Vigilante

One hero’s story of fighting back against gang culture on New York’s streets

Frustrated with the increasing rate of crime in 1970s New York, Curtis Sliwa and his fast-food restaurant colleagues decided to take citizen safety into their own hands – forming ‘The Guardian Angels’. Embraced by counter-culture and shunned by authorities, the group of 13 unarmed young men were quickly propelled to fame and their numbers grew into the thousands. 37-years on, the movement’s leader, Sliwa, opens up his dramatic story of life, death and risk while patrolling the dangerous subways and grim streets of the Bronx and beyond.

Keepers of the Magic

Seeing through the eyes of the world's best cinematographers

How do cinematographers capture the perfect shots? From natural light's limitations to the importance of director-cinematographer relationships, Keepers of the Magic foregrounds a unique discussion with a seamless amalgamation of cinema's most iconic sequences. Featuring interviews and analysis from the masterminds behind them, including Gordon Willis (The Godfather), Vittorio Storaro (Apocalypse Now) and Sam Mendes (American Beauty), this doc is as much a tribute to their work as a thoughtful and intelligent expose into cinema's world-class visionaries.

Grit

An insight into Indonesia's unstoppable mud explosion

When Dian was six she narrowly escaped a tsunami of boiling mud that completely submerged 16 villages under a moonscape of grit, leaving 60,000 people displaced. Lapindo, an Indonesian drilling company, had unleashed a violent, unstoppable flow from the earth's depths, estimated to continue for another decade. Shot over six years, GRIT witnesses Dian's transformation in to a politically active teen, as she and her mother take on the perpetrators.

The Teacher's Wife

ABC Australia's shocking investigation into the disappearance of Lyn Dawson

Chris and Lyn Dawson appeared to have the perfect marriage, but in 1982, Lyn disappeared. Attempts to prosecute Chris for her murder have proven unsuccessful. Now, hit podcast “The Teacher’s Pet” is shedding new light on Lyn’s disappearance.

Of Fish and Foe

A surprising look at contemporary eco-activism on the Scottish Seas

The Pullars are one of the last families using traditional methods to fish for wild Atlantic salmon off the coast of Scotland. When these methods involve killing seals, the salmon’s natural predators, conflict erupts. Animal activist groups Sea Shepherd and Hunt Saboteurs oppose the Pullars at every turn, despite the legality of the fishermen’s actions and the consequences to their livelihood. Challenging preconceptions, this ambiguous doc puts modern environmentalism under the microscope.

A Little Wisdom

Young monastic life in the heart of the Buddha’s birthplace

5-year old Hopakuli is lazy, cheeky and forever disobeying his elders. He is one of the young, orphaned monks living in the isolated Tibetan monastery of Lumbini, Nepal, the birthplace of the Buddha. As Hopakuli and his brother Chorten learn to endure the rigours of monastic life with their fellow orphans, they find escape in the power of their imaginations, the rough and tumble of their boyhood a constant challenge to the regimented religious environment they call home. Beautifully crafted, this stylish documentary is an intimate immersion into the universal truths of youth.

Stroop: Journey into the Rhino Horn War

On the frontline of the war against rhino poaching

In South Africa, poachers kill three rhinos every day. Fuelled by the demand for rhino horn in Southeast Asia, where it’s widely believed to have medicinal powers, poaching could see South Africa’s rhino population disappear in just a decade. With exclusive access to the rangers on the front line in South Africa’s national parks and with extraordinary undercover footage showing how the horn is processed and packaged in Asia, Stroop presents a never-before-seen panorama of the international rhino poaching crisis.

Pani: Women, Drugs and Kathmandu

Living with addiction in Kathmandu

In Kathmandu, life for female opioid addicts is hard. Shunned by society and with limited access to rehabilitation services, many turn to sex work and petty crime to survive. Living in the shadows, they endure a cycle of abuse at the hands of clients, drug dealers and corrupt officials. This powerful and intimate doc offers unique access into the lives of eight brave women, charting their struggles to live on and recover against the odds.

God Children

India's deified children born with birth defects

In rural villages of India, children born with a specific birth defect may be transformed overnight into a Hindu God, becoming an incarnation and a beacon of hope to the people around them. One boy never wished to be seen as a Hindu God, while the other only knows how to live as a symbol of hope to his village. Both were never given the choice.