Christo Grozev, forced to flee Austria for his journalistic investigation of secret Russian operations, is the central focus of a dynamic and powerful story Finally getting a release after the verdict in the Bulgarian spy-ring trial, James Jonesโs grip…
Joerg Burgerโs film, as immersive as a museum visit, lovingly embraces the meticulous labours of the curators and touches on key current questions for the sectorJoerg Burgerโs meticulous and mesmerising study of the Vienna Museum of Natural History is …
Shot in 2019, Alisa Kovalenkoโs moving film follows the friends after they win a competition to travel to the HimalayasBefore Russiaโs invasion in 2022, the eastern region of Donbas in Ukraine had already experienced some of the bloodshed that was soon…
Goalkeeper Peter Schmeichel reflects on his Champions League triumph, on-pitch aggression, double-agent dad and son Kasper in a fan-friendly documentaryThis is a pretty respectable entry in the current corporate-landfill era of sports documentaries. It…
Recordings of fightersโ wiretapped phone calls are juxtaposed with images of wartime destruction in Oksana Karpovychโs compelling war documentaryVietnam saw the advent of the visible war, documented by TV cameras; but the Russia-Ukraine war perhaps rep…
Olga Chernykhโs portrait of life in war-torn Ukraine, based on home videos, examines how bonds and memories persist through trauma, loss and distanceFormally inventive and emotionally resonant, Olga Chernykhโs documentary feature debut highlights the p…
Documentary about the Portuguese colonial exhibition of 1934 aims to expose historical prejudice but inadvertently reinforces its racist gaze For a film that grapples with the legacy of colonialism, Marta Pessoaโs documentary begins with a rather provo…
Two years after he started documenting the effect of the Ukraine war on his pupils, Pavel Talankin reveals how it led to accolade โ and exile from homeAs Russian tanks advanced into Ukraine in February 2022, Vladimir Putin was waging a parallel battle …
Directing duo Julia Gutweniger and Florian Kofler subtly subvert the postcard-perfect ideals of the north Adriatic coast in this engrossingly odd documentaryAll the familiar pleasures of a beach getaway โ seafood feasts, open-air concerts, lazy lounges…
First women working as fishing guides on Laxรก River, featured in new film, call for action after farmed fish escapeFor seven generations, Andrea รsk Hermรณรฐsdรณttirโs family have been fishing on the Laxรก River in Aรฐaldalur. Iceland has a reputation as a …
One of Irelandโs most important novelists and a woman of fierce intelligence and bravery is celebrated in Sinรฉad OโSheaโs thoroughly enjoyable documentarySinรฉad OโSheaโs documentary portrait of the author Edna OโBrien is a reminder that most writers โ …
The first stirrings of revolt behind the Iron Curtain are retold in this intriguing documentary hybridIf the fall of the Berlin Wall has a prehistory, maybe there is an integral part, or even the beginning: the December 1970 protests in Poland against …
Film-maker Guido Hendrikx goes house-to-house in a Dutch suburb, ringing doorbells and then mutely filming โ we see what people will say and do to fill the silenceDutch film-maker Guido Hendrikx has given us a funny but also somewhat slippery and disin…
This quietly compelling documentary tells the stories of a select group of people as they cope with Christmas with hardship and humourA modest film with modest ambitions, this is a documentary that paints a portrait of a small Irish town at Christmas, …
Director Rich Peppiatt said โthere is an irony in the best British film being Irishโ as his Belfast-set film won seven prizes in totalIrish-language rap comedy Kneecap emerged as the big winner at the British independent film awards (Bifas), with seven…
Lucie Krรกlovรกโs daring documentary uses a choir and an original libretto to recount the story of the renegade Czech musicianRetelling the complicated life of prolific Czech composer Jan Kapr, Lucie Krรกlovรกโs category-defying documentary harmonises the …
Documentary following a ceramicist and a painter who have joined the battle to defend against the Russian invasion is perhaps a little too picturesqueCompared with the award-winning The Earth Is As Blue As an Orange from 2020, which charted a Ukrainian…
Ruth Beckermannโs compassionate documentary is testament to a diverse group of delightful seven-year-olds and the brilliance of their dedicated teacherThere are some big personalities in the class of seven-year-olds in an inner city Vienna primary scho…
Nikolay Stefanovโs documentary, which follows fans of FC Minyor Pernik, reveals much about what is behind this toxic masculinityIn the Bulgarian mining town of Pernik, a weekend football match is not for the faint of heart. Dressed in the black and yel…
Mickaรซl Bandelaโs documentary reflects on the events that left him in care as a child, and the generational losses that came beforeWhen he was a few months old, film-maker Mickaรซl Bandela was put into the care of his foster mother Marie-Thรฉrรจse, after …
