Political
see all genres ›Politics as usual and politics as “unusual” offer great source material for documentary filmmakers who've mined scandal, personality and the search for the public “good” in creating films on public service and the political process.
Watch Political Films
Genres / Documentary / Political
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The Vanishing City
Global trends in major cities around the world have changed rapidly in the last several decades. These trends are perhaps best exemplified in the city of New York. Told through the eyes of city planners, developers, politicians, small business owners, landlords and tenants,...Watch Movie -
The Double Life of Paul Henreid
Paul Henreid, perhaps most famous for his roles in CASABLANCA and NOW, VOYAGER became a star at Warner Brothers during World War II, as the exotic lead with the European accent. After the war, his contract was cancelled and he was left to his own devices. He continued acting...Watch Movie -
Human Remains
HUMAN REMAINS is a haunting documentary which illustrates the banality of evil by creating intimate portraits of five of the 20th century's most reviled dictators. The film unveils the personal lives of Adolf Hitler, Benito Mussolini, Joseph Stalin, Francisco Franco and Mao Tse Tung. We learn the...Watch Movie
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The Weather Underground
Thirty years ago, with these words, a group of young American radicals announced their intention to overthrow the U.S. government. Fueled by outrage over the Vietnam War and racism in America, they went underground during the 1970s, bombing targets across the country that they...Watch Movie -
Operation Filmmaker
In the wake of "Operation Iraqi Freedom," American actor Liev Schreiber had an idealistic notion: to rescue an Iraqi film student from the rubble of his country and bring him to the West to intern on a Hollywood movie. It promised to be a heartwarming tale, a small victory out...Watch Movie -
The Pruitt-Igoe Myth
THE PRUITT-IGOE tells the story of the transformation of the American city in the decades after World War II, through the lens of the infamous Pruitt-Igoe housing development and the St. Louis residents who called it home. It began as a housing marvel. Built in 1956,...Watch Movie
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Resistance
RESISTANCE is the first major look at the complex subject of Jewish efforts to fight back against the Nazis and their collaborators in Eastern Europe. Told by the partisans themselves, without a narrator, and filmed in Lithuania, Poland and Israel, the film uses striking black-and-white imagery...Watch Movie -
Tribulation 99
Upon its release in 1991, TRIBULATION 99 became an instant counter-culture classic. Craig Baldwin’s “pseudo-pseudodocumentary” presents a factual chronicle of U.S. intervention in Latin America in the form of the ultimate far-right conspiracy theory, combining covert action, environmental...Watch Movie -
Salvador Allende
A leftist revolutionary or a reformist democrat? A committed Marxist or a constitutionalist politician? An ethical and moral man or, as Richard Nixon called him, a "son of a bitch?" In SALVADOR ALLENDE, acclaimed Chilean filmmaker Patricio Guzmán returns to his native country...Watch Movie
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Bowling for Columbine
Winner of an Academy Award for Best Documentary, filmmaker Michael Moore's BOWLING FOR COLUMBINE takes a somewhat humorous and oft-times serious look at firearms abuse in the US. Traveling throughout the heartland of the country, Moore sets out to discover why Americans are so...Watch Movie -
Zizek!
The author of works on subjects as wide-ranging as Alfred Hitchcock, 9/11, opera, Christianity, Lenin and David Lynch, Slovenian philosopher Slavoj Zizek is one of the most important and outrageous cultural theorists working today. This captivating, erudite documentary explores the eccentric...Watch Movie
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Gone
Kathy Gilleran is a twenty-year veteran police officer from Cortland, New York, just south of Syracuse. Her son, Aeryn Gillern, is a researcher working at the United Nations Industrial Development Organization in Vienna and a former Mr. Gay Austria. On October 31st, 2007, Kathy receives a call...Watch Movie -
Nostalgia For the Light
For his new film master director Patricio Guzmán, famed for his political documentaries travels ten thousand feet above sea level to the driest place on earth, the Atacama Desert, where atop the mountains astronomers from all over the world gather to observe the stars. The sky...Watch Movie -
Hotel Polski
A mysterious and little known event that occurred in Warsaw during the summer of 1943 that was referred to as the "Hotel Polonia Affair" is the subject of the short documentary from director Kama Veymont, who puts himself on a quest to find out what happened to around 2500 Jews who obtained false...Watch Movie
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You Can't Be Neutral on a Moving Train
This acclaimed film looks at the amazing life of the renowned historian, activist and author, Howard Zinn. Following his early days as a shipyard labor organizer and bombardier in World War II, Zinn became an academic rebel and leader of civil disobedience in a time of...Watch Movie -
Black Wax
BLACK WAX is a musical-political entertainment film produced and directed by Robert Mugge in 1982. It was the first American film to be fully funded by Britain's then-brand-new Channel 4 Television and also likely the first film to use Steadicam from first frame to last. BLACK WAX centers on the...Watch Movie -
Payback
Margaret Atwood's visionary non-fiction work "Payback: Debt and the Shadow Side of Wealth" is the basis for this riveting and poetic documentary on "debt" in its various forms: societal, personal, environmental, spiritual, criminal and, of course, economic. Filmmaker Jennifer Baichwal...Watch Movie