Best movies like Ascent

A conceptual bicentennial film dealing with spatial and temporal relationships between two travelers, their car, and the geographic, political, and social changes from NY to Los Angeles.

A look at the mystique of road movies, combining interviews, film clips, music, photography, literature and a narrative storyline featuring Paul Rudd and Tom McCarthy.

The first of four installments in the groundbreaking Heartbeat of the World anthology film series. Comprised of several short films by some of the world's most exciting directors, Words with Gods follows the theme of religion - specifically as it relates to an individual's relationship with his/her god or gods...or the lack thereof. In Words with Gods, each director recounts a narrative centered around human fragility, as well as environmental and cultural crises involving specific religions with which each has a personal relationship; including early Aboriginal Spirituality, Umbanda, Buddhism, the Abrahamic faiths, Hinduism, and Atheism. An animated sequence by Mexican animator Maribel Martinez is woven through each of the film segments, with each segment narratively connected as a feature-length film.

Takes us to locations all around the US and shows us the heavy toll that modern technology is having on humans and the earth. The visual tone poem contains neither dialogue nor a vocalized narration: its tone is set by the juxtaposition of images and the exceptional music by Philip Glass.

Documentary depicting the lives of child prostitutes in the red light district of Songachi, Calcutta. Director Zana Briski went to photograph the prostitutes when she met and became friends with their children. Briski began giving photography lessons to the children and became aware that their photography might be a way for them to lead better lives.

A documentary of the first successful expedition to the summit of Mount Everest. New Zealand's Edmund Hillary and Sherpa Tenzing Norgay climb Mount Everest in 1953.

Backpacking in the Caucasus Mountains, walking for hours, an engaged couple and their tour guide trade anecdotes and play games to pass the time, until a momentary misstep, that takes only two or three seconds, changes everything.

A dormant volcano deep with the Turkish forest holds within it a deadly secret. Perfectly preserved, a nest of pterodactyl eggs are ready to hatch...

A collection of magical tales based upon the actual dreams of director Akira Kurosawa.

Tim Jenison, a Texas based inventor, attempts to solve one of the greatest mysteries in all art: How did Dutch Master Johannes Vermeer manage to paint so photo-realistically 150 years before the invention of photography? Spanning a decade, Jenison's adventure takes him to Holland, on a pilgrimage to the North coast of Yorkshire to meet artista David Hockney, and eventually even to Buckingham Palace. The epic research project Jenison embarques on is as extraordinary as what he discovers.

Go head-to-head with an icebreaker. Plunge down a twisting mountain gorge. Soar through the clouds in the nosecone of a jet, then speed along with a dog team as it races across a frozen Arctic lake. A sweeping, moving tribute to Canada's stunning geography and rich cultural heritage, Momentum leaps off your screen--and touches your heart. Momentum wowed audiences from around the world when it premiered at Seville, the greatest world's fair of the last quarter century.

A newly married couple discovers disturbing, ghostly images in photographs they develop after a tragic accident. Fearing the manifestations may be connected, they investigate and learn that some mysteries are better left unsolved.

Shinko (Karin Aiba) is a high school student from Hamamatsu. Due to university admission pressures, she struggles with her mother. She hasn't really made conversation with her mom in a year. Shinko's friend Misato (Mayuu Kusakari) then recommends to her to join the school's calligraphy club. Shinko is impressed by Teacher Yatsushiro's (Kazuki Namioka) words. Teacher Yatsushiro is the one who takes care of the calligraphy club. Shinko decides to join the calligraphy club.

A doomed love triangle between intrepid French scientists Katia and Maurice Krafft, and their beloved volcanoes.

When Nicki finds two horses stranded deep in the Rocky Mountain snow, she makes it her mission to find a way to get them to safety. With no other options, she picks up a shovel and starts to dig out the mile-long path, inspiring her father, Matt, and the rest of the community to join together and save the horses in the spirit of Christmas.

Documents the daily lives of a small community of the living deceased who make their home in Los Angeles.

When a young hiker stumbles onto an isolated farm after losing her way on the Appalachian Trail, she is taken in by a strange yet beautiful couple desperate to protect a secret deep in the mountains.

After being cryogenically frozen for more than 30 years, a woman wakes to find her husband an old man and her children older than she is. Her daughter has also developed a psychotic obsession with her and may be out to kill her.

A documentary about how a dominant cultural and demographic institution both sustains their traditional activities and adapts to the digital revolution.

Sam Hunter, an American photojournalist, is ostensibly covering the Pope's visit to the South American country of San Pedro. But Sam's real goal is to track down the elusive revolutionary leader Marcos and bring back an exclusive interview. Sam quickly gets into trouble with the repressive military regime of the dictator Mendosa, which controls San Pedro with an iron grip. Nevertheless, Sam heads off to the mountains to find Marcos. On his way, he meets the radiantly beautiful Dr. Luisa Suarez, a doctor committed to the impoverished mountain peasants. An awakening volcano and the best efforts of a government death squad do not stop Sam from reaching Marcos, and he becomes sympathetic to the cause... documenting it with his photos. In a tumultuous climax, revolution and the volcano erupt simultaneously, as Sam struggles to get his revealing photos out to the front pages of the world's newspapers.

