Full Frame Festival 2010

A Cambodian whose family was among the 2 million victims slain by the Khmer Rouge, Thet Sambath patiently spends his time, energy and money gaining the trust of the regime's cold-blooded murderers in hopes of capturing their confessions on tape. Several years in the making, this powerful documentary… Read review »

Documentarian Lixin Fan follows a couple who, like 130 million other Chinese peasants, left their rural village for work in the city, leaving their children to be raised by grandparents. The husband and wife return only once each year, on an arduous 1,000-mile journey. But their homecoming is not a … Read review »

Not your run-of-the-mill concert film here as prodigy composer Jason Moran revisits and interprets bebop pianist Thelonious Monk’s historic 1959 Town Hall big band concert. Commissioned by Duke University, the San Francisco Jazz Festival, the Chicago Symphony Center, and the Washington Performing Ar… Read review »

Sebastian Junger, author of The Perfect Storm, teamed with photographer Tim Hetherington to spend a year embedded with the Second Platoon in Afghanistan, documenting the hard work, fear and brotherhood that come with repelling a deadly enemy. Hunkered down with the soldiers in one of the region's mo… Read review »

This hilarious documentary from director Kaspar Astrup Schroder profiles prolific Japanese inventor Yoshiro Nakamatsu, whose contraptions range from the whimsical (motorized roller skates) to the kooky (a mental-enhancement "Cerebrex" machine). Noting without a trace of hubris that "My mind is very … Read review »

Documentarian Alex Gibney (Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room) turns his acute focus on convicted Washington lobbyist Jack Abramoff, reproaching him and other legislators for their negative impact on U.S. politics. Gibney's film plays less like a dry treatise and more like a high-stakes political … Read review »

Its promo ads banned by Italy's state broadcasting agency, this film reveals how salacious television productions enable the ongoing reign of Italy's three-time prime minister and top media mogul Silvio Berlusconi. Pandering content such as bikini-clad women on his reality show does nothing to imped… Read review »

World-renowned artist Vik Muniz embarks on one of the most inspired collaborations of his career, joining creative forces with Brazilian catadores -- garbage pickers who mine treasure from the towering trash heaps of Rio's Jardim Gramacho landfill. In this Sundance award-winning documentary, the cat… Read review »

Acclaimed writer and director Michel Gondry (Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind) turns the camera on his own family in this documentary about his aunt Suzette, a teacher in rural France from 1952 to 1986. Raised in Versailles in a family of musicians and educated in Paris, Gondry is keen on under… Read review »

The Poot serves as a beautifully crafted tribute to the ancient Iranian tradition of carpet weaving, documenting the detail and precision that goes into each hand-loomed creation. No part of the process is overlooked: plants are ground into a range of colorful dyes, sheep are sheared and their wool … Read review »