Cey Sesiguzelโs documentary covers a lot of history โ and not always in the most dynamic way. But the testimony of survivors of war forms its powerful coreFifty years have passed since the 1974 partition of Cyprus, a harrowing event that looms large ov…
Using World of Warcraft-style animation, this documentary tells the story of Mats Steen, a boy with muscular dystrophy whose online popularity was only revealed after his deathItโs probably just an accident of scheduling, but this deeply affecting docu…
Cรฉline Pernet places a number of willing volunteers in front of a camera and asks them a series of candid questions, and the responses form a fascinating tapestry of experienceIn an era where conversations between strangers often take place through scr…
Reports and pictures by photojournalist Pierre Crom provide a look back at how events escalated towards the Russian invasion Co-directed by photojournalist Pierre Crom and film-maker Juri Rechinsky, this gripping documentary revisits the harrowing even…
Women’s rights, climate change, colonialism, harassment in school, the war in Ukraine are the topics covered by the three fiction (including an animated feature) and two documentary films that were nominated for theย LUX Audience Film Award 2025, on Wed…
Elisa Mantinโs film shows Greeks as the economic victims of ideologically motivated EU forces, imposing punishment-via-austerityMaybe the true Greek tragedy is the temptation to interpret everything that happens in that country under the long Hellenic …
Orla Barry clearly has a true vocation for her flock, both handling real livestock and weaving them into her art and this documentary has poetic beautyNear the beginning of this beautiful, brooding film, Orla Barry (its subject/writer/narrator) remembe…
A sense of inevitable finality permeates every frame of Marusya Syroechkovskayaโs documentary, composed of personal footage shot over a decadeAt the age of 16, in 2005, Marusya Syroechkovskaya was already certain that she would die young. โEveryone kno…
Anastasia Trofimovaโs film Russians at War criticised for โdistorted picture of realityโ in Ukraine after Venice premiereA new documentary portraying the lives of Russian soldiers near the Ukrainian frontlines has faced fierce criticism for attempting …
Ihor Ivankoโs documentary looks at his grandfather Leonid Burlakaโs career through a treasure trove of undeveloped photos and explores the role film has in preserving historyA labour of love, Ihor Ivankoโs documentary pays tribute to his grandfather Le…
This elegiac Irish film documents the relationship between street artist Asbestos and his mother, and the public art project he makes to help process his griefA strange but reassuring ouroboros effect is in place in Ross Killeenโs documentary about dem…
The Italian director, whose film Together made a key contribution to the Free Cinema movement in the UK, died in 2020 but this interview is a fitting tributeLorenza Mazzetti was the Italian artist, writer and film-maker whose short film Together made a…
Film-maker David Gutnik lasers in on the artists pushing back against Russian aggression for an inspiring yet harrowing new documentaryKyiv was supposed to fall in three days. Thatโs what talking heads and pundits in media were saying, rather dismissiv…
This plucky documentary tells of the small town whose residents created its first football pitch, and the years that followed chasing their goalSet in Hellissandur, Iceland, population 369, this modest documentary tells the story of how the village got…
Kevin Macdonaldโs documentary digs out the roots of the clash between Ukraineโs hero president and the former boxer in charge of its capitalThe bad blood between Vitali Klitschko, former heavyweight champ and now mayor of Kyiv, and Ukraineโs hero pres…
The director was having trouble making his documentary about Vitali Klitschko and his brother Wladimir emotional and dramatic. But when the mayor was blamed for two bomb shelter deaths, everything changedIโm not a war correspondent. But itโs 3am and, l…
Faustine Crosโs documentary revisits home videos from her childhood through fresh eyes having learned as an adult what her young self had missedThere comes a point in every childโs life when they start seeing their parents not solely as all-powerful pr…
The Oscar-winning documentary-maker was instrumental in the historic US-Russian prisoner swap, but she says, the one person missing from the deal was her friend Alexei Navalny. She talks about her last conversation with him, her new film about the Tali…
Jarring and heartbreaking documentary excavates the film-makerโs past while illuminating an abuserโs place in the cycle of violenceEnveloped in a sonic cocoon of gentle ocean waves and rustling wind, the sensorial opening of Efthymia Zymvragakiโs featu…
Daniela de Feliceโs impressionistic, sensuous documentary meditates on the romantic relationships and student activism of her youth in 1990s ItalyBittersweet memories rise like mist in Daniela de Feliceโs impressionistic, sensuous documentary recallin…
