Category Archives: Overviews

The 66th edition of the Festival de Cannes begins this Wednesday, May 15, and runs through Sunday, May 26. Independently organized side events, Directors’ Fortnight and International Critics’ Week, begin Thursday and end on Sunday and Friday, respectively. Frankly speaking, Cannes doesn’t embrace nonfiction. Out of the nearly hundred feature films presented this year, only twleve are docs, and, of those, three are retrospective works. Defenders crow about the organizers’ discerning eyes, but I refuse to believe that there are fewer than a dozen new documentaries out there that are strong and worthy of the platform that these events could provide. At the same time, doc makers know that Cannes isn’t really a place that regularly champions nonfiction the way it does fiction, so perhaps they keep the cycle going by not bothering to submit. That said, here’s a brief overview of the ones that will be screened this month:

Four are part of Cannes’ Official Selection. None are part of the Competition, but one is in Un Certain Regard: Rithy Panh’s meditation on the Khmer Rouge, L’IMAGE MANQUANTE (THE MISSING PICTURE). Another is Out of Competition: Documentary master Claude Lanzmann’s LE DERNIER DES INJUSTES (THE LAST OF THE UNJUST) (pictured), a revisitation of the director’s 1975 interviews with the last President of the Jewish Council of Elders in Czechoslovakia’s Theresienstadt ghetto, and a return to the Theresienstadt in 2012 to explore its past. The final two docs are part of the Special Screenings: James Toback’s SEDUCED AND ABANDONED, a meta-doc about veteran filmmakers and actors attending last year’s Cannes and seeking support for their next projects; and Frank Simon’s rarely-seen film from 1971, WEEKEND OF A CHAMPION, in which the film’s producer, Roman Polanski, spends a weekend with Formula 1 racing champion Jackie Stewart – who have an onscreen reunion for a forty-year-later postscript.

Another five titles are part of Cannes’ special Cannes Classics selections. Three are in the utilitarian named “Documentaries” sidebar: Diego Galán’s CON LA PATA QUEBRADA (pictured), on nine decades of women in Spanish cinema; Mark Cousins’ A STORY OF CHILDREN & FILM, an essay film about the interplay of childhood and cinema; and Treva Wurmfeld’s SHEPARD & DARK, which premiered at Toronto last year, but which was produced by Joanne Woodward, subject of this year’s festival poster. Of the fest’s twenty “Restored Prints,” two are docs: Chris Marker and Pierre Lhomme’s 1963 LE JOLI MAI (THE LOVELY MONTH OF MAY), which consists of interviews with Parisians just after the end of the Algerian War; and Youri Ozerov, Milos Forman, Mai Zetterling, Claude Lelouch, Arthur Penn, Michael Pfleghar, John Schlesinger, and Kon Ichikawa’s 1973 VISIONS OF EIGHT, an omnibus portrait of the 1972 Munich Olympics, which went on to win the Golden Globe for Best Documentary in 1974.

There are only three films in the parallel events – all in Directors’ Fortnight, none in International Critics’ Week. Frank Pavich’s JODOROWSKY’S DUNE (pictured), a look at the doomed 1974 adaptation of the scifi novel by the renowned Chilean/French director; Marcel Ophuls’ UN VOYAGEUR (AIN’T MISBEHAVIN), the reflections of the director on cinema and his collaborators; and Kaveh Bakhtiari’s L’ESCALE, a personal exploration of the experiences of a group of undocumented Iranians in Athens.

Celebrating its 10th anniversary this year, Planete + Doc Film Festival opens this Friday, May 10 in Warsaw, expanding to Wroclaw on Sunday, May 12, and continuing in both cities through Sunday, May 19. One of Poland’s signature cinema events, the festival screens over 100 feature docs, in addition to shorts, panels, masterclasses, music events, and family programming. Ten competitions totaling over 20,000 Euros will be presented, along with awards with names like Chopin’s Nose (music docs), Green Cross (ecology docs), and Magic Hour (mid-lengths) in addition to audience awards and the like. Programming is organized around fifteen thematic sections, which include three retro series on the films of Heidi Ewing and Rachel Grady, Canada’s Peter Mettler, and Russia’s Sergei Loznitsa. Here are some of my picks of new or unfamiliar films from the remaining twelve sections: Continue reading →

Tomorrow, Wednesday, May 8 sees the launch of the 28th edition of DOK.fest Munich, the second largest doc event in Germany. Running through Wednesday, May 15, the festival includes over a hundred titles, many vying for the more than 35,000 Euros in cash and in-kind prizes, ranging for jury awards for best international, German language, and emerging country films to best Bavarian, student, and music docs. The programming reflects a balance between higher-profile selections that have emerged elsewhere on the festival circuit to a healthy assortment of new or more obscure titles, including an intriguing mix of local productions, as well as a retrospective of Werner Herzog’s work. While I’m not attending, the following section overview represents some of the feature docs I’d check out: Continue reading →

