
30 Jul 2020

Weltreise mit Buddha
The Odd Monk is a personal journey through modern day Buddhism. German first time Filmmaker Jesco Puluj travels around the world, meeting a variety of monks and nuns to discover the essence of Buddhism.

In Thailand, a hymn to rice need not always be sung. A dance, or spectacular homemade fireworks can say the same thing. As can a film, as is convincingly demonstrated by this lyrical, beautifully filmed homage to this essential staple food.

30 Jul 2020

The Odd Monk is a personal journey through modern day Buddhism. German first time Filmmaker Jesco Puluj travels around the world, meeting a variety of monks and nuns to discover the essence of Buddhism.
01 Jan 2014
Are tourists destroying the planet-or saving it? How do travelers change the remote places they visit, and how are they changed? From the Bolivian jungle to the party beaches of Thailand, and from the deserts of Timbuktu, Mali to the breathtaking beauty of Bhutan, GRINGO TRAILS traces stories over 30 years to show the dramatic long-term impact of tourism on cultures, economies, and the environment.

08 Oct 2021

The enthralling, against-all-odds story that transfixed the world in 2018: the daring rescue of twelve boys and their coach from deep inside a flooded cave in Northern Thailand.

09 Oct 2009

Juan “Accidentes” Dominguez is on his biggest case ever. On behalf of twelve Nicaraguan banana workers he is tackling Dole Food in a ground-breaking legal battle for their use of a banned pesticide that was known by the company to cause sterility. Can he beat the giant, or will the corporation get away with it?

23 Apr 2013

A short documentary chronicling the personal lives and narratives of Thai "ladyboys," who are born men but present themselves as women, living openly in Thai society. The film interviews ladyboys from all walks of life-- performers, filmmakers, activists-- to learn what it's like to live in a society with visible gender fluidity, and to explore if Thailand is really as open to and accepting of sexual diversity as it seems.
12 Jun 2014
Street art, creativity and revolution collide in this beautifully shot film about art’s ability to create change. The story opens on the politically charged Thailand/Burma border at the first school teaching street art as a form of non-violent struggle. The film follows two young girls (Romi & Yi-Yi) who have escaped 50 years of civil war in Burma to pursue an arts education in Thailand. Under the threat of imprisonment and torture, the girls use spray paint and stencils to create images in public spaces to let people know the truth behind Burma's transition toward "artificial democracy." Eighty-two hundred miles away, artist Shepard Fairey is painting a 30’ mural of a Burmese monk for the same reasons and in support of the students' struggle in Burma. As these stories are inter-cut, the film connects these seemingly unrelated characters around the concept of using art as a weapon for change.

02 Jun 2012

Sangduen Chailert, or Lek, as she is generally known, has already rescued over 200 elephants. She has dedicated her life to saving the Asian elephant and founded a special camp, The Elephant Nature Park to protect them. We follow this winner of Time Magazine’s “Asian Hero of the Year” Award in her work. Lek is on a mission to save the Asian elephant in her native Thailand. This film looks at the plight of the Asian elephant, as it goes from being a widely used domestic animal, to becoming a burden on modernizing communities. With experts predicting its extinction within four decades, Lek’s work is needed now more than ever and she has gathered a large group of supporters and volunteers in her quest for a better future for the Asian elephant. This moving film demonstrates Lek’s natural understanding of and rapport with these huge animals and will stir the viewers emotions as it highlights the often desperate state some elephants are kept in.

18 Dec 2007

A look at global sex tourism, focusing on the situation in Venezuela and Thailand.

09 Sep 2011

In Bangkok, Thailand, women punch a clock and wait for clients in a brightly lit glass box; in the red-light district of Faridpur, Bangladesh, a madam haggles over the price of a teenage girl; and in the border town of Reynosa, Mexico, crack-addicted women pray to a deity named Lady Death.

11 Feb 1947

Farrebique, the first feature-length effort of French documentary filmmaker Georges Rouqier, is widely regarded as his finest film. Rouqier concentrates on a single French farm family, following them through the four seasons. As in the works of Robert Flaherty, the human characters and the land surrounding them are "one", and Rouqier never misses an opportunity to parallel their lives with the eons-old phases of nature. The final symbolic images of Spring, achieved through time-lapse photography, are almost unbearably beautiful. The winner of several festival awards, Farrebique nonetheless did not immediately result in an outpouring of financing for Rouqier's follow-up films (this was a common problem in the financially strapped French film industry of the 1940s). Perhaps as a result, Rouqier did not make his sequel, Biquefarre (filmed in the same region, with some of the same "actors"), until 1983.

12 Oct 2018

A movie about two women who are mothers to the same child, and a child who belongs to two different worlds.

07 Jul 2014

Farang, the Thai word for foreigner, is the story of chef Andy Ricker and how he spun a 25-year obsession with Northern Thailand into the hit success that is his Pok Pok restaurant empire.

09 Mar 2014

Jeremy Clarkson, Richard Hammond, and James May are on a mission to build a bridge over the River Kwai in Thailand. In order to do so, they must first drive across a country that has been largely closed to Westerners for over 40 years: Burma. What follows is an epic journey of beautiful scenery, regular adversity, ongoing malfunction, and constant bickering between the three hosts.

08 Nov 2000

A camera crew travels through Thailand asking villagers to invent the next chapter of an ever-growing story.
08 Jun 2013
It is quickly becoming the most populated country in the world, but India holds a dark secret. Men and women who make their homes in the poor villages throughout the central region of the country are forced to make decisions that no parents should ever have to make. Sell a child into slavery or watch your children starve to death.

15 Apr 2006

An investigation into the nature of the sex trade in Thailand.

01 Jan 1988

Women workers stand up to the toxic flower industry in Colombia.

19 Feb 2020

This expository documentary is shedding some light on the southeast Asian elephant industry. What is this dark secret? And why is it harmful for the elephants? What is behind the latest trend “no riding”? What are the ethical elephant parks, and are they really in favor with their beloved animals?

12 Aug 2016

A young man and his young elephant street beg in gritty Bangkok amid the controversial elephant business that threatens their survival, until the opportunity comes to release the elephant to the wild.

01 Jan 2018

This intimate portrait of a Thai boxer, from New York-based filmmaker Josh Hayward, reveals the rituals and pressures experienced in Bangkok's boxing culture—an environment of grueling physical and psychological tension.