True Story is a streaming platform dedicated to the art of documentary storytelling. "a welcome home for curated non-fiction from around the world" - Sight and Sound
New on True Story
Stories
Three Women - Director Interview
Interview with director Maksym Melnyk, by film critic and curator Sevara Pan.
Sami's Odysseys - Director's Note
I met Sami during my first visit to Addis Ababa in September 2014. After traveling, working, and filming in Russia for about fifteen years, my discovery of Ethiopia was a dizzying experience. It was an unknown, mysterious land to me: its language, history, and culture were totally unfamiliar. Lured by the magnetism of this new universe, my meeting with Sami was decisive: with him, I walked through Addis for days and nights, wandering streets and alleys, entering places that, as…
Prism - 3 Filmmakers, 3 Voices
An van. Dienderen: “China Girls” are the images of white women filmed very briefly with a color card. The process is deeply hidden in the technology of cinema. Since it is only used by technicians, the average viewer does not normally get to see it. However, it is a process that demonstrates that the technology of cinema is biased to portray white skin well and the skin of colored people much worse. This is especially evident in images where you…
Courtney Stephens - Minor Spaces
Courtney Stephens talks about her films Mating Games, Ida Western Exile and The American Sector (co-directed with Pacho Velez). Interview by Carol Nahra from Docs on Screens.
Art Talent Show – Director Interview
The film was shot within one week. Where did you get the idea to focus on the time of talent tests only?
Lists
New on True Story 12 films
We add a new documentary to True Story every Friday, check out some of our recent releases.
Recent reviews
"Very few documentary filmmakers today see themselves as a “fly on the wall”. But gifting a pig to a protagonist in front of the camera or letting her cut the camerman’s hair? That’s rather unusual...the film portrays a rural lifestyle full of privation that seems to be in decline in the mountain region near the EU border." - DOK Leipzig, Audience Award Winner
CALVINIA follows a 40-year-old man who returns to his hometown in rural South Africa to visit his elderly father. His journey oscillates between memories of his childhood on a sheep farm in the 1980s and present-day images of people and places from his past, still familiar but weathered by the passage of time. A journey of self-discovery unfolding in concentric circles, CALVINIA evokes the nostalgia of childhood memories within the complex socio-political realities of a fractured society.
"beautifully constructed...This poetically…
The erudite and indigent Sami lives in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. Nearing sixty, he has just completed a scholarly work in Amharic about Greco-Roman mythology, and he intends to publish it, come hell or high water.
"In Ethiopia’s labyrinthine capital, a recluse sits translating Greek and Roman myths on an ancient laptop as cosmic chaos presses in on him." - CPH:DOX, Next Wave Competition
#TrueStoryDocs
Four furious years in one of Naples’ toughest neighbourhoods, where all three generations of a single family live on the edge of the law.
"Fiore expertly combines observations...to reach a kind of ecstatic truth that is as beautiful as it is heart wrenching." - Cineuropa
Being thrown down a flight of stairs, hit by a car or beaten up is the everyday life for stuntwomen. We follow Virginie, Petra and Estelle during training sessions and on film sets in France and the US. What does all this pretend-violence do to their bodies and minds?
"Elena Avdija’s revelatory and nuanced documentary shines a light on the incredibly brave performers who face physical and emotional battles on and off screen" Guardian
A bittersweet story about living life to the fullest, disregarding one’s age and refusing to conform to social norms. Queer performer Lulla La Polaca hasn’t given up on finding love, though his eighty-year-old body and a world that would like to label him as a senior citizen, sometimes can’t keep up with his desires.
"Still sorely underexplored on screen, the autumnal years of queer life are vibrantly explored in Bogna Kowalczyk’s lively and moving portrait of 82-year-old drag artist Andrzej Szwan, who goes by the name Lulla La Polaca on stage." - Guardian
"A cinematic and existential encounter" - Ann Arbor Film Festival
A young man returns to his native Romania to make a fresh start as a shepherd. Jannes Callens' film moves at the same pace as a pasture crossing, between expedition, pause and contemplation. Striking images of this profession merge with existential considerations. How can you guide a flock when you're a little lost yourself?
"reclaims the autonomy of marginalised figures from the white gaze." - Guardian
PRISM is a co-creative film in the form of a chain letter, directed by three filmmakers with different skin tones. PRISM problematises the neutrality of the camera and its inequality of power to tackle other inequalities
in society based on skin colour.
We add a new documentary to True Story every Friday, check out some of our recent releases.