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The Best Episodes of Storyville

Every episode of Storyville ranked from best to worst. Let's dive into the Best Episodes of Storyville!

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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 some 70 different countries, the strand has garnered a staggering

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Episode Rankings

  1. #1 Fan Favorite
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    Storyville Season 19 Episode 19 - A Syrian Love Story
    10.0/10(1 votes)

    #1 - A Syrian Love Story

    S19:E19

    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:Unknown
    Writer:Unknown

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  2. Storyville Season 29 Episode 16 - Mr Nobody Against Putin
    9.0/10(1 votes)

    #2 - Mr Nobody Against Putin

    S29:E16

    A Storyville documentary that follows a Russian schoolteacher as he risks everything to expose rising militarism in his classroom.

    Director:Unknown
    Writer:Unknown

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  3. Storyville Season 27 Episode 13 - Blue Box
    8.0/10(1 votes)

    #3 - Blue Box

    S27:E13

    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:Unknown

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  4. Storyville Season 20 Episode 8 - My Nazi Legacy
    6.5/10(1 votes)

    #4 - My Nazi Legacy

    S20:E8

    Three men travel together across Europe. For two of them the journey involves a confrontation with the acts of their fathers, who were both senior Nazi officers. For the third, the eminent human rights lawyer and author Philippe Sands, it means visiting the place where much of his own Jewish family was destroyed by the fathers of the two men he has come to know. An emotional, psychological exploration of three men wrestling with their past, the present of Europe, and conflicting versions of the truth.

    Director:Unknown
    Writer:Unknown

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  5. Storyville Season 1 Episode 1 - Little Dieter Needs to Fly
    0.0/10(0 votes)

    #5 - Little Dieter Needs to Fly

    S1:E1

    Three decades after German-American pilot Dieter Dengler was shot down over Laos, he returns to the places where he was held prisoner during the early years of the Vietnam War. Accompanied by director Werner Herzog, Dengler describes in unusually candid detail his captivity, the friendships he made and his daring escape. Not willing to stop there, Herzog even persuades his subject to re-enact certain tortures, with the help of some willing local villagers.

    Director:Unknown
    Writer:Unknown

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  6. Storyville Season 1 Episode 2 - Nobody's Business
    0.0/10(0 votes)

    #6 - Nobody's Business

    S1:E2

    Filmmaker Alan Berliner chronicles his father's life.

    Director:Unknown
    Writer:Unknown

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    The 20 WORST Episodes of Storyville

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  7. Storyville Season 1 Episode 3 - Wednesday
    0.0/10(0 votes)

    #7 - Wednesday

    S1:E3

    Victor Kossakovsky searched obsessively for inhabitants of St. Petersburg who were born on Wednesday 19 July 1961, his own birthday, in former Leningrad. Fifty-one women and fifty men fitted the profile. In the course of time a few of these 101 people had died, others had moved to another community or abroad. But in 1995 Kossakovsky managed to capture on film all seventy remaining residents, in the street, at work or simply at home. While doing so he spent time with doctors and patients, entertainers and businessmen, construction workers and homeless people. In his unorthodox style Kossakovsky has produced a beautiful profile of people in their thirties in St. Petersburg.

    Director:Unknown
    Writer:Unknown

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  8. Storyville Season 1 Episode 4 - Naughty Boy
    0.0/10(0 votes)

    #8 - Naughty Boy

    S1:E4

    A profile of Danish film-maker Ole Ege, whose work pushed the boundaries of acceptability when Denmark legalized pornography in 1969.

    Director:Unknown
    Writer:Unknown

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  9. Storyville Season 1 Episode 5 - Paradise Lost
    0.0/10(0 votes)

    #9 - Paradise Lost

    S1:E5

    A horrific triple child murder leads to an indictment and trial of three nonconformist boys based on questionable evidence.

    Director:Unknown
    Writer:Unknown

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  10. Storyville Season 2 Episode 1 - East Side Story
    0.0/10(0 votes)

    #10 - East Side Story

    S2:E1

    A look at Communist musicals that strove to be ideologically correct - and entertaining, besides.

    Director:Unknown
    Writer:Unknown

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  11. Storyville Season 2 Episode 2 - When We Were Kings
    0.0/10(0 votes)

    #11 - When We Were Kings

    S2:E2

    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:Unknown
    Writer:Unknown

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  12. Storyville Season 2 Episode 3 - Kurt and Courtney
    0.0/10(0 votes)

    #12 - Kurt and Courtney

    S2:E3

    After rocker Kurt Cobain's death, ruled a suicide, a film crew arrives in Seattle to make a documentary. Director Nick Broomfield talks to lots of people: Cobain's aunt who provides home movies and recordings, the estranged father of Cobain's widow Courtney Love, an L.A. private investigator who worked for Love, a nanny for Kurt and Courtney's child, friends and lovers of both, and others. Although Love won't talk to him and his inquiries lose him financial backing, he comes to believe the coroner's verdict. Portraits emerge: a shy, slight Kurt, weary of touring, embarrassed by fame, hooked on heroin; an out-going Courtney, dramatic, controlling, moving from groupie to star.

    Director:Unknown
    Writer:Unknown

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  13. Storyville Season 2 Episode 4 - Don't Look Back
    0.0/10(0 votes)

    #13 - Don't Look Back

    S2:E4

    Portrait of the artist as a young man. In spring, 1965, Bob Dylan, 23, a pixyish troubador, spends three weeks in England. Pennebaker's camera follows him from airport to hall, from hotel room to public house, from conversation to concert. Joan Baez and Donovan, among others, are on hand. It's the period when Dylan is shifting from acoustic to electric, a transition that not all fans, including Baez, applaud. From the opening sequence of Dylan holding up words to the soundtrack's "Subterranean Homesick Blues," Dylan is playful and enigmatic.

