16 h. ago ‘The public has been lied to’: secretly made documentary insists that aliens exist

The Age of Disclosure is a new film featuring high-ranking government officials who claim proof of extraterrestrial life has been covered upDirector Dan Farah grew up with aliens. As a child of the 80s and 90s, pop culture was awash with extra-terrestrial sightings. “How can you be a kid watching movies like ET and Close Encounters, TV shows like The X Files, and not end up curious about whether or not we’re alone in the universe?” he said in an interview with the Guardian. “And whether or not the US government does, in fact, hold secrets from the public.”Farah’s exposure to otherworldly beings in fiction kickstarted an interest that’s now morphed into a professional quest, and the subject of his documentary debut The Age of Disclosure. Here, Farah makes the case that the United States has been hiding, for decades, a font of information related to UAP (unidentified anomalous phenomena) – the acronym rebrand of the stigma-ridden UFO. Continue reading...

Politics

30 h. ago Netflix’s Selena doc sensitively focuses on her incredible life over her tragic death

The 23-year-old ‘Queen of Tejano music’ was murdered just as her music was set to cross over and revealing new film Selena y Los Dinos: A Family’s Legacy finds new ways to celebrate herThe tragic circumstances surrounding Selena Quintanilla’s death are well documented. In 1995, while on the verge of US pop crossover success, the 23-year-old Queen of Tejano Music was murdered by one of her employees, Yolanda Saldívar.Selena’s life story has already been told in multiple ways, including through a movie, a musical and a podcast series. However, the touching Netflix documentary Selena y Los Dinos: A Family’s Legacy is the most empathetic and personal look at her life and career to date. Working alongside Selena’s family, who generously opened their archive of rare photos and home videos and sat for extensive interviews, director Isabel Castro uses intimate recollections and vivid primary sources to trace the artist’s ascent. Continue reading...

Events

59 h. ago Ken Burns on his American Revolution documentary: ‘We won’t work on a more important film’

The acclaimed documentarian’s latest epic series has been in the works for a decade and features A-list contributions from Meryl Streep to Tom HanksKen Burns is no longer a mere documentarian; he is a brand, a franchise, a one-man industrial complex. When he has a new project heading for the small screen, everybody wants a part of him.Burns has done “more fucking podcasts than I ever thought possible”, he says, nearing the end of nine-month promotional tour that included 40 cities, 80 screenings and hundreds of interviews. “I think there are 340.1m podcasts, one for every American, and I’ve done half of them.” Continue reading...

Events

5 d. ago ‘Fights for our material survival’: documentary goes inside the battle for trans rights

In Heightened Scrutiny, the fight driving activist and lawyer Chase Strangio is backgrounded by a deep dive into how the media has helped to push an anti-trans agendaTrans documentarian Sam Feder’s latest feature Heightened Scrutiny is a kind of two-for-one – an affecting portrait of one of the most important trans activists of our time, and a continuation of the media critique he established through earlier films, particularly his groundbreaking 2020 Netflix doc Disclosure. It’s a powerful look at the fight over civil rights for trans people, while also posing as a critical rebuttal to supposedly center-left media like the New York Times and the Atlantic, which have aided and abetted rightwing forces in setting off a moral panic against trans existence.The film follows the ACLU attorney Chase Strangio as he prepares for oral arguments in the supreme court case US v Skirmetti. These arguments occurred on 4 December 2024, with the court ruling several months later in favor of Tenness...

Events

5 d. ago Apple Cider Vinegar review – a kidney stone leads into whimsical geology doc

Sofie Benoot’s film opens out from the film-maker’s medical problem to a diverting reflection on humankind’s deep roots in ancient mineralsThe elegant, humorous, susurrating Welsh voice of Siân Phillips sets the keynote for this whimsical essay documentary from Belgian film-maker Sofie Benoot about the nature of rock and stone, and the mysterious interrelation between our bodies and the landmass of Earth.Benoot’s starting point is the kidney stone that has just been removed from her body, an intriguingly smooth and worn pebble; it’s a personal event she assigns to her offscreen alter ego, voiced by Phillips. This quasi-fictional narrator musingly notes that once upon a time she provided the voice for nature documentaries; quite true, Phillips has indeed narrated some nature documentaries, which appears to be the reason why Benoot cast her. Continue reading...

Politics

2 w. ago Going to the Dogs review – lovable canines at the heart of a sport in decline

Documentary examines British greyhound racing with affection and respect but doesn’t shy away from the opposing views of animal rights activists At one point in this documentary about greyhound racing, an interviewee describes it as a fundamentally working-class sport, and it’s hard to argue with that. And like so many British working-class pleasures and pursuits, shifting tastes and the relentless march of gentrification have seen its popularity wane substantially since heydays past. This frisky film explores the canine-centric milieu with affection and respect – but, laudably, it also makes room, about halfway through its runtime, for the case against racing as articulated by several animal rights activists who decry the conditions in which some dogs are raised, the practice of euthanising animals deemed no longer viable for racing, and the injury risks racing itself poses.Naturally, the trainers, breeders and owners we meet here violently disagree with these critiques. It’s to di...

