Truth is definitely stranger than fiction with the Documentaries strand, which presents – and probes – the many facets of real life. From famous and not-so-famous faces to spectacular and far-flung places, these films are inspiring, blood-boiling, entertaining, educational, emotional and true.
Documentaries
Anselm
German auteur Wim Wenders’s majestic 3D portrait of compatriot, artworld luminary and friend Anselm Kiefer.
Read More →Art Talent Show
This dryly humorous, Wiseman-esque film about an esteemed Czech art school asks: who gets to decide what art is?
Read More →Beyond Utopia
This pulse-racing nonfiction thriller follows the individuals risking their lives to defect from North Korea and the pastor granting them passage.
Read More →Four Daughters
A mother and two of her daughters are joined by actors to work through their family history and grasp the other two daughters’ heartbreaking choices.
Read More →Happy Clothes: A Film About Patricia Field
Venture behind the pink tutu with the legendary Sex and the City stylist to discover the creative process that made her a New York icon.
Read More →Iron Butterflies
In this surreal and haunting documentary, a Ukrainian filmmaker obsessively sifts through the shrapnel of the MH17 plane crash.
Read More →Le Spectre de Boko Haram
Winner of Rotterdam’s top prize, this moving documentary explores the lives of Cameroonian children at the edge of a war zone.
Read More →Milisuthando
This poetic, visually striking meditation on growing up under apartheid in South Africa is unlike any documentary memoir you’ve seen before.
Read More →The Mother of All Lies
Winner of Un Certain Regard’s Best Director and L’Œil d’Or at Cannes, this Moroccan documentary sets out to untangle personal and national secrets.
Read More →Paradise
Abandoned by an indifferent government, a remote Siberian village stands united in the face of a massive forest fire that threatens its future.
Read More →Pictures of Ghosts
Brazil’s modern master returns with a haunting tribute to the film-going experience in this Cannes-touted documentary.
Read More →R21 aka Restoring Solidarity
This time capsule of an extraordinary unseen history is a work of documentation and preservation – both of a moment in time and of the moving image.
Read More →Room 999
David Cronenberg, Baz Luhrmann, Claire Denis and a host of directors discuss cinema’s future in this riveting sequel to Wim Wenders’s 1982 classic.
Read More →Smoke Sauna Sisterhood
In the southern Estonian woods, a group of women talk and embrace the soul-cleansing power of steam in this Sundance award-winning documentary.
Read More →Time Bomb Y2K
This archival explosion relives the wild and unhinged madness of the turn of the millennium.
Read More →You Can Call Me Bill
From Star Trek to actual space travel, 92-year-old William Shatner has done it all. Alexandre O. Philippe beams us up with this touching tribute.
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MINI Selects
PRESENTED BY
Inspired by its ‘Big Love’ attitude to life, MINI has partnered with MIFF to present a selection of films within our Documentaries strand that highlight the universality of the human condition. Regardless of age, creed, culture, ability, gender or sexuality, we all have the power to enrich our own and others’ lives.
Casa Susanna
Deep in the US’s Catskill Mountains of the 50s and 60s sat a refuge for transgender women and cross-dressing men to experience life without fear.
Read More →The Eternal Memory
This stirring Sundance Grand Jury Prize winner chronicles the love story of a Chilean couple navigating Alzheimer’s disease.
Read More →Fledglings
Three children spread their wings as they farewell their parents and enter a boarding school for students who are blind or have low vision.
Read More →Invisible Beauty
An intimate self-portrait of Black model, booking agent and fashion industry changemaker Bethann Hardison’s challenge to the colourist status quo.
Read More →On the Adamant
Winner of the Berlinale Golden Bear, this empathetic film invites viewers to spend time with the residents of a floating art-therapy centre in Paris.
Read More →A Still Small Voice
This Sundance U.S. Documentary Directing Award winner is a revelatory portrait of a hospital chaplain and the people under her care during COVID.
Read More →The Tuba Thieves
Described by its maker as a “meditation on access and loss”, this trailblazing film reframes cinema from a d/Deaf and hard-of-hearing perspective.
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