Documentary AreaSimply the best Documentaries

‘Who Is in Control?’ explores the great deception that greets us each morning when we awake: it feels as though we are in conscious control of our lives but the truth is that we are not. Instead almost every action, every decision, every belief that we hold is driven by parts of the brain that we have no access to.

The human brain is the most complex object we’ve discovered in the universe, and every day much of its neural circuitry is taken up with the tens of thousands of decisions we need to make. ‘How do I decide?’ is a journey through the unseen world of decisions, and how they get made. Decisión-making is what allows us to navigate a course through life. Discover how important emotions are in making decissions and, as we learn more about our own brains, we can break away from slavery to our impulses. Neuroscience shows that you're made up of multiple competing drives and by understanding how choices battle it out in the brain, we can learn how to make better decisions.

A feature length documentary about humanity's absolute dependence on animals (for pets, food, clothing, entertainment, and scientific research) but also illustrates our complete disrespect for these so-called 'non-human providers'. With an in-depth study into pet stores, puppy mills and animals shelters, as well as factory farms, the leather and fur trades, sports and entertainment industries, and finally the medical and scientific profession, the film uses hidden cameras and never before seen footage to chronicle the day-to-day practices of some of the largest industries in the world, all of which rely entirely on animals for profit. Powerful, informative and thought-provoking, EARTHLINGS is by far the most comprehensive documentary ever produced on the correlation between nature, animals, and human economic interests. There are many worthy animal rights films available, but this one transcends the setting.

In ‘Who will we be?’ Dr. David Eagleman journeys into the future, and asks what’s next for the human brain, and for our species. We stand at a major turning point, one where we might take control of our own development. We face a future of uncharted possibilities in which our relationship with our own body, our relationship with the world, the very basic nature of who we are is set to be transformed. For thousands of generations, humans have lived the same life cycle over and over. We are born, we control a fragile body, we experience a limited reality, and we die. But science and technology are giving us tools to transcend that evolutionary story. Our brains don't have to remain as we have inherited them. We are capable of extending our reality, of inhabiting new bodies, and possibly shedding our physical forms altogether. And we are discovering the tools to shape our own destiny. Who we become is up to us.

The film tells the tale of Nim Chimpsky, a chimpanzee who was the subject of a landmark experiment to see if an ape could learn to communicate with language if raised and nurtured like a human child. This study was the brainchild of Dr. Herbert Terrace, a Columbia University behavioral psychologist who hoped to teach Nim enough language that he could eventually express what he was thinking and feeling. This would refute Noam Chomsky's thesis that language is inherent only in humans, hence his moniker, a direct pun on the famous linguists' name. The doc was a smash when it played at Sundance with this entirely different incredible but true story

The second episode is about how plants gain their sustenance. Sunlight is one of the essential requirements if a seed is to germinate, and Attenborough highlights the cheese plant as an example whose young shoots head for the nearest tree trunk and then climb to the top of the forest canopy, developing its leaves en route. Using sunshine, air, water and a few minerals, the leaves are, in effect, the "factories" that produce food. However, some, such as the begonia, can thrive without much light. To gain moisture, plants typically use their roots to probe underground. Trees pump water up pipes that run inside their trunks, and Attenborough observes that a sycamore can do this at the rate of 450 litres an hour — in total silence. Too much rainfall can clog up a leaf's pores, and many have specially designed 'gutters' to cope with it. However, their biggest threat is from animals, and some require extreme methods of defence, such as spines, camouflage, or poison. Some can move quickly to deter predators: the mimosa can fold its leaves instantly when touched, and the Venus flytrap eats insects by closing its leaves around its prey when triggered. Another carnivorous plant is the trumpet pitcher that snares insects when they fall into its tubular leaves. Attenborough visits Borneo to see the largest pitcher of them all, Nepenthes rajah, whose traps contain up to two litres of water and have been known to kill small rodents.