Black Angels

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.

Crazy Horse - Le show

The Crazy Horse has staged unique shows on Paris' avenue George V every evening since 1951. Enjoy some of the most spectacular numbers seen at Crazy Horse in an exceptional film shot in High Definition video, including previously unreleased sequences of the dancers and their lives backstage!

At Eleven

Isa and Zoe are eleven years old, they are best friends. Through their video diaries, they tell their perspectives on the transition from childhood to adolescence, the changes they are undergoing and their concerns when they stop being girls to become women.

Le charme de l'ambiguïté

From transvestites to transformers, we will follow the trail that will lead us in different and famous Parisian music-halls, such as the mythical Alcazar of Paris, La Grande Eugène. Whether they are below or beyond their character, often these men who are looking for themselves look at life with the humor of despair. Why this need to "transform" themselves? Why is it always the men who cross-dress and not the women? Why did the public flock to these shows in the 1970s and 1980s? Interpretations of famous characters such as Diana Ross, Josephine Baker, Billie Holiday, the Peter Sisters, the Andrew Sisters, Zizi Jeanmaire, Judy Garland, Sarah Bernhardt, among others, contribute to making this musical document an essential testimony of this era.

Lentejuelas de sangre

Antonio Gracia José (1942-2011), known as “Pierrot,” was a prominent member of the Barcelona art scene, a pioneer in the filmmaking of underground short films and Fantaterror movies, writer and playwright, magazine editor, movie poster painter, cartoonist and cabaret showman.

Quatro em Linha

VALKYRIES

Cookie Queens

A celebration of girlhood and the complexities that come with it, Cookie Queens is a coming-of-age story about the joys, pressures, and tensions woven into one of America’s most cherished rituals: Girl Scout Cookie season.

Marching in the Dark

In a drought-struck region in India, suffering from climate change and a high suicide rate amongst farmers, a group of resilient women farmers, who recently lost their husbands, is coming together with a local psychologist to learn counselling and help others in grief.

Cosmovisions

In Southern Bahia, seven indigenous women invite to reflection, sharing their mythology, ancestry and paths to living well.

Yours in Sisterhood

What might be revealed in the process of inviting strangers to act out and respond to 1970s feminism forty years later? Between 2015 and 2017, hundreds of strangers in communities all over the US were invited to read aloud and respond to letters from the 70s sent to the editor of Ms. Magazine–the first mainstream feminist magazine in the US. The intimate, provocative, and sometimes heartbreaking conversations that emerge from these spontaneous performances make us think critically about the past, present, and future of feminism.

Mae West: Dirty Blonde

Mae West achieved great acclaim in every entertainment medium that existed during her lifetime, spanning eight decades of the 20th century. A full-time actress at seven, a vaudevillian at 14, a dancing sensation at 25, a playwright at 33, a silver screen ingénue at 40, a Vegas nightclub act at 62, a recording artist at 73, a camp icon at 85 - West left no format unconquered. She possessed creative and economic powers unheard of for a female entertainer in the 1930s and still rare today. Though a comedian, West grappled with some of the more complex social issues of the 20th century, including race and class tensions, and imbued even her most salacious plotlines with commentary about gender conformity, societal restrictions and what she perceived as moral hypocrisy. Mae West: Dirty Blonde is the first major documentary film to explore West's life and career, as she "climbed the ladder of success wrong by wrong" to become a writer, performer and subversive agitator for social change.

Sisterhood

Filmmaker Sophie Dros enters into a dialogue with strong women in a powerfull document about being a woman in the Netherlands today. Inspired by Simone de Beauvoir's essay The second sex, filmmaker Sophie Dros (winner of the NFF Debut Competition 2017) talks to four women and a group of young girls. Together they go in search of universal stories; about dealing with expectations, empathy and connection, desires, fear, need for confirmation and losing control.

Twinsters

Adopted from South Korea, raised on different continents & connected through social media, Samantha & Anaïs believe that they are twin sisters separated at birth.

Blood Sisters

Julia and Johanna, from the high-rise flats of Rosengård in Malmö, inseparable for as long as they remember. Curled up beside each other at night, carrying equal memories of abduction and abuse in their home country Azerbaijan. In Blood Sisters we follow their journey from twin sisters in symbiosis to young women trying to stand on their own feet.

Days

Marie-Philip is a PhD student and part-time professor who loves cats and Harry Potter. But one week before her 29th birthday, she is diagnosed with breast cancer. For a year, without false modesty, we follow her through each step as she confides in us with shocking honesty. An ode to life, to courage and to the resilience of all those who fight every day against disease.

a ritual of sisterhood.

«this short film visits memories of the past, truths of the present + hopes for the future. healing for sisters who are in process, in ritual.» (Rikkí Wright)

Forbidden Temptations

Italian documentary film shot in several European towns (Berlin, Hamburg, London, Paris, Venice) as well as in Rome's De Paolis Studios. The movie features a series of strip-tease numbers intermixed with real-life scenes and interviews.

Les Charlots en folie

Documentary on Les Charlots, known as The Crazy Boys in the English-speaking world, a group of French musicians, singers, comedians and film actors who were popular in the 1960s, 1970s, and early 1980s.

