Projects in categories: Documentary

Synopsis

As the glinting steel and mirror-glass skyscrapers of London’s financial hub edge ever closer, the area surrounding Hoxton Street has been transformed by hyper-gentrification and sky-high property prices. A traditional East London street less than a mile from the City of London – it is now the last bastion of the areas disadvantaged – a concentration of the aged, poor and dispossessed. Hoxton Street’s close-knit working-class community has absorbed waves of immigrants since the 1950s. But as traditional industry has withered, the latest influx of young urban hipsters followed closely by expensive restaurants, digital media start-ups and corporate property developers has brought a deepening sense of inequality. Sensing they have been left out of the changes swirling around them, the street’s ageing white residents, who lament the loss of their jobs and former ways of life, mirror the 52% of Britons who voted to leave the EU.
Focusing on one street and its inhabitants over a four-year period, and set against the upheavals of rapid gentrification, years of austerity, the fallout from Grenfell and the eruption of Brexit, the film offers a revealing portrait of life in London today.
Official Selection BFI London Film Festival 2019 - Debate Strand - World premiere

Synopsis

No road. No voice. No future. Deep in the jungle a road is quietly destroying a protected rainforest, causing conflict and fear. Yet for some indigenous communities, desperate for change, it brings the promise of a better life… but at what cost?

Synopsis

Executive Producer Fernando Meirelles (Academy Award-nominated director of "City of God") and Malian musician Inna Modja take us on an epic journey along Africa's Great Green Wall - an ambitious vision to grow an 8000km ‘wall of trees’ stretching across the entire continent to fight back against desertification, climate change and migration.
Official Selection Venice Film Festival 2019 - World premiere

Synopsis

Billie Holiday one ofthe greatest voices of all time, a woman of breath-taking talent and globalpopularity, was throughout her short life a figure of controversy - a blackwoman in a white man’s world, a victim and a rebel whose performances and recordings of the protest song "Strange Fruit" earned her powerful enemies. She was also an enigma, her telling of her own life story a mix of half truths and free-form improvisations.
In the late1960s journalist Linda Lipnack Kuehl set out to write the definitive biographyof Billie. Over the next decade, she tracked down and tape-recorded interviews with the extraordinary characters that populated the iconic singer’s short, tumultuous life. Raw, emotional and brutally honest, these incredible testimonies ranged from musical greats like Charles Mingus, Tony Bennett, Sylvia Syms and Count Basie to her cousin, schoolfriends, lovers, lawyers, pimps and even the FBI agents who arrested her. But Linda’s book was never finished and the tapes unplayed – until now.
With unprecedented and exclusive access to Linda's astonishing 200 hours of never-before-heard interviews, BILLIE showcases an American legend, capturing her depths andcomplexity through the voices of those who knew her best. Painstakingly restored with footage and stills colourized by one of the leading colour artists, it is an arresting and powerful tale of one of the greatest singers who ever lived, and of Linda Lipnack Kuehl, the woman who would sacrifice her life intrying to tell it.
Official Selection Telluride Film Festival 2019 - World premiere

Synopsis

Oscar-winning writer/director Alex Gibney’s revelatory CITIZEN K is an intimate yet sweeping look at post-Soviet Russia from the perspective of the enigmatic Mikhail Khodorkovsky, a former oligarch turned political dissident.
Official Selection Venice Film Festival 2019 - Out of Competition - World premiere
Official Selection Toronto International Film Festival 2019 - Contemporary World Cinema

Synopsis

A portrait of the struggles and triumphs of Australian footballer Adam Goodes - a hero on and off the field, as both a decorated sportsman and an indigenous-rights activist.
Official Selection Toronto International Film Festival 2019 - TIFF Docs - International premiere

Synopsis

A depiction of the everyday lives of the residents of Gascoigne Estate in Barking, East London, up to the demolition of the building.

Synopsis

With an elephant's ivory tusk as the protagonist, artist-filmmaker Jessica Sarah Rinland's film meditates upon the endless tactility of museological and ecological conservation, inviting reflection upon forms of representation, replicas, and embodiments of various materials, disciplines, and institutions.
Official Selection Locarno Film Festival 2019 - Moving Ahead - World premiere
Official Selection Toronto International Film Festival 2019 - Wavelengths

Synopsis

In the town of Krabi, a popular tourist destination in southern Thailand, the pre-historic, the recent past and the contemporary capitalist world awkwardly collide. The town’s local folklore and histories are promoted as attractions to foreigners, while the town’s traditional labour force is muted and hidden from the tourists’ eyes. A nameless character, whose identity continually changes, takes us around town to explore various sites that capture Krabi in its current state. These sites uniquely illustrate how Krabi’s folklore is propagated and commodified to fill the need of tourism industry.
A docu-fiction work from Ben Rivers and Anocha Suwichakornpong developed from ideas explored in their 2018 Thailand Biennale installation piece 'The Ambassadors'.
Official Selection Locarno Film Festival 2019 - Moving Ahead - World premiere
Official Selection Toronto International Film Festival 2019 - Wavelengths
Official Selection BFI London Film Festival 2019 - Special Presentation

Synopsis

A film to mark the centenary of a West London beekeepers' association.

Synopsis

After suffering a spinal stroke in 2015 and told she would never walk again, Riona Kelly talks about her struggle to defy the doctors with the help of her new partner, ex-rugby league player Keith Mason.

Synopsis

The documentary follows choreographer and drag queen Jay Jackson/ Laganja Estranja ('RuPaul's Drag Race' Season 6) around London. Jay teaches a dance class and shares stories about his life. The film ends with a live performance at the West 5.