    Director:Unknown
    Writer:Unknown

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  14. Storyville Season 2 Episode 5 - 444 Days
    0.0/10(0 votes)

    #14 - 444 Days

    S2:E5

    444 Days offers a detailed insight into the troubled history between the USA and Iran, telling the story of the 1979 hostage crisis at the American Embassy in Tehran. On 4 November 1979, hundreds of Islamic students occupied the Embassy, taking 52 US diplomats hostage and beginning a siege that would topple a president. Featuring exclusive interviews with captors and victims, 444 Days delivers a gripping account of the crisis as it unfolded.

    Director:Unknown
    Writer:Unknown

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  15. Storyville Season 2 Episode 6 - Year of the Dogs
    0.0/10(0 votes)

    #15 - Year of the Dogs

    S2:E6

    Year of the Dogs is a documentary detailing the turbulent 1996 season of the Australian Football League (AFL) team Footscray Football Club (now Western Bulldogs).

    Director:Unknown
    Writer:Unknown

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  16. Storyville Season 2 Episode 7 - Waco: The Rules of Engagement
    0.0/10(0 votes)

    #16 - Waco: The Rules of Engagement

    S2:E7

    A reassessment of the tragedy at Waco that left 76 members of the Branch Davidian religious sect dead.

    Director:Unknown
    Writer:Unknown

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  17. Storyville Season 2 Episode 8 - Gigi, Monica and Bianca
    0.0/10(0 votes)

    #17 - Gigi, Monica and Bianca

    S2:E8

    This documentary, made by several of the Dardenne Brothers regular collaborators, tells the story of a group of Romanian teenagers living on the streets of Bucharest, particularly focusing on 'Gigi' and his pregnant girlfriend 'Monica'. We watch their struggles, listen to their ambitions and witness their lives unfold as their child is born and they must find a way to support her and themselves. This is an uncompromising documentary, that shows the hardships its characters are facing in graphic detail, but without commentary or sentiment. Much like the Dardenne's feature films, the characters and situations are left to speak for themselves and it's hard not to be emotionally effected.

    Director:Unknown
    Writer:Unknown

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  18. Storyville Season 2 Episode 9 - Moon Over Broadway
    0.0/10(0 votes)

    #18 - Moon Over Broadway

    S2:E9

    A chronicle of the ups and downs that occur during the rehearsals and previews process of Ken Ludwig's Broadway comedy "Moon Over Buffalo".

    Director:Unknown
    Writer:Unknown

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  19. Storyville Season 3 Episode 1 - A Small Town in Poland
    0.0/10(0 votes)

    #19 - A Small Town in Poland

    S3:E1

    The small town of Bransk used to boast a large Jewish population before the Holocaust. As Bransk prepares to celebrate its 500th anniversary, the authorities debate whether to acknowledge the town's Jewish past.

    Director:Unknown
    Writer:Unknown

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  20. Storyville Season 3 Episode 2 - Resurrection
    0.0/10(0 votes)

    #20 - Resurrection

    S3:E2

    Cuba's cemeteries are too small to hold all of the country's dead. This film chronicles the emotional scenes at the exhumation of bodies after they have been buried for three years, and the subsequent storing of their bones in a crypt - a process that is watched by the dead's relatives.

    Director:Unknown
    Writer:Unknown

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  21. Storyville Season 3 Episode 3 - Fragments: Jerusalem
    0.0/10(0 votes)

    #21 - Fragments: Jerusalem

    S3:E3

    Director Ron Havilio intertwines a highly personal view of Jerusalem - where he has lived for nearly 50 years - with an overview of the Holy City's fascinating and litigious history. He also looks at life in the city as it approaches the new millennium.

    Director:Unknown
    Writer:Unknown

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  22. Storyville Season 3 Episode 4 - Photographer
    0.0/10(0 votes)

    #22 - Photographer

    S3:E4

    In 1987, 600 colour slides depicting scenes in a wartime Jewish ghetto in Poland, were found in a Vienna bookshop. Director Dariusz Jablonski 's uses these photos to provide a chilling testimonial to one of World War Two's darkest chapters

    Director:Unknown
    Writer:Unknown

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  23. Storyville Season 3 Episode 5 - I Was a Slave Labourer
    0.0/10(0 votes)

    #23 - I Was a Slave Labourer

    S3:E5

    German gov't and industry have resisted demands to compensate the millions who worked as slave labourers under the Third Reich. Rudy Kennedy tries to force German firms to acknowledge their links with Nazi atrocities

    Director:Unknown
    Writer:Unknown

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  24. Storyville Season 3 Episode 6 - An American Love Story: Welcome to America
    0.0/10(0 votes)

    #24 - An American Love Story: Welcome to America

    S3:E6

    A seven-part documentary from director Jennifer Fox sheds light on the state of race relations by following two years in the lives of a mixed-race married couple and their two children in New York.

    Director:Unknown
    Writer:Unknown

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  25. Storyville Season 3 Episode 7 - An American Love Story: I've Fallen and I Can't Get Up
    0.0/10(0 votes)

    #25 - An American Love Story: I've Fallen and I Can't Get Up

    S3:E7

    Part 2: Daughter Cicily travels to Nigeria to spend a term with a group of students.

    Director:Unknown
    Writer:Unknown

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Best Episodes Summary

"A Syrian Love Story" is the best rated episode of "Storyville". It scored 10/10 based on 1 votes. Directed by Unknown and written by Unknown, it aired on 9/28/2015. This episode scored 1.0 points higher than the second highest rated, "Mr Nobody Against Putin".