Best Belgian documentary movies

Jazz and decolonization are intertwined in a powerful narrative that recounts one of the tensest episodes of the Cold War. In 1960, the UN became the stage for a political earthquake as the struggle for independence in the Congo put the world on high alert. The newly independent nation faced its first coup d'état, orchestrated by Western forces and Belgium, which were reluctant to relinquish control over their resource-rich former colony. The US tried to divert attention by sending jazz ambassador Louis Armstrong to the African continent. In 1961, Congolese leader Patrice Lumumba was brutally assassinated, silencing a key voice in the fight against colonialism; his death was facilitated by Belgian and CIA operatives. Musicians Abbey Lincoln and Max Roach took action, denouncing imperialism and structural racism. Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev intensified his criticism of the US, highlighting the racial barriers that characterized American society.

Belgian filmmaker Chantal Akerman lives in New York. Filmed images of the City accompany texts of Akerman's loving mother back home in Brussels. The City comes more and more to the front while the words of the mother, read by Akerman herself, gradually fade away.

Belgian pop star Angèle reflects on her life and hopes as she finds balance amid the tears, joys and loneliness of fame. Told through her own words.

Some 20 years ago, two sex workers were murdered in an upper-class Brussels neighborhood. Celebrated Belgian magistrate Anne Gurwez decides to revisit this cold case, pouring over the evidence with the use of new technologies and tracking down then-suspects.

Lao Yang is head of logistics of the group. He is responsible for the equipment, building materials and food (mainly chickens) to arrive in the isolated Chinese prefab camp. The Congolese government was supposed to deliver these things but so far the team hasn't received anything. With Eddy (a Congolese man who speaks Mandarin fluently) as an intermediate, Lao Yang is forced to leave the camp and deal with local Congolese entrepreneurs, because without the construction materials the road works will cease. What follows is an endless, harsh, but absurdly funny roller coaster of negotiations and misunderstandings, as Lao Yang learns about the Congolese way of making deals.

1976, Brian de Palma directs Carrie, the first novel by Stephen King. Since, more than 50 directors adapted the master of horror's books, in more than 80 films and series, making him now, the most adapted author still alive in the world.

A new light on American filmmaker Steven Spielberg, Hollywood’s greatest director, offering a unique perspective on his work and digging into his personal influences.

In her early twenties, Hiam Abbass left her native Palestinian village to follow her dream of becoming an actress in Europe, leaving behind her mother, grandmother, and seven sisters. Thirty years later, her filmmaker daughter Lina returns with her to the village and questions for the first time her mother’s bold choices, her chosen exile and the way the women in their family influenced both their lives.

In August 1991 a failed coup d'état attempt (known as Putsch) led by a group of hard-core communists in Moscow, ended the 70-year-long rule of the Soviets. The USSR collapsed soon after, and the tricolour of the sovereign Russian Federation flew over Kremlin. As president Gorbachev was detained by the coup leaders, state-run TV and radio channels, usurped by the putschists, broadcast Tchaikovsky's "Swan Lake" instead of news bulletins, and crowds of protestors gathered around Moscow's White House, preparing to defend the stronghold of democratic opposition led by Boris Yeltsin, in the city of Leningrad thousands of confused, scared, excited and desperate people poured into the streets to become a part of the event, which was supposed to change their destiny. A quarter of a century later, Sergei Loznitsa revisits the dramatic moments of August 1991 and casts an eye on the event which was hailed worldwide as the birth of "Russian democracy".

In seven different parts, Godard, Ivens, Klein, Lelouch, Marker, Resnais, and Varda show their sympathy for the North-Vietnamese army during the Vietnam War.

‘Our Nature, the Movie’ is an ambitious nature documentary about Belgian nature, full of wonderful stories about well-known and little-known animals that amaze people and increase their love and respect for our nature.

Stephen Hawking has warned that the creation of powerful artificial intelligence will be “either the best, or the worst thing, ever to happen to humanity”. Inspired by Brian Christian’s study The Most Human Human: What Artificial Intelligence Teaches Us About Being Alive, the filmmakers set out on an international investigation highlighting the effects of AI - scenes from our daily lives destructive and constructive.

A detailed account of one of the bloodiest battles of World War I. Between February and December 1916, the French and German armies relentlessly fought in the devastated camps around the village of Verdun.

