Documentary
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Watch: An Exclusive Clip from Mark Cousins’s Forthcoming My Name is Alfred Hitchcock
Alfred Hitchcock, the director as well as self-analyzing critical observer, is evoked in the latest documentary from Mark Cousins, titled, appropriately, My Name is Alfred Hitchcock. During the pandemic lockdown, Cousins was invited by producer John Archer to make a film about the great director timed to the 100th anniversary of his debut film. Cousins set about watching all of Hitchcock’s films in chronological order, reading various critical book as well as works by his daughter and The Birds actress Tippi Hedren, all the while filling up notebooks of thoughts, reflections and details. That research and viewing produced a script, […]
by Scott Macaulay on Oct 24, 2024 -
“With Viktor I Approached Sign Language Just Like Any Other Language”: Olivier Sarbil on His TIFF-premiering doc Viktor
One of the cinematic highlights of this year’s TIFF, Olivier Sarbil’s Ukraine-set (and Darren Aronofsky-produced) Viktor follows the titular protagonist, a Kharkiv resident who lives with his widowed mother and faces a most unusual conundrum. Desperate to defend his country, Viktor — a sword-loving giant of a man whose bible is Miyamoto Musashi’s The Strategy of the Samurai — is nevertheless blocked from joining the war effort because he just so happens to be Deaf. Fortunately, Viktor possesses the dogged determination of a noble warrior and manages to convince the local army to take him on as a volunteer photojournalist […]
by Lauren Wissot on Sep 8, 2024 -
“My Father Started Using the Hidden Camera to Send Messages Expressing What Seemed Like Regrets”: Lina Vdovîi and Radu Ciorniciuc on their TIFF-Premiering Doc Tata
Lina Vdovîi and Radu Ciorniciuc’s TIFF-debuting Tata originated with a cry for help from a migrant worker being physically assaulted by his boss. The Romania-based filmmakers, partners in life and art, are both veteran investigative journalists in their region — Vdovîi an award-winning reporter from the Republic of Moldova who’s been nominated for the European Press Prize, Ciorniciuc a co-founder of the first independent media organization in Romania — so worker exploitation was a familiar beat. More troubling, however, was the familiarity of the man video messaging the duo from Italy: Vdovîi’s dad, a father who she’d long been estranged […]
by Lauren Wissot on Sep 7, 2024 -
The Devil, Most Definitely: Christopher Jason Bell on His Ten-Part Archival George W. Bush Docu-Series Miss Me Yet
“When George W Bush becomes president, for the first time, I knew someone dumber than me was president, and the whole fucking thing fell apart. It’s all been a house of cards, it’s all been a shell game, and a mirror illusion, and George W. Bush made it so you could finally see through the mirror, at all the wrong angles.” — Quentin Tarantino. Over the last four presidential administrations, Christopher Jason Bell has produced an estimable body of work, directing more than13 shorts and three features, devoted to creating off-beat, experimental, and challenging microbudget cinema, spanning narrative, documentary and […]
by Evan Louison on Sep 6, 2024 -
“Be With the Girls, Be Active Listeners, Be in Awe of Their Imagination”: Angela Patton and Natalie Rae on Their Powerful Netflix-Premiering Doc, Daughters
In 2012, Angela Patton delivered a viral TED Talk about her revolutionary Date with Dad prison program—a father-daughter dance between incarcerated dads and their daughters, giving separated families a unique chance to connect and reunite without any physical barriers. The CEO of Girls for a Change—a youth development nonprofit with a mission to empower Black girls in Central Virginia—Patton then found a partner in Natalie Rae, who reached out to collaborate on a film together. The result of their nearly a decade-in-the-making work is Daughters, a heartrending documentary that premiered in Sundance in January 2024, where it was bought by […]
by Tomris Laffly on Aug 22, 2024 -
Trailer Watch: David Gutnik’s Ukraine War Doc, Rule of Two Walls