Inside Deep Throat

In 1972, a seemingly typical shoestring budget pornographic film was made in a Florida hotel: "Deep Throat," starring Linda Lovelace. This film would surpass the wildest expectation of everyone involved to become one of the most successful independent films of all time. It caught the public imagination which met the spirit of the times, even as the self-appointed guardians of public morality struggled to suppress it, and created, for a brief moment, a possible future where sexuality in film had a bold artistic potential. This film covers the story of the making of this controversial film, its stunning success, its hysterical opposition along with its dark side of mob influence and allegations of the on set mistreatment of the film's star.

Zero Days

Alex Gibney explores the phenomenon of Stuxnet, a self-replicating computer virus discovered in 2010 by international IT experts. Evidently commissioned by the US and Israeli governments, this malware was designed to specifically sabotage Iran’s nuclear programme. However, the complex computer worm ended up not only infecting its intended target but also spreading uncontrollably.

Room 237

A subjective documentary that explores various theories about hidden meanings in Stanley Kubrick's classic film The Shining. Five very different points of view are illuminated through voice over, film clips, animation and dramatic reenactments.

78/52

The most famous murder scene in movie history comprises 78 camera settings and 52 cuts: the shower scene in Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho. 78/52 tells the story of the man behind the curtain and his greatest obsession.

For Sama

A love letter from a young mother to her daughter, the film tells the story of Waad al-Kateab’s life through five years of the uprising in Aleppo, Syria as she falls in love, gets married and gives birth to Sama, all while cataclysmic conflict rises around her. Her camera captures incredible stories of loss, laughter and survival as Waad wrestles with an impossible choice– whether or not to flee the city to protect her daughter’s life, when leaving means abandoning the struggle for freedom for which she has already sacrificed so much.

Welcome to Chechnya

This searing investigative work shadows a group of activists risking unimaginable peril to confront the ongoing anti-LGBTQ program raging in the repressive and closed Russian republic. Unfettered access and a remarkable approach to protecting anonymity exposes this under-reported atrocity–and an extraordinary group of people confronting evil.

Disclosure

An investigation of how Hollywood's fabled stories have deeply influenced how Americans feel about transgender people, and how transgender people have been taught to feel about themselves.

Matangi / Maya / M.I.A.

Drawn from a never before seen cache of personal footage spanning decades, this is an intimate portrait of the Sri Lankan artist and musician who continues to shatter conventions.

Gonzo: The Life and Work of Dr. Hunter S. Thompson

Fueled by a raging libido, Wild Turkey, and superhuman doses of drugs, Thompson was a true "free lance, " goring sacred cows with impunity, hilarity, and a steel-eyed conviction for writing wrongs. Focusing on the good doctor's heyday, 1965 to 1975, the film includes clips of never-before-seen (nor heard) home movies, audiotapes, and passages from unpublished manuscripts.

One More Time with Feeling

Andrew Dominik's One More Time With Feeling is a remarkable black and white documentary which chronicles the creation of Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds' album Skeleton Tree. Originally a performance based concept, the film evolved into something much more significant as Dominik delved into the tragic backdrop of the writing and recording of the album. The result is stark, fragile and raw, and a true testament to an artist trying to find his way through the darkness. It documents the writing, recording and performing of Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds’ sixteenth studio album, Skeleton Tree.

Robin Williams: Come Inside My Mind

A funny, intimate and heartbreaking portrait of one of the world’s most beloved and inventive comedians, Robin Williams, told largely through his own words. Celebrates what he brought to comedy and to the culture at large, from the wild days of late-1970s L.A. to his death in 2014.

Generation Wealth

Over the past 25 years, Lauren Greenfield's documentary photography and film projects have explored youth culture, gender, body image, and affluence. Underscoring the ever-increasing gap between the haves and the have-nots, portraits reveal a focus on cultivating image over substance, where subjects unable to attain actual wealth instead settle for its trappings, no matter their ability to pay for it.

QT8: The First Eight

A detailed account of the life and artistic career of legendary filmmaker Quentin Tarantino, from his early days as a video club manager to the scandalous fall in disgrace of producer Harvey Weinstein. A story about how to shoot eight great movies and become an icon of modern pop culture.

Sour Grapes

Controversy erupts when an unassuming young man floods the American wine market with fake vintages valued in the millions, bamboozling the wine world elite, in this humorous and suspenseful tale of an ingenious con on the eve of the 2008 stock market crash.

Facing Ali

Ten of Muhammad Ali's former rivals pay tribute to the three-time world heavyweight champion.

Travis Scott: Look Mom I Can Fly

While crafting his Grammy-nominated album "Astroworld," Travis Scott juggles controversy, fatherhood and career highs in this intimate documentary.

The Kid Stays in the Picture

Documentary about legendary Paramount producer Robert Evans, based on his famous 1994 autobiography.

Woodstock: Three Days That Defined a Generation

50 years after the legendary fest, Barak Goodman’s electric retelling of Woodstock, from the point of view of those who were on the ground, evokes the freedom, passion, community, and joy the three-day music festival created.

Belushi

Using previously unheard audiotapes recorded shortly after John Belushi’s death, director R.J. Cutler’s documentary feature examines the too-short life of the once-in-a-generation talent who captured the hearts and funny bones of devoted audiences.

Dig!

A documentary on the once promising American rock bands The Brian Jonestown Massacre and The Dandy Warhols. The friendship between respective founders, Anton Newcombe and Courtney Taylor, escalated into bitter rivalry as the Dandy Warhols garnered major international success while the Brian Jonestown Massacre imploded in a haze of drugs.