documentaries i wish to see someday

Pandora's Box (1992) [TV] TMDB NeoDB

Pandora's Box

director: Adam Curtis actor: Adam Curtis

Pandora's Box is a six-part 1992 BBC documentary television series which examines the consequences of political and technocratic rationalism. The episodes deal, in order, with communism in The Soviet Union, systems analysis and game theory during the Cold War, economy in the United Kingdom during the 1970s, the insecticide DDT, Kwame Nkrumah's leadership in Ghana during the 1950s and 1960s and the history of nuclear power.

The Living Dead (1995) [TV] TMDB

The Living Dead

director: Adam Curtis actor: Adam Curtis

This series investigated the way that history and memory have been used by politicians and others.

The Mayfair Set (1999) [TV] TMDB

The Mayfair Set

The Mayfair Set is a series of programmes produced by Adam Curtis for the BBC, first broadcast in the summer of 1999. The programme looked at how buccaneer capitalists of hot money were allowed to shape the climate of the Thatcher years, focusing on the rise of Colonel David Stirling, Jim Slater, James Goldsmith, and Tiny Rowland, all members of London's Clermont Club in the 1960s.

The Century of the Self (2002) [TV] TMDB

The Century of the Self

director: Adam Curtis actor: Adam Curtis / Anne Bernays …

other title: El siglo del Yo

The legacy of famed psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud informs the lives of people throughout the world even to this day, though it's a phenomenon to which most are unaware. The film is an exhaustive examination of his theories on human desire, and how they're applied to platforms such as advertising, consumerism and politics.

The Power of Nightmares (2004) [TV] TMDB

The Power of Nightmares

director: Adam Curtis actor: Gilles Kepel / Melvin Goodman …

Examines how politicians have used our fears to increase their power and control over society.

The Trap: What Happened to Our Dream of Freedom (2007) [TV] TMDB

The Trap: What Happened to Our Dream of Freedom

actor: Adam Curtis / Yevgeny Kiselyov …

Individual freedom is the dream of our age. It's what our leaders promise to give us, it defines how we think of ourselves and, repeatedly, we have gone to war to impose freedom around the world. But if you step back and look at what freedom actually means for us today, it's a strange and limited kind of freedom.

All Watched Over by Machines of Loving Grace (2011) [TV] IMDb TMDB

All Watched Over by Machines of Loving Grace

director: Adam Curtis actor: Adam Curtis / Ayn Rand …

We have been colonised by the machines we have built. Although we don't realise it, the way we see everything in the world today is through the eyes of the computers.

Bitter Lake (2015) [Movie] TMDB

Bitter Lake

director: Adam Curtis actor: Adam Curtis / George H. W. Bush …

An experimental documentary that explores Saudi Arabia's relationship with the U.S. and the role this has played in the war in Afghanistan.

Russia 1985-1999: TraumaZone (2022) [TV] TMDB IMDb

Russia 1985-1999: TraumaZone

director: Adam Curtis actor: Mikhail Gorbachev / Boris Yeltsin …

What it felt like to live through the collapse of communism and democracy. A series of films by Adam Curtis.

Shifty (2025) [TV] IMDb NeoDB TMDB

Shifty

director: Adam Curtis

This series shows in a new and imaginative way how over the past 40 years in Britain extreme money and hyper-individualism came together in an unspoken alliance. Together they undermined one of the fundamental structures of mass democracy - that it could create a shared idea of what was real. And as that fell apart, with it went the language and the ideas that people had turned to for the last 150 years to make sense of the world they lived in.

Requiem for the American Dream (2015) [Movie] TMDB

Requiem for the American Dream

director: Kelly Nyks / Jared P. Scott … actor: Noam Chomsky

other title: Noam Chomsky : Requiem pour le rêve américain / Réquiem por el sueño Americano

Through interviews filmed over four years, Noam Chomsky unpacks the principles that have brought us to the crossroads of historically unprecedented inequality – tracing a half-century of policies designed to favor the most wealthy at the expense of the majority – while also looking back on his own life of activism and political participation. He provides penetrating insight into what may well be the lasting legacy of our time – the death of the middle class, and swan song of functioning democracy.