The end of an eight-year upmarket renovation of the legendary Chelsea Hotel is partly longed for and partly dreaded by the artists who still live there. The film grants us access to their apartments and interweaves the past with the present.

Digitalization has changed society. While data is becoming the "new oil", data protection is becoming the new "pollution control". This creative documentary opens an astonishing inside view into the lawmaking milieu on EU level. A compelling story of how a group of politicians try to protect todays society against the impact of Big Data and mass surveillance.

An American low-budget action film celebrated an unexpected worldwide success in 1988: "Bloodsport". With its, the world of film fans and martial arts cinema discovered a new idol: Jean-Claude Van Damme. In the 1970s there was Bruce Lee, but at the end of the 1980s a Belgian won the day. Van Damme was a karate master and had unparalleled strength and flexibility. For ten years he was one of Hollywood's hottest action stars. But excessive overconfidence and drugs bring him down again. At home in Europe he becomes a laughing stock on talk shows. Only with "JCVD" does he manage to get back on his feet, playing his character with perspective and self-irony, but without ever giving up the reputation that his action films brought him and which has been a cult for several generations. The highs and lows of his eventful life are told through archive footage and contributions from people close to the popular Belgian actor.

In 2008, after a show celebrating the 20th anniversary of his fashion house, Maison Margiela, visionary designer Martin Margiela left the fashion world for good. Throughout his career, the Belgian designer remained anonymous, refusing interviews and never being photographed, leading some to call him the fashion world’s answer to Banksy. Now, more than a decade after his departure, Margiela digs into his meticulous and idiosyncratic personal archives to reflect on his revolutionary career and legacy.

Mr. McArevey is a visionary headmaster at a Catholic primary school in one of the toughest neighborhoods of Belfast, Northern Ireland. He loves Elvis and teaches his students to connect with their feelings, while taking on the legacies of the “The Troubles.” In this exceptional portrait of a community still healing from trauma, we follow this educator extraordinaire as he uses Ancient Greek wisdom as an antidote for pessimism, violence, and historical despair.

"De Stig" is a 90-minute documentary film about life, but especially rehabilitation, by professional cyclist Stig Broeckx, who crashed heavily during the Baloise Belgium Tour on 28 May 2016.

A documentary about Jonny Polonsky, a rockstar who just can't seem to make it big. Made by his most loyal fan.

A feature documentary about the world of South-Korean professional gamers. Every year thousands of South-Koreans flock to the game stadiums in Seoul to watch the Pro League, a live sports event where professional gamers compete to be the best at one single video game: Starcraft. It’s a title many young South Koreans dream of. The game itself is more than a decade old, almost ancient in the fast developing world of video games, but in South Korea it has become a national past-time. Like most specator sports, this world of eSports rapidly evolved in a multi-million dollar business. In this story, we follow 3 boys in different stages of their career as a Pro-Gamer in South Korea. For some it will be a struggle to stay on top of their game, for others it might be the turning point of their lives

The twins Eden and Léandro were born severely premature. Once out of the belly of their mother, Laurence, they find themselves propelled into the hostile and worrying world of the hospital, full of the sounds of machines and of doctors in white coats. As the weeks pass in the neonatal service, mother and children fight for survival. Haemorrhages, respiratory problems… Surrounded by the medical team, Laurence lives to the rhythm of the twins, caught between the hope for improvement, fatigue, the ever-present possibility that things will go wrong and the fear they will die. The bond between mother and children is organic, vital. Together, they fight fiercely for life.

Winner of the Sakharov Prize 2014, Doctor Mukwege is internationally known as the man who mends thousands of women who have been raped during the 20 years of conflicts in the East of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, one of the poorest countries on the planet, despite its extremely rich sub-soil. His endless struggle to put an end to these atrocities and denounce the impunity enjoyed by the perpetrators is not welcome. At the end of 2012, the Doctor was the target of another attempt on his life, which he miraculously survived. Threatened with death, this doctor with an exceptional destiny now lives cloistered in his hospital in Bukavu under the protection of the United Nation peacekeepers. But he is no longer alone in his struggle. The women to whom he has restored physical integrity and dignity, stand beside him, true activists for peace, hungry for justice.

Guided by the sheepbells of a flock and by the evocations of the lost, this film is a voyage through storms; those of the mountains and winter, those of bodies and souls, those which remind us that which nature has not obtained from our reason, obtaining from our madness.

