10.0/101 votesLoading...#1 - A Syrian Love Story
Season 19 Episode 19 - Aired 9/28/2015
Award-winning documentary film by renowned filmmaker Sean McAllister, telling the poignant story of a family torn apart by the Assad regime. When Sean begins filming them in Syria in 2009, prior to the wave of revolutions in the Arab world, Raghda is incarcerated as a political prisoner and Amer is caring for their young boys alone. Raghda is eventually released from prison, but the family is forced to flee the country following the arrest of Sean McAllister himself. In exile, Raghda battles between being a mother or a revolutionary. Filmed over five years, this is an intimate and deeply moving portrait of a family trying to survive in exile - adapting to their new home, but missing their homeland. For Raghda and Amer, it is a journey of hope, dreams and despair: for the revolution, their homeland and each other.
Director: N/A
Writer: N/A
- 9.1/107 votesLoading...
#2 - When We Were Kings
Season 2 Episode 2 - Aired 5/24/1998
On 30 October 1974, perhaps the most famous heavyweight championship boxing match of all time took place in Kinshasa, Zaire - the "Rumble in the Jungle" between champion George Foreman and challenger Muhammad Ali. In historical footage and new interviews, this documentary explores the relationship between African-Americans and the African continent during the Black Power era in terms of both popular culture and international politics, including the brutality of then-dictator Mobutu Sese Seko.
Director: N/A
Writer: N/A
9.0/106 votesLoading...#3 - In the Name of the Father
Season 27 Episode 9 - Aired 5/16/2023
A Storyville documentary that, with extraordinary access to one of Israel's most Orthodox Hasidic communities, explores the scandal that erupted when the rabbi who established and led the community died. Inheritance battles, violent reprisals, sexual abuse and underage marriages are revealed by those that experienced it.
Director: N/A
Writer: N/A
- 8.7/1040 votesLoading...
#4 - Hurt Locker Hero
Season 22 Episode 13 - Aired 11/26/2018
The heart-stopping story of 'Crazy Fakhir', a Kurdish colonel in the Iraqi army and legendary bomb disposal expert who single-handedly disarmed thousands of landmines across the country with just a pocket knife and a pair of wire clippers. Between the fall of Saddam Hussein in 2003 and the chaos and destruction wreaked by IS ten years later, Fahkir's unwavering bravery saved thousands of lives throughout Iraq. 'Hurt Locker Hero' tells Fakhir's story through the raw and visceral amateur footage captured by his soldiers on a camcorder intended for filming family occasions. Instead, it records Fakhir endlessly snipping wires, searching family homes and digging out roadside IEDs, insisting it's too dangerous to wait hours for the highly trained American bomb disposal teams to arrive. Whilst their father and husband becomes a hero, Fahkir's wife and eight children struggle to make ends meet and worry endlessly about his safety.
Director: N/A
Writer: N/A
- 8.2/102,247 votesLoading...
#5 - India's Daughter
Season 19 Episode 10 - Aired 3/4/2015
The story of the brutal gang rape and murder of 23-year-old medical student Jyoti on a moving bus in Delhi in 2012, and the unprecedented protests and riots which this horrific event ignited throughout India, leading to the demand for changes in attitudes towards women. The film examines the values and mindsets of the rapists, and interviews the two lawyers who defended the men convicted of Jyoti's rape and murder.
Director: N/A
Writer: N/A
- 8.2/106 votesLoading...
#6 - Olympic Dreams Of Russian Gold: Over The Limit
Season 22 Episode 5 - Aired 7/1/2018
'You're not a human being, you're an athlete,' 20-year-old Rita is told by one of her two merciless coaches as she prepares to represent Russia in rhythmic gymnastics at the Olympics. It is the most crucial year of her career and her last chance to achieve her ultimate dream, a gold medal. However gracefully Rita catches rings or rolls a ball across her shoulders, her coaches expect more from her, time and again. Described as the 'Black Swan' of sports documentaries, Over the Limit offers unprecedented access to the hidden world of elite gymnasts and the unrelentingly brutal training demanded by the Russian system.
Director: N/A
Writer: N/A
- 8.1/1014 votesLoading...
