Last updated 4/4/2024. Image: Otro Mundo Es Posible/ Another World is Possible
by Beatriz Aurora Castedo, Mexico City
Documentaries have an incredible power to raise awareness and create transformative changes in consciousness both at the personal and global levels.
Since 2006, we've watched hundreds of social change documentaries and cataloged the best of them in this library. There are now so many that we realized we needed to filter this down even further. So what follows is our list of the very best one hundred - hand-picked for their quality, insight, and potential to inspire positive change.
All of the films have been selected because they are either free to watch online or can be viewed for a few dollars. With the exception of two films, all of the films with ($5) next to the title can be viewed by becoming a Films For Action Patron for $5/mo.
As new films come out or become available, we'll be updating this list over time. Enjoy!
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145 min ·
The Corporation is today's dominant institution, creating great wealth but also great harm. This 26 award-winning documentary examines the nature, evolution, impacts and future of the...
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65 min ·
Economic globalization has led to a massive expansion in the scale and power of big business and banking. It has also worsened nearly every problem we face: fundamentalism and ethnic...
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66 min ·
If you wanted to change an ancient culture in a generation, how would you do it? You would change the way it educates its children.
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87 min ·
A Quest for Meaning is an inspiring journey that connects personal growth and social change. It tells the story of two friends, Marc and Nathanael, who leave everything behind to go...
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92 min ·
Humanity is more than ever threatened by its own actions; we hear a lot about the need to minimize footprints and to reduce our impact. But what if our footprints were beneficial? What...
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109 min ·
Permaculture designer Andrew Faust gives us an inspiring and heady narrative about the evolution of all life and human consciousness on Mother Earth.
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51 min ·
All our knowledge comes from nature and yet nature is a source of many mysteries.
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160 min ·
From cave paintings to virtual reality, Beware of Images embarks on a fascinating journey through the history of mediated representation. This is the history of media you will never find...
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86 min ·
Money & Life is a passionate and inspirational essay-style documentary that asks a provocative question: can we see the economic crisis not as a disaster, but as a tremendous opportunity?
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3 min ·
A New Story For Humanity presents a beautifully and sensitively woven tapestry of the rich diversity that is the human family. Featuring interviews on the essential topics of our time...
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102 min ·
This stunning film takes you on a hypnotic journey, reaching to the past to understand the origins of the catastrophic environmental transitions we now face. Over two years, director...
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48 min ·
A film on Climate Change, Degrowth and System Change. The effects and risks of climate change are compelling young people the world round to call upon radical system change as the only...
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79 min ·
A Simpler Way follows a community in Australia who came together to explore and demonstrate a simpler way to live in response to global crises. Throughout the year the group built tiny...
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100 min ·
Tawai is a word the nomadic hunter-gatherers of Borneo use to describe the connection they feel to their forest home. In this dreamy, philosophical and sociological look at life, Bruce...
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73 min ·
In his final long-form documentary interview - filmed over four years - Chomsky unpacks the principles that have brought us to the crossroads of historically unprecedented inequality...
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101 min ·
“Once in a while a film comes along that has profound impact – this is a delicious taste of what can be.” - Polly Higgins
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87 min ·
Within Reach explores one couple's pedal-powered search for a place to call home. Mandy and Ryan gave up their jobs, cars, and traditional houses to 'bike-pack' 6500 miles around the USA...
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75 min ·
“The Twelve” tells the story of twelve spiritual Elders from around the globe. By interviewing each one of them in their home environments, the film is told exclusively through the...
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560 min ·
Plutocracy, by filmmaker Scott Noble, is the first documentary series to comprehensively examine early American history through the lens of class.
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31 min ·
In this 30 minute video, Andrew Faust shares his inspiring vision for greater food and energy independence. It's a guide to feeding and providing power for our local communities in ways...
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80 min ·
When so many are struggling for connection, inspiration and hope, Fantastic Fungi brings us together as interconnected creators of our world.
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96 min ·
Feeding Ourselves weaves intimate stories from the hopes and convictions of rural BC farmers and producers as they navigate undercurrents of uncertainty with our food system. Their...