Lithuania, 1941, during World War II. Hundreds of thousands of texts on Jewish culture, stolen by the Germans, are gathered in Vilnius to be classified, either to be stored or to be destroyed. A group of Jewish scholars and writers, commissioned by the invaders to carry out the sorting operations, but reluctant to collaborate and determined to save their legacy, hide many books in the ghetto where they are confined. This is the epic story of the Paper Brigade.

If you don't violate someone's human rights some of the time, you probably aren't doing your job.

A cinematographic “cadavre exquis”, whose entrails reveal the odd nature of a (un)certain Belgian cinema. Authors, directors, actors who have proved that imposture could be an act of creation. Convinced that any so-called “new” cinematographic production was in fact a rehash of what had already been made, these pirates of images snuck as forgers, liars, tricksters, usurpers, … Outlaws of the cinema who falsified its form. From the filmed imposture of Man Bites Dog to Jan Bucquoy’s fabulist biopic, everything participates in the dynamiting of institutional language through simulacrum and absurdity. This free journey in the “cine-belgitude” has for vocation to approach these marvellous eccentrics followers of a overexcited and stripping situationism.

For the first time fashion designer Dries Van Noten allows a filmmaker to accompany him in his creative process and rich home life. For an entire year Reiner Holzemer documents the precise steps that Dries takes to conceive of four collections, the rich fabrics, embroidery and prints exclusive to his designs. As well as the emblematic fashion shows that bring his collections to the world and have become cult “must sees” at Paris Fashion Week. This film offers an insight into the life, mind and creative heart of a master fashion designer who, for more than 25 years, has remained independent in a landscape of fashion consolidation and globalization.

"A Species Odyssey" portrays the origins of Mankind from the moment the first primate stood up on their hind legs and set off to conquer the African Savanna, to modern Man, setting off to conquer space. 7 million years of triumph fraught with difficulties and extraordinary events that make Man what he is today.

Lukas, born under a different gender, tells us about the evolution of his physical and mental transition but also the parallel experiences his parents have lived.

This footage was originally shot at Théâtre 140 in Brussels, Belgium on October 3rd, 1970 for Yorkshire Television. Bootleggers have long repeated a fictional claim that done in Paris, but that has long since been debunked. In any case, this is the earliest footage of a complete concert of Black Sabbath in existence. Here they perform many songs from their most recent album at the time, PARANOID, as well as several from their debut. Interestingly, many of the songs from PARANOID feature their original pre-album lyrics - or Ozzy had simply forgotten the new ones! The original show was split into two halves and includes some behind-the scenes clips of the band before the show. Set List: Intro -> Paranoid , Hand Of Doom [alternate, improvised lyrics] -> Rat Salad , Iron Man, Guitar Intro -> Black Sabbath, N.I.B., Behind The Wall Of Sleep -> Jazz Improvisation, Walpurgis [a.k.a. War Pigs - alternate, improvised lyrics], Fairies Wear Boots.

The Jewish National Fund's Blue Boxes were a global fundraiser to purchase land in Israel. Weaving a co-founder's diary entries with his descendants' memories, Blue Box investigates the myths that constructed a national icon.

On the death of his mother, a filmmaker makes a film to see how much her disappearance has changed his vision of the world. It is an opportunity for him to look back over his relationship with her: a relationship that made him a free individual, as a man and as a filmmaker. The second night is the final part of a trilogy that began with Letter from a filmmaker to his daughter, which was followed by Dreaming films. The making of this " Cabin Trilogy" is the fruit of fifteen years of work and reflection.

Mel Gibson, Australian-raised US actor and film director, rose to stardom in the late 1980s, a privileged status he enjoyed for nearly two decades until his fall from grace due to his controversial opinions and scandals. Angel face, tormented soul: who is Mel Gibson really?

It has been 20 years since The Island was unleashed on Flanders. After all these years, fans of the series are rewarded with an exclusive reunion special, in which thirteen original cast members and the creators reunite for a unique look back.

Human genetics is one of the most exciting fields in science at the moment. Not only does it advance exponentially fast, it is also a field of study that will very soon affect our daily lives. We will all have to deal with the possibilities and technologies that human genetics have to offer, today and in the coming years. Quite a few questions and dilemmas still have to be answered by us. Do I want to know everything that can be found out from my DNA? And who is allowed to use and read my genetic code? My doctor? The police? The chef of my favourite restaurant? Also, what genetic technologies do I want to use? Do I want to clone my dog, choose my children’s eye colour, or genetically modify them to give them extra talents? Do I want others in society to be allowed to do that? The current and future possibilities of human genetics are simply overwhelming. They are both promising and frightening, chilling and delightful.

