Authors — Lauren Wissot
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“We Offered to Bear Witness”: Sonia Kennebeck on Reality Winner
Reality Winner was a US Air Force vet and NSA employee whose leaking of an intelligence report about Russian interference in the 2016 election to The Intercept, which subsequently handed it over to the FBI in a bungled, source-disclosing attempt to verify it wasn’t a hoax, in turn led to her arrest. The saga has been well-documented, to say the least: Just this year, Tina Satter premiered her Sydney Sweeney-starring HBO film Reality, adapted from the playwright’s IS THIS A ROOM: Reality Winner Verbatim Transcription. Now we have Sonia Kennebeck’s Reality Winner, itself an extension of the 25 New Faces alum’s […]
by Lauren Wissot on Oct 12, 2023 -
“Is There an Orchestra Playing in the Depths of the Glacier?”: Margreth Olin on Her TIFF-Debuting Documentary, Songs of Earth
My DOX:AWARD top pick for the Ekko jury grid I participated in at this year’s CPH:DOX, Margreth Olin’s Songs of Earth, was also number one in my critic’s notebook for the doc most needing to be experienced on the big screen. In this palpably loving portrait of the veteran filmmaker’s elderly parents and the country that shaped them (and her), “Olin juxtaposes jaw-dropping, drone-captured images of the awe-inspiring Norwegian landscape with closeups of her dad’s bald pate, his tender hand on her mother’s back, as the environment and humankind become one” (per that notebook, and my coverage). Thus, it comes as little surprise […]
by Lauren Wissot on Sep 13, 2023 -
“Forgetfulness is Fought with Words”: Lina Soualem on Her TIFF-Premiering Doc, Bye Bye Tiberias
“I wonder if we can find ourselves fully in a world we invented,” the French-Palestinian-Algerian filmmaker and actor Lina Soualem eloquently ponders in the role of ever-questioning narrator of Bye Bye Tiberias, her extraordinary, multigenerational, female-focused family portrait. Seen through contemporary footage and 90s home movies — expertly interwoven with material from historical archives — the women include not only Soualem’s conservative, customs-observing grandmother and great-grandmother, who never left the Palestinian village their entire community had been forcibly displaced to, but also her mother, Hiam Abbass, a rebellious dreamer set on becoming an international actress. And now, 30 years on […]
by Lauren Wissot on Sep 11, 2023 -
Heart of Darkness (and Light): The 29th Sarajevo Film Festival
Taking place from August 11-18, this year’s 29th edition of the Sarajevo Film Festival, the largest film fest in (and focused on) Southeast Europe, unsurprisingly presented a wealth of cinematic gems to choose from. (And in a variety of venues, from the storied National Theater, built during the Austro-Hungarian takeover, to the evening-only Open Air Cinemas.) That is, when one wasn’t scrambling to catch the numerous talks and masterclasses—taught by this year’s Honorary Heart of Sarajevo recipients/hot tickets Mark Cousins, Lynne Ramsay and Charlie Kaufman—or attending the equally busy CineLink Industry Days (which, like the festival itself, is smartly geared […]
by Lauren Wissot on Aug 29, 2023 -
“We Didn’t Want an Audience Member To Be Able To Say, ‘Oh, That Was Just One Bad Cop’”: Stanley Nelson and Valerie Scoon on Sound of the Police
Stanley Nelson and Valerie Scoon’s Sound of the Police is an exhaustive exploration of the oppositional dynamics between African Americans and law enforcement, from slavery right up to today. Through a wealth of archival imagery, interviews with academics, authors and assorted deep thinkers of various backgrounds and colors as well as an ear-catching soundtrack (indeed the doc’s title is a nod to rapper KRS-One’s 1993 anti-police brutality anthem “Sound of da Police,” which serves as a sort of sonic exclamation point throughout the ABC News Studios doc), the veteran filmmakers make a compelling case that any relationship built on the […]
by Lauren Wissot on Aug 10, 2023 -
“I Realized This Was a Film Not Necessarily About Things Seen…But Things Felt”: Elaine McMillion Sheldon on King Coal
Like many Filmmaker readers, I first encountered the work of Elaine McMillion Sheldon a decade ago, when the West Virginia native landed on our annual 25 New Faces of Independent Film list in 2013. She’d just completed Hollow, which began as a documentary about her home state’s struggling McDowell County, and ultimately transformed into a sprawling interactive project; and per Randy Astle’s profile, “a community portrait that includes about three hours of video — including a lot shot by members of the community — audio recordings, text, photographs and user-generated material via Instagram.” Sheldon then popped back onto my radar two […]
by Lauren Wissot on Aug 9, 2023 -
A League of His Own: Sam Pollard on The League
Admittedly, as a white, baseball-phobic critic (I’ve never seen A League of Their Own or anything starring Kevin Costner and a bat), I’m not exactly the target demographic for The League, which takes a deep dive into America’s pastime through the parallel sports universe of the Negro League. Nevertheless, the doc was a must-catch, no pun intended, for me during Tribeca since I also happen to have a baseball-obsessed (Bronx-born/Brooklyn Dodgers-raised) father and (Mets-maniacal) sister who visited the Negro Leagues Baseball Museum several years back, and still speak of that trip as some sort of exotic holy pilgrimage. (For the record, the NLBM is […]
by Lauren Wissot on Jul 21, 2023 -
“A Call to Action for Everybody To Preserve Their History Before It’s Gone”: Kristen Lovell and Zackary Drucker on The Stroll
Kristen Lovell and Zackary Drucker’s Sundance-premiering The Stroll is a beautifully and lovingly crafted time capsule of NYC’s Meatpacking District that mostly spans from Giuliani’s infamous “broken windows” reign of terror through Bloomberg’s post-9/11 “gentrification on steroids,” as one knowledgeable interviewee ruefully reflects (seconds after I coincidentally yelled those same words at my screener). Unsurprisingly, our billionaire mayor did indeed view unrestrained capitalism as the solution to every problem, including that of the “undesirable” communities—starving artists and sex workers—that called the neighborhood home. For me, the most revelatory aspect of this heartfelt walk down memory lane isn’t that it’s offered from […]
by Lauren Wissot on Jun 21, 2023 -
“The Result of On-Camera Conversations Spanning 15 Years”: Christian Einshøj on The Mountains
Shockingly (as the films I adore usually fly under the radar) but deservedly, this year’s winner of the Best International Feature Documentary Award at Hot Docs, first-time feature director Christian Einshøj’s The Mountains, proved to be a prime example of my mantra that the smaller and more specific the story, the more universal the reach. Influenced by Ross McElwee’s Sherman’s March (it thrills me just to type that), and also Jonathan Caouette’s Tarnation, the doc is equal parts oddball charming and emotionally devastating. As the (very specific) logline puts it: “Armed with 30 years of home video, 75,000 family photos […]
by Lauren Wissot on Jun 14, 2023 -
“Authenticity is More Important than Anything Else”: Maria Fredriksson on Tribeca 2023 Premiere The Gullspång Miracle
Maria Fredriksson’s astonishing feature debut The Gullspång Miracle isn’t just stranger than fiction—it’s batshit insane. In the broadest of outlines, the doc stars two devoutly religious Norwegian sisters, Kari and May. May visits Kari in Gullspång, Sweden, where Kari now lives. They go to an amusement park where they take a ride inside a fake whale. May finds herself stuck in Sweden for many months, so the two decide to go shopping for an apartment, and end up buying one based on a divine sign they witness there. At the closing, they meet the seller Olaug (formerly known as Lita), […]
by Lauren Wissot on Jun 11, 2023