#7 - Blackfish - The Whale that Killed
Season 17 Episode 23 - Aired 11/21/2013
Documentary which unravels the story of notorious performing whale Tilikum, who - unlike any orca in the wild - has taken the lives of several people while in captivity. So what exactly went wrong? Shocking, never-before-seen footage and interviews with trainers and experts manifest the orca's extraordinary nature, the species' cruel treatment in captivity over the last four decades and the growing disillusionment of workers who were misled and endangered by the highly profitable sea-park industry. This emotionally wrenching, tautly structured story challenges us to consider our relationship to nature and reveals how little we humans have learned from these highly intelligent and enormously sentient fellow mammals.
Director: N/A
Writer: N/A
- 8.0/1010 votesLoading...
#8 - Marriage Chinese Style: When My Child Is Born
Season 14 Episode 20 - Aired 9/6/2010
How much freedom can there be in a Chinese marriage? This is a remarkable, intimate film about two people who want to have freedom and happiness at the same time. You may think this sounds like a western story, but it isn't - it's all deeply Chinese.
Director: N/A
Writer: N/A
8.0/107 votesLoading...#9 - Navalny
Season 26 Episode 10 - Aired 4/25/2022
In August 2020, a plane travelling from Siberia to Moscow made an emergency landing. One of its passengers, Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny, was deathly ill. Taken to a local Siberian hospital and eventually evacuated to Berlin, doctors there confirmed that he had been poisoned with Novichok, a nerve agent implicated in attacks on other opponents of the Russian government. President Vladimir Putin immediately cast doubt on the findings and denied any involvement. While recovering, Navalny and his team unravel the plot against him, finding evidence of the Kremlin’s involvement, and prepare to go public with their findings.
Director: N/A
Writer: N/A
8.0/106 votesLoading...#10 - Three Minutes: A Lengthening
Season 27 Episode 1 - Aired 1/24/2023
Three minutes of footage is all that remains of the Jewish community of Nasielsk, Poland, filmed in 1938 by photographer David Kurtz. This Storyville documentary unravels the tales hidden within the celluloid, including insights from the film-maker’s grandson and a boy who appears in the faded footage – one of the few survivors of the decimated village. Kurtz's footage was made available courtesy of the Steven Spielberg Film and Video Archive in the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.
Director: N/A
Writer: N/A
8.0/108 votesLoading...#11 - Nelly and Nadine: Ravensbrück, 1944
Season 27 Episode 6 - Aired 4/25/2023
A Storyville documentary about two women who fall in love in the Ravensbrück concentration camp.
Director: N/A
Writer: N/A
- 7.9/1022 votesLoading...
#12 - Exposed: Magicians, Psychics and Frauds
Season 18 Episode 25 - Aired 11/2/2014
Renowned magician James 'The Amazing' Randi has been wowing audiences with his jaw-dropping illusions, escapes and sleight of hand for over 50 years. When he began seeing his cherished art form co-opted by all manner of con artists, he made it his mission to expose the simple tricks charlatans have borrowed from magicians to swindle the masses. This entertaining film chronicles Randi's best debunkings of faith healers, fortune tellers and psychics. It documents his rivalry with famed spoon-bender Uri Geller, whom Randi eventually foiled on a high-profile television appearance. Another target was evangelist Peter Popoff, whose tent-show miracles and audience mind-reading were exposed as chicanery when Randi revealed a recording of Popoff's wife feeding him information through a radio-transmitter earpiece. In telling Randi's strange, funny and fascinating life story, the film shows how we are all vulnerable to deception - even, in a surprising twist, 'The Amazing' Randi himself.
Director: N/A
Writer: N/A
- 7.9/1022 votesLoading...
#13 - Poisoning America: The Devil We Know
Season 22 Episode 12 - Aired 11/19/2018
A Storyville documentary following a group of citizens in West Virginia who take on a corporation after they discover it has been dumping a toxic chemical into the water supply.
Director: N/A
Writer: N/A
- 7.9/107 votesLoading...
