Movies: Scottish Documentary Institute

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 wher...

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 viol...

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 n...

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 a...

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...

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...

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 t...

Work. Eat. Sleep. And back to work. For a long time skippers in the North East of Scotland could not find locals to work on their fishing vessels. That was until Filipino fishermen started coming to town for work. Both nationalities strive to shorten...

In her documentary, the Scottish-Syrian director tries to reconcile the two worlds in her head: her fond memories of visiting relatives in Damascus and what has happened in Syria since then. She confronts her cousin, who fled from there, with her rec...

Soon after her ‘big break’, Italian actress Nadya Cazan disappeared. Ottica Zero follows Nadya from her rejection of the monetary-based system to find an alternative way of living. It is a journey which takes us from Rome to Venus, where social innov...

This rare and intimate portrait explores a young woman’s perspective about living with albinism – a condition which has often made her an outsider – who is determined to lead a normal life....

Following a politically engaged schoolboy from Easterhouse, Scotland in the lead-up to the 2014 Scottish independence referendum....

A look at life in the so-called Banana Flats in Leith, Scotland - once the centre of the city's 1980s drug epidemic....

MIEZI KUMI (TEN MONTHS) is a short documentary of the love between Zacharia Mutai, his family and the last two northern white rhinos, which he has to take care of for ten months in a year....

Alan Sinclair aspires to be a human popsicle, literally. For this film is about the weird and wacky world of cryonics. Instead of burial or cremation get yourself put in a freezer, wait a few hundred years, get defrosted and off you go. Just keep you...

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

Cunenk grew up as a girl trapped in a boy’s body. She could not wait to leave her village and become a performer....

A filmmaker goes on a personal journey of discovery after an old letter reveals her grandfather's secret life....

A unique point-of-view insight into a day in the life of Jimmy McIntosh, a wheelchair user living with cerebral palsy who on a daily basis fights for the rights of others....

An exploration of the power of music and words, looking at a blues musician recovering from a stroke....