Related Films
Six weeks is the period in which parents of newborn babies in Poland may decide to give up a child for adoption.
Every spring, China’s cities are plunged into chaos as 130 million migrant workers journey to their home villages for the New Year in the world’s largest human migration.
Four Filipino women leave their families and schools to teach in the U.S. The women bring idealistic visions of the teacher’s craft and of American life.
In Finland, the sauna is a national obsession - a place to come together and sweat out not only the grime of contemporary life, but also grief, hopes, joys and memories.
Imagine being picked up off the street, told you have committed a murder you know nothing about and then finding yourself sentenced to 20 years in jail. Watch now »
All Films in This Topic
Six weeks is the period in which parents of newborn babies in Poland may decide to give up a child for adoption.
Every spring, China’s cities are plunged into chaos as 130 million migrant workers journey to their home villages for the New Year in the world’s largest human migration.
Four Filipino women leave their families and schools to teach in the U.S. The women bring idealistic visions of the teacher’s craft and of American life.
A platoon of Danish soldiers fight the Taliban at Armadillo, a combat operations base in southern Afghanistan.
In Finland, the sauna is a national obsession - a place to come together and sweat out not only the grime of contemporary life, but also grief, hopes, joys and memories.
The Khmer Rouge slaughtered nearly two million people in the late 1970s. Yet the Killing Fields of Cambodia remain largely unexplained. Until now.
In Zimbabwe, de facto dictator Robert Mugabe has unleashed a "land reform" program aimed at driving whites from the country through violence and intimidation.
Biblioburro: The Donkey Library
Colombian grade-school teacher Luis Soriano brings books, via two hard-working donkeys, to the children of Magdalena Province’s poor and violence-ridden interior.
My Perestroika is an intimate look at the last generation of Soviet children searching for their places in today’s Moscow.
Pastry chefs whip up the most gravity-defying concoctions and edge-of-your-seat drama as they deliver their desserts for the Meilleurs Ouvriers de France competition.
Filmed in Yemen and Guantánamo, The Oath interweaves the stories of Abu Jandal, Bin Laden's former bodyguard and Salim Hamdan, a man facing war crimes charges. Watch now »
Her passport said she was Cha Jung Hee. She knew she was not. So began a 40-year deception for a Korean adoptee who came to the United States in 1966.
What is it like to be torn from your Chinese foster family, put on a plane with strangers and wake up in a new country, family and culture?
POV features three films about adoption — Wo Ai Ni (I Love You) Mommy by Stephanie Wang-Breal; Off and Running by Nicole Opper; and In the Matter of Cha Jung Hee by Deann Borshay Liem — and has launched a national public awareness campaign to examine issues facing adoptees and families who choose to adopt. Watch all three films online through November, 2010.
Imagine being picked up off the street, told you have committed a murder you know nothing about and then finding yourself sentenced to 20 years in jail. Watch now »
Past and present collide as the daughter of Plutarco Elías Calles, a revolutionary general who became Mexico’s president in 1924, reflects on his legacy.
'Good Fortune' is a provocative exploration of how massive international efforts to alleviate poverty in Africa may be undermining the very communities they aim to benefit. Watch now »
Though apartheid ended in South Africa in 1994, economic injustices between blacks and whites remain unresolved — and the most potentially explosive issue is land.
In this delightful memoir, the award-winning French filmmaker employs all the magic of cinema to juxtapose the real and the imagined, the past and the present, pain and joy.
Rocky Otoo is the sassy teenage daughter of Ghanaian parents. After she rebels against her mother's rule in the Bronx, she flees to her father, a chief in Ghana.
A remarkable depiction of one doctor's commitment to relieving suffering and of the emotional turmoil he undergoes in bringing hope to a desperate people.
Ella Es el Matador (She Is the Matador)
Two women matadors in Spain have a passion for bullfighting and are determined to pursue their dreams. What is it like for women to enter into this male-dominated arena?
Is nothing American sacred anymore? The largest mall in the world turns out not to be the famous Mall of America. It’s the South China Mall outside of Guangzhou.
This Academy Award-nominated film chronicles Thavisouk Phrasavath and his family’s escape from Laos after the Vietnam War. In America, they find a different kind of war.
The story of a family's struggle to seek justice for their murdered son while trying to transcend hatred and the desire for revenge.