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40 min ·
THE NATURE OF CITIES follows the journey of Professor Timothy Beatley as he explores urban projects around the world, representing the new green movement that hopes to move our urban...
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95 min ·
From Venezuela's Communal Councils, to Brazil's Participatory Budgeting; from Constitutional Assemblies to grassroots movements, recuperated factories to cooperatives across the...
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157 min ·
Funny, provocative and surprisingly accessible, MANUFACTURING CONSENT explores the political life and ideas of Noam Chomsky, world-renowned linguist, intellectual and political activist...
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29 min ·
COMMUNITIES OF HOPE is a film born from a quest to discover a regenerative culture.
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57 min ·
Political power—armed central authority, with states and war—is it part of human nature?
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95 min ·
Since it mysteriously appeared on YouTube on July 18, 2012, ‘Propaganda’ has been described as ‘1984 meets The Blair Witch Project’, ‘A mouthful of scary porridge’, and ‘Even better than...
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60 min ·
If you think U.S. news has a liberal bias, this assumption-shattering film from Noam Chomsky, Edward Herman, and Justin Lewis will have you thinking again. Making the common-sense case...
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2 min ·
Award-winning director Damon Gameau (That Sugar Film) embarks on a journey to explore what the future could look like by the year 2040 if we simply embraced the best solutions already...
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162 min ·
Zeitgeist: Moving Forward is a feature-length documentary by Peter Joseph that argues for a global transition away from our current monetary-based economic system toward a more...
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382 min ·
What is it that makes us human? Is it that we love, that we fight? That we laugh? Cry? Our curiosity? The quest for discovery?
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65 min ·
Crossroads: Labor Pains of a New Worldview is a documentary exploring the depths of the current human condition and the emergence of a worldview that is recreating our world from the...
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89 min ·
School Circles is an independent documentary that explores the practice of democratic schools in the Netherlands. The film shows students, teachers and staff members coming together to...
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85 min ·
Living the Change explores solutions to the global crises we face today – solutions any one of us can be part of – through the inspiring stories of people pioneering change in their own...
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66 min ·
How do we navigate the intensity of emotions and reactions stirred up by climate change, or COVID-19 for that matter? How do we come to a place of peace, compassion, forgiveness and...
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85 min ·
This film presents an optimistic alternative to apocalyptic doom and gloom. Directed by Emmy Award nominee João Amorim, the film follows journalist Daniel Pinchbeck, author of the...
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63 min ·
"Project Censored The Movie: Ending the Reign of Junk Food News" takes an in-depth look at what is wrong with the news media in the U.S. today and highlights the work of 40-year veteran...
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70 min ·
At a time when many are disillusioned with big banks and big business, and growing inequity in our country, employee ownership offers a real solution for workers and communities. SHIFT...
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120 min ·
What if telling a story that gives hope by pointing out solutions was the best way to solve the ecological, economical and social crises that shake our world?
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59 min ·
This film series explores many aspects of our society. To rethink what is possible in our world, we need to consider what kind of world we want to live in. Although we refer to it as...
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104 min ·
United Natures explores the rights of Mother Earth, environmental philosophy, wisdom, spirituality, and the potential for a neo-indigenous future for humanity.
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59 min ·
Within modern life exists a paradox: we celebrate democracy as a political system, but not as an economic system, even though our workplaces have a far greater impact on our day to day...
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95 min ·
EARTHLINGS is a feature-length documentary about humanity's absolute dependence on animals (for pets, food, clothing, entertainment, and scientific research) but also illustrates our...
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104 min ·
"In a time when many are questioning institutional integrity across society, seeking accurate and relevant information to help make sense of our supposedly post-truth era, Noble shines a...
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39 min ·
REAL ESTATE 4 RAN$OM outlines a genuine alternative to the global property speculation that forced so many into debt. Doubling the pressure, the tax game has become just that, with tax...
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165 min ·
InterReflections is an experimental, mixed genre narrative feature film by Peter Joseph, adapted from his book The New Human Rights Movement. The ambitious, nearly 3 hour work challenges...
