Megacities

Megacities is a documentary about the slums of five different metropolitan cities.

Bus 174

Documentary depicts what happened in Rio de Janeiro on June 12th 2000, when bus 174 was taken by an armed young man, threatening to shoot all the passengers. Transmitted live on all Brazilian TV networks, this shocking and tragic-ending event became one of violence's most shocking portraits, and one of the scariest examples of police incompetence and abuse in recent years.

Father, Son and Holy War

Filmmaker Anand Patwardhan looks to history and psychology as he delves into the possible reasons behind the demolition of the Babri Mosque.

Isle of Flowers

A tomato is planted, harvested and sold at a supermarket, but it rots and ends up in the trash. But it doesn’t end there: Isle of Flowers follows it up until its real end, among animals, trash, women and children. And then the difference between tomatoes, pigs and human beings becomes clear.

Favela Gay

Favela Gay tells the story of eleven individuals in their own words. Living in eight slums (favelas) in Rio de Janeiro, these members of the LGBTQ community – two transgender women, a crossdressing man, a travesti prostitute, a famous carnival dancer, two community activists, and even a young man who used to be transgender, but transitioned back – have fought prejudice and seen some of the most unsavoury sides of the city.

Favela Rising

A man emerges from the slums of Rio to lead the nonviolent cultural movement known as Afro-reggae.

I Want to Be a Pilot

Omondi lives in the biggest slum in East Africa. Everyday he sees airplanes fly over him. He dreams of becoming an airline pilot and flying far away.

Purdah

The inspiring story of a young Indian Muslim woman who trades her burka for dreams of playing on the Mumbai Senior Women's Cricket Team and how the harsh realities for women in her country creates an unexpected outcome for her own family, ultimately shattering and fueling aspirations.

Inquiry: The Great British Housing Disaster

David Jones investigates how 1960s council housing came to be built so poorly that thousands later needed to be demolished.

India Cabaret

A documentary exploring the "respectable" and "immoral" stereotypes of women in Indian society told from the point of view of 2 strip-tease dancers in a cabaret house in Bombay.

House Orders

In buildings where foreign workers lived in Germany, there were strict rules of conduct, defined by the house rules and supervised by the building superintendents. Many rights regarding the freedom of movement, communication and behavior were abused. Interviews with the tenants and with the "orderlies" which point out absurd situations and clashes caused by these restrictions.

The Walls Come Tumbling Down

A 1975 documentary short about a strike being conducted by public-housing residents in St. Louis.

New Towns for Old

Sheffield stands in as 'Smokedale', an industrial Everytown, in this stirring call for "new schools, new hospitals, new roads, new life", after WWII.

São Vito

Story about the imposing building Edifício São Vito, a mark on the center of São Paulo gentrification system. The building was demolished in 2011, with many families being deallocated after an agreemente with the city town that was never accomplished.

Hong Kong’s Secret City

Not many people know that there is in the center of Hong Kong, a city of 50,000 inhabitants that escape authority, a city which holds no law and no order, the ‘walled city’. Never before has a television crew been allowed to enter this labyrinth. Christa Wesemann, an Austrian documentary filmmaker, has achieved this for the first time. The recordings from the ‘walled city’ are breathtaking pictures, as it has never seen the world. The history and daily flow in Walled City are ruled by the ‘triad’, a Chinese crime syndicate.

Farewell Oak Street

This documentary presents a before-and-after picture of people in a large-scale public housing project in Toronto. Due to a housing shortage, they were forced to live in squalid, dingy flats and ramshackle dwellings on a crowded street in Regent Park North; now they have access to new, modern housing developments designed to offer them privacy, light and space.

John & Jane

A new form of observational documentary that borders on science-fiction, John & Jane follows the stories of six Call Agents that answer American 1-800 numbers at a Mumbai call center.

Vita di borgata

P for Pelican

An old hermit lives in a slum and wants to teach the alphabet to the children who regularly go there to play. When a child proposes he use the word “Pelican” for the letter ‘P’, the hermit goes to the nearby park to see this animal he has never heard of.

Chicago at the Crossroad

While gun violence was on the decline in most major US cities, why did it continue to increase in Chicago's segregated communities? What is known about the systems that created the problem, the laws that isolated it, and the policies that abandoned it? Using dramatic footage, including interviews with residents on the front lines over the last 15 years, this documentary opens a rare historical window into the systematic creation of poverty stricken communities plagued by gun violence.