The best Abel Ferrara’s documentary movies
We present our ranking of the best Abel Ferrara’s movies. Do you love cinema? Or are you looking for a movie of your favorite actor to watch tonight? Surely you have some to see or that you did not know yet about Abel Ferrara.
Balkan Spirit
6.7/10
Filmmaker Hermann Vaske explores the creative Balkan world in the hopes of understanding the meaning of "Balkan spirit".
Wiara
Six authorities of cinema describe their approach to transcendence, mysticism, spirituality and life after dead.
At Sundance
2.6/10
A group portrait of filmmakers attend the 1995 Sundance Film Festival. Featuring Matthew Harrison, Richard Linklater, Ethan Hawke, Todd Haynes, Greg Araki, Abel Ferrara, Atom Egoyan, James Gray, Robert Redford, Haskell Wexler, among many others. Co-directed by Amy Hobby. [Filmed in Pixelvision and blown-up to evocatively grainy 16mm.]
Mulberry St.
6.4/10
Born in the Bronx and raised in upstate New York, Abel Ferrara started his professional film career on Mulberry Street in 1975. For the past year he's been living on the block, and the feast of San Gennaro is the subject of his new film. While he has used this location for a few of his features, this time it's the star of the film.
Cannes: All Access
6.1/10
From its simple beginnings in 1939 in a sleepy beach town in the south of France, the prestigious Cannes Film Festival has become the must-attend red carpet event of the year. Filmmaker Richard Schickel's fascinating documentary captures the glitz and glamour of the festival's incredible 60-year run with archival footage and unforgettable moments. Hollywood's biggest names including Clint Eastwood, Martin Scorsese, Sharon Stone and Harvey Weinstein talk about the politics, madness, and thrills of competing for one of the industry's highest honors - the coveted Palme d'Or - and what it's like to be at the most fabulous festival by the sea.
Sportin' Life
5.6/10
Sportin’ Life is the sixth incarnation of the international art project Self, curated by Saint Laurent’s creative director, Anthony Vaccarello. This project is an artistic commentary on society while emphasizing the complexity of various individuals through the eyes of artists who evoke the Saint Laurent attitude of confidence, individuality and self-expression. The documentary is an exploration into the sources and personal history of creativity, the essential life of an artist. Raw and sharp, it has the feeling of a moment in time that is still happening. Abel Ferrara’s intimate and lush look at his own life, his world refracted through his art – music, filmmaking, his collaborators and inspirations such as Ferrara’s early works and his creative partnerships with Willem Dafoe, Joe Delia, Paul Hipp and the musicians who inspired this work.
Odyssey in Rome
7.6/10
Alex Grazioli follows bad-boy filmmaker Abel Ferrara as he spends three grueling years battling obstacles in Italy to direct "Mary," a modern-re imagining of the life of Mary Magdalene. Featuring candid interviews and on-set footage with Forest Whitaker, Heather Graham, Matthew Modine, and Juliette Binoche, "Odyssey," brings to bear an impressive tableau of Ferrara's colleagues as they discuss his unique approach to creating dynamic films.
At the Video Store
7.2/10
Equal parts personal essay, intense rumination, and playful satire, this movie laments the death of the American Video Store while it searches for the missing human element in today's digital landscape.
Abel/Asia
4.1/10
Behind the scenes mini-doc from Asia Argento on Abel Ferrara during the filming of New Rose Hotel.
Chelsea on the Rocks
5.9/10
Chelsea on the Rocks celebrates the personalities and artistic voices that have emerged from New York’s legendary Chelsea Hotel. Once considered an untouchable, impenetrable tower for writers, artists, musicians and mavericks, it has been recently claimed as a boutique hotel venture for a management company that shows disregard for its formidable history. –Cannes Film Festival
The Projectionist
6.1/10
In his first New York City-set documentary in nearly a decade, filmmaker and provocateur Abel Ferrara uses the experience of one longtime cinema owner to chart the vast changes to the city’s theatrical landscape.
Piazza Vittorio
6.4/10
Vivid mosaic/portrait of Rome’s biggest public square, Piazza Vittorio, featuring talks with African musicians and restaurant workers, Chinese barkeeps and relocated eastern Europeans, homeless men and women, artists, actors, and many others.
Nice to Meet You, Please Don't Love Me!
7.6/10
A documentary on Asia Argento, made during the making of "the Heart is Deceitful Above All Things." Cinema has always been a part of her life, so much so that she cannot separate her childhood souvenirs from her film career. With Abel Ferrara, Peter Fonda, Marilyn Manson, Rancid, John Robinson...
Uncle Bob
6.5/10
Robert Oppel's documentary about the life and murder of his uncle and namesake, Robert Opel, the man who streaked the Academy Awards in 1974.
Alive in France
5.6/10
Abel Ferrara headlines a film retrospective and a series of concerts in France dedicated to songs and music from his films. Preparations with his family and friends will form the material of this self portrait, showing another side of the director of legendary films BAD LIEUTENANT, THE KING OF NEW YORK and THE ADDICTION. Ferrara is joined on stage by past collaborators, including composer Joe Delia, actor-singer Paul Hipp and his wife actress Cristina Chiriac for concerts at the Metronum in Toulouse and the Salo Club in Paris in October 2016.
Talking with the Vampires
5.4/10
Abel Ferrara directed this thirty-minute documentary that interviews the cast of his film THE ADDICTION.
Abel Ferrara in Lucca
A simple, modest and faithful record of some moments at the Lucca Film Festival in October 2010, with songs and speeches by Abel Ferrara: trace of the co-presence of two of the greatest contemporary filmmakers, dissident and true sons of Cesare Zavattini’s revolutionary spirit.
