New Directors/New Films 2016: Documentary Overview

Celebrating its 45th edition, New Directors/New Films, a collaboration between the Museum of Modern Art and the Film Society of Lincoln Center, begins tomorrow, Wednesday, March 16, and runs through Sunday, March 27. After a disappointing reduction in the number of nonfiction offerings in 2015, this year’s series shows an improvement, with six of its 27 features representing documentary and hybrid work:

Two titles come to NYC after recent, acclaimed debuts at Sundance: US Documentary Grand Jury Prize winner WEINER (pictured), Josh Kriegman and Elyse Steinberg’s surprisingly candid look inside Anthony Weiner’s ill-fated mayoral run; and CAMERAPERSON, noted cinematographer Kirsten Johnson’s meditation on capturing images.

A deep sense of place links the remaining nonfiction works in this year’s ND/NF: Salomé Lamas’ ELDORADO XXI (pictured) looks at the lives of miners in the remote Peruvian Andes; Zhao Liang’s BEHEMOTH offers a startling view of the impact of industrialization on China’s Inner Mongolia; Tony Stone’s PETER AND THE FARM profiles a man’s self-destruction against the background of his Vermont farm; and Pietro Marcello’s hybrid LOST AND BEAUTIFUL, which is set in the world of a southern Italian shepherd.