Normally on shoots, veteran documentary maker Kim Longinotto films far away from her native England, often capturing the lives of women in desperate situations over the course of a few weeks. With her latest film, Dalton’s Dream, things ran rather differently. Having watched his victory on the British X Factor in 2018, Longinotto reached out to Dalton Harris, interested in documenting his life in a new country with a new record contract. An initial three-month shoot morphed into more than four years, held up by both the pandemic and the turbulence of Harris’s life as he found himself persecuted for […]
by Carol Nahra on Jul 6, 2023Shockingly (as the films I adore usually fly under the radar) but deservedly, this year’s winner of the Best International Feature Documentary Award at Hot Docs, first-time feature director Christian Einshøj’s The Mountains, proved to be a prime example of my mantra that the smaller and more specific the story, the more universal the reach. Influenced by Ross McElwee’s Sherman’s March (it thrills me just to type that), and also Jonathan Caouette’s Tarnation, the doc is equal parts oddball charming and emotionally devastating. As the (very specific) logline puts it: “Armed with 30 years of home video, 75,000 family photos […]
by Lauren Wissot on Jun 14, 2023