BRITDOC Foundation

Real Films

Film Directory

  • The Nature Project (Working Title)

    Director:

    David Bond

    This project was selected from the ‘Power of Nature’ scheme, looking to help to fund and distribute a feature documentary film that examines our contemporary relationship with nat... [read more]

  • Swandown

    Director:

    Andrew Kotting

    Swandown is a poetic film-diary about encounter and culture. It is also an endurance test and pedal-marathon. Andrew Kötting and Iain Sinclair pedalled a plastic swan-shaped pedalo from ... [read more]

  • In Search of the Anti Christ

    Director:

    Jamie Campbell & Joel Wilson

    Filmmaking duo Jamie and Joel attempt to make sense of religion in the US by investigating the Rapture. Little known in the UK, up to one third of the population of the United States is said ... [read more]

  • The Maze

    Director:

    Donovan Wylie

    BAFTA award-winning filmmaker and Magnum photographer, Donovan Wylie, charts the story of the Maze prison in Northern Ireland, from being a shining example of the architecture of containment ... [read more]

  • Mass E Bhat

    Director:

    Richard York & Hannan Majid

    As it continues its own industrial revolution, Bangladesh is, in many ways a perfect example of what we refer to as 'a developing nation'.  

    Mass E Bhat explo... [read more]

  • Fatherland

    Director:

    Taghi Amirani

    Fatherland tells the story of the filmmaker's late father's extraordinary double life pre- and post-Iranian Revolution. The film is set against a huge historical canvas covering tumul... [read more]

  • Semangat (Spirit)

    2009 Director:

    Adam Gutch & Chu-Li Shewring

    In the jungles of Borneo, an Iban father on the cusp of old age begins a river journey to seek help for his sick child. Troubled by uncanny visions, which arise out of the bizarre world of th... [read more]

  • Black Gold

    2005 Director:

    Nick Francis and Marc Francis

    Multinational coffee companies now rule our shopping malls and supermarkets and dominate the industry - worth over $80 billion - making coffee the most valuable trading commodity in the world... [read more]

  • Guca

    2006 Director:

    Milivoj Ilic

    Guca is the name of a small village in Serbia which for over 40 years has been home to the national trumpet festival. Once a small local affair, it now pulls crowds of over 200,000 and is leg... [read more]

  • How is Your Fish Today?

    2006 Director:

    Xiaolu Guo

    A young man in southern China has killed his lover.

    He starts a lonely escape across the whole country towards his land of wonder, a snowy village at the northern border. Sitting a... [read more]

  • Bukom: the Fighting Spirit

    2006 Director:

    George Amponsah

    The story of a Ghanaian fishing village, with a proud fighting tradition, which has become a Mecca for finding new boxing talent. The film becomes a &'fish out of water'; allegory as commerci... [read more]

  • Farewell Song

    2006 Director:

    Arthur and Luther Jones

    Since the communist takeover in 1949, China's orchestras have been controlled and funded by the government. But as market economics returned to the Mainland in the 1990s, the arts had to ... [read more]

  • Heavy Water - A Film for Chernobyl

    2006 Director:

    David Bickerstaff & Phil Grabsky

    Based on Mario Petrucci's award-winning book-length Poem for Chernobyl, Heavy Water, this film tells the story of the people who dealt with the world's worst nuclear disaster... [read more]

  • Kimmie

    2006 Director:

    Hazel Chandler

    Kimmie follows the journey of Liberian child's rights activist, Kimmie Weeks, 23, as he returns home from exile in the USA for the first time in six years. Kimmie is a very perso... [read more]

  • Reunion

    2006 Director:

    Monica Magyarosy

    Filmed over a Memorial Day Weekend in Buffalo, New York, Reunion is a heartfelt, touching and frequently funny portrait of the very first reunion of an extended Jewish family.

    On t... [read more]

  • Sargy Mann

    2006 Director:

    Peter Mann

    Sargy Mann is an inspiring story about one artist's battle to overcome adversity in the shape of blindness, and continue his life's work and passion, to paint.

    First time d... [read more]

  • Sooner or Later

    2006 Director:

    Paul J Cronin

    Using contemporary footage and archived out-takes of Haskell Wexler's 1969 feature Medium Cool, Sooner or Later takes a lyrical look at the life of the star of Wexler... [read more]

  • Specky

    2006 Director:

    Anne-Claire Pilley

    A short documentary musing how short-sighted people could have survived the Stone Age.

    Through a series of experiments involving her specky relatives, the director illustrates how ... [read more]

  • Talk to Me

    2006 Director:

    Mark Craig

    In 1985, Mark Craig bought an answer machine. He then kept every message it recorded...for 20 years!

