The Smiley documentary films collection is comprised of award-winning films that have performed impressively in the international festival circuit. Representing the best of independent film-making, this is the company's blue-chip catalogue and it includes films that have scored coveted industry awards such as the Oscar and the Peabody as well as awards from prestigious festivals such as Sundance, Hotdocs and IDFA.
Previous catalogues...
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The Happy Hoaxer
USA / In development / Director's details to be announced / 90 mins
In this feature comedy, a young and ambitious newspaper reporter, in pursuit of a hot story gets caught up in a wild goose chase with an infamous prankster. Set in the...
Anna May Wong: In her own words
USA / 2011 / Yunah Hong / 56 mins
Anna May Wong: in her own words is a personal and provocative look at the famous and glamorous Chinese - American actress from the 1920s and 30s. Anna May Wong...
Higher Education
Australia / 2011 / Miles Roston / 70 mins & 52 mins
In an era of budgetary cuts, access to university or tertiary education has now become a luxury for many. Such privileged access is challenged by a group of Australians...
An Encounter with Simone Weil
USA / 2010 / Julia Haslett / 85 mins & 52 mins mins
After losing her father to suicide when she was 17 and subsequently witnessing her brother’s depression, filmmaker Julia Haslett develops a curiosity for French writer...
Passion
Mongolia / 2010 / Byamba Sakhya / 83 mins
Set against the stunning backdrop of the Mongolian landscape, PASSION is a heart-felt film that explores the complexity of creating art and making films. It follows Binder...
Rondo
Belgium & France / 2010 / Olivier van Malderghem / 85 mins
In Nazi-occupied Belgium in 1942, Jewish teenager Simon is shipped to England to stay with his grandfather Abraham by a resistance group after his father is arrested and...
Sacred & Secret
Malaysia & Switzerland / 2010 / Basil Gelpke / 86 mins & 2 x 45 mins
In SACRED & SECRET, director Basil Gelpke enters the secret and inner life of the Balinese. For the Balinese there are more important things than the accumulation of material...
The Butcher's Wife
China / 2010 / GAO Xiongjie / 119 mins
A butcher in a small village, Wang Liang, takes on a young wife out of her family’s debt. However, Liang’s expectations of a simple life are soon frustrated as his new...
The Warriors of Qiugang
USA / 2010 / Ruby Yang / 39 mins
THE WARRIORS OF QIUGANG follows villagers in the central Chinese province of Anhui who take on a chemical company that is poisoning their water and air. From the back...
Voice Over
Bulgaria / 2010 / Svetoslav Ovtcharov / 106 mins
Set during the 1970s in communist Bulgaria, Anton Krastev is a director of photography, who aided by his well-connected political contacts in the industry has found success...
5 Hours with Raja
New Zealand / 2009 / Anna McKessar / 52 mins
5 Hours with Raja charts the experiences of a young mother who chooses to carry her unborn baby to term, despite the diagnosis of a fatal birth defect. Despite...
Barah Aana
India / 2009 / Raja Menon / 93 mins
Barah Aana is a comedy of real life, set in today’s Mumbai. The story revolves around three unlikely friends: a driver (Naseeruddin Shah), a watchman (Vijay Raaz), and...
Kit & Maynie: Tea, Scones and Nuclear Disarmament
New Zealand / 2009 / Claudia Pond Eyley and Susi Newborn / 47 mins
Kit and Maynie: Tea, Scones and Nuclear Disarmament is a humorous story with a serious message about two octogenarians who juggled peace and nuclear testing demonstrations...
The Border City 2
South Korea / 2009 / Hyung-sook Hong / 104 mins
In 2003 Song Du-Yul, a Korean philosophy professor, returned to his homeland after having spent thirty-seven years in political exile in Germany. During his visit to South...
LOOT
USA / 2008 / Darius Marder / 86 mins / TV cut available upon request mins
"One of the most perfect documentaries I have ever seen. You'll get lost in it. The story is so complex and the characters so quirky, that you'd think the Coen...
Match & Marry
USA / 2007 / Suzannah Warlick / 48 mins
"Match & Marry" offers a fun look at the ancient tradition of matchmaking. Many of us will recall the generational clash that took place in the musical, Fiddler on the...
Drugs and Death at Bagram
USA / 2010 / Shaun McCanna / 57 mins
The mystery surrounding the death of a young US soldier which begins under a fog of foul play and drug abuse ultimately reveals a growing controversy around the use of...
A Soldier's Peace
USA / 2009 / Kristen Thompson and Marshall Thompson / 87 & 55 mins
When Army journalist Marshall Thompson came home from a tour of duty in Iraq, two things were clear to him – the war was wrong and he needed to do something to stop it...
Intifada NYC
USA / 2009 / David Teague / 47 mins
terrorists. As critics and the mainstream media stoked the flames in the climate of post-9/11 America, the controversy forced the school's Arab-American Muslim principal...
Against the Grain
USA & Perú / 2008 / Ann Kaneko / 65 mins
In 1989, Alfredo Márquez used an image of Mao in an artwork.He was sentenced to 20 years in prison. For every artist, the need to create and be heard is as basic as food...
Chance of a Lifetime
New Zealand / 2008 / Sandy Crichton / 49 mins
This award-winning tale tells the extraordinary story of how a population of wild New Zealand falcons managed to survive in the face of fierce commercial forestry logging...
In Search of Shilan
Australia/Iraq / 2008 / Memuzin River / 60 mins
Ten years ago, Cetin, a Kurdish poet, went into exile from Turkey, and after many months via Bulgaria and South Africa, arrived in Australia as a refugee. Leaving the...