Beginning this Wednesday, May 8, and running through the rest of the month, MoMA presents Chinese Realities/Documentary Visions, a retrospective series of nonfiction and nonfiction-inspired film from China. The work reflects changes to the nation’s documentary aesthetics over the past quarter century, which has come hand-in-hand with rapid modernization in the wake of China’s remarkable economic transition. Series curators Sally Berger and Kevin B Lee have assembled examples from as far back as 1988, pre-Tiananmen Square, to brand new work, spanning state-sanctioned productions to underground, independent work – the majority largely unseen by Western audiences outside of some limited festival exposure. In addition to panels, more than two dozen films make up the series, including several fiction films employing documentary strategies as well as hybrid projects. The following highlights a number of the notable documentary selections: Continue reading →

Vancouver’s DOXA Documentary Film Festival begins this Friday, May 3, and runs through Sunday, May 12. The 12th annual festival presents more than sixty documentary features, in addition to shorts, panels, and special events. Intended to explore the elasticity of nonfiction, the fest aims to expose local audiences to innovative Canadian and international docs. DOXA opens with Canadian doc OCCUPY THE MOVIE, Corey Ogilvie’s overview of the history of the popular movement, which began in Vancouver; presents a “midweek special” centerpiece screening of Ben Lewis’ Sundance-premiering GOOGLE AND THE WORLD BRAIN; and closes with Ryan White’s SXSW alum GOOD OL’ FREDA. Selections from the rest of the lineup follow: Continue reading →

Beginning this Thursday, May 2 and running through Saturday, May 11, DocAviv: The Tel Aviv International Documentary Film Festival celebrates its 15th anniversary. More than eighty new documentary features, in addition to shorts and retrospective programming, spotlighting a diverse range of both Israeli and international work, will screen during the event, recognized as one of the key doc festivals in the region. It’s on my list of fests I’d love to attend at some point, but, sadly, this year’s not the year. What follows are some highlights of feature docs appearing there that I’d be most interested in viewing: Continue reading →

After a particularly challenging week, some normalcy returns to the Hub city with the start of the Independent Film Festival Boston tomorrow, Wednesday, April 24. Running through next Tuesday, April 30, this year marks the eleventh edition of what has been called the city’s premier film event, and the largest film festival in the whole of New England. Continue reading →

The longest-running film festival in both North and South America, San Francisco International Film Festival, kicks off its 56th edition this Thursday evening and runs through Thursday, May 9. This is the first festival with new Executive Director Ted Hope at the helm, bringing a welcome and familiar leadership to the organization after the tragic back-to-back deaths of his respected predecessors Graham Leggat and Bingham Ray. He’s brought with him Colin Stanfield as Managing Director, with longtime Director of Programming Rachel Rosen providing continuity and her regular keen curatorial eye. This year’s lineup includes over 150 films, including nearly thirty documentary features. I’ll be in town for the festival’s first weekend and may try to catch a few titles I haven’t already seen, time and schedule permitting. Regardless, here’s a quick look at some of the selections to consider checking out if you’re in the Bay Area: Continue reading →

In less than one week, Toronto’s Hot Docs, North America’s largest documentary festival, kicks off its twentieth edition, which will run through Sunday, May 5. An essential stop on the doc fest circuit, I’ve been fortunate to attend for the past several years, and will be covering the event for Indiewire once again. Like Amsterdam’s IDFA, what’s especially notable about Hot Docs is its ability not only to draw a huge general public audience, but to attract the participation of nonfiction industry players, especially decision makers for key international broadcasters and funds. The latter annually take meetings and hear pitches in the accompanying Hot Docs Forum, for which I was honored to serve on the selection committee this year, and which I plan to include in my coverage as I have done in the past. That said, my main focus will be on the films – as many of the 205 titles appearing in the lineup as I can see during my time there. Director of Programming Charlotte Cook and her team culled this year’s selections, representing 43 countries, from 2386 submissions, organizing them into eleven different sections. The following spotlights the feature docs I’m most looking forward to, going section-by-section: Continue reading →

This Friday kicks off the 44th edition of Nyon, Switzerland’s Visions du Réel, one of the oldest doc events in the world. Founded in 1969 as the Nyon International Documentary Film Festival, the event was originally led by Moritz de Hadeln of later Berlin, Locarno, and Venice fame, and had an expressly political motivation – beyond showcasing Swiss nonfiction, the fest’s geographical location, situated in the center of Europe, motivated de Hadeln to provide a platform for productions from Eastern Bloc nations as a means to foster societal change. In the present, the festival features an expansive lineup of more than 150 films over the course of its weeklong run, representing new Swiss and international documentaries to its growing audience. I’ve never attended, but here’s a sampling of the titles that piqued my interest, separated by programming strand: Continue reading →