#14 - The Night Notre-Dame Burned
Season 24 Episode 18 - Aired 11/16/2020
A Storyville documentary that tells the dramatic story of the devastating fire at Notre-Dame Cathedral on 15 April 2019. Blow by blow, it follows the team of brave firefighters - from the men and women on the frontline to the brigade chief - as they face the epic responsibility of saving one of the city's most emblematic and much–loved symbols from burning to the ground. As well as on-the-ground helmet cam and drone footage of the unfolding, dramatic events, the film-makers – the Naudet Brothers – who famously recorded the collapse of the Twin Towers on 9/11 in New York – were themselves at the scene to record a moment in history in their own capital city.
Director: N/A
Writer: N/A
7.9/107 votesLoading...#15 - Whirlybird: Live above LA
Season 25 Episode 1 - Aired 2/15/2021
Flying high above Los Angeles in a whirling news helicopter, Marika Gerrard and Zoey Tur (then known as Bob) spent the 80s and 90s capturing the city’s most epic breaking news stories. Before the advent of the 24-hour news cycle, this daring husband-and-wife team invested in a helicopter and pilot’s licence, taking their cameras to the sky and changing broadcast news forever. The cameras not only captured the adrenaline of live news culture, but also the subsequent strain on their relationship and an identity struggle that eventually culminated in a major life transition for Zoey. A wholly unique take on the story of Los Angeles, told through stunning aerial footage and remarkable home videos, Whirlybird reframes many of the city’s pivotal moments of the 1990s, including the OJ Simpson pursuit and the 1992 riots.
Director: N/A
Writer: N/A
7.9/1013 votesLoading...#16 - Blue Bag Life
Season 27 Episode 8 - Aired 5/9/2023
Storyville documentary in which UK artist and film-maker Lisa Selby turns the camera on herself as she tries to understand her relationships with her late mother and her partner, both heroin addicts. The film won the audience award at the 2022 London International Film Festival.
Director: N/A
Writer: N/A
7.9/108 votesLoading...#17 - Tanja: Terrorist or Freedom Fighter?
Season 27 Episode 16 - Aired 9/26/2023
What would make a middle-class Dutch woman want to join a revolutionary struggle thousands of miles from home? This Storyville film tells the story of Tanja Nijmeijer, the former teacher who became a member of the Colombian FARC rebel group, rising to become one of its most senior leaders and later a campaigner for peace.
Director: N/A
Writer: N/A
- 7.8/109 votesLoading...
#18 - The Lance Armstrong Story - Stop at Nothing
Season 18 Episode 15 - Aired 7/6/2014
Documentary telling the intimate but explosive story about the man behind the greatest fraud in recent sporting history, a portrait of a man who stopped at nothing in pursuit of money, fame and success. It reveals how Lance Armstrong duped the world with his story of a miraculous recovery from cancer to become a sporting icon and a beacon of hope for cancer sufferers around the world. The film maps how Armstrong's cheating and bullying became more extreme and how a few brave souls fought back, until eventually their voices were heard. Director Alex Holmes tracks down some of his former friends and team members who reveal how his cheating was the centre of a grand conspiracy in which Armstrong and his backers sought to steal the Tour de France. Friends and fellow riders were brought into a dirty pact that no-one could betray. But the former friends whose lives he destroyed would prove to be his nemesis, and help uncover one of the dirtiest scandals in sports history.
Director: N/A
Writer: N/A
7.8/105 votesLoading...#19 - Attica: America’s Bloodiest Prison Uprising
Season 27 Episode 7 - Aired 5/2/2023
A Storyville documentary about the violent five-day standoff between inmates and law enforcement which gripped America in 1971.
Director: N/A
Writer: N/A
- 7.7/1011 votesLoading...
#20 - Russia's Toughest Prison: The Condemned
Season 18 Episode 23 - Aired 10/19/2014
With unprecedented access, this documentary looks into the hidden world of one of Russia's most impenetrable and remote institutions - a maximum security prison exclusively for murderers. Deep inside the land of the gulags, this is the end of the line for some of Russia's most dangerous criminals - 260 men who have collectively killed nearly 800 people. The film delves deep into the mind and soul of some of these prisoners. In brutally frank and uncensored interviews the inmates speak of their crimes, life and death, redemption and remorselessness, insanity and hope. The film tracks them though their unrelenting days over several months, lifting the veil on one of Russia's most secretive subcultures to reveal what happens when a man is locked up in a tiny cell for 23 hours every day, for life. A startling insight into inscrutable minds and the forbidding world they have been condemned to.