Aki isn’t a brave little boy, but he’s dedicated nonetheless to safeguarding his sickly, mute friend Fuyu. They and their little gang live deep underground, in the concrete warrens to which survivors have fled following the eruption of Mt. Fuji. The community is in decline, however, as illness and despair take their toll. Fuyu dreams of the outside world, which he is too frail to ever reach. But what colour is the sky out there?

The unknown life of Ukiyo-e artist Katsushika Hokusai in the Edo period, who is said to have painted more than 30,000 works throughout his life, such as "Thirty-Six Views of Mount Fuji"

Filth & Wisdom is a poignant view of the lives of three not quite ordinary friends settled into meaningless jobs that barely keep them afloat while helping to finance their dreams of bigger and brighter futures. Their unique yet universal stories capture their struggles that are at turns funny and tragic but always brutally honest. Their intertwined lives explore the inevitable: a path paved with filth will often end in wisdom and one paved with wisdom will often end in filth.

The story of the unprecedented sports shutdown in March of 2020 and the remarkable turn of events that followed. This sports documentary is a chronicle of the abrupt stoppage, athletes’ prominent role in the cultural reckoning on racial injustices that escalated during the pandemic, and the complex return to competition in the summer and fall.

The 1980 eruption of Mount St. Helens was the deadliest in U.S. history. Survivor testimonies and rare images reveal the cataclysms it unleashed.

David Attenborough sets out on a journey across the seven continents in search of the most impressive and inspiring natural wonders of our planet.

What life was like in the ancient Roman city of Pompeii moments before it was devastated by the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in A.D. 79.

Julia Bradbury heads for Iceland to embark on the toughest walk of her life. Her challenge is to walk the 60 kilometres of Iceland's most famous hiking route, a trail that just happens to end at the unpronounceable volcano that brought air traffic across Europe to a standstill in 2010 . With the help of Icelandic mountain guide Hanna, Julia faces daunting mountain climbs, red hot lava fields, freezing river crossings, deadly clouds of sulphuric gas, swirling ash deserts and sinister Nordic ghost stories as she attempts to reach the huge volcanic crater at the centre of the Eyjafjallajökull glacier.

Meet three families from around the world as they keep households with 13, 16 and even more than 150 family members organized on a daily basis.

Haruma is an up-and-coming photographer who is getting full exposure at a photo exhibition in a Tokyo photo gallery. Rei, a beautiful curator at the Yamanashi Prefectural Art Museum, is fascinated by the photos she sees and calls Haruma to request a photo-shoot with an intimate part of herself as the subject. The only rules to this shoot are that no questions must be asked and Rei will be given the negatives. Haruma is initially surprised but goes along with the job, however, Haruma’s pregnant girlfriend Natsumi grows frustrated over being kept in the dark about their work and jealousy develops in their relationship as passions blow up.

Eami means ‘forest’ in Ayoreo. It also means ‘world’. The story happens in the Paraguayan Chaco, the territory with the highest deforestation rate in the world. 25,000 hectares of forest are being deforested a month in this territory which would mean an average of 841 hectares a day or 35 hectares per hour. The forest barely lives and this only due to a reserve that the Totobiegosode people achieved in a legal manner. They call Chaidi this place which means ancestral land or the place where we always lived and it is part of the "Ayoreo Totobiegosode Natural and Cultural Heritage". Before this, they had to live through the traumatic situation of leaving the territory behind and surviving a war. It is the story of the Ayoreo Totobiegosode people, told from the point of view of Asoja, a bird-god with the ability to bring an omniscient- temporal gaze, who becomes the narrator of this story developed in a crossing between documentary and fiction.

Will, a charming 35-year-old Philadelphia ad man, heads to Lebanon, Pa. to bury his recently deceased father. He forms an unexpected friendship with CJ, his bright, newly pregnant 17-year-old cousin. As Will becomes interested in CJ's married teacher and CJ confronts her conflicted father, both struggle with formidable decisions about the path their lives will take. Can we vault our differences and meet in the middle? This bittersweet comic drama tenderly explores the cultural divide in America through the lives of one extended family.

Upon the death of his great grandfather, Brandon Davis a wedding photographer inherits an antique camera famous for taking Victorian death photography. After photographing his subjects they start to die from horrible, bizarre deaths.

In 1977, a book of photographs captured an awakening - women shedding the cultural restrictions of their childhoods and embracing their full humanity. This documentary revisits those photos, those women and those times and takes aim at our culture today that alarmingly shows the need for continued change.

1 Giant Leap is a concept band and media project consisting of the two principal artists, Jamie Catto and Duncan Bridgeman. This is the film part of their first project. The result is a flowing, loose-knit tapestry of imagery, interviews, and diverse performances. Gathering material from 25 countries and dozens of famous and not-so-famous musicians, authors, celebrities, spiritualists, philosophers, and unique individuals from nearly every cultural background, this enveloping DVD is best enjoyed as a soothing audiovisual odyssey (select "loop mode" for continuous play!). Assembling this cornucopia by theme (Time, Inspiration, Sex, God, Death, etc.), Bridgeman and Catto function as co-composers with an astonishing array of collaborators, giving 1 Giant Leap its richly international (and some might say inter-spiritual) identity. The result is a far-reaching glimpse of our world through the eyes of those who improve it by their musical presence. --Jeff Shannon