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98 min ·
The film dives into the deeply personal stories and everyday lives of families and communities struggling to fight a goliath. A working mother is forced to turn to public assistance to...
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30 min ·
This film covers the basic economic principles of Prout, which offers a viable alternative to the materialistic, anti-human philosophies of Capitalism and Communism.
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35 min ·
Peter Russell’s award-winning video, based on a live audio-visual presentation in 1983. He explores the idea that the Earth is an integrated, self-regulating living organism and asks...
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66 min ·
This film is an inspirational immersion in the Transition movement, gathering stories from around the world of ordinary people doing extraordinary things. There are stories of...
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56 min ·
AFFLUENZA diagnoses a serious social disease - caused by consumerism, commercialism and rampant materialism - that is having a devastating impact on our families, communities, and the...
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98 min ·
A powerful and timely investigation into the media’s role in war, tracing the history of embedded and independent reporting from the carnage of World War One to the destruction of...
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52 min ·
When the Soviet Union collapsed in 1990, Cuba's economy went into a tailspin. With imports of oil cut by more than half – and food by 80 percent – people were desperate. This film tells...
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61 min ·
Not Business As Usual is a provocative look at capitalism and its unintended price of success. The film tracks the changing landscape of business with the rising tide of conscious...
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105 min ·
The global economy is in crisis. The exponential exhaustion of natural resources, declining productivity, slow growth, rising unemployment, and steep inequality, forces us to rethink our...
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90 min ·
FIRST EARTH is a documentary about the movement towards a massive paradigm shift for shelter -- building healthy houses in the old ways, out of the very earth itself, and living together...
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123 min ·
Zeitgeist: Addendum, a 2008 documentary film produced by Peter Joseph, is a continuation of the film Zeitgeist, the Movie. The film includes facts regarding the Federal Reserve System in...
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68 min ·
Food and farming is in crisis. In just over a decade we’ve lost more than 33,000 farms from our countryside, and alongside this, bad diet is now causing more health problems than...
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84 min ·
In 2004, thirteen Indigenous Grandmothers from all four corners, moved by their concern for our planet, came together at a historic gathering, where they decided to form an alliance: The...
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86 min ·
Carne Ross was a government highflyer. A career diplomat who believed Western Democracy could save us all. But working inside the system he came to see its failures, deceits and ulterior...
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87 min ·
In the wake of Argentina's dramatic economic collapse in 2001, Latin America's most prosperous middle class finds itself in a ghost town of abandoned factories and mass unemployment. The...
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60 min ·
Why is it that some children thrive while others do not? Is it a matter of genetics, IQ, socioeconomic background or education? Every child deserves to reach their full potential and the...
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49 min ·
Man is the only creature that produces landfills. Natural resources are being depleted on a rapid scale while production and consumption are rising in nations like China and India. The...
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27 min ·
Class Dismissed provides a critical look at how U.S. history is taught in high school, at the myths that reduce the complexity of history into simple soundbites, and the information that...
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129 min ·
We live in a world of screens. The average adult spends the majority of their waking hours in front of some sort of screen or device. We're enthralled, we're addicted to these machines...
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63 min ·
The Canary Effect takes an in depth look at the devastating effect that US policies have had on the indigenous people of America.
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59 min ·
Academy Award-winning filmmaker Alex Gibney (Taxi to the Dark Side, Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room) presents his take on the gap between rich and poor Americans in Park Avenue...
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54 min ·
Cops and former cops who have put in decades fighting the war on drugs speak out against prohibition.
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44 min ·
A whirlwind week in Singapore exploring the amazing story of how Singapore came to be one of the most 'biophilic' cities of the world, on the cutting edge of ecocity design and...
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73 min ·
"The Superior Human?" systematically challenges the common human belief that humans are superior to all other life forms, which is often used as an excuse for animal cruelty and the...
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51 min ·
Planet Local shows a quiet and transformative revolution emerging worldwide.
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101 min ·
This is a movie about how we have left the natural connection to the planet. The movie investigates how this has happened, the incredible amounts of pollutants that we are exposed to...