Politics

2 w. ago ‘How did we get here?’: documentary explores how Republicans changed course on the climate

In The White House Effect, now available on Netflix, archival footage is used to show how the US right moved from believing to disputing the climate crisisIn 1988, the United States entered into its worst drought since the Dust Bowl. Crops withered in fields nationwide, part of an estimated $60bn in damage ($160bn in 2025). Dust storms swept the midwest and northern Great Plains. Cities instituted water restrictions. That summer, unrelentingly hot temperatures killed between 5,000 and 10,000 people, and Yellowstone national park suffered the worst wildfire in its history.Amid the disaster, George HW Bush, then Ronald Reagan’s vice-president, met with farmers in Michigan reeling from crop losses. Bush, the Republican candidate for president, consoled them: if elected, he would be the environmental president. He acknowledged the reality of intensifying heatwaves – the “greenhouse effect”, to use the scientific parlance of the day – with blunt clarity: the burning of fossil fuels contr...

Politics

3 w. ago In Waves and War review – Navy Seals battle PTSD with psychedelic therapy

Sombre documentary sees US soldiers give brave testimony while undergoing ibogaine and 5-MeO-DMT treatment to confront their traumasA gaggle of former US Navy Seals open up about their post-traumatic stress in this absorbing if somewhat formulaic documentary by Jon Shenk and Bonni Cohen. Ultimately, it is something of an advertisement for a new therapeutic protocol that involves the veterans taking the hallucinogens ibogaine (derived from an African shrub) and 5-MeO-DMT (derived, like something out of a William S Burroughs novel, from a river toad); a treatment that, to hear the subjects here describe it, can work miracles on the battle-scarred, suicidal minds of its users. Currently, the treatment is only available at a Mexican clinic because the drugs have not been cleared by the US Food and Drug Administration, but a bunch of boffins connected to Stanford University’s Brain Stimulation Lab are studying its clinical effects and the film works hard to make everything look as legit ...

Events

3 w. ago Canuto’s Transformation review – did a man really turn into a jaguar in Brazil’s remote forest?

Ariel Kuaray Ortega’s complex docufiction sifts through the mysterious story of a man who, during the military tyranny, is said to have become a big catHere is a complex, mysterious docufictional mediation which unfolds at an unhurried walking pace, co-authored by the Indigenous Brazilian film-maker Ariel Kuaray Ortega, a member of the Mbyá-Guarani movie collective; it’s evidently been a personal project, many years in the making, and a prizewinner at the 2023 IDFA festival in Amsterdam. Ortega returns to his home town in a remote forested region on the border with Argentina, on a mission to investigate a local legend that a man called Canuto, from his grandfather’s generation, was transformed into a jaguar.The film is at once a documentary on this subject and a record of the fictional re-enactment that Ortega is staging using local people – and, in a way, it is a film about itself. He speaks to his aged grandfather and to villagers about their customs and beliefs and their fraught ...

Politics

3 w. ago Writing Hawa review – Afghan woman fights for freedom as the Taliban close in

Najiba Noori’s thought-provoking documentary follows her mother, finally getting her chance at autonomy just as the Taliban retake the countryShot in Afghanistan shortly before the 2021 Taliban takeover, Najiba Noori’s thought-provoking debut juxtaposes the private transformation of a woman with the public unravelling of the nation. At age 13, Noori’s mother, Hawa, was married off to a man 30 years her senior. Now with grownup children, she can finally embark on her own mission: to learn how to read and write, and to open her own textile business. Even though supported by her family, Hawa’s hopes and dreams are suffused with melancholy; soon, even more draconian laws will be imposed on Afghan women.During the calm before the storm, Noori’s roving camera serves as a facilitator for intergenerational dialogue. With stunning candour, Hawa speaks of her unhappy married life, and her past desire to elope with another man. In a painful twist of fate, the cycle continues with Zahra, Hawa’s...

Politics

4 w. ago ‘When I told him I’d secretly seen his films, his eyes filled with tears’: Isabella Rossellini remembers her father Roberto

The Italian director’s career was briefly derailed when his ‘scandalous’ affair with the Hollywood star Ingrid Bergman hit the headlines in the 1950s. Their daughter Isabella remembers a devoted parent and a brilliant film-makerIn June 1977, Roberto Rossellini died suddenly of a heart attack, home in Rome, less than a week after serving as jury president of the Cannes film festival. The director’s daughter Isabella – the fourth of his seven children – was then in her mid 20s. She remembers her mother, Ingrid Bergman, saying: “Dad left us quickly, just as quickly as he drove his Ferrari.”The story of Roberto’s last two decades is told in Living Without a Script, a new archive-based documentary, which premieres this week in Rome. While the film serves as a reminder of its subject’s status as one of the greats of world cinema – the key figure in postwar Italian neorealism – it also shows his life beyond movies. Continue reading...

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