Movies: Scottish Documentary Institute

Breathing is about the thin space between life and death. 34-year-old Neil Platt plans his own funeral, muses about the meaning of life and the impossibility of terminating a mobile phone contract. With 5 months left to live, and paralyzed from the n...

At a unique Edinburgh bakery, a community of workers with learning disabilities makes a variety of organic breads for daily delivery to local shops and cafés....

Mentiras is a visually stunning but profoundly unsettling journey through the world’s largest city. Based on one man’s confession to human rights crimes committed with the backing of the Mexican government – it is the story of a troubled conscience a...

When a Palestinian filmmaker based in Scotland unearths a rarely-seen Scottish film archive of Palestinian wild flowers, he decides to reclaim the footage. This tender film essay questions the role of image-making as a tool of both testimony and viol...

A palpably rendered audiovisual essay draws together the distinct sensibilities of filmmakers Peter Mettler (The End of Time) and Emma Davie (I am Breathing) and philosopher David Abram (The Spell of the Sensuous) to forge a path into the places wher...

Fitting explores the relationship between the director, an amputee, and her prosthetist, by their contrasting experiences during the making of a prosthetic leg. It asks what it means for to create an extension to someone else’s body, and the impact t...

A remote and wild island on the west coast of Scotland is home to a small group of people that live in deep connection with the land, the sea and the weather. For different reasons, they left their city life to escape their inner demons and to live a...

Bill Drummond, once the most notorious man in pop music, now travels around the world baking cakes, building beds and shining shoes as part of a twelve year World Tour which is his final art project. This film follows him as he does his work in India...

A rhythmic portrait of an island community, where the sea has always defined life....

Cunenk grew up as a girl trapped in a boy’s body. She could not wait to leave her village and become a performer....

In post-revolution Libya, a group of women are brought together by one dream: to play football for their nation. But as the country descends into civil war and the utopian hopes of the “Arab Spring” begin to fade, can they realise their dream? And is...

Innes spends another bleak winter in the Scottish Highlands, relentlessly killing deer. Over the past twenty years he has planted over a million trees, working towards a 200-year long vision. But he knows this landscape needs death if life is ever to...

This rare and intimate portrait explores a young woman’s perspective about living with albinism – a condition which has often made her an outsider – who is determined to lead a normal life....

April loves music, dancing, trampolining and swimming, but with sensory difficulties faces challenges in the search for independence as her 16th birthday approaches....

Work. Eat. Sleep. And back to work. For a long time skippers in the North East of Scotland could not find locals to work on their fishing vessels. That was until Filipino fishermen started coming to town for work. Both nationalities strive to shorten...

Following a politically engaged schoolboy from Easterhouse, Scotland in the lead-up to the 2014 Scottish independence referendum....

The true story of a group of factory workers in Scotland who stood up to a military dictatorship in Chile....

The solitary life of a young Chinese takeaway delivery driver....

A young Ugandan goat herder dreams of being able to read and write but must oppose his elders....

Livingston skateboard park became internationally legendary. Forty years on, the park is no longer a favourite. That is until a group of school girls, passionate about skateboarding, step in....