Authors — Lauren Wissot
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“Every Viewer Can Decide What to Believe or Not Believe, Who to Trust and What to Question”: Avi Belkin on His SundanceTV True Crime Series No One Saw a Thing
Currently playing on SundanceTV, the Blumhouse-produced No One Saw a Thing is a true crime series directed by Avi Belkin, whose unexpectedly riveting Mike Wallace Is Here premiered earlier this year at Sundance (and launched in theaters just last month). It revisits a surreal episode in American vigilante history in which the small town bully of Skidmore, Missouri was shot to death while sitting in his truck, his wife by his side. This occurred back in 1981 —and to this day no one’s been charged. Even though a good chunk of the population witnessed the murder. While this mystery remains unsolved, […]
by Lauren Wissot on Aug 26, 2019 -
“We Decided to Treat the Policy and the Propaganda as if They Were Also Human Characters”: Nanfu Wang and Jialing Zhang on One Child Nation
One Child Nation, winner of this year’s Sundance U.S. Grand Jury Prize (and premiering theatrically August 9th via Amazon Studios), is a striking cinematic examination of China’s three-and-a-half decade long, one-child policy by filmmakers Nanfu Wang (Hooligan Sparrow, I Am Another You) and Jialing Zhang (Complicit). It’s also a stunning uncovering of the multi-layered machinations required for a government to negate reproductive autonomy. And ironically, as the NYC-based Wang herself points out towards the end of the film, advocates of China’s (now defunct) policy and the US’s (very much alive) anti-abortion stance both subscribe to a core belief in state […]
by Lauren Wissot on Aug 8, 2019 -
“A Record for All of History of What Our Lives Were Like, and What We Went Through”: Waad Al-Kateab and Edward Watts on For Sama
Nabbing this year’s top doc prize at Cannes (as well as at SXSW), For Sama is a harrowing, on-the-ground look at the disintegration of a society through one young woman’s eyes. That woman, Waad Al-Kateab, also happens to be the film’s co-director (along with Emmy Award-winning, BAFTA-nominated filmmaker Edward Watts). Incredibly, and courageously, as her beloved city of Aleppo came under attack by Syrian forces, Al-Kateab decided to pick up a camera and create a heartfelt record — or rather “love letter” — to her unborn daughter Sama. What she captured was not just the clear-eyed reality of losing friends […]
by Lauren Wissot on Jul 25, 2019 -
“I Was Drawn… to the Pure Mystery of It”: Liz Garbus on Her HBO Doc, Who Killed Garrett Phillips?
In 2011 the small town of Potsdam, NY was rocked by an inexplicable atrocity: 12-year-old Garrett Phillips was discovered murdered in his home. The tragedy in turn launched a manhunt, which led to the ex-boyfriend — or rather, one of the ex-boyfriends — of Garrett’s mother Tandy Cyrus being arrested for the crime. Which only led to more questions as this man, Oral “Nick” Hillary, happened to be the beloved soccer coach at Clarkson University. And also one of the few black men in town. Liz Garbus’s Who Killed Garrett Phillips? painstakingly follows the twists and turns that unfolded over […]
by Lauren Wissot on Jul 22, 2019 -
“Our Work Was Bound to Cause Discomfort…”: P.A. Carter on his HBO-Premiering Doc Series, Behind Closed Doors
One of the most complicated (and epic, as it feels much larger than the sum of its two parts) documentaries I’ve seen in years, P.A. Carter’s Behind Closed Doors is this summer’s not-to-miss film for true crime devotees. Debuting on HBO July 16th and 17th, Carter’s meticulously-crafted picture begins with the double murder of 13-year-old Aarushi Talwar and her family’s servant Hemraj Banjade in the Talwars’s upper-middle-class home — a mystery that immediately unleashed a media circus in the staid Indian town of Noida. But it was the whiplash machinations surrounding the subsequent investigations and interrogations, trials and appeals, that […]
by Lauren Wissot on Jul 15, 2019 -
A Sneak Peek at the 30th Human Rights Watch Film Festival
The 30th anniversary edition of the Human Rights Watch Film Festival (running June 13-20, and co-presented by Film at Lincoln Center and the IFC Center) has much more to boast than its smartly slimmed-down lineup of 13 feature-length films (11 docs and two narrative works). In addition to the requisite post-screening panel discussions with filmmakers, subjects and special guests, there’s this year’s added bonus of actual behind-the-lens parity. With half the films directed or co-directed by women, the majority directed by filmmakers of color and, perhaps most importantly, half helmed by filmmakers with actual roots in the places they’re documenting, […]
by Lauren Wissot on Jun 13, 2019 -
“That’s What Public Art is All About…Everyone is Invited”: Andrey M Paounov on his Christo doc Walking on Water
Andrey M Paounov’s Walking on Water centers on the legendary environmental artist Christo and the realization of his most recent project (his second since the 2009 death of his beloved partner in life and art Jeanne-Claude). 2016’s The Floating Piers was a two-mile-long walkway of monk-yellow fabric that allowed over a million visitors to “float” on foot across Italy’s Lake Iseo. What Walking on Water is not, thankfully, is your standard celebratory portrait of an unconventional maestro (though Christo, who brings to mind a Bulgarian version of Bernie Sanders, is certainly that). Indeed, what makes Paounov’s Locarno-premiering film so refreshingly […]
by Lauren Wissot on May 17, 2019 -
“We’re Looking for Passionate People Who We Think Will Put in the Work and Deliver”: Dorota Lech on the 20-year-old Hot Docs Forum
As a film journo who usually prefers celebrating the fruits of cinematic labor over covering the messy business of making the product I’m often a bit squeamish when it comes to observing pitch sessions (in no small part due to the glaring abundance of older white faces dangling the purse strings). Fortunately, the folks behind the two-decade-old Hot Docs Forum, which utilizes the appropriately Harry Potter-esque, neo-Gothic Hart House student center at the University of Toronto, do an expert job of combining industry necessity with collegial fun. This is perhaps best evidenced by the Forum’s Cuban Hat Award, a prize […]
by Lauren Wissot on May 6, 2019 -
A Stripper, A Gangster, A Border Crisis (and no Trump!): What to See at Hot Docs 2019
It goes without saying that the upcoming 26th edition of Hot Docs (April 25th-May 5th) presents a wealth of topnotch nonfiction films to choose from. With over 200 pictures — not to mention numerous events, immersive media and the two-day industry Forum — North America’s largest documentary festival might even feel like too much of a good thing. Fortunately for me, between the miracle of Vimeo links and traveling on the doc fest circuit since IDFA, I’ve seen a good chunk of the feature-length selections, many of which I fear will be buried beneath the headline-grabbing buzz. (Much of it […]
by Lauren Wissot on Apr 23, 2019 -
Full Frame’s 9th Annual A&E IndieFilms Speakeasy Closes with “Framing the Conversation: Stanley Nelson”
Taking place on a Saturday afternoon in the lobby of The Durham Hotel, “Framing the Conversation: Stanley Nelson” was the final panel discussion in a series of A&E IndieFilms Speakeasy chats at this year’s Full Frame Documentary Film Festival. (Though the festival itself is an arm of the Center for Documentary Studies at the prestigious Duke University, these always informative, free-to-the-public, laidback talks have been the 22-year-old Full Frame’s secret weapon for close to a decade.) In town to interview Nelson, the down-to-earth founder of Firelight Media, a recipient of both the MacArthur “Genius Grant” and a National Humanities Medal […]
by Lauren Wissot on Apr 20, 2019