Semi-documentary concert film on Stromae's latest tour, abruptly interrupted for health issues.

As the disaster of yet another school shooting hits, some parents are faced with a brutal fact: their child was the one pulling the trigger. Jeff Williams is the father of Andy, who in 2001, at the age of 15, shot and killed two classmates and wounded 13 other students. Andy, 25 at the time of filming, is now serving life in prison. Clarence Elliot’s son Nicholas shot and killed his teacher and wounded another in 1988. He too is serving life in prison. Sue Klebold’s son Dylan was one of the two teenagers behind the Columbine High School massacre in 1999, one of the deadliest school shootings in history. Dylan ended the shooting by committing suicide. Through the three parents' deeply personal stories and raw, honest testimony, the film explores multiple themes that emerge from terrible tragedies - guilt, failure, responsibility, sorrow, friendship and love.

'Addicted!' is Erik Van Looy's first theater show in which he talks candidly about the addiction he has struggled with all his life: his addiction to movie stars... Juicy stories, crazy jokes and great videos: we really get to know everything about Erik, his films, his often crazy encounters with movie stars and... the taste of hairspray.

Nanny, cook or sex slave. For a long time, the mistaken belief that the women in the terrorist organization Islamic State were condemned to blind obedience was held up. But appearances are deceptive. Some of them join the terrorist militia of their own free will. They are fully integrated into the system: they torture with unscrupulous cruelty and actively fight alongside their men. Today, the Caliphate's capitals lie in ruins. Nevertheless, many of the women have stayed and are trying to leave behind memories full of pain and shame. Thomas Dandois gives them a voice.

This documentary re-examines the story of the Red Orchestra: the most important resistance network in Nazi Germany, whose operations extended from Berlin and Brussels to Paris.

Two brothers. One unforgiving desert. No way back. In The Toughest Footrace on Earth, Average Rob and Arno The Kid enter the Moroccan desert for the Marathon Des Sables Legendary — an impulsive decision that turns into a relentless battle against the heat, injuries and themselves. What follows is a physical and mental ordeal without filters or excuses. After six months of intensive preparation, Rob & Arno are at the start of a nearly impossible adventure: a gruelling 250-kilometre walk through the scorching Sahara desert, braving sandstorms, unbearable heat and complete exhaustion. From the first training to the last step across the finish line, you get an unfiltered view of the brothers' unparalleled journey. Along the way, they meet inspiring individuals, all of whom, based on their own personal motivation, take on the battle with themselves on the hottest stage in the world.

The growing struggle for Palestinian self-determination between 1960 and 1980 was supported by radical left-wing movements worldwide, also in Japan. This is illustrated by a collection of 16mm films by militant filmmakers from various countries, which were dubbed and screened in Japan. Their Japanese audiences felt oppressed by the US after World War II, and not only sympathized but also identified with the Palestinians.

Villa Empain was conceived by a Belgian philanthropist as his private home. After its completion in 1934, Louis Empain donated the property to the state. Since then, the exquisite building has served as a Soviet embassy, a TV studio, etc. Only since 2008 does it fulfil its original destination: a haven for art.

Stones are at once the most foundational and the most overlooked parts of our lifeworld. When a retired nature documentary narrator passes a kidney stone, she decides to tell one more story about this forgotten world of stone . A hypnotic essay film asking urgent ecological questions, Apple Cider Vinegar takes the viewer on a journey meeting Palestinian quarry workers, passionate Britisch Geologist and People living on the lava fields of Fogo.

Lettre d’un cinéaste à sa fille is a playful, free and personal film in the form of a letter, a film interwoven with a thousand stories knit together with different textures, a book of images where a filmmaker shows the images and the stories he wants to share.

On August 21, 1940, Trotsky was assassinated in Mexico City, after eleven years of exile. The killer, Ramon Mercader, a young Spanish communist, was a character straight out of a spy movie. He was recruited in 1937 by Stalin's secret service when the latter decided to eliminate Trotsky, that tireless opponent. Through the epic story of Trotsky's last years in exile in Mexico, enriched with flashbacks to his political past, this film, a true historical thriller, offers a cross-narrative between Trotsky's life in exile and the setting up, at the same time, of "Operation Duck", the code name for his assassination.