    Talk To Me is a personal life journey from long-haired graduate to gre... [read more]

  • The Word Was God

    2006 Director:

    Mark Boulos

    Filmmaker and artist Mark Boulos' short film looks at language, religion, and the ecstasy of prayer: the film contrasts the last village in Syria where Aramaic - the language of Christ - ... [read more]

  • Here's Johnny

    2007 Director:

    Adam Lavis, Kat Mansoor and Will Hood

    Here's Johnny enters the surreal world of famous graphic artist Johnny Hicklenton, who is battling against Multiple Sclerosis. Living in an increasing state of immobility and frustration,... [read more]

  • Living With the Tudors

    2007 Director:

    Karen Guthrie and Nina Pope

    After 4 years of participation as costumed historical re-enactors, Karen Guthrie & Nina Pope were given unprecedented access with their cameras to the UK's oldest and largest historic... [read more]

  • Steal This Film II

    2007 Director:

    Jamie King

    Professor and activist Jamie King has become a figurehead for the opposition in the war against file sharing.

    Steal This Film II explains how and why the war has been lost and the ... [read more]

  • We are Together

    2007 Director:

    Paul Taylor (d.) and Teddy Leifer (p.)

    Filmed over three years, We Are Together tells the remarkable and moving story of a group of children who use music to overcome hardship and loss. It is the story of an orphanag... [read more]

  • Alive Day

    2007 Director:

    Tom Eldridge

    A feature documentary following young US veterans, injured in Iraq, as they take their first steps out of military care. Given a brief discharge from hospital, 12 severely injured Americ... [read more]

  • Small Town Boy

    2007 Director:

    Moby Longinotto

    This wonderful short follows the courageous and isolated young David Birch as he prepares to ride through his small country village as the first ever, gay male carnival queen, proud of his id... [read more]

  • Tres Pesos

    2007 Director:

    Ruth Cross

    Unfolding in three chapters of rare intimacy and candour, Tres Pesos offers an insight into the everyday lives of young Cuban reggaeton musicians.

    Living in the neglected outskirts... [read more]

  • Afghan Star

    2008 Director:

    Havana Marking

    Through the eyes of young, talented and ambitious pop hopefuls all competing to become the next Afghan Star we experience the birth of a new, optimistic Afghanistan. 10 years ago in Afghanist... [read more]

  • Chosen

    2008 Director:

    Brian Woods

    Chosen is testament to the power of a compelling story, simply told. It deals with a subject often whispered but rarely spoken about - the sexual abuse of schoolboys by teachers in Britain... [read more]

  • Life After the Fall

    2008 Director:

    Kasim Abid

    Life After the Fall&... [read more]

  • Drum Room

    2008 Director:

    Miranda Pennell

    The empty spaces of an ambiguous building open up to reveal a group of aspiring musicians as they play together, alone. Filmed within a music school, Drum Room focuses on the contradictory as... [read more]

  • The End of the Line

    2008 Director:

    Rupert Murray

    If we do nothing, the world's oceans will be empty of fish within our lifetimes. This beautifully-filmed international documentary is a searing investigation of how it happened, who is to... [read more]

  • Every Other Friday

    2008 Director:

    Sam Hunt

    Every other Friday for 25 years, Albert O'Conner (Albie) has run a disco at the Barrow-In-Furness Catholic Church Hall for those in the area with mental or physical disabilities. Albie hi... [read more]

  • King of South Shields

    2008 Director:

    Tina Gharavi

    In 1977, the boxer Muhammad Ali travelled to the North East of England and was married in a mosque in South Shields. This film examines how this event affected the sense of identity of young ... [read more]

  • The Solitary Life of Cranes

    2008 Director:

    Eva Weber

    The Solitary Life of Cranes takes the viewer on a journey high up in the sky, to look at London's ever-changing landscape through the eyes and words of crane drivers.

    ... [read more]

  • Stone Pastures

    2008 Director:

    Donagh Coleman

    Stone Pastures tells the story of a nomadic family living on the Himalayan plateau of Ladakh. In this high altitude cold desert, the nomads' way of life is fast disappearing as t... [read more]

  • Moving to Mars

    2009 Director:

    Mat Whitecross (d.) and Karen Katz (p.)

    Moving to Mars tells the story of two families from Burma who travel from a vast refugee camp on the Thai/Burma border to their new homes in the United Kingdom.

    Having accep... [read more]

  • Sounds Like Teen Spirit: a Popumentary

    2009 Director:

    Jamie Jay Johnson

     

    [read more]

  • Hackney Fandango

    Director:

    Tom Hunter

    Hackney Fandango is a short documentary charting a day in the life of one dancer in east London through the different dance forms practised in the area.  An updating of colourful ... [read more]

  • The Madman and the Cathedral

    2009 Director:

    James Rogan

    In a small town not far from Madrid, a former monk has spent the last forty years single-handedly building a cathedral. With no planning permission and using mostly recycled materials, he has... [read more]

  • The Yes Men Fix the World

    2009 Director:

    Mike Bonnano, Andy Bichlbaum & Kurt Engfehr

    This film is about disasters and risk - the risk that big business is prepared to take with our lives.

