The winners of the 16th annual Cinema Eye Honors Awards, which recognizes excellence in nonfiction filmmaking, were announced last night during an in-person ceremony at the Museum of the Moving Image in Astoria, Queens. All That Breathes, Shaunak Sen’s Cannes-winning documentary, took the top prize in the Outstanding Achievement in Nonfiction Feature Filmmaking category as well as nabbing an award for Outstanding Achievement in Cinematography. Yet Sara Dosa’s Fire of Love took home more wins overall, winning in categories Outstanding Achievement in Editing, Outstanding Achievement in Original Score (by Nicolas Godin of French electro duo Air) and tying with Brett […]

In just three (admittedly, very momentous) years, the marketplace for independent films has completely changed. During previous turning points over the decades, executives would use words like “waves” or “cycles” to describe instances of upheaval, but what’s happening now is more like a comprehensive reset. In a recent online article titled “The Sky is Falling, Take Shelter,” producer Rebecca Green wrote, “This year is unlike anything I’ve seen in the 20 years I’ve been working in this business.”  If Sundance and its films are a barometer for the independent film industry, consider this comparison: The pre-pandemic class of Sundance 2019 […]

Cinema Eye Honors, a leading awards body that celebrates nonfiction filmmaking, announced today its full list of nominees for 2022. Sara Dosa’s Fire of Love (Filmmaker’s summer issue cover) and Alex Pritz’s The Territory both lead with seven nominations each across several categories, including editing, cinematography, sound design, direction and Outstanding Nonfiction Feature. Other films with multiple nominations are Laura Poitras’s All the Beauty and the Bloodshed (our recent fall issue cover), Shaunak Sen’s All That Breathes and Brett Morgen’s Moonage Daydream, among others.  Women are particularly well-represented among this year’s nominees, including five out of six filmmakers highlighted in […]

“I couldn’t love someone who doesn’t share that love at the top of a volcano,” says French volcanologist Katia Krafft early in Sara Dosa’s Fire of Love, a film that’s both a spectacular, eye-searing documentary about the history and science of volcanoes and achingly existential romance. Katia, a geochemist, and partner Maurice Krafft, a geologist, met, fell in love and—“disappointed in humanity” —turned away from the tumult of the 1960s to find a life on the outskirts of the primordial, amidst drifting ash and near-psychedelic lava pools. “We contemplate lying at the edge of the abyss,” Katia says. Like today’s […]

Derrida’s “archival turn” of the ’90s has officially taken over mainstream documentary filmmaking—a trend that has been covered in general interest thinkpieces in Indiewire as well as in academic scholarship, and one that’s proven more lucrative than I could have ever imagined. For the second year in a row, Sundance opened its U.S. Documentary competition selections with a blockbuster archival film, and National Geographic Documentary Films won the bidding frenzy for Sara Dosa’s Fire of Love with a “mid-seven figures” purchase almost a year after reports that 2021 Sundance “Day One” film Summer of Soul sold for north of $12 […]

The last two years have prompted much contemplation and reconsideration of the reasons why we make our films as well as the ways in which we make them. What aspect of your filmmaking—whether in your creative process, the way you finance your films, your production methodology or the way you relate to your audience—did you have to reinvent in order to make and complete the film you are bringing to the festival this year? Fire of Love is the first archival film I’ve ever directed—my previous two independent films I directed were primarily vérité. Fire of Love producer Shane Boris, assistant producer […]

Two of the best known volcanologists, Katia and Maurice Krafft—are arguably as well known for having died in an expedition on Japan’s Mount Unzen, but Fire of Love, a documentary by Sara Dosa that makes use of the footage shot by the couple, turns away from the easy tragic narrative to instead shine a light on the love they shared for their work as well as for each other. Editors Erin Casper and Jocelyne Chaput explain how they put together a film from footage that was often difficult to parse and why they took inspiration from the French New Wave. […]