01 Oct 2014
One Little Pill
Bold & candid, One Little Pill will reveal to the world a startling pharmaceutical discovery & assault the skepticism & denial perpetuating alcohol dependence.
In 1986, twelve years after his film Kihnu Naine (The women of Kishnou), Mark Soosaar made this complementary documentary at the centre of which are the male inhabitants of the island. With a bitter undertone to it, Soosaar shows how, to this view, a lack of possibilities for self-government and the conceited attitude of the mainland towards the islanders have caused great problems to this society. The island has been negligently placed under far too large a kolkhoz. Enormous alcoholism is prevalent among the male population and, increasingly, among the women. Sheer possession of money has become a standard of regard. If a family cannot spare 4,000 roubles for the marriage of their children, they are ignored by the other islanders. In this dramatic as well as poetic documentary we see how the social awareness of a society has gone by the board. Merely concrete and strict reformations can improve the situation the island is in.
01 Oct 2014
Bold & candid, One Little Pill will reveal to the world a startling pharmaceutical discovery & assault the skepticism & denial perpetuating alcohol dependence.

02 Feb 2023

A newspaper clip of a 30-year-old movie makes our middle-aged protagonist in the middle of his peak years to look for his best childhood friend. The journey leads him back to his teenage years in the 1990s depression, over-generational substance abuse and past encounters. This partly essayistic, autobiographical documentary tells the story of friendship and generational experiences while also pondering on the causes and effects of destinies in the judgmental atmosphere of our society.

01 Jan 2023

Markenhof nursing home is located in the woods of Beekbergen. The unsuspecting walker might think it's a holiday park, but the buildings are home to 138 patients, all wandering around in various stages of memory-destroying Korsakoff's Syndrome. Korsakov's disease is caused by severe vitamin B1 deficiency, almost always the result of alcoholism. One patient can do little more than stare into space, while the other appears to be fine at first glance. Wracked by guilt, shame, addiction and a destroyed memory, patients Kenny and Christina try to create an understandable and livable world.

27 Oct 2017

A personal film by Steffan Strandberg about his adolescence with an alcoholic mother.

26 Nov 2022

Metro trains disappear on the turning track, only to immediately return on the same route. Tapio (57), Toni (42) and Aksa (60) are also stuck on these tracks. The men meet every morning in the square behind the Herttoniemi metro station, from where they transfer to Vuosaari in the metro's "restaurant car". Men's lives are dominated by alcohol and unemployment. The turning track of dreams follows the lives of Tapio, Toni and Aksa for a year - moments filled with joy, despair, self-destruction and friendship in the metro stations and trains of Eastern Helsinki. It gives voice to those who do not have special human dignity in the eyes of society.

23 Aug 2024

A tender portrayal of four stubborn brothers becomes a touching contemporary Swedish family chronicle about dreams, class, heritage, and the difficulty of connection. The Andersson brothers grew up in a working-class home in Gothenburg. Roy became an internationally acclaimed filmmaker while Ronny ended up as a homeless man. Kjell became a documentary filmmaker, and Leif lives as a disability pensioner.

02 Jul 2021

Paris, Rue Beautreillis, July 3, 1971. The corpse of rock star Jim Morrison is found in a bathtub, in the apartment of his girlfriend Pamela Courson. The chronicle of the last months of the life of the poet, singer and charismatic leader of the American band The Doors, one of the most influential in the history of rock.
27 Jul 2011
The people at the centre of this film are lawyers, civil servants, housewives, managing directors and mothers. They are also alcoholics. In her documentary, Carolin Schmitz explores the protagonists’ stories and their strategies for survival: the little tricks they employ in order to try and get through their daily lives – lives which become increasingly difficult to manage the stronger the addiction becomes. Their fear of losing control and being exposed as a drinker create their need to conform, but the protagonists can only cope with this pressure by increasing their alcohol intake.

26 Oct 2010

The life and work of the enigmatic singer-songwriter Harry Nilsson.

13 Sep 2004

Chronicles the fascinating and often turbulent life of Townes Van Zandt.

27 Aug 2018

Adrian Chiles takes a long hard look at his own love of boozing. He wants to find out why he and many others don't think they are addicted to alcohol, despite finding it almost impossible to enjoy life without it.
01 Jan 1997
David Vandenbrink seems like a healthy 21-year-old, bright and articulate young man. There is little to suggest that while in his mother's womb, he suffered permanent brain damage. His condition, fetal alcohol syndrome (F.A.S.), went undiagnosed for the first 18 years of his life, causing confusion, anger, and pain for both David and his non-Indigenous adoptive family. Fetal alcohol syndrome is a term used to describe a set of symptoms seen in some children born to women who drank alcohol during pregnancy. The damage can be subtle or severe, resulting in a wide range of symptoms in the areas of slowed growth, disfigurement, and damage to the brain. Associated behavioural problems include impulsiveness, poor judgment, and an inability to grasp the consequences of actions. This personal story, using video footage shot by David himself, along with the experiences of members of his family, is a hard look into the serious consequences of a little-known, but widespread, health problem.

09 Nov 2000

Carol Morley returns to Manchester, where in the early 1980s, five years of her life were lost in an alcoholic blur. The Alcohol Years is a poetic retrieval of that time, in which rediscovered friends and acquaintances recount tales of her drunken and promiscuous behavior. In Morley’s search for her lost self, conflicting memories and viewpoints weave in and out, revealing a portrait of the city, its pop culture, and the people who lived it.

14 Jan 2022

We all carry hell with us. The filmmaker’s hell exists on a canvas, which he studied carefully in childhood. The mystical picture has many names: Circus, Hell, Game at the Arena. Decades later he finds the painting again. The film unravels as loose ponderings about the plight of being an artist and touches upon the filmmaker’s personal demons. Can he see the painting in a new light?

15 Aug 1976

Arthur and Ernest are two bachelor fishermen who occupy the proverbial end-of-the-road on Morris Island, an Acadian community in southern Nova Scotia. Sober or not, they carry on with and for the filmmaker who is attempting to find out about their lives. The resulting encounters owe a smuch to Harold Pinter or Samuel beckett is they do to the documentary genre of film-making.

08 Jun 2015

A feature length, theatrical documentary on the life of Paul Gascoigne, one of the greatest footballers that ever lived: delving deep into his psyche, vulnerabilities, fears and triumphs.
01 Jan 1956
One of several films by the Hoffman-Skórzewski duo, made as part of the "black series" of Polish documentaries showing social problems hidden from viewers behind the façade of socialist realist productions until the mid-1950s. The subject of the film are the effects of alcoholism, whose innocent victims are children.

12 Oct 2014

A Royal Hangover is a feature length documentary about the ambivalent alcohol culture of Britain. Think Bowling For Columbine, only with alcohol instead of guns. Drinking for Britain: We don't shoot ourselves to death here, we kill ourselves with drink - much more dignified!

26 May 1999

This documentary follows the lives of the Bowling family as they fight to survive in dirt-poor Appalachia. Matriarch Iree has given birth to 13 children, but only two have left to seek better lives in Ohio while the rest have married and started their own impoverished families near home. Uneducated and unskilled, all are unemployed, and domestic violence and alcoholism pose serious problems. The filmmakers explore the family's relationships through interviews and footage of their daily lives.

30 Nov 2013

In Dependence is a documentary film about a middle aged couple trying to balance their lives in the riptide of alcoholism and co-dependency.