Disclosure, directed by Sam Feder (Kate Bornstein is a Queer & Pleasant Danger) and executive produced by Laverne Cox, debuts on Netflix today, June 19th. And in the wake of the whiplash from the Trump administration’s decision to erase healthcare protections for trans people, followed by the US Supreme Court’s momentous ruling protecting those same folks from workplace discrimination, it couldn’t have arrived at a better time. The doc is an exhaustive and entertaining look at how trans individuals have historically been depicted onscreen through surprising archival footage (Birth of a Nation and Bugs Bunny make appearances) and insightful interviews […]

I suppose it should come as no surprise that since the election of Donald Trump, Roy Cohn’s seemingly inexhaustible 15 minutes of fame have been extended yet again. Before his death from AIDS (or what he termed “liver cancer”) over three decades ago, Trump’s longtime mentor/lawyer/power broker/enforcer had spent his entire life reincarnating himself. Somehow the closeted homosexual and chief counsel to Senator Joseph McCarthy during the infamous Red Scare transformed what should have been an existence defined by shame into one of pure shamelessness — living the Studio 54 highlife with his mobster and celebrity friends, and never missing […]

White Noise, the first feature-length documentary from The Atlantic, often plays more like it was sprung from the mind of Christopher Guest. Director Daniel Lombroso, who’s traveled throughout the world to shoot award-winning shorts for the magazine’s website, exploring everything from Russian espionage to Israeli settlements, now trains his lens on the alt-right — specifically on three of its biggest stars. There’s Lauren Southern, who seems to be crafting herself into a sort of Ann Coulter for the YouTube generation. Also conspiracy theorist and sex blogger Mike Cernovich, who eventually dispenses with fascist ideology in favor of the more lucrative […]

This year’s Human Rights Watch Film Festival, streaming nationwide from June 11-20, is chock-full of impressive cinematic gems that delve into a wide variety of important topics woefully underrepresented onscreen. Beginning with opening night’s Belly of the Beast, the latest from Emmy and Peabody Award-winning filmmaker Erika Cohn (The Judge), which shines a light on the involuntary sterilizations running rampant in our US federal prison system, the fest continues to express its commitment to strong films by and about women. Most notably there’s Juliana Fanjul’s harrowing Radio Silence — which trails longtime journalist Carmen Artesegui in her dangerous fight to […]

Making its world premiere at this year’s virtual Hot Docs on May 28 and running through June 6, Two Gods (which had also been selected for the canceled Full Frame fest) follows one unlikely trio. Hanif is a devout Muslim, and an African-American man fully committed to his work as a casket maker and ritual body washer in his Newark, New Jersey community. He’s also unwaveringly dedicated to the two neighborhood kids he’s taken under his wing, 12-year-old Furquan and 17-year-old Naz, the former dealing with an unsafe home life, the latter with unsafe streets. But as the story unfolds […]

Hot Docs was one of the first of the Spring, 2020 film festivals to forge ahead through the pandemic chaos and reemerge on the online side as a more streamlined event. North America’s largest doc fest took the hybrid approach of postponing public screenings while providing a Hot Docs at Home streaming option to those social distancing in Canada. It also transferred its conference and market to the digital realm. Hot Docs also expanded its industry running dates to a whopping full month (April 30-May 31) of online accessibility, uploading everything from the “Why Art Matters in a Time of […]

Hot Docs was one of the first of the Spring, 2020 film festivals to forge ahead through the pandemic chaos and reemerge on the online side as a more streamlined event. North America’s largest doc fest took the hybrid approach of postponing public screenings while providing a Hot Docs at Home streaming option to those social distancing in Canada. It also transferred its conference and market to the digital realm. Hot Docs also expanded its industry running dates to a whopping full month (April 30-May 31) of online accessibility, uploading everything from the “Why Art Matters in a Time of […]

Executive produced by Charlotte Cook, and making its debut at this year’s (virtual) Hot Docs, Bruno Santamaría’s Things We Dare Not Do is a stunning look at the small Mexican town of Roblito through the eyes of its deeply impoverished, yet happy-go-lucky, youngsters. Serving as mother hen to the carefree kids,  for whom random violence seems no more noteworthy than water delivery day or a taco snack, is 16-year-old Ñoño. Though the vivacious teen’s exploration of his own gender identity forms the basis of the film’s title, Things We Dare Not Do is no mere coming out saga. It’s a […]

The following interview with director Benjamin Ree about his documentary The Painter and the Thief was published during the 2020 Sundance Film Festival. It’s being rerun now to coincide with the virtual cinema and VOD release of the film from NEON. Spectacularly cinematic and employing a risk-taking structure that keeps the viewer as off-balance as the film’s emotionally fragile protagonists, The Painter and the Thief is the second feature-length doc from Norwegian director Benjamin Ree. (Ree’s prior film Magnus, a coming-of-age tale about the chess prodigy Magnus Carlsen, premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival in 2016.) The film follows the stranger-than-fiction story of […]

How does one relitigate a case that was never litigated (outside the media) in the first place? This is the challenge at the heart of Roee Messinger’s American Trial: The Eric Garner Story, which premiered at last year’s New York Film Festival and releases online today May 21st, accompanied by a live stream Q&A and interactive audience component. The film is an unscripted courtroom drama that casts real-life prosecutors and defense attorneys (though none directly involved with the 2014 case of the NYPD officer videotaped choking Staten Islander Eric Garner to death), alongside real-life evidence, expert testimony, and rules of […]