David Gutnik’s Rule of Two Walls — the title referring to the recommended method of sheltering during a bombing raid — receives its theatrical premiere August 16 at New York’s DCTV Firehouse Cinema before rolling out to selected cities via Monument Releasing. The doc, which depicts the work of Ukrainian artists making defiant work during the current war in Ukraine, is executive produced by Liev Schreiber and is the director’s foll0w-up to his fiction debut, Materna, which, like Rule of Two Walls, premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival. In an interview with Lauren Wissot timed to that festival premiere, Gutnik […]
by Scott Macaulay on Aug 8, 2024 -
“I Was Shocked To Be the Only Person There with a Camera”: Kelly Anderson and Jay Arthur Sterrenberg on their Tribeca-Debuting Doc about Industry City Development, Emergent City
From Elizabeth Nichols’s Flying Lessons, to Brett Story and Stephen Maing’s Union, to now Kelly Anderson and Jay Arthur Sterrenberg’s Emergent City (likewise EP’d by Stephen Maing), corporate takeovers of NYC and the inherent Gotham vs. Goliath battles they spawn seem to be in the documentary air this year. And while Flying Lessons and Union clearly cast entities like corrupt Croman Real Estate and anti-labor Amazon as the respective baddies, Emergent City is surprisingly not much interested in blaming Jamestown Properties, the conglomerate behind Industry City, the largest privately owned industrial property in New York, for the rapid gentrification of […]
by Lauren Wissot on Jun 11, 2024 -
“A Purely Rationalist Dismissal of UFOs Fails To Capture Something Essential About the Phenomenon”: Daniel Claridge and Pacho Velez on Their Tribeca-Premiering They’re Here
Unless you are buried too deep into the Plato’s Cave that UFO researchers and enthusiasts insist we are only now emerging from, it has been hard to miss that UFOs — or, as they are called now, UAPs — are having a moment. Interest in what’s out there has ebbed and flowed over the years, from speculation about Roswell, NM and Area 51, the Erich Von Daniken books of the 1970s, The X Files to, more recently, declassification of Navy videos and UAP government whistleblowers testifying before government committees. UAP sightings are increasing — partly due to Starlink — while […]
by Scott Macaulay on Jun 7, 2024 -
“Our Film Highlights the Bravery of Those Willing to Stand Up to Putin Despite the Personal Cost, But It Should Also Act as a Wakeup Call”: James Jones on his Tribeca-Debuting Antidote
A real-life high stakes thriller from Emmy (and BAFTA and Cinema Eye)-winning filmmaker James Jones (Chernobyl: The Lost Tapes, Wanted: The Escape Of Carlos Ghosn), Antidote follows a few brave men who have chosen to put their lives (and thus those of their families) on the line to bring down the Putin regime: a whistleblowing insider to Russia’s poison program; the twice-poisoned, Russian-British activist-journalist (and current political prisoner) Vladimir Kara-Murza; and Bellingcat’s Christo Grozev, last seen in Daniel Roher’s Oscar-winning Navalny exposing the murderers who unsuccessfully poisoned the late activist before confinement to a Siberian prison finished the job. Which, […]
by Lauren Wissot on Jun 7, 2024 -
“I Don’t Think We Ever Expected To See a Carbon Copy of China’s Industrial Experience [in Ethiopia], and We Certainly Didn’t”: Max Duncan and Xinyan Yu on Their Tribeca-Debuting Made in Ethiopia
While Max Duncan and Xinyan Yu’s Made in Ethiopia takes place in the titular country, it in many ways echoes last year’s Central African Republic-set Eat Bitter, co-directed by Ningyi Sun and Pascale Appora-Gnekindy, which similarly explored China’s capitalist push throughout the continent; and specifically from the POV of the shared personal toll it’s taking on individuals from very unalike cultures. In this case we’re introduced to an inexhaustibly optimistic woman named Motto, the upbeat Chinese head of a mega industrial park in a rural Ethiopian town. She’s also a true believer that the Chinese dream can be exported to […]
by Lauren Wissot on Jun 6, 2024
