Search Results for "biographical documentary"

This documentary offers a deeply intimate look at extraordinary teenager Billie Eilish. Award-winning filmmaker R.J. Cutler follows her journey on the road, onstage, and at home with her family as the writing and recording of her debut album changes her life.

In his early days as an actor, Marlon Brando (1924-2004) was a shy young man with theatrical ambitions, like many others; but his charisma and superb acting skills made him truly unique, so that the doors to the starry sky of Hollywood opened for him. However, his peculiar manners, political commitment and complicated love life always overshadowed his artistic success.

An intense portrait of the iconic filmmaker, writer, actor, comedian and musician Woody Allen: his life, family and friends; his writing and directing habits, and his relationship with performers.

It’s Chicago in the 1980s and ‘90s, and Kevin Matthews has it all as one of the nation’s most recognized on-air radio personalities. He’s partying with celebrities, rubbing shoulders with famous athletes, and the world is at his fingertips. Then everything changes – he’s diagnosed with a debilitating illness and the spotlight gradually slips away. At the height of his anguish, he stumbles upon a broken statue of the Virgin Mary, and his life takes an unexpected turn. In this moment of spiritual awakening, Kevin finds his true purpose and calling, discovering what matters most. Calling himself “Mary’s Roadie,” he offers his fans something deeper: inspiration and hope.

A keen chronicle of the unlikely rise to power of Adolf Hitler (1889-1945) and a dissection of the Third Reich (1933-1945), but also an analysis of mass psychology and how the desperate crowd can be deceived and shepherded to the slaughterhouse.

Tony Curtis, the man who influenced Elvis Presley and James Dean. A sex symbol, a matinee idol, a powerful and magnetic actor, Tony Curtis was the original movie star.

1962. A crystalline voice becomes a planetary tube. A Belgian nun jostles Elvis and the Beatles on the world charts. Her name: Sister Smile. A popstar with the trajectory of a comet who understands her success no more than the double meaning of her words… The harder the fall will be. Even God does not protect sharks' appetites or pretenses of success! Who killed the little voice of God? Here is the tragic story of an innocent voice, of an extraordinary fate, almost of a curse ...

Augustus is reputed to have been a violent, adventurous, power-hungry and unscrupulous warlord. Yet as founder of the Roman Empire, he ushered in a period of peace and prosperity. Drawing on the analysis of several historians, this documentary traces an extraordinary destiny: posthumously adopted by his great-uncle Julius Caesar, Octavian, the future Augustus, accepted an inheritance fraught with consequences. Having made his own empire prosper, he wrote his political will at the age of 76, without naming an heir. How was the succession of this childless strategist organized?

A short kid from a Canadian army base becomes the international pop culture darling of the 1980s—only to find the course of his life altered by a stunning diagnosis. What happens when an incurable optimist confronts an incurable disease?

Since her debut at the age of 18, musician, civil rights campaigner and activist Joan Baez has been on stage for over 60 years. For the now 82-year-old, the personal has always been political, and her friendship with Martin Luther King and her pacifism have shaped her commitment. In this biography that opens with her farewell tour, Baez takes stock in an unsparing fashion and confronts sometimes painful memories.

Meryl Streep is one of the most versatile and successful actresses of all time and is still considered a superstar after 50 years of career. She fascinates filmmakers and audiences alike with her broad range of expression.

Utilizing potent TV interviews and many forgotten performances from his 30-year career, we are immersed into Frank Zappa’s world while experiencing two distinct facets of his complex character. At once Zappa was both a charismatic composer who reveled in the joy of performing and, in the next moment, a fiercely intelligent and brutally honest interviewee whose convictions only got stronger as his career ascended.

After 40 years, Tom Cruise continues to push the envelope in film. Exposing one's heart to the world through their work is not only risky business, as far as Cruise is concerned, it is the only way to achieve an end that feels complete.

An intimate, soul-baring new documentary covering the life and 40+ year career of actor and poet Michael Madsen, from troubled youth to film star, told through interviews with colleagues, friends, family members and the American Badass himself. Featuring Quentin Tarantino, John Travolta, Charlie Sheen, Ron Perlman, Daryl Hannah, and many, many more.

In 1969, the grocery store's son and promising cyclist Eddy Merckx took part in the Tour de France for the first time. He devours the competition and is the first to cross the finish line with a lead of more than seventeen minutes. 'The Cannibal' is born.

He is the most sought-after man in Europe in the 1960s. Lex Barker embodies the flawless hero in his films and, as Old Shatterhand, becomes a role model for generations of fans. Revered in Europe, misunderstood and almost forgotten in his native America. But who was this American who rode through Yugoslavia in a leather costume for the European audience? In 1973, Lex Barker died of a heart attack on the streets of Manhattan in New York. But no one recognizes the man who was Tarzan in Hollywood. Nobody knows him or cares about that he, as Winnetou's friend, is revered as an icon in Europe. Lex Barker's European western adventures are just a footnote in American film history. On the occasion of the 50th anniversary of his death, the documentary tells the story of one of the most beautiful men who ever flickered across Europe's cinema screens, for whom European cinema proved to be a stroke of luck and for whom a failed Hollywood career took him via Italy to Germany.

Steve McNair was an NFL legend whose life was seemingly cut short by a crime of passion. Is there more to this chilling tragedy than meets the eye?

Shadows have followed Harvey Keitel wherever he went, from his blasphematory childhood, to the army and his iconic roles in films such as Scorsese’s Mean Streets and Taxi Driver. Treated as an outcast after being fired from the set of Apocalypse Now, he made a triumphant return with directors such as Tarantino and Jane Campion.

Jean Rochefort, Jean-Pierre Marielle, Philippe Noiret - This is the story of a bunch of friends. Comedian buddies. Actors who dreamed of the Conservatory and the National Theater of Paris. The theater was their ideal, cinema will be their paradise. Their friend Jean-Paul Belmondo, the relaxed Parisian, who failed the entrance exam, will make sparks fly. Rochefort, Marielle and Noiret, the three provincials, will climb the steps of recognition one by one. From the little cabarets on the Left Bank to the TV shows of the Buttes-Chaumont pioneers. From the second roles to the first and from the B movies to the classics.

Melania is both an ideal symbol of a conservative America and the evil embodiment of limitless ambition. Political journalist Laurence Haïm has observed her for the past years and is able to reveal a much more complex part of the personality and life of the mysterious lady. For some, Melania Trump is an unscrupulous trophy wife on the arm of the most powerful man in the world. For others, the First Lady embodies with distinction the conservative woman, the unwavering wife in the service of her husband. For all, she remains inaccessible and secretive, a woman whose public appearances are heavily prepared and scripted. In the time of ‘Me too’, let us take a dive into conservative America, discover another side of feminism impersonated by none other than Melania Trump.