Icarus Films: About

About Icarus Films

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"Since 1978, Icarus has offered a haven for nonfiction films that are at once socially conscious and supremely artful."
—The New York Times

"[Icarus' films] demonstrate a principle dear to both that company and me: the conviction that a movie can have strong social or political content and still do something interesting as film."
—The Nation

"The familiar opposition between politically progressive films and aesthetically advanced ones is overcome in the extraordinary catalogue of Icarus Films."
—The New Yorker

Since 1978, Icarus Films has been a leading distributor of documentary films in North America. Led by longtime president Jonathan Miller, we work with independent producers worldwide to release 30-50 new films a year, and represent a collection of well over 1,000 titles.

Each year we release six to eight feature documentaries to theatrical audiences. We've recently released films including the Brazilian documentary In the Intense Now, the Serbian documentary The Other Side of Everything and, as a co-release with KimStim, the fiction feature film from Indonesia, Marlina the Murderer in Four Acts. Coming up next is the newly restored 13-part series by great director and dear Icarus Films friend Chris Marker: The Owl's Legacy.

Icarus Films Home Video offers selected titles to individual consumers digitally, and on Blu-ray and DVD. This year so far we’ve released Rebels on Pointe (also licensed to Starz), and the six-part series Capitalism. Our other television broadcast partners included PBS, where the acclaimed program POV will broadcast The Apology to millions of viewers.

Icarus Films owns two specialized labels focused on healthcare and social services: The Fanlight Collection includes 350 film and video programs on aging, death and dying, global health, healthcare, medicine, mental health, nursing, and professional ethics. And Program Development Associates distributes 600 multi-media training and educational resources on disability subjects.

In 2012, Icarus Films acquired The dGenerate Films Collection, the leading source for contemporary, independent films from mainland China. Our recent releases from this collection including Wang Bing's 'Til Madness Do Us Part, Bitter Money and the forthcoming co-release with Grashopper Film, Dead Souls.

We are also proud to have partnered with Bullfrog Films and established Docuseek2, which offers a subscription video-on-demand (SVOD) service focused on meeting the needs of colleges and universities for online access to essential documentary content. Currently Docuseek2 has over 1300 titles available, of which 550 come from the Icarus Films collection.

After 40 years in business, Icarus Films is proud to be active in traditional and new media, and to work with new talent as well as “old masters.” We value meeting the needs of activists, educators, and service providers, as well as challenging audiences, and programmers, with original creative works.

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