Věra 68 (2012)

Gunner Palace

American soldiers of the 2/3 Field Artillery, a group known as the "Gunners," tell of their experiences in Baghdad during the Iraq War. Holed up in a bombed out pleasure palace built by Sadaam Hussein, the soldiers endured hostile situations some four months after President George W. Bush declared the end of major combat operations in the country.

La corte de Ana

She appeared when Spain was waking up from a long post-war period and crying with melodramas starring children, a child prodigy unlike any other; a girl who, in time, would become a symbol of freedom and a total artist. Actress, singer, friend, lover. This is the story of Ana Belén.

Magician: The Astonishing Life and Work of Orson Welles

The extraordinary life of Orson Welles (1915-85), an enigma of Hollywood, an irreducible independent creator: a musical prodigy, an excellent painter, a master of theater and radio, a modern Shakespeare, a magician who was always searching for a new trick to surprise his audience, a romantic and legendary figure who lived only for cinema.

Black Sabbath: The Last Supper

Filmed live during Black Sabbath's 1999 "Reunion" tour, this historic concert features the original lineup of the legendary metal band.

François Truffaut: My Life, a Screenplay

At the end of his life, gravely ill, François Truffaut took refuge with his ex-wife Madeleine Morgenstern. She tried to keep him occupied during his long agony. The filmmaker confided in his friend Claude de Givray, with the intention of writing his autobiography. Too weakened, he abandoned the project. The film reveals part of this final story.

Faye

Through honest reflection, complemented by insight from colleagues and friends, Faye Dunaway contextualizes her life and filmography, laying bare her struggles with mental health while confronting the double standards she was subjected to as a woman in Hollywood.

The Last Movie Painter

A fantastic journey through the world of Renato Casaro, one of the most important illustrators that the world’s film poster industry has ever known.

Persecution Blues: the Battle for the Tote!

In 2010, the iconic Tote Hotel – last bastion of Melbourne’s vibrant music counterculture – was forced to close by unfair laws. Filmed over 7 years, “Persecution Blues” depicts the struggle of more than 20,000 fans – and the bands who inspire them – to preserve their history and protect their future, and puts the audience on the front line of an epic-scale culture war.

Harta Tahta Raisa

Recording the journey of Raisa, a great Indonesian singer from childhood to her greatest achievements, holding a big concert at Gelora Bung Karno.

Dreams with Sharp Teeth

The documentary story of Harlan Ellison

Optimism

The urge to relieve a winter valley of permanent shadow and find gold in alluvial gravel is part of a long history of desire and extraction in the far Canadian north. Cancan dancers, curlers, smelters, former city officials, and a curious cliff-side mirrored disc congregate to form a town portrait. Shot on location in Dawson City, Yukon Territory.

Namrata

This short documentary tells the intensely personal story of Namrata Gill – one of the many real-life inspirations for Deepa Mehta’s Heaven on Earth – in her own words. After six years, Gill courageously leaves an abusive relationship and launches a surprising new career.

Waterman

Five-time Olympic medalist and Native Hawaiian Duke Paoa Kahinu Mokoe Hulikohola Kahanamoku shattered records and brought surfing to the world while overcoming a lifetime of personal challenges. Waterman explores his journey and legacy as a legendary swimmer, trailblazer, and the undisputed father of modern-day surfing, following the sport’s first-time inclusion in this year’s Summer Olympics – a fitting tribute to his work promoting the sport around the globe.

The Beaches of Agnès

Filmmaking icon Agnès Varda, the award-winning director regarded by many as the grandmother of the French new wave, turns the camera on herself with this unique autobiographical documentary. Composed of film excerpts and elaborate dramatic re-creations, Varda's self-portrait recounts the highs and lows of her professional career, the many friendships that affected her life and her longtime marriage to cinematic giant Jacques Demy.

Promises

Documentarians Justine Shapiro and B.Z. Goldberg traveled to Israel to interview Palestinian and Israeli kids ages 11 to 13, assembling their views on living in a society afflicted with violence, separatism and religious and political extremism. This 2002 Oscar nominee for Best Feature Documentary culminates in an astonishing day in which two Israeli children meet Palestinian youngsters at a refugee camp.

