The Leading Role

Bombshell: The Hedy Lamarr Story

June 2018 •English

The life and career of the hailed Hollywood movie star and underappreciated genius inventor, Hedy Lamarr.

The Divine Garbo

December 1990 •English

Profile of actress Greta Garbo, narrated by Glenn Close

After You

January 2013 •Swedish

"My mother is spending all her time with her dying father. I’m spending all my time filming her. As the end is getting closer, my mother and I start doing the filming more and more together. It becomes our way of dealing with the time we have left." —Marius Dybwad Brandrud

Personal Affairs

January 1979 •

The story follows five months in the life of Belgrade student Maja Sabljic, an actress-to-be, from her high school graduation day (at the end of May) until mid September when she tries to enroll at the Film Academy (FDU). The story is presented in the documentary style, involving the real-life persons of the late seventies' Belgrade scene.

Bond Girls Are Forever

November 2002 •English

Through vintage film clips of past Bond movie epics, and with the participation of several former "Bond Girls" as interviewees (among them Dr. No's Ursula Andress and Diamonds Are Forever's Jill St. John), the documentary traces the evolution of the typical James Bond heroine from decorative damsel in distress to gutsy (but still decorative) participant in the action.

Terwijl het liefde was

August 2021 •Dutch

Artistic director of the National Theater Eric de Vroedt writes and directs a performance about his own mother Winnie, who passed away in 2020. This piece, titled The Century of My Mother, is a family story about the migration from the Dutch East Indies to the Netherlands. It is De Vroedt's way of examining the relationship with his mother and not having to say goodbye to her yet: 'I can let her live on stage, but when the curtain falls, when the play is completely finished, then she is really dead'.

Deshilando Luz

May 2025 •Spanish

A film essay that intertwines the director's gaze with that of her late mother. Beyond exploring mourning and absence as exclusively painful experiences, the film pays tribute to her mother through memories embodied by places and objects that evidence the traces of her existence. The filmmaker asks herself: What does she owe her mother for who she is and how she films? To what extent does her film belong to her?

Lines from the Heart

March 1996 •Swedish

The trio of actresses have ostensibly gathered to pay tribute to Mai Zetterling, but also reminisce about their own careers and the illustrious figures, including Ingmar Bergman, they have worked with.

American Thrift: An Expansive Tribute to the "Woman American"

January 1962 •English

Chevrolet presents this tribute to the American woman and her thrifty ways with money. The film also salutes the individuality of the Amerian citizen and the variety of choices we have in the marketplace.

Salaam Cinema

April 1995 •Persian

Makhmalbaf puts an advertisement in the papers calling for an open casting for his next movie. However when hundreds of people show up, he decides to make a movie about the casting and the screen tests of the would-be actors.

Terry's Little Village

August 2024 •English

Terry Wilson is a 70-year-old lifelong resident of Meadowvale Village, Ontario's first heritage district. As development looms and begins to destroy Terry's favourite place in the world, he recreates pieces of history in his backyard, crafting an oasis where it feels like nothing has changed. A beautiful tribute to his childhood, his mother, and his town, Terry passionately fights to preserve history in a world that's too anxious for change.

The Mirror and the Window

November 2021 •Spanish

Filmmaker Diego Gutiérrez knows that he is soon to lose two loved ones: his mother Gina Coppe and his best friend Danniel Danniel. Both ask him to film them during this final phase of their lives—Gina in her apartment in Mexico City, Danniel in a Dutch restaurant where he feels at home. What stories do they want to leave behind?

Mother Land

February 2022 •Finnish

When filmmaker Mari Soppela took her children and husband to live for a year on a sacred mountain in her native Finland, she was fulfilling a lifelong dream to share the arctic wilderness of her childhood with her family. But when years later her children turn the camera onto her, she is forced to confront her motivation for filming their lives in this searching and searingly honest cinematic exploration of identity, belonging and motherhood. Filmed over the course of 27 years, Mother Land challenges us all to examine the landscapes we carry within us and the narratives we create to make sense of our lives.

Ona Carbonell: Starting Over

February 2022 •Spanish

In August 2020, Olympic artistic swimmer Ona Carbonell became a first time mother, an experience that reshaped her life overnight.

Mothers

February 2011 •Macedonian

Two nine-year-old girls report a flasher to the police even though they never saw him. Three filmmakers meet the only residents of a deserted village - an elderly brother and sister who have not spoken to each other in 16 years. Retired cleaning women are found raped and strangled in a small town. The fiction slowly turns into a documentary.

Mother

April 2009 •English

Mother compiles clips of mother figures from classic Hollywood cinema and television dramas. The figures range from the Virgin Mary and Mother Courage, to characters from Maude (1972–78), Aliens (1986), Imitation of Life (1959), and American Gangster (2007). The characters play out scenes of care, loss, emotional manipulation, abandonment, and grief. The intense relationships between mothers and daughters are especially prominent.

Romy Schneider: A Woman in Three Notes

September 2008 •German

Documentary portrait of the actress Romy Schneider, in which director Frederick Baker tries to form an overall picture from the facets of image, myth, real life and screen persona.

Bleed Out

November 2018 •English

After a routine partial hip replacement operation leaves his mother in a coma with permanent brain damage, what starts as a son's video diary becomes a citizen's investigation into the future of American health care.

Stále spolu

May 2015 •Czech

Petr and Simona have been living together for twenty-five years. They have nine children, with whom they live in caravans on a meadow in Šumava – without television, computers, or running water. The authoritarian Petr calls himself a "professional father." He guides his offspring toward freedom and harmony with nature, while trying to protect them from the harmful influence of consumer society. The children only go to school for exams—their college-educated parents teach them at home. At first glance, the family cohesion, which is practically unparalleled in today's Western world, seems idyllic. Upon closer inspection, however, doubts begin to arise. The film Still Together explores the price of a free life outside of society and asks: is there a recipe for the ideal family?

Come to Las Vegas, Baby

July 2009 •Spanish