A Monk's Secret (2009)

Into Great Silence

An intimate portrayal of the everyday lives of Carthusian monks of the Grande Chartreuse, high in the French Alps (Chartreuse Mountains). The idea for the film was proposed to the monks in 1984, but the Carthusians said they wanted time to think about it. The Carthusians finally contacted Gröning 16 years later to say they were now willing to permit Gröning to shoot the movie, if he was still interested.

Libres

For centuries, many men and women have left everything to dedicate their lives to contemplation. LIBRES, is a journey into the interior of man. We have obtained permission to enter and speak with people who rarely speak, in places that remain closed to the world: monasteries. What leads a person to divest himself of the world he knows, to withdraw from it for the rest of his life? How does such a person think? LIBRES approaches great questions of the existence of man, with a single objective: to listen to them.

Father Lenin

An evocative and unsettling journey through christian and also deeply communist Kerala. Amidst red flags and altar boys, between the sea and the jungle, mixing the language of reportage and that of fable, the unedited docufilm tells the touching, profound, at times funny stories of a group of priests and nuns in the days leading up to Easter.

Le camembert nous ouvre sa boîte

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On the Other Side

The oldest Quebecois Benedictine convent open its gates to a documentary filmmaker for the first time. Observed up close, life behind its walls is busier than one would expect. About twenty cloistered nuns, most of them over 70, share their daily life with diligence and humor. A contemplative portrait of a community of sisterhood and solidarity emerges, punctuated by prayer, work and games evenings.

The Breakfast

Curly Mulligan is the pupil who brings the headmaster a full fry-up every morning. When the head finds a hair in his breakfast, all hell breaks loose.

The Innocents

Poland, 1945. Mathilde, a young French Red Cross doctor, is on a mission to help the war survivors. When a nun seeks for her help, she is brought to a convent where several pregnant sisters are hiding, unable to reconcile their faith with their pregnancy. Mathilde becomes their only hope.

A Violent Desire for Joy

Region of Occitania, France, 1792. As the storm of revolution devastates the country, young monk Gabriel and his companions live peacefully in the Franciscan monastery of Saorge, near the Italian border. But everything changes with the arrival of the beautiful Marianne and a military detachment.

Hunting the Elements

Where do nature's building blocks, called the elements, come from? They're the hidden ingredients of everything in our world, from the carbon in our bodies to the metals in our smartphones. To unlock their secrets, David Pogue, technology columnist and lively host of NOVA's popular "Making Stuff" series, spins viewers through the world of weird, extreme chemistry: the strongest acids, the deadliest poisons, the universe's most abundant elements, and the rarest of the rare—substances cooked up in atom smashers that flicker into existence for only fractions of a second.

America

A cinematic omnibus rooted in New Orleans, challenging the idea of black cinema as a "wave" or "movement in time," proposing instead a continuous thread of achievement.

See Know Evil

An uncensored look into the life of '90s fashion photographer and youth culture icon, Davide Sorrenti. Known for his prodigious photos and responsible for the rise of "heroin chic", this is the story of a young photographer and how he came to define an era.

Mumford & Sons: We Wrote This Yesterday

Mumford and Sons are a band that have never stayed still. An innate desire to travel, to meet people and to do the unexpected has become a calling card of sorts as fans the world over join their community and fall in love with their consistently evolving music. The documentary follows the band and their latest set of collaborators as they travel across uncharted territory, playing the major cities of South Africa with an eclectic mix of musician friends. They explore the craft of song writing and the people, events and influences that dictate that. The film showcases the band at their most open and collaborative as they relish the excitement of playing to crowds in new cities who've never seen them before. Along the way they set a fresh challenge for themselves; taking their collaborative culture one step further as they attempt to write and record a mini album in just two days, with the other musicians on tour. The filming of this process not only lifts the lid on the art of song....

El conserje

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Nous : La face cachée de nos transports

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Silent and Forgotten

Thirteen silent film stars share their stories in their own words.

Times Like Those: Foo Fighters 25th Anniversary

Maybe the 25th anniversary year didn't go *quite* as planned but we were still able to come together for a look back at the last 25 years.

Above the Best

Army Aviators say they fly "above the best" see the lengths these heroes will go to, to protect the soldiers on the ground, and each other during intense combat in the most dangerous places on Earth.

Hush

A documentary chronicling one woman's investigation into the abortion health risk controversy.

Ballad of a Righteous Merchant

Chronicles the making of director Werner Herzog’s 2009 feature, My Son, My Son, What Have Ye Done, providing profound insight into the director and his craft. My Son, My Son, What Have Ye Done was inspired by the true story of an actor who committed in reality the crime he was supposed to enact on stage: murdering his mother. With longtime friend Herbert Golder behind the lens, Herzog reveals the privacy and deep solitude that defines the director and his art.

Bloody Nose, Empty Pockets

A portrait of the lives of a disparate group of patrons and employees at an American watering hole today.

Fernando Torres: The Last Symbol

A look at the life and career of Spanish football star Fernando Torres.

Before the Flood

A look at how climate change affects our environment and what society can do to prevent the demise of endangered species, ecosystems, and native communities across the planet.

The Michigan Beer Film

The Michigan Beer Film explores the artistic and economic explosion of the Michigan craft beer industry in 2013. Shot over the course of 18 months, the film documents several breweries at different stages of the craft brewing journey, from a 1 barrel system to 800 fermenters. From Sawyer to Marquette, Leelanau to Grand Rapids, Kalamazoo to Detroit; craft beer is making an impact. The Michigan craft beer scene embodies an authenticity and determination that not only can Michigan connect with, but America as well.

Pimps Up, Ho's Down

Brent Owens directs this documentary that follows the life of several "professional gentlemen of leisure." Originally aired on HBO America Undercover and was released on DVD with extended footage.

Nanook of the North

This pioneering documentary film depicts the lives of the indigenous Inuit people of Canada's northern Quebec region. Although the production contains some fictional elements, it vividly shows how its resourceful subjects survive in such a harsh climate, revealing how they construct their igloo homes and find food by hunting and fishing. The film also captures the beautiful, if unforgiving, frozen landscape of the Great White North, far removed from conventional civilization.

Olympia: Part One – Festival of the Nations

Commissioned to make a propaganda film about the 1936 Olympic Games in Germany, director Leni Riefenstahl created a celebration of the human form. This first half of her two-part film opens with a renowned introduction that compares modern Olympians to classical Greek heroes, then goes on to provide thrilling in-the-moment coverage of some of the games' most celebrated moments, including African-American athlete Jesse Owens winning a then-unprecedented four gold medals.

Olympia: Part Two – Festival of Beauty

Commissioned to make a propaganda film about the 1936 Olympic Games in Germany, director Leni Riefenstahl created a celebration of the human form. Where the two-part epic's first half, Festival of the Nations, focused on the international aspects of the 1936 Olympic Games held in Berlin, part two, The Festival of Beauty, concentrates on individual athletes such as equestrians, gymnasts, and swimmers, climaxing with American Glenn Morris' performance in the decathalon and the games' majestic closing ceremonies.

The Mind Game

When he was just 14, Sajid Khan Nasiri fled Afghanistan alone. After a two-year journey filled with danger and hardships – which he minutely documented on his phone camera – he arrives in Belgium to seek asylum. There, a whole new struggle begins. Intimate sequel to the prize-winning Shadow Game.

Rojek

After the impressive Gulistan, Land of Roses (VdR 2016), the Kurdish filmmaker Zaynê Akyol returns with these conversations with imprisoned members of the Islamic State, alternating their words with aerial views of the countryside. An unexpected look at a far-reaching current political issue and a film whose subject matter and rhythm create an impressive cinematic object.

All of Our Heartbeats Are Connected Through Exploding Stars

On March 11, 2011, a tsunami devastated the coasts of Japan, claiming thousands of lives. Today, the scars of this tragedy remain visible. Yet in spite of this, people, plants and animals alike continue to exist. Through striking images shot on land and in the sea, Jennifer Rainsford’s film celebrates human resilience and the endless beauty of our planet.

Foragers

Foragers interweaves documentary and fiction to report on a searing conflict between the Israel Nature and Parks Authority and Palestinian foragers. Through an elaborate and elegant composition, the film successfully captures the inherited love, resilience and knowledge of these traditions, over an eminently political backdrop.

Chaylla

Chaylla is fighting to free herself from a violent relationship. Her determination comes up against a part of herself that still hopes it is possible to share her life with the father of her children. This magnificent first feature film sheds upsetting light on violence against women and the difficulties of finding a way to justice.

Herbaria

In his second feature film, Leandro Listorti establishes a parallel between two worlds he seems to know well: that of plants and that of cinema. This delicate cinematographic work, full of beautiful images—both archival and current—gives an account of the immense work of classification and preservation, and generously invites us to think about forms of representation and memory.

Burial

With striking images and meticulous sound work, Burial reminds us of the paradoxical relationship between scientific development and the destruction of nature. Questioning the effects of human activity on the planet we inhabit and which we have put at risk, the film focuses on the unsolved issues of nuclear plants and nuclear activity.

H

During the San Fermín celebrations in Pamplona in 1969, a man died when the bulls were let loose. There was nothing to identify him, except for the letter “H” on his keyring. Carlos Pardo Ros imagines this man’s last night: a drunken nocturnal stroll with the ghosts of H, at one of the world’s biggest folk festivals.

Kapr Code

This film traces the life of Jan Kapr, a prominent Czech composer of the 20th century. A documentary opera with an ambitious libretto and playful and refined editing work, Kapr Code is an unexpected celebration of creativity that shakes up our ideas of biography and pays tribute to the importance of resisting homologation and censorship through art and creation.

Olho Animal

This is the story of a film-making dog. In a series of return trips between Brittany and Lisbon, the protagonist, along with a producer, conjures up a film through the prism of ethology, in search of the sincerity of the animal gaze. An animal comedy that includes hundreds of images of dogs that have appeared in films over the history of cinema.

Calvinia

25 years after the end of apartheid, an Afrikaner man returns to the small town and haunting landscapes he grew up in in rural South Africa. Confronted with the failing health of his father and ghosts from the past, he remembers and seeks out the town's dogs, gays and people fallen by the wayside of the 'rainbow nation'. The town simmers with unresolved histories compounded with fresh challenges in a climate-changing world, preoccupied by questions of life and death, meaning and survival.

Journey to Nyae Nyae

N!xau (G/qa'o), the star of The Gods Must Be Crazy (1980), is visited in 1990 and shortly before his death in 2003; the way he and his fellow San (Bushmen) people live is not the idyllic lifestyle portrayed in the 1980 film.

Les enfants de la collaboration

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Ritratti: Andrea Zanzotto

Marco Paolini discusses with poet Andrea Zanzotto about nature, history and language.