The best Helen Mirren’s documentary movies on Apple iTunes
Dame Helen Lydia Mirren DBE (née Mironoff) is an English actor. Mirren began her acting career with the Royal Shakespeare Company in 1967, and is one of the few performers who have achieved the Triple Crown of Acting, having won the Academy Award for Best Actress in 2007, after two previous nominations, for her performance as Queen Elizabeth II in The Queen. In 2015 she won the Tony Award for Best Actress in a Play, after two previous nominations, for her performance in The Audience, in which she also portrayed Elizabeth II. The Audience was written by Peter Morgan, who also wrote The Queen. Mirren won her first of several Emmy Awards in 1996 for her performance as police detective Jane Tennison on the acclaimed ITV series Prime Suspect, which ran for a total of seven seasons between 1991 and 2006.
Some of her other notable film roles include Marcella in the 1984 film Cal, for which she won the Cannes Film Festival Award for Best Actress, 2010 (1984), The Cook, the Thief, His Wife & Her Lover (1989), The Madness of King George (1994), Teaching Mrs. Tingle (1999), Gosford Park (2001), Calendar Girls (2003), The Last Station (2009), Hitchcock (2012), and The Hundred-Foot Journey (2014). She also starred as Victoria Winslow in the action-comedy films Red and Red 2.
The Pulitzer At 100
6.5/10
The Pulitzer at 100, by Oscar and Emmy winning director Kirk Simon, is a ninety-minute independent documentary released in conjunction with the Pulitzer Centennial in April 2016. This film is told through the riveting stories of the artists that have won the prestigious prize. With Pulitzer work read by Helen Mirren, Natalie Portman, Liev Schreiber, John Lithgow and Yara Shahidi; journalists include Carl Bernstein, Nick Kristof, Thomas Friedman, and David Remnick; authors include Toni Morrison, Michael Chabon, Junot Díaz, Tony Kushner, and Ayad Akhtar; and musicians Wynton Marsalis, David Crosby, and John Adams also share their stories.
Cries from Syria
8.3/10
An attempt to re-contextualize the European migrant crisis and ongoing hostilities in Syria, through eyewitness and participant testimony. Children and parents recount the revolution, civil war, air strikes, atrocities and ongoing humanitarian aid crises, in a portrait of recent history and the consequences of violence.
Excalibur: Behind the Movie
7.5/10
This retrospective documentary looks back on the making of director John Boorman's 1981 movie, Excalibur. Self-described as the toughest film he ever made, Excalibur told the tale of King Arthur and the Sword in the Stone and helped start the careers of actors Liam Neeson, Gabriel Byrne, Helen Mirren and Patrick Stewart. In this one hour film, they join other cast and crew to share their memories from the filming of this Arthurian masterpiece. Documentary originally released in 2013 with the title Behind The Sword In The Stone; a later, renamed version with updated biographical information on the actors involved was then released in 2016. The 2016 version has since been shown on various on-demand channels.
Enemy of the Reich: The Noor Inayat Khan Story
7.2/10
In 1943, Noor Inayat Khan was recruited as a covert operative into Winston Churchill's Special Operations Executive. With an American mother and Indian Muslim father, she was an extremely unusual British agent. After her network collapsed, Khan became the only surviving radio operator linking the British to the French Resistance in Paris, coordinating the airdrop of weapons and agents, and the rescue of downed Allied fliers.
Escape from Extinction
7.7/10
Rare footage of endangered animals and interviews with the world's leading animal welfare specialists and conservation scientists working to protect animals from all seven of Earth's continents, and its mighty oceans, lakes, and rivers.
An Accidental Studio
7.1/10
Charts the early years of HandMade Films seen through the eyes of the filmmakers, key personnel, and the man who started it all: former Beatle George Harrison.