Aileen: Life and Death of a Serial Killer

British documentarian Nick Broomfield creates a follow-up piece to his 1992 documentary of the serial killer Aileen Wuornos, a highway prostitute who was convicted of killing six men in Florida between 1989 and 1990. Interviewing an increasingly mentally unstable Wuornos, Broomfield captures the distorted mind of a murderer whom the state of Florida deems of sound mind -- and therefore fit to execute. Throughout the film, Broomfield includes footage of his testimony at Wuornos' trial.

The Last Truck: Closing of a GM Plant

The inside story of the last days of a General Motors plant in Moraine, Ohio, as lived by the people who worked the line.

Alive Day Memories: Home from Iraq

In a war that has left more than 25,000 wounded, ALIVE DAY MEMORIES: HOME FROM IRAQ looks at a new generation of veterans. Executive Producer James Gandolfini interviews ten Soldiers and Marines who reveal their feelings on their future, their severe disabilities and their devotion to America. The documentary surveys the physical and emotional cost of war through memories of their "alive day," the day they narrowly escaped death in Iraq.

Marjoe

Part documentary, part expose, this film follows one-time child evangelist Marjoe Gortner on the "church tent" Revivalist circuit, commenting on the showmanship of Evangelism and "the religion business", prior to the start of "televangelism". Preserved by the Academy Film Archive in 2005.

The Story of the Weeping Camel

When a Mongolian nomadic family's newest camel colt is rejected by its mother, a musician is needed for a ritual to change her mind.

A Brief History of Time

This shows physicist Stephen Hawking's life as he deals with the ALS that renders him immobile and unable to speak without the use of a computer. Hawking's friends, family, classmates, and peers are interviewed not only about his theories but the man himself.

Be Water

In 1971, after being rejected by Hollywood, Bruce Lee returned to his parents’ homeland of Hong Kong to complete four iconic films. Charting his struggles between two worlds, this portrait explores questions of identity and representation through the use of rare archival footage, interviews with loved ones and Bruce’s own writings.

Dixie Chicks: Shut Up and Sing

Shut Up and Sing is a documentary about the country band from Texas called the Dixie Chicks and how one tiny comment against President Bush dropped their number one hit off the charts and caused fans to hate them, destroy their CD’s, and protest at their concerts. A film about freedom of speech gone out of control and the three girls lives that were forever changed by a small anti-Bush comment

Time

Fox Rich, indomitable matriarch and modern-day abolitionist, strives to keep her family together while fighting for the release of her incarcerated husband. An intimate, epic, and unconventional love story, filmed over two decades.

Mucho Mucho Amor: The Legend of Walter Mercado

Once the world's most famous astrologer, Walter Mercado seeks to resurrect a forgotten legacy. Raised in the sugar cane fields of Puerto Rico, Walter grew up to become a gender non-conforming, cape-wearing psychic whose televised horoscopes reached 120 million viewers a day for decades before he mysteriously disappeared.

NiiSoTeWak: Two Bodies, One Heart

NiiSoTeWak means “walking the path together.” Tapwewin and Pawaken are 10-year-old brothers trying to make sense of the world, their family and each other. They’re already grappling with some heady questions about identity. What does it mean to be a twin? What does it mean to be Cree? How do you define yourself when you’re forever linked to someone else? The twins discuss these questions with their two elder brothers — 22-year-old actor Asivak and 20-year-old basketball player Mahiigan — and their parents, Jules and Jake.

Dark Matter

Materia oscura tells the story of a war zone in peacetime. The film location is the Salto di Quirra test range (Sardinia, Italy) where, for over fifty years, governments around the world have tested 'new weapons' and where the Italian government has carried out controlled explosions of old weapon stocks, inexorably endangering the territory.

Jane

Drawing from never-before-seen footage that has been tucked away in the National Geographic archives, director Brett Morgen tells the story of Jane Goodall, a woman whose chimpanzee research revolutionized our understanding of the natural world.

Cocaine Prison

From inside Bolivia's craziest prison a cocaine worker, a drug mule and his little sister reveal the countries relationship with cocaine.

Free Tibet

A film about the Tibetan Freedom Concert in San Francisco in 1996.

The Final Year

Featuring unprecedented access inside the White House and State Department, The Final Year offers an uncompromising view of the inner workings of the Obama Administration as they prepare to leave power after eight years.

