Bending the Arc

Jan 23, 2017

1h 42m

★ 7.0

A Friendship that Changed the World

Overview

About the extraordinary doctors and activists—including Paul Farmer, Jim Yong Kim, and Ophelia Dahl—whose work 30 years ago to save lives in a rural Haitian village grew into a global battle in the halls of power for the right to health for all.

Genres

Documentary

Production Companies

Impact Partners

JustFilms / Ford Foundation

Urban Landscapes

Scout & Scholar

Abramorama

Sundance Institute

Bending the Arc Trailers

No Trailers found.

Cast

Himself

Paul Farmer

Herself

Ophelia Dahl

Himself

Jim Yong Kim

January 1953: On the eve of his death Stalin finds himself yet another imaginary enemy: Jewish doctors. He organizes the most violent anti-Semitic campaign ever launched in the USSR, by fabricating the "Doctors' Plot," whereby doctors are charged with conspiring to murder the highest dignitaries of the Soviet Regime. Still unknown and untold, this conspiracy underlines the climax of a political scheme successfully masterminded by Stalin to turn the Jews into the new enemies of the people. It reveals his extreme paranoia and his compulsion to manipulate those around him. The children and friends of the main victims recount for the first time their experience and their distress related to these nightmarish events.

No Image Available

10.0

Echo Of The Past: The Terrence Tower

Jun 26, 2012

A historical documentary documenting the rise, function, and abandonment of a 17 story building that once housed The Rochester Psychiatric Center. This film tells the story of the building through historical footage, interviews of former staff and patients who recount their memories of the behemoth facility while also exploring the abandoned building as it is today.

7.0

Lentävä kuolema

Nov 7, 2025

The tuberculosis sanatorium was both heaven and hell within the same walls. The story of the epidemic includes death, shame and isolation as well as sanatorium romances, fun and survival stories. The film takes the viewer on a vivid journey into the sanatorium era: it gives the viewer a sanatorium experience full of surprises, and through documentary evidence, takes us to the heart of the secrets.

0.0

Homeopathy Unrefuted?

Jul 29, 2021

Despite the homeopathic doctors studying medicine, they treat their patients against the basis of scientific knowledge. Allegations of fraud surround the topic. In the film, homeopaths embark on adventurous explanations of their popular belief system.

0.0

Voodoo

Mar 31, 1933

In 1925, during the occupation of Haiti, a U.S. Marine Corps sergeant was stationed in charge of the small island of La Gonave. He befriended the natives and was so popular that they named him King Faustin I and installed him as their ruler. He ruled the island for three years, then left and returned to make this documentary.

7.4

Sicko

May 18, 2007

A documentary about the corrupt health care system in The United States who's main goal is to make profit even if it means losing people’s lives. "The more people you deny health insurance the more money we make" is the business model for health care providers in America.

0.0

Education Week

Jan 1, 1925

Young scholars get busy for Newcastle-on-Tyne's 'Education Week' in the tour of Tyneside classrooms.

9.0

Tasmanian Devil: The Fast and Furious Life of Errol Flynn

Oct 17, 2007

The story of Tasmanian-born actor Errol Flynn whose short & flamboyant life, full of scandals, adventures, loves and excess was largely played out in front of the camera - either making movies or filling the newsreels and gossip magazines. Tragically he was dead from the effects of drugs and alcohol by the time he was only 50 & the myths live on. But there is another side of Flynn that is less well known - his ambitions to be a serious writer and newspaper correspondent, his documentary films and his interest in the Spanish Civil War and Castro's Cuba

0.0

Gonorrhea

Jan 23, 1943

Diagnosis of gonorrhea should be done by clinical and laboratory investigation. The physician and patients are shown in the physician's office and examining room. The patients remove their clothing, and the physician takes samples from the end of the penis and makes thin smear slides from them. The techniques for stripping gonococci from male and female patients with chronic gonorrhea are shown in drawings and live footage. The physician is shown getting and preparing a urine sample for laboratory testing for the presence of gonococci, including using a hand-cranked centrifuge. The material is packaged to be sent away for laboratory diagnosis by gram stain and culture.

6.5

The Forgotten Plague

Feb 10, 2015

Tuberculosis is the deadliest killer in human history, responsible for one in four deaths for almost two centuries. While it shaped medical pursuits, social habits, economic development and public policy, TB and its impact are poorly understood.

5.0

Stateless

Sep 17, 2020

Director Michèle Stephenson’s new documentary follows families of those affected by the 2013 legislation stripping citizenship from Dominicans of Haitian descent, uncovering the complex history and present-day politics of Haiti and the Dominican Republic through the grassroots electoral campaign of a young attorney named Rosa Iris.

0.0

Through Your Eyes

Feb 6, 2026

In an effort to understand where she came from, Fabiola asked a question that became the central phrase of the film: what would my life have been like if I'd stayed in Haiti? Taking as her starting point her biological mother's precarious economic situation, she had no choice but to entrust her daughter to her care. Fabiola could have ended up restavek, or in a loving foster family, or on the streets abandoned to her fate, or adopted abroad.

6.8

The Bleeding Edge

Jul 27, 2018

Each year in the United States, unparalleled innovations in medical diagnostics, treatment, and technology hit the market. But when the same devices designed to save patients end up harming them, who is accountable?

0.0

Hospital City

Sep 15, 2004

As debate in Canada and the world rages over health care, Hospital City offers a moving, human portrait of the people whom the issues touch most closely.

8.0

Anyplace But Here

Jul 1, 1978

A documentary part of CBS reports. The plight of mental patients fit for discharge, but who find themselves thrust into communities unprepared to treat or accept them is the focus of this documentary narrated by Bill Moyers. The dilemma of being as scared of getting well as of remaining ill and facing a world with no home or job to go to is vividly portrayed as the film follows three patients as they move into rare transition programs.

5.4

A Doctor's Sword

Aug 7, 2015

An Irish doctor survived the atomic bomb attack on Nagasaki and was given a Samurai sword for the lives he saved. 70 years later his family searches for the origin of their father's sword.

6.3

Hospital

Jun 1, 1977

24 hours in the life of a hospital from the point of view of the doctors and nurses.

Bending the Arc

Overview

Genres

Production Companies

Bending the Arc Trailers