On Call
Essential Documentaries
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1h 37m
Leaving January 1
Directed by Alice Diop | 97 mins | 2016
At the end of one of the corridors of the Avicennes Hospital in Bobigny, just outside of Paris, is a medical clinic for refugees: one of just a few in France, and the no-frills setting of this bracing piece of direct cinema. The dispassionate manner of the overworked medical professionals—and of the filmmaking—stands in contrast to both the intensity and import of their work.
Up Next in Essential Documentaries
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Towards Tenderness
Leaving January 1
Directed by Alice Diop | 40 mins | 2016
Four young men from the Parisian banlieues discourse on sex and love in this up-close and confessional, César-winning exploration of the contemporary male gaze. As in "Danton’s Death" (2011), the filmmaker Alice Diop is present in the fil... -
Danton's Death
Leaving January 1
Directed by Alice Diop | 65 mins | 2011
Skillfully illustrating the persistence of racialized stereotyping and its impact on the individual, Diop’s documentary follows the professional struggles of a young Black actor from Aulnay-sous-bois, a disadvantaged community on the outs... -
Goodbye to Language
Directed by Jean-Luc Godard | 70 mins | 2014
An innovator to the end, Godard’s penultimate feature finds him experimenting with the possibilities of digital 3D, using the technology to plot the disintegration of both a couple’s relationship and the images of the relationship. A film of unpreceden...