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53 min ·
Education For a Sustainable Future presents information on how today's practices in schools are socially unsustainable. The documentary film critically analyses what is considered...
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264 min ·
"A gripping, deeply informative account of the plunder, hypocrisy, and mass violence of plutocracy and empire; insightful, historically grounded and highly relevant to the events of...
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70 min ·
Part III of The Bloom “New Ways of The Sacred” looks at how Transformational Festivals are venues for an active engagement with ancient, universal themes of MYTHOS, RITUAL and THE...
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50 min ·
Does the philosophy of materialism work to destroy our identities, experience, and environment? Join narrator Daphne Ellis on a radical romp through the evidence and decide for yourself...
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66 min ·
2016-17 saw the worst prison riots in decades. Across the country the prisons estate exploded as warned by campaigners and prisoners. The flames of the riots cast a light on the...
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72 min ·
Does each gesture really make a difference? Can music and dance be a weapon of peace? Director Iara Lee embarked on a three-year, five-continent trek to find out. From AFRICAN countries'...
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48 min ·
"It's possible to rehabilitate large-scale damaged ecosystems with the use of permaculture design principles and techniques."
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56 min ·
Australian filmmaker Peter Charles Downey takes us on a personal and cathartic journey of empowerment, redemption, and healing.
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70 min ·
Award-winning filmmaker Jesse Borkowski delivers a refreshing meditation on how business can be used to create value beyond profit; connecting motivational stories from social...
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45 min ·
This is a documentary about getting out into the natural world and learning from the wisdom of land and people - focusing on how rewilding our perception might be the catalyst for the...
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76 min ·
INHABITANTS follows five Native American communities as they restore their traditional land management practices in the face of a changing climate. For millennia Native Americans...
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84 min ·
From Executive Producer Mark Ruffalo comes the world’s first documentary film on the Rights of Nature Movement, a “Paradigm Shifting” story where the 'Rights of Nature' has...
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60 min ·
Biophilic Design is an innovative way of designing the places where we live, work, and learn. We need nature in a deep and fundamental fashion, but we have often designed our cities and...
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63 min ·
United States of Distraction chronicles critical media literacy and faculty experts, students, and media makers who provide contextual analysis for understanding the current rise of the...
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61 min ·
Opening with a powerful ‘deep time’ perspective, from the beginning of the Earth to our present moment, BAFTA-winning director Peter Armstrong's new film recognises the fundamental...
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55 min ·
Climate change is here. Will we have the wisdom to survive? The film features thought leaders and activists in the realms of science, economics, and spirituality. The focus: how we can...
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35 min ·
"When today's stories of crushing greed and endless growth have come to an end, what, then, will be the new stories?"
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44 min ·
The Third Harmony tells the story of nonviolence, humanity’s greatest (and most overlooked) resource.
"I am exhilarated and grateful to the filmmakers for bringing forth such a fine...
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90 min ·
70 years ago Costa Rica abolished its army and committed itself to fostering a peaceful society. It has been reaping the benefits ever since.
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71 min ·
Before starting a family, Soozie Eastman, daughter of an industrial chemical distributor, embarks on a journey to find out the levels of toxins in her body and explores if there is...
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57 min ·
The story of how a mining town recovered from its legacy of pollution and prospered by building community around the battle to save their beautiful river.
Born in the California Gold...
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51 min ·
Cities should be a solution not a problem for human beings. The city of Curitiba has demonstrated for the past 40 years how to transform problems into cost-effective solutions that can...
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77 min ·
Through the stories of six extraordinary individuals, Self-Taught explores what self-directed education means to them and the impact it has had on their lives, ambitions, work and beliefs.
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66 min ·
Consuming Kids throws desperately needed light on the practices of a relentless multi-billion dollar marketing machine that now sells kids and their parents everything from junk food to...
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89 min ·
For the first time in history, mental illness and suicide have become one of the greatest threats to school-aged children. Many parents still view dangers as primarily physical and...
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94 min ·
The discipline that involves doing sports combined with the mental clarity that comes from being immersed in nature is a combination that has enabled thousands of people to abandon...