Director: N/A
Writer: N/A
- 7.7/1018 votesLoading...
#21 - Circus Elephant Rampage
Season 19 Episode 17 - Aired 7/22/2015
The gripping and emotionally-charged story of Tyke, a circus elephant who went on a rampage in Honolulu, Hawaii, in 1994, killed her trainer in front of thousands of spectators and died in a hail of gunfire. Her break for freedom - filmed from start to tragic end - traumatised a city and ignited a global battle over the use of animals in the entertainment industry. Looking at what made Tyke snap, the film goes back to meet the people who knew her and were affected by her death - former trainers and handlers, circus industry insiders, witnesses to her rampage, and animal rights activists for whom Tyke became a global rallying cry. Tyke is the central protagonist in this tragic but redemptive tale that combines trauma, outrage, insight and compassion. This moving documentary raises fundamental questions about our deep and mysterious connection to other species.
Director: N/A
Writer: N/A
- 7.7/1017 votesLoading...
#22 - Red Penguins: Murder, Money and Ice Hockey
Season 24 Episode 21 - Aired 12/7/2020
A tale of capitalism and opportunism run amok - complete with gangsters, strippers and live bears serving beer on a hockey rink in Moscow. Shortly after the collapse of the Soviet Union, the Pittsburgh Penguins and the famed Red Army hockey team formed a joint venture that showed that anything was possible in the new Russia. Eccentric marketing whiz Steve Warshaw is sent to Russia and tasked with transforming the team into the greatest show in Moscow. He takes the viewer on a bizarre journey, highlighting a pivotal moment in US-Russia relations in a lawless era when oligarchs made their fortunes and multiple murders went unsolved.
Director: N/A
Writer: N/A
7.7/107 votesLoading...#23 - Blue Box
Season 27 Episode 13 - Aired 9/5/2023
Blue Box is a brave account of how the Jewish National Fund acquired land in Palestine before and after the creation of the State of Israel. Film-maker Michal Weits' great-grandfather Joseph was a key figure in the organisation. In her family, and across Israel, he is celebrated as the father of the country’s forests, taking ‘a land without a people for a people without a land', but when Michal finds his private diaries, she discovers a very different story. In conversations with her family, she questions her great-grandfather's actions, resulting in an exploration of Israel's past and an uncomfortable truth.
Director: Michal Weits
Writer: N/A
7.7/107 votesLoading...#24 - Benjamin, Joshua and The Crown Shyness
Season 27 Episode 14 - Aired 9/12/2023
When high school ends and adulthood begins, Benjamin and Joshua Israel, two identical twins of Jewish origin, start feeling burdened. While friends and schoolmates are planning a new life, they don’t seem able to imagine their own future. Being in your twenties and having a natural charisma combined with a sassy attitude is not enough if you have an intellectual disability and the world makes it hard for you to fit in. Feeling left out, Benji and Josh confront the limits imposed by others, without fear of smashing right into them. Josh wants to have sex for the first time, while Benji follows the reverie of a new love. Even if the twins are often in conflict with each other, their bond is impossible to break. They will soon learn that growing up also means giving the other space without casting a shadow.
Director: N/A
Writer: N/A
- 7.6/1024 votesLoading...
#25 - On the President's Orders
Season 23 Episode 14 - Aired 10/24/2019
Storyville film that tells the story of President Duterte's bloody campaign against drug dealers and addicts in the Philippines, told with unprecedented access to people on both sides of the war.
Director: N/A
Writer: N/A
The Best Episodes of Storyville
Every episode of Storyville ranked from best to worst. Let's dive into the Best Episodes of Storyville!
Showcasing the best in international documentaries, Storyville has developed an enviable reputation since its inception more than a decade ago. Screening over 340 films, from...
Genre:Documentary
Best Episodes Summary
"A Syrian Love Story" is the best rated episode of "Storyville". It scored 10/10 based on 1 votes. Directed by N/A and written by N/A, it aired on 9/28/2015. This episode scored 0.9 points higher than the second highest rated, "When We Were Kings".