Best movies like Nolan: The Man and the Myth

The Universal Language is a new documentary from Academy Award-nominated director Sam Green (The Weather Underground). This 30-minute film traces the history of Esperanto, an artificial language that was created in the late 1800s by a Polish eye doctor who believed that if everyone in the world spoke a common tongue, humanity could overcome racism and war. Fittingly, the word “Esperanto” means “one who hopes.” During the early 20th century, hundreds of thousands of people around the world spoke Esperanto and believed in its ideals. Today, surprisingly, a vibrant Esperanto movement still exists. In this first-ever documentary about Esperanto, Green creates a portrait of the language and those who speak it today that is at once humorous, poignant, stirring, and ultimately hopeful.

A biography of Vincent van Gogh using only images and the letters he wrote to his brother Theo.

Under the pretense of having a picnic, a geologist takes his teenage daughter and 6-year-old son into the Australian outback and attempts to shoot them. When he fails, he turns the gun on himself, and the two city-bred children must contend with harsh wilderness alone. They are saved by a chance encounter with an Aboriginal boy who shows them how to survive, and in the process underscores the disharmony between nature and modern life.

In Bangkok, the young Kham was raised by his father in the jungle with elephants as members of their family. When his old elephant and the baby Kern are stolen by criminals, Kham finds that the animals were sent to Sidney. He travels to Australia, where he locates the baby elephant in a restaurant owned by the evil Madame Rose, the leader of an international Thai mafia. With the support of the efficient Thai sergeant Mark, who was involved in a conspiracy, Kham fights to rescue the animal from the mobsters.

David Byrne is a visual artist as well as a musician, and ever since his early days as a member of Talking Heads, he's wanted his concerts to be more than just a static performance. In 1984, Byrne and filmmaker Jonathan Demme redefined the boundaries of the concert film with the Talking Heads documentary STOP MAKING SENSE, and more than 25 years later Byrne has teamed up with David Hillman to create RIDE, RISE, ROAR, which documents Byrne's 2008-2009 concert tour, in which he performs new material written in collaboration with Brian Eno as well as favorites from his solo career as well as his tenure in Talking Heads. Using costumes and inventive choreography, Byrne and his musicians and dancers give his music a stage presentation as exciting as the music.

In his squalid apartment, a man tries to squash with his shoe an insect of some kind that is moving around the room.

After freeing a young Bedouin girl from her unjust imprisonment in Jerusalem, an Australian adventuress, together with her devoted police detective friend, begins to unravel a decade-old mystery concerning priceless emeralds, an ancient curse and the disappearance of the girl's mother and massacre of her tribe.

Young John Anderson is captivated by jazz musician, Billy Cross when he performs on the remote airstrip of his Western Australian outback hometown after his plane is diverted. Years later, now a family man and making a meagre living tracking dingoes and playing trumpet in a local band, John still dreams of joining Billy on trumpet and makes a pilgrimage to Paris.

In 1989, known as Mendax, Julian Assange and two friends formed a group called the International Subversives. Using early home computers and defining themselves as white hat hackers - those who look but don’t steal – they broke into some of the world’s most powerful and secretive organisations. In the eyes of the US Government, they were a major threat to national security.

Image of Death is a 1978 Australian TV movie about a woman who likes to live off other people's money.

In this one-hour documentary, superstar Miley Cyrus allows unprecedented access into her extraordinary life as she rises to the challenge of presenting a new and sometimes controversial persona to the public. As a teenage star, Miley amassed millions of passionate international fans who followed her every move. Three years later, she attempts to shed her previous image while embracing music full time. Whether in the studio, at a performance, or on the set of her latest music video, Miley exudes the confidence of a creative young woman in a period of radical self-discovery who still inspires legions of admirers while confronting her critics. Ultimately, the film is an intimate portrait that captures Miley's exuberantand spirited life, her evolving identity, and her exciting transformation into amusic icon.

Through a series of twenty six short stories, a girl describes the childhood events that shaped her ideas about fatherhood, family relations, work and play. As the stories unfold, a dual portrait emerges: that of a father who cared more for his career than for his family, and of a daughter who was deeply affected by his behavior. Working in counterpoint to the forceful text are sensual black and white images that depict both the extraordinary and ordinary events of daily life. Together, they create a formally complex and emotionally intense film.