    Political pranksters, The Yes Men have been called 'the Jonat... [read more]

  • Erasing David

    2009 Director:

    David Bond (d.) Ashley Jones (p.)

    David Bond has nothing to hide...but does he really have nothing to fear?

    David Bond lives in one of the most intrusive surveillance states in the world. He decides to find out how... [read more]

  • Shelter in Place

    2009 Director:

    Zed Nelson (director) & Hannah Patterson (producer)

    A compelling portrait of a community living on the fenceline of big industry, touching on issues of civil rights, environmental pollution and their battle against corporate power.

    ... [read more]

  • H2NY

    2009 Director:

    Michael Landy

    This twenty seven minute documentary by artist Michael Landy charts his fascination with Jean Tinguely's 1960 art work Homage to New York, the most famous of Tinguey's auto-destruct m... [read more]

  • Journey to the Moon

    2009 Director:

    Kutlug Ataman

    Journey to the Moon explores an urban myth that in 1957, a group of villagers from Turkey's remote Black Sea coast were conned by a local politician into believing he would build a spaces... [read more]

  • Backstory

    2009 Director:

    Mark Lewis

    A short documentary exploring the fabulous history and unique technique of cinematic rear projection, the method by which the 'real' was introduced into studio films.

    Long... [read more]

  • The Joneses

    2009 Director:

    Moby Longinotto

    Platinum blonde Jheri Jones lives on a remote trailer park in Pearl, Mississippi - the poorest of US States, home to the Ku Klux Klan and heart of the Bible Belt. Two of her sons, Brad and Tr... [read more]

  • My Kidnapper

    2010 Director:

    Mark Henderson, Kate Horne

    In 2003 Mark Henderson was one of eight backpackers taken hostage by Marxist guerrillas while trekking in the Colombian jungle. What had started as an innocent tourist adventure, ended up as ... [read more]

  • Self Made

    2010 Director:

    Gillian Wearing

    Self Made is Turner Prize-winner Gillian Wearing’s debut feature. If you were to play a part in a film, would you be yourself or a fictional character?

    Hundreds of people res... [read more]

  • Guilty Pleasures

    2010 Director:

    Julie Moggan

    Every four seconds a Harlequin Mills & Boon romance novel is sold somewhere in the world. In India, the books give Shumita hope that her straying husband will return. In Japan, housewife ... [read more]

  • Up in Smoke - formerly Burning Needs

    2011 Director:

    Adam Wakeling

    Slash and burn farming generates more carbon emissions annually than all air and road travel put together. It is one of the biggest contributors to deforestation and global warming. It sits a... [read more]

  • Town Of Runners

    2011 Director:

    Jerry Rothwell

    Long-distance running is a way of life in the Arsi region of Ethiopia. In a country well-acquainted with poverty, famine and war, world-beating athletes are a source of intense pride.

    [read more]

  • Ping Pong

    2011 Director:

    Hugh Hartford

    Ping Pong: A Sports Movie About Old Age follows players from around the world as they make their way to Inner Mongolia to compete in the 80+ age groups of the World Table Tennis Cham... [read more]

  • Hell & Back Again

    2011 Director:

    Danfung Dennis

    The intensely personal story of Sergeant Harris and Marine battalion Echo Company from the start of the 2009 tour of Afghanistan to their return, the decompression and rehabilitation in the U... [read more]

  • A Whole Lott More

    2011 Director:

    Victor Buhler

    Lott Industries in Ohio, USA employs 1200 workers with developmental disabilities. For decades, the company has built car parts. However, with the decline of the auto industry, Lott Industrie... [read more]

  • Calvet

    2011 Director:

    Dominic Allan

    The powerful, tortured paintings of French artist Jean Marc Calvet sell from $20,000 a piece, he has major solo exhibitions in New York and yet, until 7 years ago, he had never touched a pain... [read more]

  • Who Is Dayani Cristal?

    2011 Director:

    Marc Silver

    An anonymous body is discovered in the Arizona desert. 
The only identifying feature is a tattoo reading ‘Dayani Cristal’. 
To unravel the mystery we must go on an epic journey be... [read more]

  • The Bengali Detective

    2011 Director:

    Philip Cox

    The secrets of Kolkota’s and London’s Bengali community revealed by overweight dance obsessed intrepid detective Rajesh Ji.

    Mixing dance and song with the harsh lives o... [read more]

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