Immortalized in Beatrix Potter’s The Tale of Squirrel Nutkin, the red is the island nation’s only native species of squirrel. But it is being driven to extinction by the invading greys.
Over 120 countries have united to form the International Criminal Court to prosecute perpetrators of crimes against humanity, war crimes and genocide.
The security wall being built by Israel on the West Bank has isolated a nursing home, leaving its residents to face old age in the throes of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
Inheritance is the story of Monika Hertwig, the daughter of mass murderer Amon Goeth, and her efforts to come to terms with her "inheritance."
City of Cranes takes the viewer hundreds of feet above the ground to hear the insights of crane drivers, and see a glimpse of the poetic, mesmerizing world of cranes. (14 minutes) Watch now »
Nearing completion, China's massive Three Gorges Dam is altering the landscape and the lives of people living along the fabled Yangtze River. Countless ancient villages and historic locales will be submerged, and 2 million people will lose their homes and livelihoods.
Chile's former dictator, Augusto Pinochet, is brought to justice by one of his own in this cautionary tale about violating human rights in the name of "higher ideals."
The story of Alexander Pushkin, whose audacious, comical exploits against totalitarianism find him facing the hostility of the police and the consternation of his family.
In Japan, baseball is not a pastime — it's an obsession epitomized by the national high school baseball tournament known simply as "Koshien."
This is democracy — Japanese style: the story of a man plucked from obscurity by the ruling political party to run for a critical city council seat. Watch online now!
Young construction laborers in the Israeli city of Modi'in are caught between Israeli security laws and a Palestinian Authority they see as having failed them.
The proud Mexican tradition of corrido music provides both heartbeat and backbone to this rich examination of songs, drugs and dreams along the U.S./Mexico border.
In one of documentary cinema's more remarkable enterprises, 49 Up is the seventh in a series of films that has profiled a group of English children every seven years, beginning in 1964.
Lumo Sinai was raped by marauding soldiers in the Congo, which resulted in a fistula, a medical condition that renders her incontinent and threatens her ability to bear children.
Global Recordings Network (GRN), founded in Los Angeles in 1939, has produced audio versions of Bible stories in over 5,500 languages. GRN aims to record in every language on earth. They distribute the recordings, along with ultra-low-tech hand-wind players, in isolated regions and among displaced migrant workers. GRN calls their target audience "the tailenders" because they are the last to be reached by worldwide evangelism.
During the genocide in Rwanda in 1994, a newly built secondary school on a hill named Murambi was the site of one of the world’s most horrifying mass murders.
Sierra Leone's Refugee All Stars
Traumatized by physical injuries and brutal losses in Sierra Leone's civil war, a group of refugees fight back with the only means they have — music.
Carmen and Lourdes work at maquiladoras just over the border in Tijuana, Mexico, where each day they confront labor violations, environmental devastation and urban chaos.
Working alone in Iraq over eight months, filmmaker Laura Poitras takes an unforgettable journey into the heart of war-ravaged Iraq in the months leading up to the January 2005 elections.
Twelve Disciples of Nelson Mandela
As part of the first wave of black South African exiles, Harris's stepfather, B. Pule Leinaeng, and his 11 comrades left their home in Bloemfontein in 1960.
The Boys of Baraka follows four boys from Baltimore to rural Kenya, where a teacher-student ratio of one to five, a strict disciplinary program and a comprehensive curriculum form the core of an extraordinary journey in their transformation to men.
Alan Lomax was "the song hunter," devoting his life to recording the world's folk tunes before they would permanently disappear with the rise of the modern music industry.
In 1990, an unknown candidate named Alberto Fujimori rode a wave of popular support to become the president of Peru. He fought an all-out war on terror against the guerilla organization Shining Path, and won. Ten years later, accused of kidnapping, murder and corruption, he fled Peru to his native Japan, where he was in exile for four years.
Set during the violent ethnic conflict in Sri Lanka, No More Tears Sister explores the price of truth in times of war. The film recreates the courageous and vibrant life of renowned human rights activist Dr. Rajani Thiranagama.
Is it possible to heal wounds and bitterness passed down through generations? An Orthodox Jewish father tries to alert his adult sons to the dangers of creating impenetrable barriers between themselves and those outside their faith. He takes them on an emotional journey to Poland to track down the family who risked their lives to hide their grandfather for more than two years during World War II.