An ancient talking macaw named Mac becomes the saving grace for an elderly man threatened with a nursing home, when it is discovered that the talking bird knows the whereabouts of a buried treasure from its days with a pirate. His grandson decides to go off on the hunt only to discover that a resort now exists where the treasure is buried.

Hitch a ride into the dark heart of Australia with Soda_Jerk's TERROR NULLIUS, a blistering, badly behaved sample-based film that confronts the horror of our contemporary moment. Equal parts political satire, eco-horror and road movie, TERROR NULLIUS is a rogue remapping of national mythology, where a misogynistic remark is met with the sharp beak of a bird, feminist bike gangs rampage and bicentenary celebrations are ravaged by flesh-eating sheep. By intricately remixing fragments of Australia's pop culture and film legacy, TERROR NULLIUS interrogates the unstable entanglement of fiction that underpins this country's vexed sense of self.

The extraordinary true story of MC Hammer. From his early life on the rough streets of Oakland, California, to his meteoric rise as an international rap star, and then finally his fall from grace.

The film chronicles their back stories, prolific tennis careers and spirited rivalry, which propelled tennis into the international sports headlines of the late ‘70s and early ‘80s. In addition, McEnroe/Borg: Fire & Ice spotlights their post-tennis careers as the two men went their separate ways, with McEnroe launching a high-profile broadcasting career, while Borg chose a more private life.

In the year 2000, 30-year-old Mariah Carey was the most successful female recording artist of all time. In September that year she began filming Glitter, her pet project, a film based on her childhood and her extraordinary rise to fame. But 12 months later she’d suffered a complete emotional and physical breakdown and her career lay in ruins.

Biographical documentary about the life and career of the film star. What lies behind the extraordinary success of a man sometimes described as a nice guy who came first.

Jackie Chan is a true icon of Asian and Chinese culture. Over a 45-year-long career, he has carved a niche for himself as an actor, stuntman, director, and screenwriter, but also singer and formidable businessman. After starring in almost 200 films, Chan has reconciled fans of genre film and Hollywood blockbusters, whilst bridging the gap between Asian and Western cinema. Through film excerpts, archive footage and images, and an offbeat approach inspired by the visual codes of the golden age of kung fu films, this documentary will take a look back at the creation of a popular hero who has come to be an icon for China, and the entire Asian continent.

Born with the gift from nature, polished by years of painstaking work, Pinchas Zukerman was between the ages of 7 and 17 the best teaching that could possibly be found. His well-spent youth established him with an international career before he was 21. The close friendship between the artist and the director, Christopher Nupen, provides not only an interesting documentary but also a touching immersion in the intimacy of one of the greatest violinists the world has ever known.

Thanks to a remarkable discovery in the BBC's film vaults, the best of David Attenborough's early Zoo Quest adventures can now be seen as never before - in colour - and with it the remarkable story of how this pioneering television series was made. First broadcast in December 1954, Zoo Quest was one of the most popular television series of its time and launched the career of the young David Attenborough as a wildlife presenter. Zoo Quest completely changed how viewers saw the world - revealing wildlife and tribal communities that had never been filmed or even seen before. Broadcast 10 years before colour television was seen in the UK, Zoo Quest was thought to have been filmed in black and white, until now. Using this extraordinary new-found colour film, together with new behind-the-scenes stories from David Attenborough and cameraman Charles Lagus, this special showcases the very best of Zoo Quest to West Africa, Zoo Quest to Guiana and Zoo Quest for a Dragon in stunning HD colour.

Never before has the extraordinary life of Mexican artist Frida Kahlo been framed in relation to the full spectrum of the historical and cultural influences that shaped her. THE LIFE AND TIMES OF FRIDA KAHLO explores the 20th century icon who became an international sensation in the worlds of modern art and radical politics.

One of only two living mammals to lay eggs, the platypus has baffled and inspired the scientific community for hundreds of years. Three years in the making, this stunning natural history film takes us down the East Coast of Australia to the many serenely beautiful habitats of the platypus. Technology specially created for this film captures images from inside the nesting chamber of a wild platypus, and records the extraordinary sounds of the mother suckling her offspring. We watch as they grow from newborns to adulthood. Join renowned documentary makers David Parer and Elizabeth Parer-Cook (Dragons of Galapagos, Wolves of the Sea) on this fascinating journey from the rainforests of Queensland to the frozen mountains of Tasmania, as they reveal new insights into this mysterious creature.