Acclaimed photojournalist with a gift for capturing the joys and travails of the human conditionThe German photographer Thomas Hoepker, who has died aged 88, was celebrated for his humanist approach in capturing the joys and travails of the human condi…
The son and grandson of Auschwitz commandant Rudolf Hรถss appear in Daniela Volkerโs engrossing documentary, a companion piece to Zone of InterestThe first shock delivered by this engrossing documentary is probably the queasy jolt of recognition. Hans J…
Everyone is down on their luck in the biggest used-goods store in Silesia, but director ลukasz Kowalski finds beauty in many small acts of kindnessSurreptitiously funny and slyly tragic in equal measures, this Polish documentary, a debut for director ล…
Hiam Abbass, AKA Marcia Roy from Succession, returns to the village she left 30 years ago to become an actor, with her daughter Lina Soualem behind the cameraHiam Abbass is the Franco-Palestinian actor who has been a consistent presence in internationa…
Viktor Portelโs film follows Czech investigator Vladimรญr Dzuro as he returns to sites of torture and death, and meets survivors as well as supporters of perpetratorsRevisiting the blood-soaked conflicts that followed the breakup of Yugoslavia in 1991, …
Oleh Sentsovโs film Real is 90 minutes of frontline action captured when he didnโt realise his camera was onIn the new film by the Ukrainian director Oleh Sentsov, soldiers pinned down in a trench try to organise the evacuation of a group of fellow fig…
Film-maker Tomรกลก Kratochvรญl follows the story of Czech-Mancunian trucker turned activist ล tefan PongoCentring on an ordinary man with extraordinary determination, Tomรกลก Kratochvรญlโs documentary shows how one simple video can ignite a revolutionary move…
Waad al-Kateabโs documentary Death Without Mercy collects agonising experience from the aftermath of 2023. She reflects on a natural disaster made much worse by politics, and how she is trying to helpWaad al-Kateab has always looked for hope, but when …
Joรฃo Rosasโs film, depicting the lives of immigrant construction workers busily gentrifying the Portuguese capital, asks important questionsFirst conceived in the weeks leading up to the birth of film-maker Joรฃo Rosasโs first child, this documentary po…
This peaceful nature film contemplates the creatures and critters that live in and around a 200-year-old oak, including some Top Gun-esque aerial cinematographyEntirely devoid of dialogue (unless a bit of Dean Martin on the soundtrack counts), this ple…
This hour-long reverie from Argentinian film-maker Matรญas Piรฑeiro offers chilling insight into the agonies of unrequited loveThe three words โyou burn meโ are a surviving fragment (or micro-poem) by Sappho, and make up the title of this hour-long rever…
Shot over 15 years between Denmark and Pakistan, the film-maker captures day-to-day life in Karachi, and explores how freedom and human rights are not doled out equallyShot over the course of 15 years, Anita Mathal Hoplandโs documentary provides a cine…
Ivan Sautkinโs work as a volunteer helping people to safety gave him rare access to the trauma faced by people forced from their homes. The director relives the challenges of making the film as it screens in CannesThereโs a moment in Ivan Sautkinโs new…
Restored 1976 doc of Connollyโs tour of Ireland shows that, despite his bombastic stage presence, he is impeccably polite. But his naughtier material hasnโt aged wellHere is a 70s time capsule as pungent as a brimming pub ashtray. Restored and rereleas…
Oleksiy Radynski chronicles the visionary architect Florian Yurievโs drive to rescue Kyivโs Institute of Information from destruction after he was given weeks to live The extraordinary mind of Florian Yuriev, a visionary Ukrainian architect and artist,…
Brosnan to โฆ Bolt? Frank Mannionโs follow-up documentary to Quintessentially British presents a grab bag of interviews โ some with distinctly un-Irish personalitiesIt features a definition of โthe craicโ but, frustratingly, this long, meandering docume…
In a town built around the once-thriving AvtoVAZ vehicle plant, disenfranchised students find an outlet in restoring old LadasDeveloped in the 1960s around Russiaโs famous AvtoVAZ plant, which was built by the countryโs largest car manufacturing compa…
Steve Collins and Chris Eubank recall their 1995 super-middleweight world title clash, and its odd details, with intelligence and honestyHere is a boxing documentary that is a cut above the usual back-slapping nostalgia โ largely down to the canny, viv…
A biologist, a postal worker and a farmer are a charismatic trio at the heart of a documentary that builds an emotional connection between film-maker and subjectBordering Poland and Slovakia, Stuzhytsya is a remote, sleepy village situated near the Car…
Documentary on deportation of 48,000 Jewish Amsterdammers during Holocaust prompts city to actOn 8 August 1944, an Amsterdam tram took Anne Frank from Weteringschans prison, past the โsecret annexeโ where she had hidden from the Nazis, on the start of …
Eyewitness documentary shot by war reporter Mstyslav Chernov during the Russian siege of the Ukrainian city takes Academy Award โ the countryโs firstOscars 2024: full list of winnersFull report: Oppenheimer wins best pictureThe Ukrainian film 20 Days i…
Documentarist Claire Simon films women, including herself, receiving care in a womenโs health, obstetrics and gynaecology ward at a Parisian hospitalFilm-maker Claire Simon operates the camera herself for this extraordinary film, assuming the tradition…
Bogna Kowalczykโs lively and moving film follows 82-year-old Lulla La Polaca who embraces the future and its uncertainties with irresistible joie de vivreStill sorely underexplored on screen, the autumnal years of queer life are vibrantly explored in …
Gregoris Rentisโs documentary tells the stories of three private guards waiting for an attack that never comes, but the socio-political reasons for their existence is never fully exploredDivided into three chapters, Gregoris Rentisโs documentary follow…
This documentary by Serbian-born director Marta Popivoda is a mildly psychedelic drift into the horror of one womanโs deportation and determined survivalMuch of this Serbian documentary uses a striking, mildly psychedelic technique: a super-slow dissol…
Dutch Estonian novelist Sana Valiulina investigates the life of her father who was compelled to betray Stalinโs Soviet Union by serving the Nazi war machine Aliona van der Horstโs documentary tells an impossibly painful and sad story from the second wo…
Account of the German film-makerโs singular career takes in numerous starry admirers but also is a portrait of an existential disruptorWith pop-culture brand recognition like no other auteur, he walks the walk and talks the talk โฆ in that inimitable vo…
Documentary tells story of the destructive erasure and displacement caused by the damโs construction โ through the tapes of the activists who tried to stop itIn 2003 the Itoiz dam in Navarre, Spain, was completed and its reservoir filled in, submerging…
Hopefuls for the Academy of Fine Arts in Prague face a probing from their professors in a documentary that looks for answers about art, institutions and ourselvesShot over the course of a week-long entrance examination held by the Academy of Fine Arts …
Emilija ล karnulytฤโs hypnotic documentary zooms into the science of uranium and radioactivity, as well as cold war politics Occupying the liminal space between a geological excavation and speculative realism, Emilija ล karnulytฤโs hypnotic documentary e…
Filmed as Russia invaded Ukraineโs port city, Mstyslav Chernovโs documentary is gruelling, compelling and vitalMore on the best movies of 2023 in the USMore on the best culture of 2023Mstyslav Chernovโs horrifying eyewitness documentary 20 Days in Mari…
In his radiantly photographed documentary, Luca Lucchesi confronts the locals who revere a black Jesus icon yet are racist towards outsidersโLet us in, we are poor pilgrims tired from a long journey.โ Joseph, Mary and Jesus are the original spurned ref…
Loosely organised documentary shows Swedish singer-songwriter Gonzรกlez musing about mental health and drifting around his luxurious-looking houseA portrait of Swedish singer-songwriter Josรฉ Gonzรกlez, who is also part of the beat combo Junip, this low-k…
Documentary suggests that when performer Gena Marvin takes to the streets she is squaring up not only to prejudice but to the stateIt often takes actual physical courage to be different anywhere you grow up โ but it takes superhuman courage to be diffe…
In a visually impressive documentary, film-maker Stefan Pavlovic spends time with a fisherman and former soldier living in an abandoned churchGrowing up in Montreal in a Bosnian household, Stefan Pavlovic yearned to connect with his family origins, a l…
In archive interviews and painterly animated reconstrucions, Aurora Mardiganian recalls her experiences during the Armenian genocide โ and how she escaped to the US and became a silent film starGiven the word โgenocideโ is being flung every which way t…
Twelve documentary makers withdraw after organisers condemn use of โFrom the river to the seaโ by onstage protestersIsrael-Hamas war โ live updatesA dozen film-makers and artists have withdrawn their work from the worldโs largest documentary festival a…
Film-maker Claire Doyonโs bio-doc charts the rich but deeply challenging experiences of being a parent to daughter Pรฉnรฉlope and the intense bond that changes as they both grow olderIn 2012, French film-maker Claire Doyon made Pรฉnรฉlope, a 50-minute docu…
Is the woman unconscious? Could the manโs embrace be violent? A new film invites us to challenge our preconceptions about the gilded masterpieceSome paintings become so iconic that it is difficult to remember that they are in fact paintings, not just p…
As a season of the Czech directorโs remarkable Seven Up-style documentaries comes to a streaming channel, she talks about filming under communism, funding projects that take decades to complete and forging relationships with unruly protagonistsOver the…
Ex-Chancellor Sebastian Kurz faces charges of giving false testimony in Vienna trial.
