U - Z

Through intimate cinema vérité, Union chronicles the extraordinary efforts of an unlikely group of warehouse workers as they launch a grassroots union campaign at an Amazon fulfillment center in Staten Island, New York. Filmmakers Brett Story (The Prison in Twelve Lanscapes, The Hottest August) and Stephen Maing (Crime + Punishment) document the struggle from day one, offering a gripping human drama about the fight for power and dignity in today's globalized economic landscape. 

Under Tomorrow's Sky follows renowned architect Winy Maas, co-founder of MVRDV, whose work argues for transforming cities with “high rises on a human scale,” stacked structural volumes with open spaces and greenery around them that feel like vertical villages. This inspiring documentary shows Maas’ influence on contemporary architecture, and examines how his designs are offering innovative solutions for the city of the future.

Award winning director Hong SangSoo dishes up a fresh take on modern courtship. When filmmaker Young-soo introduces his wealthy gallery owner friend Jae-hoon to another friend, the female television writer Soo-jung, the table is set for a complicated triangular relationship. 

Filmmaker Joong-rae, suffering from writer’s block, takes a trip to the coast with his production designer Chang-wook, who brings along the vivacious Moon-sook. Soon after their arrival, Moon-sook falls for Joong-rae’s advances; however, the fickle hero can’t commit and he awkwardly parts with her. What had been a sardonic Jules and Jim turns into a burlesque Vertigo when Joong-rae returns to the coastal resort and attempts to recreate the original romance with a woman who resembles Moon-sook, until his jilted lover shows up…

A man goes into the woods alone. We know nothing about him, apart from his military-style attire with a nametag indicating he might be called Wilcox. Is he a traumatized veteran, a survivalist, a desperate man or even a philosopher-hermit? A documentary style fictional film, a minimalist adventure yarn haunted by reality, Wilcox, from award-winning filmmaker Denis Cote, is both simple and mysterious, a non-judgmental perspective on people who decide to remove themselves from the world.

Winner of the Golden Leopard for Best Film and Best Actress at the Locarno Film Festival, Vitalina Varela is the masterful new film from acclaimed director Pedro Costa. A work of deeply concentrated beauty, it stars nonprofessional actor Vitalina Varela in a remarkable performance (based on her life), as a Cape Verdean woman who hopes to reunite with her husband after decades of separation due to economic circumstance, only to arrive in a strange land mere days after his funeral.

In 1985, Claude Lanzmann debuted Shoah, one of the most monumental cinematic works of all time. Ziva Postec was an indispensable part of the project. In this fascinating documentary, Postec recalls this gargantuan, painful and necessary experience which consumed six years of her life. With previously unseen footage from the making of Shoah, it's a moving portrait of an artist who for a long time has largely gone unnoticed, eclipsed by the towering presence of her male colleague.

A new edition of the landmark documentary, William Eggleston in the Real World – from Michael Almereyda, director of Escapes, Marjorie Prime, Experimenter, and Hamlet, among others – is a brilliant and intimate look at the renowned photographer, whose hallucinatory Faulknerian images were featured in the Museum of Modern Art's first one-man exhibition of color photographs.

Deep inside a pristine forest, we hear the sudden sound of a chainsaw felling a fir tree. So begins this breathtakingly photographed, puzzle-like documentary which follows the mysterious journey of the tree’s lumber entirely through thirteen 360° panning shots; a wide-angle picture of the role nature plays in a world defined by globalization.

An essential documentary exploring the remarkable life and legacy of the late feminist author Ursula K. Le Guin, best known for her classic Earthsea series and masterworks of science fiction such as The Left Hand of Darkness and The Dispossessed; with reflections from literary luminaries including Margaret Atwood, Neil Gaiman, Michael Chabon, and more. 

Embodying strength and stoicism, five Venezuelan women from diverse backgrounds and generations each draw a portrait of their country as it suffers under the worst crisis in its history amid extreme food and medicine shortages, a broken justice system, and widespread fear, in this powerful and timely documentary.

In 2010, the sleepy fishing town of Taiji found itself in the world’s spotlight when The Cove, a documentary denouncing its whaling traditions, won an Academy Award. Fascinating and thought-provoking, A Whale of Tale revisits this story and discovers a different perspective as it unearths a deep divide in eastern and western thought about nature, wildlife and cultural sensitivity.

In the late 1950s, a large American-Swedish company established a mining operation in the remote highlands of Liberia and built a sprawling, modernist city, a “true America,” for its employees and their families. Today, all that remain are abandoned buildings and empty pools. Exactly what happened involves mythical beasts, the environment, the promise of industrialization, and the last remnants of colonialism.

One day, Lucie decides to write a letter to the man who abused her when she was a young girl. She then takes her camera, her car, and resolves to bring it to him in person. This award-winning short doc was started by Lucie, but finished by her son, Loic, when he discovered the video tape of her journey ten years later.

The story, which Italo Calvino called a “choral narrative,” centers on a group of workers and peasants, many of them ordinary laborers and farmers, who rebuild their lives in the aftermath of the Second World War by reconstructing a destroyed village and forming a utopian community.

Straub-Huillet's visit to the Louvre reflects their fierce sentiments on art and their way of looking, using the words of Paul Cézanne to critique images, to be venomous about some artists and honey-tongued about others.

In this haunting short work, the enchantress Circe recounts to Leucò her attempts to bewitch and bed Odysseus. She talks about men and women, the human and the divine, and the brave hero who chooses to become neither a pig nor a God.

Filmed on the set of Jess Franco’s Count Dracula starring Christopher Lee, Portabella’s masterpiece mixes making-of footage and an electronic soundtrack for an investigation into the figure of the vampire - as both a reflection on fascism and cinema - to create a subversive fever dream of a meta-film.

For more than 35 years, scientist Aušra Revutaite has lived alone atop the Tuyuksu glacier studying the effects of climate change. This remarkable documentary, pulsing with an otherworldly beauty, captures her everyday life and work.

A walk through a quiet waterside town in England yields myriad revelations - from prize-winning Indian curries to a nearly lost world of proto-punk music - in this wondrous new documentary from Jem Cohen, director of Museum Hours and Counting.

From urban farms in Detroit to Native-owned agriculture projects across the midwest to guerrilla gardens in Zurich, Wild Plants is a kaleidoscopic portrait of activists around the world who are creating their own botanic utopias.

A courageous, essential portrait of what its like to be gay in Russia today, from Alina Rudnitskaya, one of the country's most important filmmakers. 

A revelatory documentary exploring the physical act of looking; from the work of an eye surgeon to a NASA explorer to a human rights lawyer.