reciprocal influences they exact upon one another.
Official Selection Berlin International Film Festival 2020 - Forum - World premiere

Synopsis

Moving from the frozen landscapes of the Jura mountains to the urban centres of Port-au-Prince, Ouvertures brings the Haitian revolutionary Toussaint Louverture back to life. In France a Haitian researcher tries to read the past within the stratigraphic layers of Jurassic limestone, whilst in Haiti a group of young actors translate and rehearse scenes from 'Monsieur Toussaint', a play written by Édouard Glissant, that recounts the last days in the life of Louverture dying in exile in a prison cell in the Jura, 1803. Ghosts from the pantheon of Haitian history visit Louverture on his deathbed and put him to trial. As the play proceeds the actors become possessed by their characters, and eventually the ghost of Louverture joins the group and takes them on a voyage for a new kind of exile.
Official Selection Berlinale 2020 - Forum - World premiere

Synopsis

Details the unlikely path sound took from the illegal 90's British pirate radio airwaves and raves, to the dawn of dubstep's royal family in the London suburb Croydon, and on to the most unexpected wild card of the whole story - the dawn of music on the internet. Our story eventually leads us to the highest stratosphere of pop culture chronicling Skrillex's Grammy winning journey to superstardom in what has now become a multi-billion dollar entertainment industry.

Synopsis

Since the 1950's wireless signals have been banned in Green Bank to protect its radio telescope from interference. With no cell phones and no wifi, the small Appalachian town has attracted a number of people that claim to suffer from Electro Hypersensitivity seeking respite from the modern world. This is the story of the peculiar relationship between these people, the small town folk, and the massive radio telescope in the middle of it all, aimed at the sky above.

Official Selection IDFA 2020 - Competition for Mid-Length Documentary - World premiere

Synopsis

An exploration of mental health in the drag community, centred around NYC drag queen Blackie O.

Synopsis

Haunted by the ghost of war, a stoic Syrian Barber is trying to build a home for himself and his family on a remote Scottish island. He must find a way to survive this new unfamiliar life and protect the memory of Syria for his young children.
Official Selection Sheffield Doc/Fest 2021 - World premiere

Synopsis

LOLA is about the break up of a family from the perspective of their beloved pet dog, an English Pointer named Lola. As the family teeter towards a breaking point, we’ll draw perspective on the modern domestic, the actuality of a failed marriage and the implications for the familial unit.

Synopsis

A Ugandan mother tries to navigate her past traumas through participating in the country's first beauty pageant for plus-size women.
Grierson British Documentary Awards 2020 - Winner - Best Student Documentary
BAFTA Film Awards 2021 - Nomination - Best British Short Film

Synopsis

In a suburb of London sits Britain’s answer to Dogtown, the hallowed birthplace of skateboarding in the US. “Rom Town” as it is affectionately named by the locals was one of the first skateparks in the UK to be built and with its unique architectural features was granted historical status by English Heritage in 2014.

So it is one of the world's oldest and most unique skateparks, but following a devastating fire, it is financially on its knees. Meet the park’s middle age skaters, BMXers and street artists, who against all the odds, are fighting to keep it alive for the next generation.

Shot in stunning full 4K this is the first time a feature length documentary has looked at the early British skateboarding scene and the first generation of skaters and BMX riders from the late seventies and eighties who are still going strong. Rom Boys features archive footage from the past 40 years and over thirty interviews with some of the worlds biggest names in skate and BMX from the UK and US.

Synopsis

A beekeeper on the island of Anglesey faces losing her ancestral home to the development of a nuclear power plant.

Synopsis

Based on the book 'The Reason I Jump' written by Naoki Higashida, a non-verbal autistic Japanese boy. Translated from Japanese in 2013 by acclaimed novelist David Mitchell, the book is now a worldwide bestseller, offering an illuminating and life-enhancing guide to Planet Autism – a planet that has very different laws from the one most inhabit.
The book, written when its author was unknown and only 13, is now a bestseller in 27 languages, and has become one of the world’s most widely-read guides to Autism, offering an extraordinary passport to another world.
The book's question-and-answer format gives a remarkable insight into the thoughts and feelings of an autistic person who cannot talk; a Rosetta stone that allows us to hear what it’s like to be autistic. This feature documentary is a cinematic translation of the experiences revealed in the book, weaving Naoki’s writings around stories of non-verbal autistic people across the globe, immersing us in their unique sensory worlds, full of intensity, richness, and beauty - and sometimes shadows and terror.
Official Selection Sundance Film Festival 2020 - World Cinema Documentary Competition - World premiere
Grierson Awards 2022 - Winner - Best Single Documentary – International