
The Country Upside Down
2009-04-29 · 90 min · Not rated
Returning to the island that her father left 50 years earlier, the filmmaker goes back in time to retrace the history of her name.
Trailers are previews, not full movies.
No authorized playback source configured. Use the legal watch options below.
Production details
- Directors
- Sylvaine Dampierre
- Production companies
- Atlan Films, Hévadis Films
- Countries
- France, Guadaloupe
- Status
- Released
Top Cast
Sylvaine DampierreSelfTitle information and images are supplied by TMDb. Explore our discovery guide for advice on comparing metadata and legal viewing options.
Where to watch
Availability provided by JustWatch via TMDb. Offers can change. Provider links are listed on TMDb; full playback requires a separately authorized source.
Seasons & episodes
Recommendations

Through deeply personal interviews with her siblings and an examination of the photographs, letters, and belongings left behind, Mariska assembles a new portrait of her mother Jayne Mansfield, an extraordinary and complex woman.

An intimate portrait of the small shops and shopkeepers of the Rue Daguerre in Paris, a picturesque street that has been the filmmaker’s home for more than 50 years.

A compilation of over 30 years of private home movie footage shot by Lithuanian-American avant-garde director Jonas Mekas, assembled by Mekas "purely by chance", without concern for chronological order.

Director Michael Apted revisits the same group of British-born adults after a 7 year wait. The subjects are interviewed as to the changes that have occurred in their lives during the last seven years.

Filmmaker Christopher Quinn observes the ordeal of three Sudanese refugees -- Jon Bul Dau, Daniel Abul Pach and Panther Bior -- as they try to come to terms with the horrors they experienced in their homeland, while adjusting to their new lives in the United States.

Over 35 years after Bob Lazar's revelations, this documentary exposes secrets of a facility the government still denies. Featuring Lazar's testimony, recreations, and new evidence, it reopens a case that continues to spark global curiosity

As a visually radical memoir, CAMERAPERSON draws on the remarkable footage that filmmaker Kirsten Johnson has shot and reframes it in ways that illuminate moments and situations that have personally affected her. What emerges is an elegant meditation on the relationship between truth and the camera frame, as Johnson transforms scenes that have been presented on Festival screens as one kind of truth into another kind of story—one about personal journey, craft, and direct human connection.

Filmmaking icon Agnès Varda, the award-winning director regarded by many as the grandmother of the French new wave, turns the camera on herself with this unique autobiographical documentary. Composed of film excerpts and elaborate dramatic re-creations, Varda's self-portrait recounts the highs and lows of her professional career, the many friendships that affected her life and her longtime marriage to cinematic giant Jacques Demy.

In an intimate and joyful story of love in the face of loss, celebrated poets Andrea Gibson and Megan Falley find strength—and unexpected hilarity—in what might be their final year together.

This revealing documentary honors the legendary Sidney Poitier—iconic actor, filmmaker, and civil rights activist. Featuring interviews with Denzel Washington, Spike Lee, Halle Berry, and more.

The film follows adventurer Jeff Johnson as he retraces the epic 1968 journey of his heroes Yvon Chouinard and Doug Tompkins to Patagonia.

An in-depth look at the prison system in the United States and how it reveals the nation's history of racial inequality.

A documentary on the expletive's origin, why it offends some people so deeply, and what can be gained from its use.

Thousands of royal artifacts of Dahomey, a West African kingdom, were taken by French colonists in the 19th century for collection and display in Paris. Centuries later, a fraction returned to their home in modern-day Benin. This dramatized documentary follows the journey of 26 of the treasures as told by cultural art historians, embattled university students, and one of the repatriated statues himself.

Carefully picked scenes of nature and civilization are viewed at high speed using time-lapse cinematography in an effort to demonstrate the history of various regions.

A woman narrates the thoughts of a world traveler, meditations on time and memory expressed in words and images from places as far-flung as Japan, Guinea-Bissau, Iceland, and San Francisco.

A documentary about the making of David Fincher's 2008 film THE CURIOUS CASE OF BENJAMIN BUTTON. Virtually every element in the evolution of the Fincher's film is documented here, from the project's attachment to numerous other directors during the 1990s, to its shoot in 2006 and 2007 in New Orleans, to its complex, CGI-intensive postproduction process.

Documentary about legendary Paramount producer Robert Evans, based on his famous 1994 autobiography.

From the heights of her modeling fame to her tragic death, this documentary reveals Anna Nicole Smith through the eyes of the people closest to her.

This documentary revisits the French football team's controversial 2010 World Cup and the bus strike that sparked global headlines and national outrage.
Similar titles


Atikamekw elder Cézar Néwashish continues to recount the history of the community of Manawan that first began in The History of Manawan: Part One. As Christianity and European customs take deeper root in the community – abetted by residential schools and aggressive assimilationist government policies – seemingly irreversible changes to significant customs begin to unfold. Despite these struggles, the people carry on. This short is part of the Manawan series directed by Alanis Obomsawin.

