Projects in categories: Documentary

Synopsis

An animated documentary about the precarious lives of African immigrants seeking their fortunes in Guangzhou, China - the centre of a booming global trade in counterfeit goods.

Synopsis

Released in 1974, Changin' Times was an extraordinary album recorded in extraordinary circumstances. This was the first-ever commercial album recorded inside a prison. The artist's name was Ike White and he was locked up from the age of 19, serving life for murder. His journey from prison to industry adulation to freedom is one of the greatest stories never told. On the cusp of stardom, Ike slipped out of the limelight, changed his name, and disappeared. This is his story.

Synopsis

As told through clips from 183 female directors, this epic revisionist history of the cinema focuses on women’s integral role in the development of film art. Using almost a thousand film extracts from thirteen decades and five continents, Mark Cousins asks how films are made, shot and edited; how stories are shaped and how movies depict life, love, politics, humour and death, all through the compelling lens of some of the world’s greatest filmmakers – all of them women. Official Selection Toronto International Film Festival 2018 - TIFF Docs - World premiere

Synopsis

'Answered Prayers' was meant to be Truman Capote's greatest masterpiece, an epic portrait of NYC's glittering jet-set society. Instead, it sparked his downfall. Through never before heard audio archive and interviews with Capote's friends and enemies, this intimate documentary reveals the rise and fall of America's most iconic gay writer. Official Selection Toronto International Film Festival 2019 - TIFF Docs - World premiere

Synopsis

CLOUDBERRIES was filmed in Arctic Russia in a village near an offshore gas field. The narrator is 'just visiting’, with villagers including the last Sámi. Sounds of the sea, wildlife, a music festival, a choir, and an abandoned school house accompany the filmmaker until she finally sets out to sea. Official Selection BFI London Film Festival 2019 - Experimenta Strand - World premiere

Synopsis

EVERYBODY FLIES discloses the never-before-seen documentation, scientific facts, and personal testimonies relating to the controversial issue of cabin air quality. With more than 18 years of research into the topic, filmmaker Tristan Loraine addresses a question not many passengers ever consider: ‘Is the air we breathe on a plane safe?’

Synopsis

Nicola, a successful actor, agrees to play Lucio Fulci in a biopic dedicated to the director. The actor begins a journey to discover Fulci man, so that he can interpret it in the best way. He will meet his daughters, friends, collaborators of the director, and the most profound scholars of Fulci's work. He will have access to new and unseen materials. Nicola, divided between the preparation of the film and the study of the character, will deeply question the true nature of a man who, already in life, had rewritten his biography. A biography in which myth, creation and legend have rewritten an exhilarating and dramatic life.

Synopsis

The story of whisky has been told many times. But this film takes a different view, showing how it has been shaped by geology and climate, by tales told on the side of the road and in the corners of pubs. Whisky is a product of folklore and myth, of music and alchemy, of chance rather than design. This is the twisting, shifting and multi-layered tale. In this journey through the lesser-known parts of Scottish whisky culture, we follow spirits writer Dave Broom on his quest to gain a deeper understanding of his national drink. While whisky has never been as popular, it is often seen in the context of being a brand which sits outside people’s lives. It’s often thought of as a drink which speaks of the past rather than engaged with a dynamic present. Dave has been writing about spirits for over thirty years, but whisky is his particular passion and a subject on which he has many strong opinions. This film traces his journey back to the roots of whisky and show how it is an integral part of a wider Scottish culture, rather than just a product.

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