Persuasive Speeches: Documentaries

An intimate documentary five years in the making, Because We Have Each Other chronicles the life of Janet and Buddha and their five adult children.They’re a neurodiverse family on the working-class fringe. With too many pets and a whole lot of bills to pay, they’re dreaming of bigger futures in a society that refuses to see them.Life has been hard, and blended families can be messy. But amidst the chaos, their love is as real as it is unconventional.At times deeply funny, this wondrous film examines the hopes and heartbreaks of one family as they invite us into their extraordinary home.

This is a story about the world’s greatest beach safety hazard - and the threat it poses at some of the most beautiful and popular beaches on Earth: in Australia, South Africa, Brazil, Mexico, Costa Rica and the United States.
Rip Current Survival tells the stories of those whose lives have been changed forever, with real rescues caught on camera.
Cutting edge science beneath the water’s surface journey’s into the heart of rips – as researchers in the UK, France, New Zealand and Australia unlock the secrets of how these currents operate.

In this short documentary, News Corp Australia gives you a first-hand look at youth offending, exploring how these teens operate and what's driving their behaviour.

GAYBY BABY is a portrait of four kids - Gus, Ebony, Matt and Graham - whose parents all happen to be gay. In this heartfelt documentary, we get to know the four kids: Gus wants to be a WWE wrestler; Matt questions the teachings of his church; Graham struggles with living in ultra-conservative Fiji; Ebony dreams of stardom. As they each wrestle with the challenges of oncoming adolescence, the outside world wrestles with the issue of marriage equality, and whether or not kids like them are at risk, but what we learn from these kids is that there's more than one way to make a family.

Subject explores the life-altering experience of sharing one’s life on screen through key participants of acclaimed documentaries "The Staircase", "Hoop Dreams", "The Wolfpack", "Capturing the Friedmans", and "The Square". These erstwhile documentary “stars” reveal the highs and lows of their experiences as well as the everyday realities of having their lives put under a microscope. Also featuring commentary from such influential names in the doc world as Kirsten Johnson, Sam Pollard, Thom Powers and Sonya Childress, the film unpacks vital issues around the ethics and responsibility inherent in documentary filmmaking. As tens of millions of people consume documentaries in an unprecedented "golden era," Subject urges audiences to consider the often profound impact on their participants.

Off Country follows the lives of seven Indigenous students as they leave home to spend a year boarding at one of the oldest and most elite boarding schools in the country, Geelong Grammar. From inside the boarding house, on the sports field and in the classroom we follow the 2020 school year as the boarding school is thrown into chaos.

The critically acclaimed documentary told through the eyes of charismatic 10-year-old Arrernte/Garrwa boy, Dujuan and his family, revealing the challenges Dujuan faces both in his school and on the streets of Alice Springs.

Every year in Australia, there are cases where people suffering from extreme mental illness kill other people, or commit serious acts of violence, after failing to get the mental health treatment they need. Their families carry an unimaginable burden. For decades, work has been done to remove the stigma around mental illness, but the confronting reality is that the mental health system is failing to protect the community and some patients themselves.