Scottish Documentary Institute

A remote and wild island on the west coast of Scotland is home to a small group of people that live in deep connection with the land, the sea and the weather. For different reasons, they left their city life to escape their inner demons and to live as eco-friendly and sustainable as possible.

Prison life in the build up to the annual Scottish Prison Service hairdressing competition. Winning the coveted prize is the ultimate goal, but Francis, the current champion has other objectives on his mind.

Breathing is about the thin space between life and death. 34-year-old Neil Platt plans his own funeral, muses about the meaning of life and the impossibility of terminating a mobile phone contract. With 5 months left to live, and paralyzed from the neck down by Motor Neurone Disease, he ponders how to communicate about his life in a letter for his baby son. How can he anticipate what he might want to know about his father in a future he can only imagine?

An intimate look at the daily happenings in a registrar office in Edinburgh.

Bill Drummond, once the most notorious man in pop music, now travels around the world baking cakes, building beds and shining shoes as part of a twelve year World Tour which is his final art project. This film follows him as he does his work in India and the United States.

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.

How has science impacted on our perception of God?

An intimate portrait of three parents trying to come to terms with their missing children and struggling to move on with their own lives.

Fitting explores the relationship between the director, an amputee, and her prosthetist, by their contrasting experiences during the making of a prosthetic leg. It asks what it means for to create an extension to someone else’s body, and the impact this has on both maker and amputee. The film demystifies this unfamiliar space and experience for the viewer, and questioning stereotyping and prejudice widely seen within our society's consideration of body image.

A black filmmaker's trip to Scotland leads to an exploration of Scottish Caribean history.

In the Basque town of Altsasu, the beds of seven young men lie empty. As the town celebrates its annual festival, Altsasu follows Igone as she copes with the imprisonment of her son Jokin and six others, convicted in a case which has been widely condemned as a miscarriage of justice.

A look at the array of mysterious, quirky objects received by fashion designer Paul Smith and the effect they have had on his life.

When a Palestinian filmmaker based in Scotland unearths a rarely-seen Scottish film archive of Palestinian wild flowers, he decides to reclaim the footage. This tender film essay questions the role of image-making as a tool of both testimony and violence when connected to entanglements between people and the land.

From Tripoli to Benghazi, meet a grandmother sowing the national flag with relish, a young woman determined to become a film director, a fisherman philosopher, illegal migrants caught in limbo in a detention center, a group of young filmmakers trying to fund their fiction film and many others. A collection of brief insights into the lives of people trying to find normality in a world of chaos.

In post-revolution Libya, a group of women are brought together by one dream: to play football for their nation. But as the country descends into civil war and the utopian hopes of the “Arab Spring” begin to fade, can they realise their dream? And is there even a country left to play for? Freedom Fields is a film about hope and sacrifice in a land where dreams seem a luxury. Through the eyes of these accidental activists we see the reality of a country in transition, where the personal stories of love, struggle and aspirations collide with History.

A blind woman prepares to be introduced to her partner's family three thousand miles away.

As a family from a politically and physically divided island, Meray and her father developed extremely opposite views to each other. She travels from Scotland back to her childhood home - to the garden where she once had nightmares of the conflict. Now it's blossoming with fruit trees that her father grows, acting as the conversational middle ground for the deeper problems of the relationship. As the debates about power dynamics in the house and on the island grow in parallel, she needs to understand her father's experiences and find the courage to tell him that she always sought his validation. Meray felt oppressed by her father and the state in north Cyprus, and finally wants to express herself within her family, and the Cyprus that she once escaped.

A scientist in a laboratory in Scotland attempts to create synthetic life.

A film crew travels to the island of Islay off the west coast of Scotland to investigate the curious tale of the discovery on the island of a dead wallaby.

The story of Rudolph Hess's mysterious 1941 flight to Scotland.