All the best Documentary Movies Streaming on SBS On Demand in April 2025

Ngāti Manu woman Isey Cross and her youngest son James prepare for the party of a lifetime to celebrate Isey's 100th birthday in Kawakawa, New Zealand.

A love letter from a young mother to her daughter, the film tells the story of Waad al-Kateab’s life through five years of the uprising in Aleppo, Syria as she falls in love, gets married and gives birth to Sama, all while cataclysmic conflict rises around her. Her camera captures incredible stories of loss, laughter and survival as Waad wrestles with an impossible choice– whether or not to flee the city to protect her daughter’s life, when leaving means abandoning the struggle for freedom for which she has already sacrificed so much.

Ophir tells the story behind the likely birth of the world’s newest nation on Bougainville Island, Papua New Guinea. The story of an unknown indigenous revolution for humanity, land, and culture and a decade long war. The film documents its origin and aftermath, where antagonistic visions of the world collude and collide. A poetic yet dramatic ode to the indelible thirst of a peoples for freedom, culture and sovereignty; it offers a gripping exposition of the visible and invisible chains of colonisation and its enduring cycles of physical and psychological warfare.

Tom "Putuparri" Lawford is a man caught between two worlds: his past and present in modern society, where he battles with alcoholism and domestic violence; and his future as a leader of his people, reconnecting with his ancestral lands, learning about his traditional culture and shouldering his responsibility to pass this knowledge on to the next generation. Director Nicole Ma spent more than a decade documenting Putuparri's journey, travelling with him and his family on numerous occasions to Kurtal, in the Kimberley's Great Sandy Desert region – traditionally a site of great significance as a place where people ritually make rain – as they fight for their native title claim over the area. Set against the backdrop of this long fight for ownership of traditional lands, the MIFF Premiere Fund-supported Putuparri and the Rainmakers is an emotional, visually breathtaking story of love, hope and the survival of Aboriginal law and culture against all odds.

Taking us through Bangarra Dance Theatre’s spectacular growth, we follow the story of how three young Aboriginal brothers — Stephen, David and Russell Page — turned the newly born dance group into a First Nations cultural powerhouse.