A Song for Daniel compares a routine day of two nine-year-old boys — one living in Baghdad and the other, born and raised in New York City — and offers a profound examination of culture and place through the eyes of two Iraqi youth living on opposite sides of the world.
The Brooklyn Connection shows the terrifying ease with which a charming Brooklyn businessman raised $30 million during the Kosovo War, purchased weapons across the USA, and shipped them legally to Albania to be smuggled into Kosovo.
Follow two young refugees from the Dinka tribe, Peter and Santino, through their first year in America. Nearly 4,000 'lost boys' have emigrated to the United States.
This film documents the lives of reporters and photographers who circumvent military media control to get access to the real Iraq War. As the invading armies sweep into the country, some of the journalists in Kuwait decide to travel in their wake, risking their lives to discover the true impact of war on civilians.
State of Denial takes viewers into the lives of six people struggling to survive with HIV in the face of social stigma, a severe lack of access to lifesaving treatments, and their president Thabo Mbeki's controversial stance on the connection between HIV and AIDS.
Author Charley Trujillo guides us through the war and post-war experiences of a group of Mexican-American soldiers who fought in Vietnam. The young soldiers could hardly guess just how profoundly the insulated life they knew in their hometown of Corcoran, California would be changed by their experiences in Southeast Asia.
Cuban American filmmaker Juan Carlos Zaldívar, once a 13-year-old loyalist of the Cuban Revolution, recounts the strange twist of fate that took him across one of the world's most treacherous stretches of water in 90 Miles.
When the Khmer Rouge took over Cambodia in 1975, Arn Chorn-Pond was nine years old. He was separated from his family and thrust into the darkness of Cambodia's ghastly Killing Fields for four years. Now, after living in the U.S. for 20 years, Arn returns to Cambodia to save its once outlawed traditional music from extinction.
Living in Iowa, Denese Becker was haunted by memories of her Mayan childhood. A quest for her lost identity in Guatemala turns into a searing journey of political awakening that reveals a genocidal crime and the still-unmet cry for justice from the survivors.
What are the chances that a former prostitute could be elected a Member of the Parliament of New Zealand by a conservative, rural district? What if that person were also a transsexual? The odds may seem daunting, but Georgina Beyer did it.
In the wake of the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, the plight of ordinary Afghans is seen through the prism of the independent medical relief group, Emergency.
Someone is killing the young women of Juárez, Mexico. Since 1993, over 270 women have been raped and murdered. Señorita Extraviada is a haunting investigation into an unspeakable crime wave amid the chaos and corruption of one of the world's biggest border towns.
A spunky Vietnamese teenager named Mai gets the chance of a lifetime—to study in the United States. From cosmopolitan Hanoi to the heart of the Deep South, Mai’s unforgettable journey offers an outsider’s glimpse inside America.
What is it really like to live in Jerusalem? Promises offers touching and fresh insight into the Middle East conflict through the eyes of seven Palestinian and Israeli children.
Life and Debt is an unapologetic look at the "new world order," from the point of view of Jamaican workers, farmers, government and policy officials who see the reality of globalization from the ground up.
After 40 years, Silvia Morini returns to the palatial house of her youth in Cuba, where her nostalgia for a pre-Castro world confronts modern Cuban reality. Yet as Silvia discovers an evolving Cuba, she herself undergoes a surprising change-not entirely altering her political outlook but becoming, as she puts it, "more human."
Exploring the meaning of war and loss with Vietnamese and American widows into a vivid testament to the chilling legacy of war.
Tejana singer Selena was on the brink of blockbuster crossover fame when her murder at age 23 catapulted her into mainstream celebrity. Filmmaker Lourdes Portillo gazes beyond the tabloids and points a sensitive lens on the cultural sensation that emerged around Selena's life and death.
Fifty years after World War II, Japanese Americans recall their years in the internment camps of WWII. From the exuberant recollections of a typical teenager, to the simmering rage of citizens forced to sign loyalty oaths, filmmaker Emiko Omori renders a poetic and illuminating picture of a deeply troubling chapter in American history.
One of a selection of hypnotically engaging short films by and about women offers vivid and lyrical pictures of joy, endurance and inspiration.
