Movies Similar to Modesty and Shame

Peter Monaghan: A Portrait(2012)

This documentary features a kinetic artist who creates vibrant mixed media works that push the boundary between 2D and 3D.

Becoming Madonna(2024)

Madonna's rise to fame from 1978 to 1992, exploring her personal life, controversies, and the challenges she faced during that period.

Being and Becoming Chua Ek Kay(2012)

The film offers exclusive and intimate insights into how and why the classically trained artist risked rejection to revolutionize the traditional Chinese ink art form in Singapore.

Jean-Michel Basquiat, artiste absolu(2022)

The life and work of New York artist Jean-Michel Basquiat have been marked by a long quest for identity, by his Haitian and Puerto Rican family origins and by a founding trip to Africa. To portray this major painter of the 20th century, who died in 1988 at only 27 years old, is also to evoke the place of black American artists in the conservative and racist America of the Reagan years.

The Artist’s Garden: American Impressionism(2017)

Taking its lead from French artists like Renoir and Monet, the American impressionist movement followed its own path which over a forty-year period reveals as much about America as a nation as it does about its art as a creative power-house. It’s a story closely tied to a love of gardens and a desire to preserve nature in a rapidly urbanizing nation. Travelling to studios, gardens and iconic locations throughout the United States, UK and France, this mesmerising film is a feast for the eyes. The Artist’s Garden: American Impressionism features the sell-out exhibition The Artist’s Garden: American Impressionism and the Garden Movement, 1887–1920 that began at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts and ended at the Florence Griswold Museum, Old Lyme, Connecticut.

Fellini, confidences retrouvées(2023)

Federico Fellini died on October 31st, 1993. Thirty years later, he is still considered as one of the most irreverant moviemaker in the history of cinema. Through a long-previously-unseen interview, directed by Jean-Christophe Rosé in 1981, through extracts of his films and through behind-the-scenes, this documentary draws an intimate portrait of Fellini by himself.

The Story Won't Die(2021)

THE STORY WON’T DIE, from Award-winning filmmaker David Henry Gerson, is an inspiring, timely look at a young generation of Syrian artists who use their work to protest and process what is currently the world’s largest and longest ongoing displacement of people since WWII. The film is produced by Sundance Award-winner Odessa Rae (Navalny). Rapper Abu Hajar, together with other creative personalities of the Syrian uprising, a post-Rock musician (Anas Maghrebi), members of the first all-female Syrian rock band (Bahila Hijazi + Lynn Mayya), break-dancer (Bboy Shadow), choreographer (Medhat Aldaabal), and visual artists (Tammam Azzam, Omar Imam + Diala Brisly), use their art to rise in revolution and endure in exile in this new documentary reflecting on a battle for peace, justice and freedom of expression. It is an uplifting and humanizing look at what it means to be a refugee in today’s world and offers inspiring and hopeful vantages on a creative response to the chaos of war.

Eric Clapton: Life in 12 Bars(2018)

An unflinching and deeply personal journey into the life and work of guitarist Eric Clapton told through his own words and songs.

The Wonderful, Horrible Life of Leni Riefenstahl(1993)

This documentary recounts the life and work of one of most famous, and yet reviled, German film directors in history, Leni Riefenstahl. The film recounts the rise of her career from a dancer, to a movie actor to the most important film director in Nazi Germany who directed such famous propaganda films as Triumph of the Will and Olympiad. The film also explores her later activities after Nazi Germany's defeat in 1945 and her disgrace for being so associated with it which includes her amazingly active life over the age of 90.

Gauguin: A Dangerous Life(2019)

Gauguin’s vivid artworks sell for millions. He was an inspired and committed multi-media artist who worked with the Impressionists and had a tempestuous relationship with Vincent van Gogh. But he was also a competitive and rapacious man who left his wife to bring up five children and used his colonial privilege to travel to Polynesia, where in his 40s he took ‘wives’ between 13 and 15 years old, creating images of them and their world that promoted a fantasy paradise of an unspoilt Eden in the Pacific. Later, he challenged the colonial authorities and the Catholic Church in defence of the indigenous people, dying in the Marquesas Islands in 1903, sick, impoverished and alone.

The Genius of Turner: Painting the Industrial Revolution(2013)

A film that looks at the genius of JMW Turner in a new light. There is more to Turner than his sublime landscapes - he also painted machines, science, technology and industry. Turner's life spans the Industrial Revolution, he witnessed it as it unfolded and he painted it. In the process he created a whole new kind of art. The programme examines nine key Turner paintings and shows how we should re-think them in the light of the scientific and Industrial Revolution. Includes interviews with historian Simon Schama and artist Tracey Emin.

Botticelli's Venus: The Making of an Icon(2016)

Sam Roddick explores the enduring appeal of Botticelli's masterpiece The Birth of Venus, one of the most celebrated paintings in western art. A joyous celebration of female sexuality, its journey to worldwide fame was far from straightforward and it lay in obscurity for centuries. Artist and entrepreneur Sam explains why Botticelli's nude was so revolutionary, and explores its impact on contemporary culture with artists such as Terry Gilliam, who memorably reinvented Venus for his Monty Python's Flying Circus animations.

Rene Magritte: Man in the Hat(2014)

In this film, Will Young travels to Magritte's native Belgium to find out more about the man whose trademark was a bowler hat and whose apparently conventional exterior concealed the mind of a subversive rebel. Will uncovers a childhood marked by tragedy, a marriage that lasted from Magritte's adolescence until his death in 1967, and a stunning artistic legacy which endures to this day.

Jim Carrey: America Unmasked(2021)

Composed of numerous archives and film clips, this documentary is the story of a transgressive actor, a pirate who came to crack America's too perfect mask to reveal its most infantile and moronic face, right in the heart of the Hollywood system.

Little Richard: I Am Everything(2023)

The story of the black, gay origins of rock n' roll. It explodes the whitewashed canon of American pop music to reveal the innovator – the originator – Richard Penniman. Through a wealth of archive and performance that brings us into Richard's complicated inner world, the film unspools the icon's life story with all its switchbacks and contradictions.

Rothko: Pictures Must Be Miraculous(2019)

Mark Rothko, a master of abstract expressionism, created 835 paintings during his five-decade career.

Andy Warhol(1987)

The first major profile of the American Pop Art cult leader after his death in 1987 covers the whole of his life and work through interviews, clips from his films, and conversations with his family and superstar friends. Andy Warhol, the son of poor Czech immigrants, grew up in the industrial slums of Pittsburgh while dreaming of Hollywood stars. He went on to become a star himself.

We Remember Marilyn(1996)

We Remember Marilyn. Marilyn Monroe transforms from Norma Jean, a cuddly teenager, into the most recognizable face and body in the world in these home movies, photos and film clips which span her early bit parts to her most known roles.

Leonardo: The Mystery of the Lost Portrait(2018)

Leonardo da Vinci is not just the most famous and most admired of all painters - he is an icon, a superstar. Yet, the man himself remains elusive. Accounts during his lifetime describe a man too handsome, too strong, too perfect to be accurate. But in 2009, the chance discovery in the South of Italy of an ancient portrait with strangely familiar features takes the art world by storm. Could this be an unknown self-portrait by Leonardo da Vinci? Controversy erupts among the experts. The implications of such a discovery have far-reaching consequences for our understanding of the work of this great Renaissance master.

Bacon-Freud, face à face(2025)