How did psychedelics, not so long ago cast into the wilderness by the medical community, so quickly return to one of America’s most prestigious research institutions and graduate to the pages of the field's premier journals? Join us as we learn the stories of the scientists at Johns Hopkins Center for Psychedelic & Consciousness Research who re-opened the doors, and the new generation of researchers working to explore the potential of psychedelics in science and medicine.
Manoj Doss, Tim Ferriss, Roland Griffiths, Natalie Gukasyan, Bob Jesse, Matthew W. Johnson, Katherine McLean, William A. Richards

The daring experimenter Dr. John C. Lilly dedicated his life to radical self-investigation and unlocking the mysteries of consciousness and communication. “My body is my laboratory” was the motto, and his research on the language of dolphins and whales – as well as psychedelics and sensory deprivation – assured his own cult status in 20th-century pop culture as the basis for Ken Russel’s Altered States and Mike Nichols’s The Day of the Dolphin. Directors Michael Almareyda and Courtney Stephens, along with narrator Chloë Sevigny, explore the life of a determined scientist and his experiments into the psychonautical unknown.
2025

A weary-looking middle-aged couple shuffle around their cluttered loft in Yangon, Myanmar. There is stuff everywhere, and a mountain of pills in blister packs lie haphazardly on top of a glass case. The loft turns out to be a clinic and the couple are qualified doctors. They are also artistic: she paints and draws, he is making a feature film, and their patients receive creative therapy in addition to regular treatment. This might not be a sterile, efficient hospital full of white coats, and the treatment rooms might look shabby, but there is real time and attention for people here.
2023

2023

Oliver Sacks: His Own Life explores the life and work of the legendary neurologist and storyteller, as he shares intimate details of his battles with drug addiction, homophobia, and a medical establishment that accepted his work only decades after the fact. Sacks was a fearless explorer of unknown mental worlds who helped redefine our understanding of the brain and mind, the diversity of human experience, and our shared humanity.
2021

Follow filmmaker Elle-Máijá Tailfeathers as she creates an intimate portrait of her community and the impacts of the substance use and overdose epidemic. Witness the change brought by community members with substance-use disorder, first responders and medical professionals as they strive for harm reduction in the Kainai First Nation.
2021

Phases of Matter follows living and inanimate residents of a teaching hospital in Istanbul, moving from the operating room to the morgue, between life and other states, the real and the virtual.
2020

Fasciae, hidden connective tissues, are largely unstudied parts of our anatomy. What role do they play in the organism? And could a better understanding of them help in finding a cure for back pain?
2018

James, giving himself 12 months before he has "a license to kill himself," sets off to the Amazon rainforest with hopes of finding a shaman who can save his life.
2017

Portrayal of a surgeon who feels stifled by Swedish bureaucracy and relocates to Ethiopia to practice medicine. In a small field hospital, with limited resources, he uses anything at hand to help the patients.
2017

The film tells the stories of five people with special abilities who treat and heal their patients in an unconventional way. These charismatic healers from Germany, Austria and Switzerland are the subjects of this documentary which sets out to show how their old-school, arcane methods can serve as an addition to conventional, academic medicine.
2017

This is a Dutch documentary about the last weeks of life in a Portuguese clinic for Emma Caris, a 18 year old girl who had been suffering anorexia nervosa since she was 16 years old.
2016

A New Understanding explores the treatment of end-of-life anxiety in terminally ill cancer patients using psilocybin, a psychoactive compound found in some mushrooms, to facilitate deeply spiritual experiences. The documentary explores the confluence of science and spirituality in the first psychedelic research studies since the 1970s with terminally ill patients. As a society we devote a great deal of attention to treating cancer, but very little to treating the human being who is dying of cancer.
2015

“I am a hypochondriac”, admits Rosa Von Praunheim, the icon of the gay movement, right at the beginning at the film. The director, who turned seventy in 2012, is afraid of cancer, and he actually suffers from glaucoma, with osteoarthritis in his big toe. Von Praunheim is interested in alternative medicine and goes on a foray into the scene.
2014
A documentary that explores the dangerous and sometimes deadly world of fake products. An industry that once dealt in imitation designer handbags and shoes has exploded into a global epidemic of counterfeit pharmaceuticals, foods, toys, electronic goods, car parts and microchips. COUNTERFEIT CULTURE challenges consumers to take a deeper look at what appears to be harmless knock-offs at bargain prices.
2013

With nutritionally-depleted foods, chemical additives and our tendency to rely upon pharmaceutical drugs to treat what's wrong with our malnourished bodies, it's no wonder that modern society is getting sicker. Food Matters sets about uncovering the trillion dollar worldwide sickness industry and gives people some scientifically verifiable solutions for curing disease naturally.
2010

Filmed in the jungles of Peru, shaman Don Jose Campos introduces the practices and benefits of Ayahuasca, the psychoactive plant brew that has been used for healing and visionary journeys by Amazonian shamans for at least a thousand years.
2010

Psychotropic drugs. It’s the story of big money-drugs that fuel a $330 billion psychiatric industry, without a single cure. The cost in human terms is even greater-these drugs now kill an estimated 42,000 people every year. And the death count keeps rising. Containing more than 175 interviews with lawyers, mental health experts, the families of victims and the survivors themselves, this riveting documentary rips the mask off psychotropic drugging and exposes a brutal but well-entrenched money-making machine. Before these drugs were introduced in the market, people who had these conditions would not have been given any drugs at all. So it is the branding of a disease and it is the branding of a drug for a treatment of a disease that did not exist before the industry made the disease.
2008

Documentary written and presented by scientist Richard Dawkins, in which he seeks to expose "those areas of belief that exist without scientific proof, yet manage to hold the nation under their spell", including mediumship, psychokinesis, acupuncture, and other forms of alternative medicine.
2007

Every year many new drugs come to market which offer hope to the sick and dying. This documentary film investigates just how far drug companies are prepared to go to get their drugs approved, what they will do to make sure they get the prices they want, and what happens when profits are put before people.
2003

Scientist Mark Plotkin races against time to save the ancient healing knowledge of Indian tribes from extinction.
2001