Documentary AreaSimply the best Documentaries

In this programme, Mary descends into the city streets to discover the dirt, crime, sex and slum conditions in the world's first high-rise city. This Rome is not the marble Rome we know, but a vast, messy metropolis with little urban planning, where most Romans lived in high-rise apartment blocks with little space, light, or even sanitation. Forced outdoors into the city streets, she reveals where they went to hang out, get drunk, have sex and get clean. She looks at the Forum as a place of gamblers, dentists and thieves, and she explores the lustiness of Roman bar life and jokes. Finally, exploring law and order from the bottom up, Mary examines how this city really worked. She meets Ancarenus Nothus, an apartment dweller who lived in fear of the rent collector; Notorious Primus, who wrote about his three great pleasures in life - baths, wine and sex; and Unlucky Doris, a seven-year-old girl killed in one of Rome's many fires.

Perhaps there is no architectural feature more distinctly Angeleno than a strip mall. The city is full of them with their busy facades and bright neon signage. Their wonderfully eclectic, multi-purpose tenants give shape and home to the multitudes of ethnic communities that make up LA’s diverse population.
Trois Mec and Petit Trois can be found side-by-side in a Hollywood strip mall, nestled between a dry cleaners and a Yum Yum donut. Ludo’s restaurants and the dishes he creates for them embody the cultural mash-up and high/low flair that is the strip mall philosophy.

A searing and courageous feature-length documentary delves into one of the most painful and under examined chapters in collegiate athletics history. Through raw, emotional interviews with former student-athletes—including wrestlers and other victims—it confronts the decades of abuse inflicted by Dr. Richard Strauss at Ohio State University, and the systemic failures that allowed him to prey on vulnerable young men across nearly two decades.
The film doesn’t just recount trauma; it exposes the deep institutional complicity and silencing, featuring voices demanding truth, accountability, and justice.

In the Taurus Mountains Simon stays with descendants of the original Turks, nomads known as Yoruks, whose lifestyle is under threat from the modern world and an increasingly religious government. They're not the only minority at odds with the authorities in Turkey; Simon sees first-hand the devastating effects of fighting in the country's Kurdish region. In an area where the government has detained foreign journalists, Simon gathers unique footage in the aftermath of a crackdown on Kurdish militants - the wholesale destruction of the historic centre of one of Turkey's oldest cities.
Away from the conflict in the south, Simon heads towards the Black Sea coast. He meets a wildlife conservationist protecting Turkey's population of brown bears, and villagers who still communicate over long distances using an ancient bird language. In the country's capital he meets a victim of President Erdogan's authoritarian purge of people accused of complicity in the failed coup against him.
Finally Simon's journey comes full circle when he returns to Istanbul - home to the new craze of 'Ottomania', a celebration of the vast empire that preceded modern Turkey. Simon visits the set of one of the world's most popular TV dramas - even getting a speaking role - based in the court of an Ottoman sultan

The story of Nikola Tesla, the great scientist, visionary, and inventor who gave the world alternating current electricity, as well as being the father of radio. The film tells the story of this man's astonishing genius, his visions and inventions. Tesla's own scientific and autobiographical writings, as well as archival photographs and re-enactments are used to tell the story. A native of Austro-Hungary, Tesla came to America in 1884. Working first with Edison, the two inventors fell out over Edison's insistence on using direct current. Tesla took his alternating current vision to Westinghouse. Tesla worked to unlock the secrets of energy and electricity. The film follows Tesla's exploits and eccentricities, which made him a darling of the press. Largely forgotten today in spite of the great debt the modern world owes him, the film pays tribute to this overlooked genius

The filmmakers challenge former Indonesian death-squad leaders to reenact their mass-killings in whichever cinematic genres they wish, including classic Hollywood crime scenarios and lavish musical numbers. Anwar Congo and his friends have been dancing their way through musical numbers, twisting arms in film noir gangster scenes, and galloping across prairies as yodeling cowboys. Their foray into filmmaking is being celebrated in the media and debated on television, even though Anwar Congo and his friends are mass murderers.
Medan, Indonesia. When the government of Indonesia was overthrown by the military in 1965, Anwar and his friends were promoted from small-time gangsters who sold movie theatre tickets on the black market to death squad leaders. They helped the army kill more than one million alleged communists, ethnic Chinese, and intellectuals in less than a year. As the executioner for the most notorious death squad in his city, Anwar himself killed hundreds of people with his own hands.
The Act of Killing is about killers who have won, and the sort of society they have built. Unlike ageing Nazis or Rwandan génocidaires, Anwar and his friends have not been forced by history to admit they participated in crimes against humanity. Instead, they have written their own triumphant history, becoming role models for millions of young paramilitaries. The Act of Killing is a journey into the memories and imaginations of the perpetrators, offering insight into the minds of mass killers. And The Act of Killing is a nightmarish vision of a frighteningly banal culture of impunity in which killers can joke about crimes against humanity on television chat shows, and celebrate moral disaster with the ease and grace of a soft shoe dance number.