Documentary
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“Our Aim Was to Document a Reconciliation Process Led by Kurdish Women”: Alba Sotorra on Human Rights Watch Film Festival Doc The Return: Life After ISIS
Terrorist or victim? That seems to be the animating question behind Alba Sotorra’s The Return: Life After ISIS. Premiering at SXSW, and selected for the Special Presentations section at this year’s virtual Hot Docs (April 29-May 9), the film is an up close and personal look at a group of Western women caught in nightmarish limbo in a detention camp in northern Syria. All left behind First World lives – in the US and Canada, the UK, Germany, and The Netherlands – with online propaganda-shaped dreams of rescuing fellow Muslims and finding shared community. And all ultimately became disillusioned and […]
by Lauren Wissot on May 20, 2021 -
“What We Were Met with During the Filming Were the True Difficulties and Trauma that Can be Associated with Migrating”: Amman Abbasi on his CAAMFest-selected short Udaan
A mother and daughter bond on a balcony, soaking in the sights and sounds of Karachi with a strange sort of pre-nostalgia, before embarking on a new life in the US. This is the opening of Amman Abbasi’s beautiful Udaan, which screens this week in the Hindsight Shorts program of CAAMFest (May 13-23). (CAAM, in partnership with Firelight Media and Reel South, launched the Hindsight initiative to provide “funding and support for diverse BIPOC filmmakers from the American South.”) Rendered with loving care and utmost nuance the scene is a reminder of something we in the US so often forget […]
by Lauren Wissot on May 18, 2021 -
“Every Visual Aspect of the Film Functions to Bring People Home”: Director Shantrelle P. Lewis on In Our Mothers’ Gardens
Shantrelle P. Lewis’ feature documentary debut, In Our Mothers’ Gardens, calls forth and preserves the family histories of several Black women from Lewis’ life, traces each of their past joys and traumas to the present and lets them out into the world to heal. She creates a welcome space for her interviewees to open up on camera, many of whom are dear old friends, and she listens intently and asks thoughtful questions like, “What does your grandmother’s love look like?”, which encourage equally thoughtful responses. All of the women she interviews can call the names and stories of their ancestors […]
by A.E. Hunt on May 14, 2021 -
“We Decided to Make a Film in Which We Would Overcome the Narrative of Our Own Preconceptions”: Renato Borrayo Serrano on His CPH:DOX/Hot Docs Co-Debut Life of Ivanna
World-premiering at the hybrid CPH:DOX (April 21-May 12), and co-presented with the all-digital Hot Docs (April 29-May 9), Life of Ivanna is one preconceived-notion-upending film. The story of an Arctic woman struggling to raise five young children as her often abusive husband spends more time drinking than working is a situation sure to strike concern in the hearts of many — alhough the chain-smoking, no-nonsense protagonist at the heart of this particular tale would likely scoff at anyone’s condescending sympathies. Indeed, with steely will the titular, tough-as-nails member of the Nenets of the tundra is able to stare down whiteouts […]
by Lauren Wissot on May 13, 2021 -
“How Do You Build Trust with People Who… Do Not Remember They Have Ever Met You?”: Louise Detlefsen on Her Hot Docs-Debuting It is Not Over Yet
A feel-good film about end-of-life care for those whose minds have already departed might strike some as a radical notion. But no more so than the philosophy behind the Danish retirement home at the heart of Louise Detlefsen’s uplifting It is Not Over Yet, world-premiering at this year’s Hot Docs (April 29-May 9). With this latest project Detlefsen — whose last doc Fat Front delved into another unconventional subject, Scandinavia’s feminist body-positive movement — embeds, almost imperceptibly, in a female-founded, women-run facility. And one that covertly gives the finger to Big Pharma and corporate nursing homes by going back to […]
by Lauren Wissot on Apr 29, 2021 -
“To Cut Through the Stigma of Wuhan Being This ‘Virus City’ : Yung Chang on His Hot Docs-Premiering Wuhan Wuhan
I last interviewed Yung Chang (Up the Yangtze, China Heavyweight) before the TIFF premiere of 2019’s This Is Not a Movie, which follows the uncompromising humanitarian war correspondent Robert Fisk (who died just this past October) on his eternal mission to give the lie to bothsidesism. And while Chang’s latest doc Wuhan Wuhan – an on-the-ground account of life during lockdown from the perspective of several brave and traumatized frontline workers – might seem a breaking news departure, it’s actually very much in line with the multiple award-winning filmmaker’s character-first approach. Whether tackling issues of capitalist exploitation, controversial righteous journalism, […]
by Lauren Wissot on Apr 29, 2021 -
Watch: Iva Radivojević’s Stunning and Eerie Arctic-Shot Short, UTUQAQ
Premiering online timed to Earth Day from Field of Vision is a stunning and poetic Arctic-shot short, UTUQAQ, directed by Iva Radivojević. Acting as her own cinematographer, Radivojević counterpoints elegant and abstract patterns across sweeping planes of ice with more human-scale documentation of the work of four researchers drilling ice cores in the region’s freezing temperatures. The narration — in Kalaallisut (West Greenlandic) by Aviaja Lyberth — is from the point of the view of the ice itself, evoking the earth’s geological memory as it confronts efforts of the researchers working in the moment to learn about what is being lost […]
by Scott Macaulay on Apr 22, 2021 -
“Decolonization Has to Work in Both Directions; Both the Colonized and Colonizer Have to be Decolonized”: Camilla Nielsson on President
Currently competing for both the Dox:Award and the Politiken Danish:Dox Award at this year’s hybrid CPH:DOX (April 21-May 5), Camilla Nielsson’s President is a riveting followup to 2014’s Democrats, which centered on two political rivals in a Sisyphean quest to transform Zimbabwe from a corrupt dictatorship into a fledgling democracy. It’s also a film Nielsson never intended to make. But that was before a ban, a military coup, and the rise of two new political rivals led the undaunted director to pick up her camera once again. With President Nielsson focuses on the young and charismatic leader of the MDC (Movement for Democratic Change) Nelson […]
by Lauren Wissot on Apr 21, 2021 -
What to Stream at Doc Fortnight 2021 (The 20th Anniversary Edition)
Having rolled out its inaugural edition in the wake of 9/11, Doc Fortnight will now be celebrating its 20th anniversary virtually (from March 18-April 5), the result of another world-upending tragedy (politically and personally dissected in Nanfu Wang’s compelling, opening night feature In the Same Breath). And yet the full-steam-ahead spirit of MoMA’s Festival of International Nonfiction Film and Media remains. The 2021 lineup, both eclectic and ambitious, spotlights 18 features and four shorts – another 10 films screen in the “Non/Fiction 20 Years of Doc Fortnight” sidebar – alongside a revival of Moroccan director Mostafa Derkaoui’s banned/lost/found doc-fiction from […]
by Lauren Wissot on Mar 19, 2021 -
Upload Prohibited: Amazon Prime Video Direct Locks Out Docs and Shorts
Amazon’s Prime Video Direct (PVD) service has a message for independent documentary and shorts filmmakers: You need not apply. Last week, Amazon’s PVD self-publishing program issued a change in policy: “At this time, we’re no longer accepting unsolicited licensing submissions via Prime Video Direct for non-fiction and short form content. We’ll notify you if these categories become available for consideration.” Suddenly, one of the largest streaming platforms in the world was out of reach for vast numbers of companies and content creators. Filmmakers across the world have used PVD, while established indie distributors such as Samuel Goldwyn Films, Kino Lorber, […]
by Anthony Kaufman on Feb 16, 2021
