Everything Is Under Control

Railway Station

January 1980 •Polish

Kieslowski’s later film Dworzec (Station, 1980) portrays the atmosphere at Central Station in Warsaw after the rush hour.

Erasing David

January 2009 •English

David Bond lives in one of the most intrusive surveillance states in the world. He decides to find out how much private companies and the government know about him by putting himself under surveillance and attempting to disappear, a decision that changes his life forever. Leaving his pregnant wife and young child behind, he is tracked across the database state on a chilling journey that forces him to contemplate the meaning of privacy and the loss of it.

The Social Dilemma

January 2020 •English

This documentary-drama hybrid explores the dangerous human impact of social networking, with tech experts sounding the alarm on their own creations.

Final Warning

January 1995 •English

Host Grant Jeffrey discusses how technology and government activities are changing the way our information is handled. How is this shaping our lives?

Big Brother: A World Under Surveillance

March 2020 •French

Under the pretext of fighting terrorism or crime, the major powers have embarked on a dangerous race for surveillance technologies. Facial recognition cameras, emotion detectors, citizen rating systems, autonomous drones… A security obsession that in some countries is giving rise to a new form of political regime: numerical totalitarianism. Orwell's nightmare.

Camera Sleuth

April 1951 •English

In this Pete Smith Specialty short, we see how real-life investigator Jo Goggin used a motion picture surveillance camera to gather evidence and disprove a fraudulent insurance claim.

Nothing to Hide

September 2017 •English

NOTHING TO HIDE is an independent documentary dealing with surveillance and its acceptance by the general public through the "I have nothing to hide" argument. The documentary was produced and directed by a pair of Berlin-based journalists, Mihaela Gladovic and Marc Meillassoux. It was crowdfunded by over 400 backers. NOTHING TO HIDE questions the growing, puzzling and passive public acceptance of massive corporate and governmental incursions into individual and group privacy and rights. After the emotion initially triggered by the Snowden revelations, it seems that the general public has finally accepted to live in a monitored digital world.

Nous sommes des champs de bataille

January 2025 •French

MLK/FBI

September 2020 •English

Based on newly declassified files, the film explores the US government’s surveillance and harassment of Martin Luther King, Jr.

The Cost Of Convenience

March 2024 •English

The Cost Of Convenience examines how internet platforms are impacting our mental health, restructuring our communities, threatening our democracy, and violating our human rights.

The Feeling of Being Watched

April 2018 •English

Journalist Assia Boundaoui sets out to investigate long-brewing rumors that her quiet, predominantly Arab-American neighborhood was being monitored by the FBI.

To Make Sure?

May 2007 •German

Journalist Sandra Harkow produces a promotional film for the RFID industry. Through a time traveler, she learns about the dark future triggered by RFID chips. Her encounter with the time traveler makes her prick up her ears and she researches the radio chips. The so-called docu-fiction style, which coherently combines real interviews with film scenes, gives the viewer the impression of being part of this reality.

A Good American

September 2015 •English

A Good American tells the story of the best code-breaker the USA ever had and how he and a small team within NSA created a surveillance tool that could pick up any electronic signal on earth, filter it for targets and render results in real-time while keeping the privacy as demanded by the US constitution.

The New World of Xi Jinping

July 2021 •French

Behind his polite exterior lies a formidable leader with a ruthless character, ready to do anything to make China the world's leading power by the People’s Republic’s centenary in 2049. This well-documented portrait of the Chinese president gives an unprecedented insight into his politics and shows how Xi Jinping's personal journey has shaped his choices as he steers China towards world domination.

Abendland

March 2011 •German

Some things can be seen more clearly at night.. . A film poem about a continent at night, a culture on which the sun’s going down, though it’s hyper alert at the same time, an “Abendland” that, often somewhat self-obsessively, sees itself as the crown of human civilization, while its service economy is undergoing rapid growth in a thoroughly pragmatic way. Nikolaus Geyrhalter takes a look at a paradise with a quite diverse understanding of protection. Night work juxtaposed with oblivious evening digression, birth and death, questions that await answers in the semi-darkness, a Babel of languages, the routine of the daily news, and political negotiation: All this has been captured in images with a wealth of details that make us look at things in a new way. The longer you consider a word, the more distant is its return gaze: ABENDLAND.

The Above

September 2015 •English

A U.S. military surveillance balloon floats on a tether high above Kabul, Afghanistan. Its capacities are both highly classified and deeply mysterious.

Total Trust

March 2023 •Chinese

By exploring the relationship between the watched and the watching, our film uncovers the trauma and hope engendered by the Chinese all-surveilling state and lends a voice to those that stand in resilient defiance of such blatant abuse of power.

National Bird

October 2016 •English

Sonia Kennebeck takes on the controversial tactic of drone warfare, and demands accountability through the personal accounts—recollections, traumas, and responses—of three American military veterans whose lives have been shaken by the roles they played in this controversial method of attack.

The World According to Xi Jinping

December 2018 •French

Under the leadership of Xi Jinping, China is on its way to becoming the leading world power of the 21st century. What goals is the mysterious autocrat, who was deeply influenced by Maoism in his youth, pursuing? What drives him? In terms of domestic policy, Xi is striving for the "perfect dictatorship"; in terms of foreign policy, he wants to rewrite the international rules.

Karl Marx City

January 2017 •German

Petra Epperlein and Michael Tucker take a powerfully personal journey through the former East Germany, as Epperlein investigates her father’s 1999 suicide and the possibility that he may have worked as a spy for the dreaded Stasi security service.