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© 2026 The Couch Critic
Browse 340 movies from Doc Society
A talented group of orphaned children in Swaziland create a fictional heroine and send her on a dangerous quest.
Jul 2017
A palpably rendered audiovisual essay draws together the distinct sensibilities of filmmakers Peter Mettler (The End of Time) and Emma Davie (I am Breathing) and philosopher David Abram (The Spell of the Sensuous) to forge a path into the places where humans and animals meet.
Nov 2018
Since the beginning of her career, Sinéad O’Connor has used her powerful voice to challenge the narratives she was surrounded by while growing up in predominantly Roman Catholic Ireland. Despite her agency, depth and perspective, O’Connor’s unflinching refusal to conform means that she has often been patronized and unfairly dismissed as an attention-seeking pop star.
Sep 2022
Structured as a labyrinth-like game and inspired by Jorge Luis Borges, Aleph is a travelogue of experience, a dreamer's journey through the lives, experiences, stories and musings of protagonists spanning ten countries and five continents.
Apr 2021
Investigative journalist, Jeremy Scahill is pulled into an unexpected journey as he chases down the hidden truth behind America's expanding covert wars, and examines how the US government has responded to international terrorist threats in ways that seem to go against the established laws of the land.
Jan 2013
In the heart of America's opioid epidemic, four men try to reinvent their lives and mend their broken relationships after years of drug abuse.
May 2018
From a historic genocide trial to the overthrow of a president, the sweeping story of mounting resistance played out in Guatemala’s recent history is told through the actions and perspectives of the majority indigenous Mayan population, who now stand poised to reimagine their society.
Apr 2017
In the majestic tropical island of Palawan, three environmental crusaders confront murder, betrayal and political corruption in this thrilling documentary about land defenders battling to save and preserve paradise in the Philippines.
Apr 2022
This feature-length big screen documentary tells the riotous inside story of the infamous sex, drugs and rock 'n' roll repertory cinema which inspired a generation during Britain's turbulent Thatcher years.
Jan 2024
An investigation into abuse and missing children at an Indian residential school in Canada ignites a reckoning on the nearby Sugarcane Reserve.
Aug 2024
David Bond lives in one of the most intrusive surveillance states in the world. He decides to find out how much private companies and the government know about him by putting himself under surveillance and attempting to disappear, a decision that changes his life forever. Leaving his pregnant wife and young child behind, he is tracked across the database state on a chilling journey that forces him to contemplate the meaning of privacy and the loss of it.
Jan 2009
Celebrating the imagination and resourcefulness of young children across the UK by understanding the outdoor games they invent, inherit, and play.
Oct 2020
In 2007, Gillian Wearing placed an advert – in newspapers, online, in job centers, and elsewhere. It read: “Would you like to be in a film? You can play yourself or a fictional character. Call Gillian.” Of the hundreds of people who replied, seven – chosen through an extended process of auditions, interviews, and workshops – ended up appearing in Self Made. Of those seven, five in particular use the acting technique known as Method to delve into their memories, impulses, anxieties, fears, fantasies, and inner resources to create a series of individual performance vignettes, their personal ‘end scenes’, that reveal with particular intensity and clarity who they really are deep down – or who, in another version of their lives, they might easily have been.
Sep 2011
Southern Rites visits Montgomery County, Ga., one year after the town merged its racially segregated proms, and during a historic election campaign that may lead to its first African-American sheriff. Acclaimed photographer Gillian Laub, whose photos first brought the area unwanted notoriety, documents the repercussions when a white town resident is charged with the murder of a young black man. The case divides locals along well-worn racial lines, and the ensuing plea bargain and sentencing uncover complex truths and produce emotional revelations.
May 2015
The danger is palpable as intrepid young filmmaker Nanfu Wang follows maverick activist Ye Haiyan (a.k.a Hooligan Sparrow) and her band of colleagues to Hainan Province in southern China to protest the case of six elementary school girls who were sexually abused by their principal. Marked as enemies of the state, the activists are under constant government surveillance and face interrogation, harassment, and imprisonment. Sparrow, who gained notoriety with her advocacy work for sex workers’ rights, continues to champion girls’ and women’s rights and arms herself with the power and reach of social media.
Jul 2016
Tells the moving and inspiring story of 12 year old Slindile and her remarkable friends at the Agape orphanage in South Africa.
Nov 2006
Rob Lemkin’s harrowing yet urgent documentary shines a lens on the trauma and legacy of colonialism in one of Africa’s poorest nations, Niger.
When her mother Nuala goes missing somewhere in Ireland, artist Myrid Carten returns from London to find her. Her search takes her into a feuding family, a contested house; and a history that threatens to take everyone down, including herself.
Oct 2025
Immediately after the US pullout from Afghanistan, Taliban forces occupied the Hollywood Gate complex, which is claimed to be a former CIA base in Kabul.
Jul 2024
In this hypnotically cinematic love letter flowing through time and generations, director Chloe Abrahams probes raw questions her mother and grandmother have long brushed aside, tenderly untangling painful knots in her family’s unspoken past.
Nov 2024