Documentary AreaSimply the best Documentaries

The Search for Freedom is the story of a cultural revolution fueled by the human desire to live in the moment and do what makes you feel the most alive. DIrector Jon Long presents this visceral look at the pioneers of extreme sports, including skateboarder Danny Way and motobiker Robbie Madison, and the human stories behind their search for thrills.

'Deliver Us from Drought' - Over the past years, Texas has experienced the worst drought in its recorded history. 97% of the scientific community agrees that human activity has contributed to extreme weather patterns around the world. But many Texans--legislators, community leaders and citizens--don't attribute their drought to humans, and have taken few if any initiatives to limit the state's CO2 emissions, currently the highest in the country. "The Resource Curse" - As humanity's appetite for energy grows exponentially, the extraction industry scrambles to the most remote regions on Earth. In the undeveloped Melanesian country of Papua New Guinea, America's Exxon Mobil has staked its claim to a $19 billion liquid natural-gas project. While some see Exxon's mammoth presence as the catalyst that will usher the underdeveloped country into the 21st Century, others predict the initiative could plunge its people into civil war.

Boxing, 'the poor man's sport', has long given kids from America's roughest neighborhoods an opportunity to escape violence with violence. But with success in the ring comes new fights for which there is no training: champions are made and broken in the blink of an eye, and young men thrust into the spotlight are often ill-equipped for the fame, fortune, and hangers-on that accompany a title belt". And for many, the toughest bouts are fought during retirement, when health and financial issues begin to mount. Built around the stories of heavyweight legends as Mike Tyson, Evander Holyfield and Bernard Hopkins, We will examine their lives in and out of the ring.

Academy Award-winning director Alex Gibney (Taxi to the Dark Side) masterfully explores the fall of the disgraced cycling champion following the 2009 Tour de France, making use of his extraordinary access to attain rare interviews with former teammates, alleged doping mastermind Dr. Michele Ferrari, and Armstrong himself. What was Lance Armstrong thinking? For years, after seizing international fame as the cancer survivor who won seven Tour de France titles, he fiercely denied accusations that he used performance-enhancing drugs. He used his power to aggressively litigate journalists and publicly humiliate former friends who claimed otherwise. His deceit finally cracked in January 2013, when he admitted guilt to Oprah Winfrey in a television interview that critics decried for only scratching the surface. Academy Award-winning director Alex Gibney approaches Armstrong with unique and extraordinary access. In 2009, Gibney was commissioned to make a film about Armstrong's return to the Tour de France, four years after the racing champion had declared retirement. That race would later stir up devastating evidence in the case against Armstrong. But Gibney came away from the experience unable to reconcile the discrepancy between doping allegations and Armstrong's emphatic denials. Then, post-Oprah, Gibney went back to Armstrong for new interviews to extract a more detailed account of his double life. In The Armstrong Lie, Gibney masterfully explores the complexities of the case, interweaving the dramatic action of the 2009 Tour de France, when Armstrong found himself unexpectedly competing against his own teammate Alberto Contador. Gibney attains rare interviews with Armstrong's former teammates and alleged doping mastermind Dr. Michele Ferrari. The film also raises troubling questions about the process of doping regulation. Recently, when asked to give advice to documentary filmmakers, Gibney responded with a motto exemplified by this film: "Embrace contradictions."

20 years ago, two astronomers made a remarkable discovery, one which would change the way we view the universe for ever. A planet outside our solar system, orbiting a distant star - an exoplanet. Since then, we have found worlds where it rains diamonds, ones that boil at 3,000 degrees centigrade and even a world with four suns in its sky. But the big question is - will we ever find another Earth? As we close in on the discovery of the 2,000th planet outside our solar system, or exoplanet, we investigates the techniques that are revealing so much about these alien worlds. The documentary asks if we are really any closer to finding another world like our own - a second Earth.

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.