Having living abroad for 19 years, music critic Philip Sherburne recently described the culture shock of returning home and trying to navigate an American supermarket: “the self-checkout machine accuses me of stealing and runs back video of me while calling for an employee to come intervene. Every time you turn around, it seems like a corporation is trying to screw you out of yet more money via another hidden fee. It’s no wonder Americans seem pissed off all the time. It’s a fundamentally hostile environment.” For me, some of the fun of attending Visions du Réel, a Swiss festival focused […]

A decade ago, I interviewed Argentinian filmmaker Martín Rejtman for an hour, walking through the general scope of his career before discussing his then-most-recent feature, Two Shots Fired, which may help flesh out the parts of this interview relating to his first feature, Rapado. Rejtman’s new film, Riders, is only his second documentary. As I wrote in my dispatch on Visions du Réel 2024, where the film premiered, Riders kicks off in May 2020, with extended global lockdown fatigue ramping up; after an opening rally of delivery drivers protesting their horrible conditions (“It is inadmissable to normalize the bodies of […]

In the spirit of springtime renewal, the Durham, North Carolina-based Full Frame Documentary Film Festival returned to in-person mode for the first time since 2019. And while Full Frame presented virtual versions from 2020 through 2022, the festival was canceled altogether last year, due in large part to fiscal struggles undermining its parent, the Center for Documentary Studies at Duke University. An April 2023 report in Duke’s The Chronicle indicated that the university would undertake a review of the Center. Members of the festival’s Advisory Committee circulated a petition on social media, helping to assure the festival’s return and, a […]

The Tribeca Film Festival, which runs from June 5 – 16 in New York City, announced today its 2024 feature film lineup. As always there are many buzzy celebrity-focused films, from Trish Dalton and Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy’s opening night doc, Diane von Furstenberg: Woman in Charge to LIZA: A Truly Terrific Absolutely True Story, directed by Bruce David Klein, to music docs featuring Sting, Prince, Linda Perry, Avicii and Detroit techno pioneer Carl Craig. And then there’s BRATS, Andrew McCarthy’s road trip doc as he reconnects with fellow members of the ’80s Brat Pack, Rob Lowe, Demi Moore, Ally Sheedy and Emilio […]

Produced in collaboration with Documentary Campus, this year’s five-day CPH:CONFERENCE featured a wide-ranging series of panels and conversations, diving in to everything from indigenous narratives to climate storytelling to the mind of Alex Gibney. Especially notable were the four mornings, FILM:MAKERS in Dialogue, all moderated by Wendy Mitchell (festival producer of Sundance London as well as a journalist for Screen International). In these sessions audiences were invited to listen in as the directors behind two films chose clips from each other’s work to engage with. One such pairing in particular proved both inspired and inspiring. Brett Story (The Hottest August, The […]

Unfolding in a Hanoi of twisting alleyways and cramped apartments, Cu Li Never Cries follows a half-dozen intertwined characters whose lives are in upheaval. Mrs. Nguyện (Minh Châu), a widow, has been gifted with a pet slow cu li, a tiny primate that may be more trouble than it’s worth. Her niece Vân (Hà Phương) helps run a day-care center on the verge of bankruptcy. Her fiancé Quang (Xuân An) has doubts about both their wedding and his future. The film’s glistening black-and-white imagery and soundtrack of patriotic anthems evoke a timeless world rarely seen in Western cinema. At the […]