Meryl Streep as Mother Courage in John Walter's absorbing, perceptive Theater of War. There are documentaries that entertain and many more that educate, and there are plenty that grab you by the lapels and spout hummus-breath in your face about how you need to stop eating meat and trade your vulgar, barbarous combustion-powered vehicle in for a bike — today! Then there are the rare documentaries that prod you, subtly but insistently, to reexamine the......

As you probably noticed from our first review this morning, the SILVERDOCS AFI/Discovery Channel Documentary Festival is now underway in Silver Spring, Md. The festival runs beginning today through Monday, June 23, and presents 108 documentary films over the course of the week. Now in its sixth year, SILVERDOCS is by far and away the classiest and best run film festival the D.C. metro area has to offer, and DCist will be crawling all over......

“So the thing you have to understand is this is radio,” says the voice in the darkness — a little bit squeaky, a little bit nasal, not at all the voice you’d assign to the leader of a benign radio cult if it weren't already so familiar. Ira Glass, creator and host of the weekly public radio story anthology This American Life, begins all his speaking engagements this way. That opening line is always good......

Ilana Trachtman is a television documentary producer by trade, but when presented with the story of Lior Liebling, she jumped into the choppier waters of independent filmmaking for the opportunity to make her debut feature. Lior is a young man with Down Syndrome, born to two Reconstructionist Jewish rabbis in Philadelphia. From an early age, he showed an unusually ardent interest in davening, the recitation of Jewish liturgical prayers, reciting the melodic prayers along with......

Remember when you were a kid, and mom and dad slid a steaming plate of Brussels sprouts, or spinach, or broccoli in front of you, and commanded, "Eat it. It's good for you!" You know now that they were right. And even back then, you probably had some sense that it was probably the right thing to do. That didn't make the experience any more enjoyable, though. Nanking, a new documentary produced by Washington Capitals......