Science Breakthroughs: Homo Naledi

Queen of the Pythons

She is a 13-foot, 70-pound snake that combines size and strength with a strike faster than the blink of an eye. Meet Squeeze, an eight-year-old African rock python who's capable of hunting in any terrain at any time of day for virtually any prey. As a new mother, her single goal is to incubate her young and keep them from becoming someone else's dinner. Follow her as she discovers that motherhood in the cold-blooded world of the South African savannah is no walk in the park.

Killer Whales: the Mega Hunt

A newly discovered mega-hunt is happening off the coast of South Africa. In an epic annual spectacle in False Bay, a pod of cunning killer whales hunt 5,000 common dolphins.

Africa Shafted: Under One Roof

Directed by Ingrid Martens, this documentary takes place completely within the lifts of Ponte tower in Johannesburg. Over five years, Ingrid films the tenants of the tower and the snippets of their lives that are captured within their rides between floors.

2 or 3 Things I Know About Him

What would your family reminiscences about dad sound like if he had been an early supporter of Hitler’s, a leader of the notorious SA and the Third Reich’s minister in charge of Slovakia, including its Final Solution? Executed as a war criminal in 1947, Hanns Ludin left behind a grieving widow and six young children, the youngest of whom became a filmmaker. It's a fascinating, maddening, sometimes even humorous look at what the director calls "a typical German story." (Film Forum)

Human By Chance?

If we compare ourselves with our genetically closest living relatives, the chimpanzees, we have few physical advantages. We are far weaker, cannot move nearly as fast, and do not have the same climbing capabilities. Instead, humans excel in areas such as architecture, religion, science, language, writing, art, culture, and ideas. These achievements are due to our larger brain that contain billions of neurons. It was the rapid growth of our brain, originating about 2 million years ago, that allowed us to be the predominant species of the world. What caused this rapid growth of our cerebral cortex? Researchers worldwide have asked this question for many years, but now there finally seems to be an answer.

The Thinking Garden

In the dying days of apartheid, three generations of women in a village in South Africa came together to create a community garden. They called it “the thinking garden” – hleketani in the local xiTsonga language – a place where women gather to think about how to effect change. Twenty-five years later the garden is still going strong, providing fresh vegetables and new opportunities for local people while helping to confront the ravages of climate change, poverty, and HIV/AIDS in a community pushed to the edge.

Another World

A feature documentary about the journey of mankind to discover our true force and who we truly are. It is a quest through science and consciousness, individual and planetary, exploring our relationships with ourselves, the world around us and the universe as a whole.

Voyages au centre de la Terre : Dans les pas de Jules Verne

Echoes of the Ancients: A Journey through Neanderthal Lives

Echoes of the Ancients explores the lives, genes, and legacy of Neanderthals through science, archaeology, and art. It reveals the deep roots of human identity in a visually stunning and intellectually rich journey across prehistoric Europe.

Forest of Crocodiles

How do white South Africans deal with their fears of crime and violence? Like crocodiles, some survive without evolving, living with their fears. Others make fear their friend and evolve in ways you'd never imagine.

Drummies

In a meditation on the meaning behind sports in a Post-Apartheid South Africa, three young girls muse on their hopes and dreams as aspiring Drum Majorettes.

End of Dialogue

The first film to ever show what life was in South-Africa under the Apartheid state. The film was released as an anonymous production under the aegis of the Pan Africanist Congress in 1970.

Pablo From Neanderthal

What would have happened if the Neanderthals had prevailed over Homo Sapiens? How would our species have evolved? How does art relate to evolution, and why in the world does evolution behave like a bricoleur? Last of all, just what does Marcel Duchamp have to do with all of this? This film is neither a documentary nor a portrait of the artist Pable Echaurren; it’s a kaleidoscopic meditation on our past, present and future.

Uncensored Science: Bill Nye Debates Ken Ham

Bill Nye and Ken Ham debate whether creation is a viable model of origins in today's modern scientific era.

Ithuteng (Never Stop Learning)

Tells the stories of four students who are turning their lives around at the Ithuteng Trust School.

Flood

A filmmaker revisits her evangelical roots to find connection with her estranged father.

Decoding Neanderthals

Over 60,000 years ago, the first modern humans left their African homeland and entered Europe, then a bleak and inhospitable continent in the grip of the Ice Age. But when they arrived, they were not alone: the stocky, powerfully built Neanderthals had already been living there for hundreds of thousands of years. So what happened when the first modern humans encountered the Neanderthals? Did they make love or war?

Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed

Pro-intelligent design scholars and scientists are often chastised, fired or denied tenured positions by those who believe in Darwin's theory of evolution.

Religulous

Commentator-comic Bill Maher plays devil's advocate with religion as he talks to believers about their faith. Traveling around the world, Maher examines the tenets of Christianity, Judaism and Islam and raises questions about homosexuality, proof of Christ's existence, Jewish Sabbath laws, violent Muslim extremists.

My Beloved Country

A provocative look from within at Afrikaner extremists who, in 1991, clung to the belief that they were the chosen ‘super race’ of Africa. With the demise of white rule, many of these Boers lived in fear. Some had banded into paramilitary groups, such as Eugene Terre’Blanche’s Afrikaner Resistance Movement, which claimed wide support within the South African army and police. They were preparing for an armed showdown with the new government.