McCarthy

"McCarthy" chronicles the rise and fall of Joseph McCarthy, the Wisconsin senator who came to power after a stunning victory in an election no one thought he could win. Once in office, he declared that there was a vast conspiracy threatening America — emanating not from a rival superpower, but from within. Free of restraint or oversight, he conducted a crusade against those he accused of being enemies of the state, a chilling campaign marked by groundless accusations, bullying intimidation, grandiose showmanship and cruel victimization. With lawyer Roy Cohn at his side, he belittled critics, spinning a web of lies and distortions while spreading fear and confusion. After years in the headlines, he was brought down by his own excesses and overreach. But his name lives on linked to the modern-day witch hunt we call “McCarthyism.”

Attila

This sports documentary goes behind the scenes in the world of mixed martial arts while chronicling the life story of MMA champion Attila Végh.

The Rape of Recy Taylor

Recy Taylor, a 24-year-old black mother and sharecropper, was gang raped by six white boys in 1944 Alabama. Common in Jim Crow South, few women spoke up in fear for their lives. Not Recy Taylor, who bravely identified her rapists. The NAACP sent its chief rape investigator Rosa Parks, who rallied support and triggered an unprecedented outcry for justice. The film exposes a legacy of physical abuse of black women and reveals Rosa Parks’ intimate role in Recy Taylor’s story.

Living Proof

Diagnosed with multiple sclerosis, documentarian Matt Embry takes viewers on a transnational journey — from Italy to Canada, and from the lab to the home — in order to examine the politics of the condition.

Keanu Reeves: Pop Messiah

Revealed in independant movies such as My Own Private Idaho, blockbuster movie star in Point Break and Speed, hero of the digital era in The Matrix, virtuoso killer in John Wick, Keanu Reeves is one of the most intriguous stars of his generation. However, after 25 years in the spotlight, he stays an enigma whose chaotic career seems to go on without a guilding principle. Today, nobody could question his unique status as he reluctantly became a social network icon, and a role model for the « woke » generation.

The Corporation

Since the late 18th century American legal decision that the business corporation organizational model is legally a person, it has become a dominant economic, political and social force around the globe. This film takes an in-depth psychological examination of the organization model through various case studies. What the study illustrates is that in the its behaviour, this type of "person" typically acts like a dangerously destructive psychopath without conscience. Furthermore, we see the profound threat this psychopath has for our world and our future, but also how the people with courage, intelligence and determination can do to stop it.

Julia's Stepping Stones

Oscar-winning filmmaker Julia Reichert reflects on the social, economic and personal forces that led to her career as a pioneering documentarian.

Hold on Tight

A short documentary exploring the ways LGBT couples show affection, and how small interactions like holding hands in public can carry, not only huge personal significance, but also the power to create social change.

Biggie: The Life of Notorious B.I.G.

The first authorized biography of Christopher Wallace, allowing Christopher to narrate his own life story. Using archival footage and previously unknown audio to tell the story along with interviews with those that knew him the best.

Clint Eastwood: Hollywood Outlaw

Film clips and interviews with biographers and colleagues chart the prolific, six-decade career of maverick actor-director Clint Eastwood.

Paul Newman, Behind Blue Eyes

From the very beginning, actor Paul Newman captivated the cinema audience with his exceptional azure eyes. The reserved Newman himself finds it trivial and even disturbing that everyone is so taken with his appearance. The actor and director - who has played in more than sixty films and directed twelve of them - prefers to focus on his work and family. And, at least as important, on his philanthropic ventures and political activism.

Stopping Traffic: The Movement to End Sex Trafficking

With the instant reach of social media and explosion in cyber porn, a child sex slave can be purchased online and delivered to a customer more quickly than a pizza. Stopping Traffic: The Movement to End Sex Trafficking starts the conversation on a taboo topic – with raw images of life on the streets, heart-pounding rescues and gut-wrenching, personal stories – ultimately offering a story of hope and empowerment, with the goal of engaging others in launching a movement to end modern-day slavery. With 27 million victims, human trafficking is the 2nd largest criminal enterprise in the world. Not just a back-alley enterprise in underdeveloped regions, it’s also prevalent in the U.S. and industrial nations. Stopping Traffic takes an unflinching, first-hand look at this shadowy underworld, telling the shocking story through the eyes of survivors, veteran activists, front-line rescue organizations and celebrities who support the cause, including Dolph Lundgren and Jeannie Mai.