Israelism (2023) [Movie] IMDb NeoDB TMDB Douban

Israelism

director: Sam Eilertsen / Eric Axelman actor: Peter Beinart / Jeremy Ben-Ami …

When two young American Jews raised to unconditionally love Israel witness the mistreatment of Palestinians, they battle the old guard to create a new movement opposing Israel’s occupation, and recentering Judaism itself.

Manufacturing Consent: Noam Chomsky and the Media (1992) [Movie] IMDb

Manufacturing Consent: Noam Chomsky and the Media

director: Mark Achbar / Peter Wintonick actor: Noam Chomsky / Mark Achbar …

other title: Chomsky, les médias et les illusions nécessaires

A film about the noted American linguist/political dissident and his warning about corporate media's role in modern propaganda.

No Other Land (2024) [Movie] Douban IMDb TMDB NeoDB

لا أرض أخرى

8.5 (13 ratings) director: Basel Adra / Hamdan Ballal … actor: Basel Adra / Yuval Abraham …

other title: لا أرض أخرى / Sem Chão …

This film made by a Palestinian-Israeli collective shows the destruction of the occupied West Bank's Masafer Yatta by Israeli soldiers and the alliance which develops between the Palestinian activist Basel and Israeli journalist Yuval.

2 or 3 Things I Know About Him (2005) [Movie] TMDB

2 oder 3 Dinge, die ich von ihm weiß

director: Malte Ludin

other title: 2 oder 3 Dinge, die ich von ihm weiß

What would your family reminiscences about dad sound like if he had been an early supporter of Hitler’s, a leader of the notorious SA and the Third Reich’s minister in charge of Slovakia, including its Final Solution? Executed as a war criminal in 1947, Hanns Ludin left behind a grieving widow and six young children, the youngest of whom became a filmmaker. It's a fascinating, maddening, sometimes even humorous look at what the director calls "a typical German story." (Film Forum)

The Internet's Own Boy: The Story of Aaron Swartz (2014) [Movie] IMDb TMDB Douban NeoDB

The Internet's Own Boy: The Story of Aaron Swartz

8.1 (7 ratings) director: Brian Knappenberger actor: Aaron Swartz / Tim Berners-Lee …

other title: Internettets vidunderdreng / O Menino da Internet: A História de Aaron Swartz …

Programming prodigy and information activist Aaron Swartz achieved groundbreaking work in social justice and political organizing. His passion for open access ensnared him in a legal nightmare that ended with the taking of his own life at the age of 26.

The Occupation of the American Mind (2016) [Movie] NeoDB Douban TMDB IMDb

The Occupation of the American Mind

director: Jeremy Earp / Loretta Alper actor: Roger Waters / Peter Hart …

Over the past few years, Israel's ongoing military occupation of Palestinian territory and repeated invasions of the Gaza strip have triggered a fierce backlash against Israeli policies virtually everywhere in the world—except the United States. This documentary takes an eye-opening look at this critical exception, zeroing in on pro-Israel public relations efforts within the U.S.

13th (2016) [Movie] TMDB NeoDB Douban IMDb

13th

director: Ava DuVernay actor: Jelani Cobb / Angela Davis …

other title: XIII emendamento / A 13ª Emenda …

An in-depth look at the prison system in the United States and how it reveals the nation's history of racial inequality.

Pictures of Ghosts (2023) [Movie] NeoDB Douban TMDB IMDb

Retratos Fantasmas

director: Kleber Mendonça Filho actor: Kleber Mendonça Filho / Rubens Santos

other title: Portraits fantômes / Retratos Fantasmas …

Downtown Recife’s classic movie palaces from the 20th century are mostly gone. That city area is now an archaeological site of sorts that reveals aspects of life in society which have been lost. And that’s just part of the story.

The U.S. and the Holocaust (2022) [TV] IMDb TMDB

The U.S. and the Holocaust

director: Ken Burns / Sarah Botstein … actor: Peter Coyote / Daniel Mendelsohn …

other title: Die USA und der Holocaust / L'Amérique face à l'Holocauste

Inspired in part by the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum’s “Americans and the Holocaust” exhibition and supported by its historical resources, this documentary series examines the rise of Hitler and Nazism in Germany in the context of global antisemitism and racism, the eugenics movement in the United States, and race laws in the American south.