Dr James Fox takes a journey through six different landscapes across Britain, meeting artists whose work explores our relationship to the natural world. From Andy Goldsworthy's beautiful stone sculptures to James Turrell's extraordinary sky spaces, this is a film about art made out of nature itself. Featuring spectacular images of landscape and art, James travels from the furthest reaches of the Scottish coast and the farmlands of Cumbria to woods of north Wales. In each location he marvels at how artists' interactions with the landscape have created a very different kind of modern art - and make us look again at the world around us.

Featuring new and exclusive interviews, Beatles' Biggest Secrets, reveals the inside story of the world's greatest pop group with explosive revelations about the extraordinary lives of Liverpool's favorite sons. From the band's formation and early exposure to the gritty world of sex, drugs and rock 'n' roll in the dingy strip clubs of Hamburg, Germany, the program then travels forward through the Beatles' careers with shocking surprises about their relationships with each other, their women and their inner circle. Filled with interviews from friends, relatives, colleagues and former girlfriends as well as rare film footage and original artwork by artist Klaus Voormann, this is the first fully rounded Beatles portrait to appear on DVD. This is the Beatles at their best -- and their worst!

After 40 years in exile, Yulparitja elders take Daniel Walbidi, their most promising young artist, back to the desert heartland they left behind. In the remote Aboriginal community of Bidyadanga a new art movement has emerged. At its helm is a young Aboriginal man who is well on the way to international fame and possible fortune. Daniel Walbidi paints the desert country that his parents walked out of 40 years ago. Now, with the rock holes, sandhills and salt lakes of their country revitalized through the creation of the paintings, they are determined to go back and show Daniel their desert country for the first time.

Artist Ryan Gander explores Japan's highly sophisticated visual culture, expressed through images and symbols. He makes unexpected connections between everything from geisha to tattoo art.

Recorded at Copenhagen’s Royal Arena in October 2017, Distant Sky captures an extraordinary and triumphant live concert from Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds. Performing new album Skeleton Tree’s exquisite compositions alongside their essential catalogue, the band’s first shows in 3 years provoked an ecstatic response in fans, critics and band alike, renewing a profound and intimate relationship wherever they played. The band’s acclaimed tour started in Australia in January 2017 before tearing across the USA and ending in Europe, with some of the best reviews of their decorated career.

Superstar singer/songwriter Jewel did not win success without great personal sacrifice, as we learn from the artist herself and those close to her in this documentary chronicling the early, hardscrabble years of her music career. The film also features the singer's performance at a 1999 benefit concert in Los Angeles, including hits such as "Who Will Save Your Soul," "Down So Long" and "Love Me Just Leave Me Alone."

A musical television special chronicling the early career of playwright George M. Cohan, focusing primarily on his vaudeville years as part of his family singing group "The Four Cohans."

After a breakup, an ambitious journalist on vacation runs into a tech guru at the center of a breaking scandal. As she falls for him, she has to choose between her career or her heart.

Mary Lynde (Theda Bara) is an innocent girl who has grown up in New York's Greenwich Village. One of the artists there, Felix Benavente (Sidney Mason), uses her as model when he paints a portrait of the Madonna for a church. His friend Robert Sinclair (Hugh Thompson) corrupts Mary so that her father (Walter Law) casts her from his home. She goes to live with Sinclair in his mountain lodge, but after the birth of a child, he callously casts her aside. Subsequently, her baby dies and she sinks to the depths of despair.

Matthew McConaughey narrates a fascinating look at Christopher Nolan's sci-fi film "Interstellar," including scientific foundations, the work of consulting Scientist Kip Thorne, basic film themes, the science behind the search for planets capable of hosting life, space-time and the theory of relativity, the science of wormholes and black holes, crafting the film's visuals based on real scientific observation, the birth of the universe, the Dust Bowl and the evolution of dust as a toxin, the likelihood of future dust storms, the prospects of escaping a dying or doomed planet and the possibilities of colonizing Mars.

"Tarantella" was an early Super 8 short film directed by Christopher Nolan with his childhood friend Roko Belic. It was made in 1989 while Nolan was studying at University College London. The film aired on "Image Union," a PBS programme in Chicago. It is about the suffering of a young man while he has nightmare about spiders and demons.

Front Line is a 1981 Australian documentary film directed by David Bradbury. It follows the career of Tasmanian-born combat cameraman Neil Davis, particularly his time in South Vietnam and Cambodia in the late 1960s and early 1970s. It was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature.