Anand Patwardhan is an Indian documentary filmmaker known for his socio-political, human rights-oriented films. Some of his films explore the rise of religious fundamentalism, sectarianism and casteism in India, while others investigate nuclear nationalism and unsustainable development. Notable films include Bombay: Our City (1985), In Memory of Friends (1990), In the Name of God (1992), Father, Son, and Holy War (1995), A Narmada Diary (1995), War and Peace (2002) and Jai Bhim Comrade (2011), Reason (2018), and The World is Family (2023), which have won national and international awards.
Pinny Grylls is a British documentary filmmaker. She is known for co-directing Grand Theft Hamlet, a 2024 feature documentary shot exclusively inside a video game, with Sam Crane. The film won the Best Documentary Jury Prize at the 2024 SXSW Film Festival.
François Verster is an independent South African film director and documentary maker.
Brett Gaylor is a Canadian documentary filmmaker living in Victoria, British Columbia. He grew up on Galiano Island, British Columbia. He was formerly the VP of Mozilla's Webmaker Program. His documentary, Do Not Track, explores privacy and the web economy.
Antoine is a 2008 Canadian documentary film directed by Laura Bari. The film features a 5-year old blind boy named Antoine Houang, living in Montreal, Quebec. It tells the real and imaginary life of Antoine, a boy detective who runs, drives, makes decisions, hosts radio shows and adores simultaneous telephone conversations. Over the course of two years, he uses a mini-boom microphone to discover and capture the sounds surrounding him. In this manner he also co-created the soundtrack of the film.
Leonard Retel Helmrich was a Dutch cinematographer and film director. Born in Tilburg, he moved to Amsterdam in 1982. He was a two-time International Documentary winner at the International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam (IDFA). On June 5, 2018, he was awarded with the title Knight in the Order of the Netherlands Lion by the Dutch King Willem-Alexander. Helmrich was known for his work with the "single shot cinema" filming method.
A Story of People in War and Peace is a 2007 documentary film written and directed by Armenian filmmaker and war veteran, Vardan Hovhannisyan.
Katerina Cizek is a Canadian documentary director and a pioneer in digital documentaries. She is the Artistic Director, Co-Founder and Executive Producer of the Co-Creation Studio at MIT Open Documentary Lab.
Michael Obert is a German book author and journalist who has been compared with the likes of Bruce Chatwin, Jon Krakauer and Ryszard Kapuściński. His debut movie Song from the Forest was honored with the Award for Best Feature-Length Documentary at the International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam 2013. In 2016 Song from the Forest was considered for the 88th Academy Awards.
Gideon Levy is an Amsterdam-based independent filmmaker and producer. He is a host for current affairs programs for Dutch Public Television. Levy’s films have been sold internationally and his films have been screened at festivals worldwide. His work frequently examines political and cultural power structures evaluating the place of the individual within those structures. Levy’s investigative film Lockerbie Revisited won the 2009 Prix Europa competition in Berlin.
Orwa Nyrabia is an independent documentary film festival artistic director, producer, filmmaker, trainer, human rights defender and co-founder of DOX BOX International Documentary Film Festival in Syria. Nyrabia is a resident of Berlin, Germany, since the end of 2013 In January 2018 Nyrabia became the Artistic Director of International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam (IDFA).
Highrise is a multi-year, multimedia documentary project about life in residential highrises, directed by Katerina Cizek and produced by Gerry Flahive for the National Film Board of Canada (NFB). The project, which began in 2009, includes five web documentaries—The Thousandth Tower, Out My Window, One Millionth Tower, A Short History of the Highrise and Universe Within: Digital Lives in the Global Highrise—as well as more than 20 derivative projects such as public art exhibits and live performances.
Diana El Jeiroudi, is a Berlin-based, Syrian independent film director and producer. El Jeiroudi’s films as director were celebrated at many festivals, including the Venice Film Festival, IDFA, DokLeipzig, Visions du Réel, CPH:DOX… among others. Her producing credits include the Sundance 2023 film 5 Seasons of Revolution, the Cannes Film Festival 2014 selection Silvered Water, the IDFA 2013 selection The Mulberry House, among others. She was the first Syrian to be a juror in Cannes Film Festival in 2014, when she was part of the first Documentary Film Award jury in the festival. Together with her partner Orwa Nyrabia, El Jeiroudi was also the first Syrian known to be invited to become a member of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences in 2017. El Jeiroudi was also a co-founder of DOX BOX International Documentary Film Festival in Syria and DOX BOX e.V. non-profit association in Germany.
The Return to Homs is a 2013 Syrian-German documentary film written and directed by Talal Derki. It is produced by Orwa Nyrabia and Hans Robert Eisenhauer while Diana El Jeiroudi served as the associate producer. The film premiered in-competition at the 2013 International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam on November 20, 2013, as the opening film of the festival.
Of Men and War is a 2014 documentary film by Laurent Bécue-Renard. It explores the psychological legacy of war on a group of American veterans returning from conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan. The men are undergoing trauma therapy at The Pathway Home, a residential treatment program on the grounds of the Veterans Home in Yountville, CA until 2018. Over the course of five years, they participate in group therapy and one-on-one sessions and gradually transform their trauma into narratives of survival before returning home to their wives, children, and parents. The film premiered in the Special Screenings section at the 2014 Cannes Film Festival. The film won the VPRO IDFA Award for Best Feature-Length Documentary at the 2014 International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam. It received a European Film Award for Best Documentary nomination at the 27th European Film Awards and screened at the Museum of Modern Art's Documentary Fortnight.
The DocuDays UA International Human Rights Documentary Film Festival is the only human rights film festival in Ukraine. The festival is held annually at Kyiv in March and admission is free to the general public. Each year, the festival has a different theme, and while not all movies shown adhere to that year's theme, all presented films are documentaries that focus on the subject of human rights.
Nothing but the Sun is a 2020 Paraguayan-Swiss documentary film created and directed by Arami Ullón. The film is about Mateo Sobode Chiqueno, an Ayoreo indigenous man from Paraguay who has recorded Ayoreo interviews, songs, and rituals for over 40 years. It was selected as the Paraguayan entry for the Best International Feature Film at the 94th Academy Awards.
We were Rebels, is a 2014 German-South Sudanese documentary thriller film co-directed by Florian Schewe and Katharina von Schroeder and co-produced by Michael Bogar and Inka Dewitz for Perfect Shot Films.
Alain Kassanda is a Congolese French film maker, film director and cinematographer, and founder of Ajímatí Films. He is known for his highly acclaimed documentary films Trouble Sleep (2020), Colette & Justin (2022), and Coconut Head Generation (2023).
Three Promises is a 2023 Palestinian documentary film directed by Yousef Srouji, and produced by Marielle Olentine, that won the Harrell Award for Best Documentary at the 19th Annual Camden Film Festival. The story revolves around a mother and her two children in Palestine during the Second Intifada.