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28 min ·
A new biographical documentary of Zen Master Thich Nhat Hanh narrated by actor Peter Coyote, A Cloud Never Dies weaves together original film and photographic archives, telling the story...
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82 min ·
Gratitude Revealed is a remarkable cinematic documentary that has been forty years in the making.
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88 min ·
In this program, the filmmakers share insights from some leading voices on our human predicament, that being the conflict between our current economic paradigm which demands infinite...
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Did we miss anything really good? What films would you add to the list? Let us know.
If you're a filmmaker and want to add your film to our library, you can add it here (if it's free). If the film is Pay-Per-View, check out our On Demand service and get in touch!
Fan suggestions:
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30 min ·
What If A Solution To Climate Change Was Beneath Your Feet?
Soil is a living universe beneath our feet. As important to our lives as clean air and water, soil also holds a potential...
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50 min ·
This is a story about clothing. It’s about the clothes we wear, the people who make them, and the impact the industry is having on our world. The price of clothing has been decreasing...
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85 min ·
Join acclaimed director Velcrow Ripper on a journey deep inside the global revolution of the heart that is erupting around the planet. Occupy Love explores the growing realization that...
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90 min ·
Oscar-nominated Pete Postlethwaite plays an old man living in the devastated world of 2055 in this documentary-drama-animation hybrid from Director Franny Armstrong and Oscar-winning...
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92 min ·
The Biggest Little Farm chronicles the eight-year quest of John and Molly Chester as they trade city living for 200 acres of barren farmland and a dream to harvest in harmony with...
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2 min ·
MANUFACTURED LANDSCAPES is a feature-length documentary on the world and work of renowned artist Edward Burtynsky. Burtynsky makes large-scale photographs of ‘manufactured landscapes’ –...
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90 min ·
The Ghosts in Our Machine is a journey of discovery into what is a complex social dilemma, one that needs to be considered morally significant. In essence, humans have cleverly...
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65 min ·
This inspirational film presents innovative and very concrete solutions to the food security challenges of our crisis-ridden age. Its powerful images showcase community-led agriculture...
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110 min ·
The life and work of photographer Sebastião Salgado, who has spent forty years documenting deprived societies in hidden corners of the world.
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96 min ·
With an estimated 60 years of farmable soil left on Earth, The Need To GROW offers an intimate look into the hearts of activists and innovators in the food movement - an 8 year old girl...
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77 min ·
A perfect storm is brewing as agriculture pioneer Cary Fowler races against time to protect the future of our food. Gene banks of the world are crumbling, crop failures are producing...
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161 min ·
We live in a time of great uncertainty and confusion. Events keep happening that seem inexplicable and out of control. Donald Trump, Brexit, the War in Syria, the endless migrant crisis...
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114 min ·
This film explores the historical role of the Democratic Party as the "graveyard of social movements", the massive influence of corporate finance in elections, the absurd disparities of...
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230 min ·
The Century of the Self tells the untold and sometimes controversial story of the growth of the mass-consumer society. How was the all-consuming self created, by whom, and in whose...
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87 min ·
The Crisis of Civilization investigates how global crises like ecological disasters, financial meltdowns, dwindling oil reserves, terrorism, and food shortages are converging symptoms of...
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54 min ·
Future Dreaming is a remarkable documentary that will challenge the way you think about humanity. The film explores the narratives that drive our economic, social and political thinking...
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Want to dive deeper? Here are 4 more collections we've curated:
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Tim Hjersted ·
"It’s all a question of story. We are in trouble just now because we are in between stories. The Old Story—the account of how the world came to be and how we fit into it—sustained us for...
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Films For Action ·
This collection of 122 documentaries is a map for navigating the 21st century. It is guided by the premise that we are facing a planetary emergency, and the primary role of schools today...
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Films For Action ·
There are over 6,000 videos on Films For Action, hand-curated for their potential to inspire action and raise awareness on just about every topic related to making the world a better place.
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Tim Hjersted ·
The world today is in crisis. Everybody knows that. But what is driving this crisis? It's a story, a story that is destroying the world. It's a story about our relationship to the world...
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