Burmese girls, lured into prostitution with promises of a better life for themselves and their families, give voice to their experiences in this poetic tribute to their struggles for survival.
Bela Bognar is no ordinary American dad. Now a suburbanite, he once fought against Soviet domination during the Hungarian revolution. Ever since, his life has been a longing for the glories of the past. Steven Bognar crafts a moving portrait of his father's 40-year quest for identity and home.
A Chinese journalist returns to her homeland to retrace the underground railroad that helped the last of China's most wanted Tiananmen Square leaders escape to freedom.
Personal perspectives on both sides of the camera are revealed when Michal Avaid, directing a three-woman Israeli/Palestinian film crew, travels throughout the West Bank to collect women's stories.
The richly textured story of the Dalai Lama of Tibet — spiritual leader, Nobel Laureate — interweaves an inspiring portrayal with the urgent plight of his homeland under Chinese occupation.
A Bulgarian refugee chronicles her family's struggle against Communist rule and tries to uncover the long-suppressed facts behind the arrests of both of her grandfathers.
The searing story of four freelance photographers — American, Russian, British and Japanese — all determined to uncover the horrors of the Soviet war in Afghanistan.
Ten million families were separated between North and South Korea when the Korean War ended in 1953. Beginning with the story of one man's journey to reunite with his sister in North Korea, award-winning filmmakers Christine Choy (Who Killed Vincent Chin?) and JT Takagi reveal the personal, social and political dimensions of the last divided nation on earth.
"Plena" is in Puerto Rico what the blues are in the U.S.: a musical expression abounding with romance, daily news and personal sagas. As the Puerto Rican community grows on the mainland, the infectious rhythms of Puerto Rico's most original contribution to Caribbean urban music are celebrated with gusto.
After years of witnessing first hand the horrors of guerrilla wars, Israeli-born producer Ilan Ziv traveled to Chile, the Philippines and the West Bank to explore the development of "People Power" and to reexamine his own long-held belief in the necessary evil of violence to overthrow repressive governments.
Founded by a Jesuit priest from St. Louis, a grassroots theatre company takes its shows on the unpaved roads of Honduras to enlighten and inspire villagers in the impoverished countryside.
The textures and complexities of everyday life in India unfold in Michael Camerini's richly observed story of two poor women and their efforts to improve their lives.
This riveting film recounts the untold story of a handful of Jewish youth who organized an underground resistance against the Nazis in the Lithuanian ghetto of Vilna.
Explore
35 Essential Chinese Documentaries
Last Train Home director Lixin Fan joins other filmmakers, film curators and writers in recommending their favorite documentaries about China. Read what they have to say about the films and filmmakers.
Doc Soup: Announcing the #tweetmydoc Pitch Winner: 'Your Name Is My Name'!
Tom Roston profiles 'Your Name Is My Name's Osata Dixon (@YourName_MyName), who distilled a documentary pitch into 104 compelling characters. Join a #tweetmydoc Twitter chat with Dixon Thursday at 12 PM Eastern.
What Was LIfe Like in Afghanistan? Additional Video
National Guard veterans Bodi and Cole talk about what life was like for the Afghan people during their deployment in Afghanistan.
Director Danfung Dennis on 'Hell and Back Again'
Danfung Dennis talks to blogger Adam Schartoff about how a documentary about combat in Afghanistan became a documentary about coming home from war, making the transition from photojournalist to filmmaker, and the impact of Tim Hetherington's death.
Doc Soup: Tweet Your Doc! (#tweetmydoc)
Later this month, Doc Soup Man Tom Roston will feature one documentary-in-progress that makes the most original and compelling use of Twitter — in 140 characters or less, of course. Share your doc with the hashtag #tweetmydoc by October 17, 2011.
POV Viewers Get Last Word on 'Last Train Home' and the Impact of Rapid Economic Development in China
Each Friday, we share a selection of comments relating to the week's documentary broadcast. This week, viewers watched Last Train Home, a heart-stopping journey with the Zhangs, a couple who left infant children behind for factory jobs 16 years ago, hoping their wages would lift their children to a better life.
Upcoming POV Community Screenings
Watch the POV documentary Enemies of the People at community events this fall, including a special screening with Genocide Watch in Washington, D.C., next week.