Winter 2012 - Committed against her will in a psychiatric hospital in Tehran, Iranian psychoanalyst Mitra Kadivar begins a correspondence by email with Jacques-Alain Miller, founder of the World Association of Psychoanalysis. Summer 2017 - An artistic team creates an opera inspired by these exchanges while absorbing the reality of the Montperrin psychiatric hospital in Aix-en-Provence.

In peaceful swampland, a solitary man wades through long grass, crawling carefully through the water. Unable to fit in with the world of humans, Misu prefers to spend his time with cold-blooded reptiles, caring for them with extraordinary empathy. Solitude is his way of survival but also his biggest enemy.

How did a poor little black girl from Missouri become the Queen of Paris, before joining the French Resistance and finally creating her dream family “The Rainbow Tribe”, adopting twelve children from four corners of the world? This is the fabulous story of the first black superstar, Josephine Baker.

For 25 years, the Democratic Republic of Congo has been ravaged by a war that has largely been ignored by the media and the international community. The victims run into the hundreds of thousands, if not millions. The perpetrators of these crimes are countless: rebel movements, but also armies, those of the Congo and neighboring countries.

An intimate and vital account of love and friendship within a group of youngsters. They live in a complex, contradictory, and isolated world – the self-proclaimed state of Transnistra, where the national flag still holds the hammer and sickle. Tanya plans to move abroad, however future seems to offer frighteningly limited possibilities for her lovestruck friends.

I Don’t Belong Anywhere - Le Cinéma de Chantal Akerman, explores some of the Belgian filmmaker’s 40 plus films. From Brussels to Tel-Aviv, from Paris to New-York, this documentary charts the sites of her peregrinations. An experimental filmmaker, a nomad, Chantal Akerman shares her cinematic trajectory, one that has never ceased to interrogate the the meaning of her existence. Thanks in great part to the interventions of her editor, Claire Atherton, she delineates the origins of her film language and her aesthetic stance.

Hotel Monterey is a cheap hotel in New York reserved for the outcasts of American society. Chantal Akerman invites viewers to visit this unusual place as well as the people who live there, from the reception up to the last story.

In intimate close-ups the camera captures an idyllic scene that seems to belong to a different era.

We know what labour wreaks on the body, but what less visible imprint does it leave on the unconscious? The nights of twelve dreamers – sometimes recounted in front of the camera, sometimes with a voice-over that accompanies shots of office buildings or urban worksites – reveal how the capitalist system invades the modern-day psyche. Long shots of edifices with smooth surfaces and sheer edges instil a deceptive gentleness. Zombies, corpses, mummies, ghosts, skulls sliced open like an egg and emptied by spoonfuls… The images follow one after the other, no two alike, but the editing organises a gradation towards the vampirism and an insidious passage from night to day, from dreams to real working life.

In the seventies, during the Richard Nixon administration, Documerica, a large-scale photographic project, led by the US Environmental Protection Agency, sought to document the country's environmental situation. The tens of thousands of photos, taken by hundreds of photographers, constitute a unique archive, showing a landscape ravaged by pollution and environmental degradation.

Brussels, La Monnaie Opera House. Three people near the end of their lives meet with choreographers, actors and musicians. They take part in a unique experience which involves music, dance and silence. Their journey becomes a tribute to the fragility of the human condition, between reality and representation, tragedy of the body and freedom of the spirit. Together they question their own relationship with death.

All food can be adulterated. More discreet than a drug cartel, more elusive than arms dealers, criminals have taken over food. Olive oil, fish, meat, spices, no department escapes their juicy traffic. A jackpot estimated in Europe at 30 billion euros enriches a new kind of mafia every year. Organized crime is selling altered products in restaurants, supermarkets and all food shops in the European Union. Their secret is to replace an ingredient with a cheaper one. Who are these new traffickers? What are their methods of operation?

On the Franco-belgian border, there's a unique place that takes in children with mental and social problems. Day after day, the adults try to understand the enigma that each one of them represents and, without ever imposing anything on them, invent the solutions that will help them to live in peace, case by case. Through their stories, 'Like an Open Sky' reveals their singular vision of the world to us.

For more than a decade, Reichsmarschall Hermann Goering, Adolf Hitler's right-hand man during the infamous Third Reich, assembled a collection of thousands of works of art that were meticulously catalogued.