The film focuses on the perpetrators of the Indonesian killings of 1965–66 in the present day; ostensibly towards the communist community where almost a million people were killed. When Suharto overthrew Sukarno, the President of Indonesia, following the failed coup of the 30 September Movement in 1965, the gangsters Anwar Congo and Adi Zulkadry in Medan (North Sumatra) were promoted from selling black market movie theatre tickets to leading the most powerful death squad in North Sumatra. They also extorted money from ethnic Chinese as the price for keeping their lives. Anwar is said to have personally killed 1,000 people.
À travers un examen des carrières du médecin américain Caldwell Esselstyn et du professeur de biochimie nutritionnelle T. Colin Campbell , Forks over Knives suggère que « l'évolution de beaucoup, sinon toutes, les maladies dégénératives qui nous affligent peut être contrôlée, voire inversée, en rejetant notre alimentation actuelle basée sur les aliments transformés et d'origine animale. » Il fournit aussi une vue d'ensemble du projet China-Cornell-Oxford, long de 20 ans, qui mena aux trouvailles du professeur Campbell, esquissé dans son livre, The China Study (2005). Il y suggère que maladie cardiaque, diabète, obésité, et cancer peuvent être liés au régime alimentaire occidental d'aliments transformés et d'origine animale (y compris les produits laitiers).
Réalisé pour la BBC d'après le document à charge du journaliste anglais Christopher Hitchens Les Crimes de M. Kissinger (publié en France en 2001 chez Saint-Simon), le documentaire d'Eugene Jarecki et Alex Gibney soutient que le lauréat du prix Nobel de la paix doit être tenu pour responsable du maintien des forces américaines au Vietnam après 1968, de l'invasion du Cambodge, du coup d'Etat qui renverse le président chilien Salvador Allende en 1973 et des massacres au Timor-Oriental. Mais pour les deux réalisateurs l'ancien secrétaire d'Etat de Richard Nixon et Gerald Ford n'est pas seulement un politicien cynique prêt à tout pour conquérir puis conserver le pouvoir. Ils affirment que Kissinger est un authentique criminel de guerre. Mais ils se contentent pour cela de clamer la pertinence de l'ouvrage de Christopher Hitchens - le plus souvent avec de longues interventions du journaliste - sans se donner les moyens d'étayer leur thèse.
Using film made at American prisons, Leuchter talked about his upbringing where his father was a corrections officer. Through his family associations, young Leuchter claimed he was able to witness an execution performed in an electric chair. Leuchter's impression of the event was that the electric chairs used by American prisons were unsafe and often ineffective. The event led him to design modifications to the device that were adopted by many American states.
The film focuses on Project Nim, a research project that was mounted to determine whether a primate raised in close contact with humans could develop a limited "language" based on American Sign Language. The project was centred on a chimpanzee named Nim Chimpsky.
In the film, South African musicians, playwrights, poets and activists recall the struggle against apartheid from the 1940s to the 1990s that stripped black citizens of South Africa of basic human rights, and the important role that music played in that struggle. The documentary uses a mixture of interviews, musical performances and historical film footage. Among the South Africans who take part are Miriam Makeba, Abdullah Ibrahim, Hugh Masekela, Vusi Mahlasela and others.
After some comical animations involving Al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden, the film shows Spurlock visiting various countries associated with or affected by Bin Laden. The film contains short interviews with many people about Bin Laden and Islamic fundamentalism, and about the US and its war on terror. Supposedly Spurlock searches for Bin Laden, and he even asks people at random in the street where he is. The film is intercut with images of Spurlock's wife in the late stages of her pregnancy. Much of Spurlock's commentary is based on the concerns of a new father.
A middle-aged Indonesian man, whose brother was brutally murdered in the 1965 purge of "communists," confronts the men who carried out the killings. Out of concern for his safety, the man is not fully identified in the film and is credited only as "anonymous," as are many of the film's crew positions. Some shots consist of the man watching (what seems to be) extra footage from The Act of Killing, which includes video of the men who killed his brother. He visits some of the killers and their collaborators—including his uncle—under the pretense of an eye exam. Although none of the killers express any remorse, the daughter of one of them is clearly shaken when she hears, apparently for the first time, the details of the killings.
Ce sont des séries de bobines de films de 35 mm allemandes, anonymes, sans générique, portant la seule inscription : Das Ghetto, retrouvées dans les années 1950 qui sont à l'origine du film de Yahel Hersonski. Ces bobines constituent un « documentaire » allemand sur le ghetto de Varsovie durant la Seconde Guerre mondiale. Dans les années 1990, la découverte d'une bobine manquante viendra éclairer la propagande qui se cachait dans les premières images retrouvées et le véritable but des Allemands qui réalisèrent ces images.
Dix-neuf ans après avoir été incarcérés pour le meurtre de trois enfants de 8 ans à West Memphis, trois adolescents voient les charges contre eux s'étioler.