Intimidad
US / 2008 / David Redmon & Ashley Sabin / 53 and 72 mins
Cecy and Camilo are a young couple struggling to make ends meet. They leave their modest hometown of Santa Maria, Puebla, east of Mexico City and their baby daughter Loida...
My Father's Studio
Canada / 2008 / Jennifer Alleyn / 72 & 52 mins
After her father’s death in 2004, Canadian director Jennifer Alleyn find herself drawn to his studio – an intimate space, still exuding the artist's imagination. The film...
The Last Magic Show
New Zealand / 2008 / Andy Conlan / 90 mins
"Well acted, darkly lit and gorgeously shot, the dark undertones of this story seem to ooze off the screen...As the story builds to an exciting climax...you will be reminded...
The Legacy of the Oka Trappists
Canada / 2008 / Ninon Larochelle / 52 mins
Director Larochelle takes us into the heart of the world famous Trappists monastery in Oka. After a 125 year legacy the monks are finally leaving. At its peak, the abbey...
The Witness: From the Balcony of Room 306
USA / 2008 / Adam Pertofsky / 30 mins
On April 4,1968, the Revered Samuel “Billy” Kyles stood beside Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. on the balcony of the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, Tennessee and bore witness...
Tongzhi in Love
China/USA / 2008 / Ruby Yang(Director)/Thomas Lennon (Producer) / 30 mins
“Frog” Cui and his friends navigate the dilemmas of being gay in modern China, torn between the lures of big city life and the stern demands of Chinese tradition. They...
What are we doing here?
U.S.A. / 2008 / Brandon, Nicholas, Daniel & Tim Klein / 83 mins
WHAT ARE WE DOING HERE? explores why the charity given to Africa over the last five decades has been largely ineffective and often harmful. The film tells the story of...
Whatever happened to Brenda Hean?
Australia / 2008 / Scott Millwood / 90 mins
This feature documentary explores the remarkable story of Brenda Hean – one of the first leaders of an environmental political party in the world – whose fight to save...
Americano
Canada & Peru / 2007 / Carlos Ferrand / 99 mins
Ferrand returns to his birth country and journeys through the back alleys of the Americas. Travelling from Patagonia to Nunavut, he revisits some of the men and women...
Constantine's Sword
USA / 2007 / Oren Jacoby / 95 & 60 mins
The theme of US President-Elect, Barack Obama’s election night speech was tolerance. His message to the world was that America is more than a vicious rivalry between blue...
Just Punishment
Australia / 2007 / Kim Beamish & Shannon Owen / 54 mins
On December 22nd, 2002, a young Australian man is on his way home from Asia having taken his first overseas trip. Hours later, he is caught at Changi Airport with 396...
Never Perfect
USA / 2007 / Regina Park / 63 and 55 mins
In 2006, there were 11 million cosmetic surgeries performed in the United States which constituted an $11.4 billion industry. Director Regina Park explores the motivation...
Praying With Lior
USA / 2007 / Ilana Trachtman / 87 & 58 mins
An engrossing, wrenching and tender documentary film, PRAYING WITH LIOR introduces Lior Liebling, also called "the little rebbe." Lior has Down syndrome, and has spent...
The Slanted Screen: The History of Asian Men in Hollywood
USA / 2007 / Jeff Adachi / 55 mins
From silent film star Sessue Hayakawa to Harold and Kumar Go to Whitecastle, The Slanted Screen examines Hollywood’s portrayals of Asian men in film and television. The...
Water Discourses
Canada & Mexico / 2007 / Saël Gueydan-Lacroix & Frédéric Julien / 33 mins
According to a report by the UN in 2006, more than 1 billion people worldwide lack potable drinking water. The seriousness of this issue in Mexico sparked the active participation...
With and Without You
Canada / 2007 / Maryse Chartrand / 90 and 60 mins
Stopping everything to get out of the rat race is what the Beaudry family did. Maryse, Samuel and their three kids left their comfortable middle class North American...
An Unreasonable Man
USA / 2006 / Henriette Mantel & Steve Skrovan / 122 or 2x 60 mins
In 2009 Senator Barack Obama was sworn in as the first African American President of the United States, signifying a watershed moment in American political history. This...
Hand of God
USA / 2006 / Joe Cultrera / 94 ( enquire about tv length ) mins
A decade before the Catholic Church was rocked by the sexual abuse scandal, Paul Cultrera was piecing together the cover-up that protected the priest who molested him...
Promised Paradise
The Netherlands / Indonesia / 2006 / Leonard Retel Helmrich / 52 mins
The Jakarta-based Indonesian puppeteer and troubadour Agus Nur Amal travels to Bali to call to account the people who were responsible for the bomb attack on a nightclub...
The Blood of Yingzhou District ( 2007 Academy Award Winner )
China/US / 2006 / Ruby Yang(Director)/Thomas Lennon (Producer) / 39 please enquire about other formats available mins
Gao Jun is the toddler who appears in the Oscar winning Blood of Yingzhou District. Director Ruby Yang followed Gao Jun for a period of a year in this groundbreaking documentary...
Abel Raises Cain
USA / 2005 ( feature length ) & 2007 ( TV length ) / Jenny Abel & Jeff Hockett / 82 & 57:35 mins
Can you believe everything that you read and hear in the news? Meet Alan Abel - a professional hoaxer and prankster. He's been fooling the American media for decades....
Julia's Story
China / 2005 / Ruby Yang / 28 mins
In a culture still bound by tradition, it struggles to shake off the taboos of sexuality and the stigma of AIDS. It is against this backdrop that “Julia’s Story” profiles...