Helena Tลeลกtรญkovรกโs film is a strange sequel to her 2008 portrait of a Czech career felon and his popular notoriety that she helped createShot over the course of 20 years, Helena Tลeลกtรญkovรกโs 2008 film Renรฉ followed the near continuous prison stints o…
Anna Hints follows a group of Estonian women into their secluded cabin, where their communion is almost mystic and no topic is off limitsThere is such raw emotional intimacy in this dazzling documentary from Estonia, filmed in a cabin in the woods wher…
This documentary about the last remaining co-operative factory in Croatia is a rare example of a production thatโs as radical as its subject: all the people featured are sharing in the filmโs profitsThe walls of ITAS, the last remaining co-operative fa…
Film-maker Mstyslav Chernov risked everything to document Russiaโs attack from within the besieged city, recording unthinkable horrors in this vital accountThere is genuine horror in this eyewitness documentary about Vladimir Putinโs attack on the sout…
A wistful, semi-surreal, quietly moving documentary about refugees living in Georgia that explores displacement and nostalgiaDirectors George Varsimashvili and Jeanne Nouchi have made a wistful documentary observing the residents of the dishevelled, el…
The Pulitzer prize-winning journalist at the heart of the Oscar-tipped documentary describes the weeks he and his team spent in the besieged city โ and why they were willing to take the riskMen in uniform are milling around outside a cafe in Sloviansk….
Ruth Beckermannโs documentary centres around a fake audition in which men read aloud from a once scandalous 1906 novel, revealing the grotesque and humorous nature of male fantasyHere is a strange, stark documentary from Austrian film-maker Ruth Becker…
Matthew Somervilleโs travelogue follows the course of the Sava from Slovenia to Belgrade, generating complicated ideas about national identity and nostalgiaFlowing through the countries that once made up the republic of Yugoslavia, the majestic Sava ri…
Lila Schmitzโs documentary offers a candid look at Irish music and community struggles in a small Irish village known for its bar-room sessionsThat The Banshees of Inisherin may apparently be a documentary is the main takeaway of this swift but wide- a…
On the first day of the Russian invasion, Penn was in Ukraine making a documentary about Zelenskiy โ he discusses their bromance, and the qualities that make him inspiringIt is just before 10am and Sean Penn does not want to be here. He made the mistak…
Ordinary events are imbued with a poignancy in this documentary showing the fragile power of community and identity in a Belarusian village Cast in a subdued, beige-toned palette, the tableau-like compositions in Kristina Savutsinaโs documentary portra…
Semi-dramatised essay film by Joe Lawlor and Christine Molloy explores complicated national loyalties alongside those of an extraordinary rebelThe intriguing, complex movies of the married writer-directors Joe Lawlor and Christine Molloy have always be…
Documentary traces the impact on an idyllic community when a Macedonian worker is found dead, but worries too little about his precarious social positionDeep within the lonely, dark woods of rural southern Switzerland, the remains of Nikola Hadziev, a…
Documentary looks back at a mysterious Lisbon through the lens of a 60s cult film, a very specific focus thatโs likable even if you havenโt seen the earlier movieSince his first film in 2000, the mesmerising O Fantasma, Portuguese auteur Joรฃo Pedro Rod…
Susana Nobreโs docufiction follows the life of Joaquim Calรงada, who spent two decades in the US as an undocumented immigrantWith his high pompadour and a penchant for boxy leather jackets and bold patterned shirts, Joaquim Calรงada looks like he has wan…
