1999 is one of the most haunting documentaries I’ve ever seen, which perfectly suits its subject matter. Director Samara Grace Chadwick returns to the small Acadian town in New Brunswick, Canada that she left as a teenager after a wave of suicides shook her high school over a handful of years, though the actual events always remain somewhat mysterious and opaque. A portrait of a group of people who, just when they were beginning to live, came intimately face-to-face with the finality of death, 1999 is not an investigation but an immersion into the emotional flux of a community struggling […]
by Astra Taylor on Apr 24, 2018So soon after Thessaloniki International Doc Fest I wasn’t expecting to be all that inspired to write about yet another festival, but an unexpected invitation saw me traveling to Nyon, Switzerland for the last few days of the 49th edition of Visions du Réel, an event I’ve been curious about for quite a while. But even after just a brief 72-hour visit, Visions inspired me greatly in the quietest, most refined of ways — the festival created a flawlessly professional but relaxed atmosphere to mingle and take in the beauty of the town, where every well-dressed denizen looks like they […]
by Pamela Cohn on Apr 24, 2018