Frederick Douglass and the White Negro is a documentary telling the story of ex-slave, abolitionist, writer and politician Frederick Douglass and his escape to Ireland from America in the 1840s. After his escape from slavery and writing his autobiography which included all the actual names of his 'owners' to prove he was telling the truth, his only option was to leave his family behind and flee the United States of America since now his life was in danger.


Alternating interview segments, shots of Martinique landscapes and scenes from Aimé Césaire's play La Tragédie du roi Christophe (1963), Sarah Maldoror portrays her friend as a politician, a poet, and a founder of the Négritude movement.


The Happy Island looks at the work of the London Missionary Society on Gemo (now Hanudamua) Island in Port Moresby harbour, Papua New Guinea, which from 1937-1974 treated people who suffered from infectious diseases, mainly leprosy and tuberculosis. The film offers insight into the attitudes and practices of Christian missionaries of that time. Despite the colonial paternalism that underpins the Missionary Society’s model of care, the film tells the story of a happy, active community, as it follows the lives of the patients, their families and the dedicated staff, all of whom live, work and socialise on the island together.

Set against the backdrop of the Gold Coast of West Africa in 1876, "Abina and the Important Men" follows the harrowing true story of Abina Mansah, a young girl who is enslaved and struggles against the British colonial system that seeks to control trade and manipulate local customs for its own benefit. Despite the abolition of slavery, Abina finds herself trapped in a society where the trade in slaves, particularly children, persists under the guise of protectorate laws. After being sold and forced to marry against her will, Abina flees to seek her freedom and confronts the British legal system. Her battle for justice is a poignant narrative that exposes the hypocrisy of the colonial powers and the resilience of those who fought against their oppression. Told through stunning animation, the film is a compelling historical drama that delves into the complexity of freedom, colonialism, and the human spirit's unyielding desire for autonomy and dignity.

Else, a half-breed child from the secretive harem of the German colonial elite, is the daughter of the governor's deputy Jesko von Puttkammer, who disappeared to faraway Germany. Else became an old woman who had suffered all her life from remaining fatherless. The film finally confronts Else's only half-sister from German nobility with the mulatto sister-in-law from Africa.

Prejudices, ignorance, and racism still leave their mark on the everyday life of black Germans, respectively Europeans, until today. How do Afro-Germans deal with their history? Which colonial-racist patterns still shape our society today? With insights into various historic epochs, it is made clear that THE history of the Black people does not exist. And neither exists THE history of white people.

Abdul Rahman, an African prince who was sold into slavery, spent four decades in servitude before an amazing coincidence took him to the White House to meet President John Quincy Adams, where he was granted his freedom. Mos Def narrates this PBS documentary that includes reenactments of scenes from Rahman's life and interviews with historians who discuss the conditions faced by slaves in early America.

This true, astonishing story describes how King Leopold II of Belgium turned Congo into its private colony between 1885 and 1908. Under his control, Congo became a gulag labor camp of shocking brutality. Leopold posed as the protector of Africans fleeing Arab slave-traders but, in reality, he carved out an empire based on terror to harvest rubber.

By means of a chronological arrangement of historical video material from the Istituto Luce archives, it tells the story of Fascist Italy's ambitions in Africa and the role they played in shaping fascist ideology and the stance of the fascist regime in the Western world at the height of the age of colonialism and aggressive European expansionism.

Documentary about abolitionist John Brown

INFINITY minus Infinity draws on several inspirations: the modernist verse of the Jamaican poet Una Marson, the alluvial invocations of the Martinican philosopher and poet Édouard Glissant, the black feminist poetics of the Brazilian philosopher Denise Ferreira da Silva, and the racial formation of geology theorised by British geographer Kathryn Yusoff amongst others in order to envision a black feminist cosmos animated by the principles of mathematical nihilism.

African-American documentary filmmaker Marlon Riggs was working on this final film as he died from AIDS-related complications in 1994; he addresses the camera from his hospital bed in several scenes. The film directly addresses sexism and homophobia within the black community, with snippets of misogynistic and anti-gay slurs from popular hip-hop songs juxtaposed with interviews with African-American intellectuals and political theorists, including Cornel West, bell hooks and Angela Davis.

Documentary about the Holy Angels Residential School in Alberta, where hundreds of First Nations children were imprisoned.

Documentary chronicling the government relocation of 10,000 Navajo Indians in Arizona.

Not My Life comprehensively depicts the cruel and dehumanizing practices of human trafficking and modern slavery on a global scale. Filmed on five continents, in a dozen countries, Not My Life takes viewers into a world where millions of children are exploited through an astonishing array of practices including forced labor, sex tourism, sexual exploitation, and child soldiering.