pietra brettkelly
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Scandalous Forms, Political Candor: Highlights from Berlinale’s 2026 Forum Documentaries
Before the Berlinale announced its official selection, it presented a remarkable retrospective entitled Lost in the 90s. Spanning wide geographies, with particular emphasis on narratives surrounding the Soviet collapse and the fall of the Berlin Wall, it brought together an eclectic cohort of documentaries and fiction—from Farocki and Godard to an underscreened Belarusian doc Orange Vests and the first fiction feature on the Chornobyl catastrophe Collapse. Such a politically charged program of films by formally daring directors with an activist spirit could serve as an inspiring point of departure for the festival to adopt an openly political rhetoric. More precisely, […]
by Sonya Vseliubska on Feb 24, 2026 -
TIFF: 5 Questions for A Flickering Truth Director Pietra Brettkelly
American independent filmmakers who moan over long-term storage bills, failed hard drives and misplaced optical tracks will receive the corrective they need to their First World Film Preservation problems by viewing Pietra Brettkelly’s new documentary, A Flickering Truth. Receiving its North American premiere at the Toronto Film Festival, the picture follows a group of film archivists who have secretly fought to preserve Afghanistan’s storied film culture from the violence of the Taliban era. Below, Brettkelly answers questions about filming in a war-torn country, Afghan cinema and how her own archival practices have changed as a result of making this film. […]
by Scott Macaulay on Sep 18, 2015 -
“THE ART STAR AND THE SUDANESE TWINS” writer-director, Pietra Brettkelly
A large part of my film, The Art Star and the Sudanese Twins, was shot in the extraordinary region of southern Sudan. Its first language is Dinka, its second language Arabic. Casual greetings are unfortunately my limits in both these languages, and this was both the challenge and the beauty of trying to film an observational documentary. My cameraman and I were often running on instinct, interpreting the body language of people we were filming. We’ve both filmed overseas and have gained some familiarity with European and Pacific Island languages. But Dinka in particular has no similarity to anything I’d […]
by Jason Guerrasio on Jan 14, 2008
