Documentary AreaSimply the best Documentaries

Anthropologist Wade Davis and river advocate Robert F. Kennedy Jr journey down the Colorado River on a two-week expedition to highlight water conservation issues. Traveling by rafts, kayaks and wooden dories, they are accompanied by their daughters and guided by Shana Watahomigie, a Native American National Park ranger. Filmed with a 350-pound 3D camera, it involved the cooperation of three Indian nations, the National Park Service, film sponsor Teva’s team of kayakers and more than a dozen experienced river guides. The film explores America's drought and freshwater shortages, the impact on the river of damming, and human water supply needs. Grand Canyon Adventure: River at Risk was directed by Greg MacGillivray and narrated by Robert Redford.

Four and a half billion years ago, the young Earth was a hellish place, a seething chaos of meteorite impacts, volcanoes belching noxious gases, and lightning flashing through a thin, torrid atmosphere. Then, in a process that has puzzled scientists for decades, life emerged. But how? Join mineralogist Robert Hazen as he journeys around the globe. From an ancient Moroccan market to the Australian Outback, he advances a startling and counterintuitive idea—that the rocks beneath our feet were not only essential to jump-starting life, but that microbial life helped give birth to hundreds of minerals we know and depend on today. It's a theory of the co-evolution of Earth and life that is reshaping the grand-narrative of our planet’s story.

North Korea, formerly known as the hermit kingdom, is perhaps the largest source of instability as regards world peace. Its border is one of the most militarized in the world. The lack of impartial information, both inside and coming out of the country, is the perfect setting for a propaganda war, which will be analysed in the film through numerous examples of the surprising way in which information is manipulated, in and about North Korea. Alejandro Cao de Benos, the sole foreigner who works for the People's Republic of Korea Government, and many locals will show us their vision of the reality in North Korea. The other side of the story will be reflected through interviews to South Korean citizens, human rights advocates, diplomats, propaganda experts, etc.

After the murder of his brother Frank, Al Capone is out for revenge against William Dever and the Chicago police. He plots to kill every undercover cop that was in Cicero on the day of Frank’s death. Before he can set his plan in motion, however, Johnny Torrio returns from Italy and reclaims his control of their criminal empire. Torrio forbids Capone from killing cops, fearing it would spark an all-out war. Despite Capone’s personal loss, Torrio returns to a booming business that’s raking in $10 million a month. However, as Torrio and Capone’s empire grows, it becomes harder to keep smaller factions under control. After a small group of Italian mobsters attacks one of Dean O’Banion’s distilleries, O’Banion blames Torrio and decides to end their business partnership. He announces his retirement to Torrio and offers Torrio an opportunity to buy him out. Torrio meets O’Banion at the Seine Brewery on May 19, 1924, with the buyout money. Chicago police raid the brewery and arrest Torrio while letting O’Banion walk free: O’Banion had set the whole thing up. With prior convictions, Torrio serves a mandatory prison sentence but is first released on bail. He vows to kill O’Banion as payback and gives Capone his blessing to kill O’Banion. Capone spends months planning the hit. Capone knows that catching O’Banion off guard is nearly impossible, so he places an order with O’Banion’s flower shop for nearly $20,000 worth of flowers, knowing that O’Banion personally oversees his biggest arrangements. On November 10, 1924, O’Banion works in his shop preparing the flower delivery. Two of Capone’s men enter the shop and fatally gun O’Banion down. Four days later, Chicago’s most powerful Irish gangster is laid to rest in one of the most lavish funerals Chicago has ever seen. More than two dozen cars are required to transport floral arrangements as a crowd of 10,000 mourns the death of the infamous gangster. Torrio and Capone attend the funeral, infuriating O’Banion’s top lieutenants, Hymie Weiss and Bugs Moran. Chaos breaks out as smaller gangs through the city begin a turf war. It’s the beginning of an era of bloodshed in Chicago known as the Beer Wars. Over 300 people are murdered at a rate of 75 to 100 murders a year.

Playing with Nuclear Fire' - In March 2011, the Tohoku earthquake in Japan created a tsunami that killed some 16,000 people and crippled the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant. In the aftermath, the government and TEPCO, the plant's operator, withheld information about the extent of the damage. Three years later, citizens and the international community are left wondering if Japan really does have the situation under control, as the government is insisting, or if the danger is far greater than anyone is willing to admit. 'No Man Left Behind' - It's estimated that over a quarter million vets from recent wars have sought treatment for PTSD. Despite these statistics, veterans often face an uphill battle to get treatment, receiving inadequate attention and, most dangerously, overprescribed narcotics and other pharmaceuticals. Ryan Duffy meets veterans struggling with mental illness and addiction.

Killing Kennedy begins in 1959, at major turning points for both the future president and his assassin. John F. Kennedy (played by Rob Lowe) is in Washington, D.C., preparing to announce his presidential candidacy, while Lee Harvey Oswald finds himself in the U.S. embassy in Moscow, renouncing his U.S. citizenship. These two events start both men-one a member of one of the United States' most wealthy and powerful families, the other a disillusioned former Marine and Marxist-on a cataclysmic track that would alter the course of history". Throughout the film, we see their highs and lows, culminating in not one but two shocking deaths that stunned the nation. Based on the best-selling book by Bill O'Reilly and Martin Dugard.