Festival:
The 16th annual DOXA
Dates:
May 4-14
About:
Approximately 50 new and retrospective features screen at this Vancouver documentary festival.
The event opens with Marie Clements’ THE ROAD FORWARD (pictured), a musical doc focused on First Nations activism. It screens as part of the Rated Y for Youth program, which also includes Jacob Smith, Jon D Erickson and Kathryn Goldman’s WAKING THE SLEEPING GIANT, about five activists who come together to combat a cross-section of pressing issues.
Other special programs include the annual Justice Forum, with Cyrus Sutton’s ISLAND EARTH (pictured), a look at food production focused on Hawai’i; Santiago Bertolino’s FREELANCER ON THE FRONT LINES, a portrait of a Canadian journalist working the dangerous Middle East beat; and Heather White and Lynn Zhang’s COMPLICIT, which exposes the dark side of consumer electronics manufacturing; a new Troublemakers sidebar of profiles, with Jean-Marie Barbe and Arnaud Lambert’s CHRIS MARKER: NEVER EXPLAIN, NEVER COMPLAIN, and Fabrizio Terranova’s DONNA HARAWAY: STORY TELLING FOR EARTHLY SURVIVAL; and the eclectic Transmissions strand, offering work like Sandra Ignagni’s YOU’RE ALREADY IN THE BAND (YOU JUST DON’T KNOW IT YET), about a troupe of tricksters; and Ouananiche’s ELSEWHERE, an experimental meditation on human travel.
Other feature programming includes the world premieres of both Mahdi Zamanpour Kiasari’s BUTTERFLY, about a young rural Iranian woman; and Carmen Pollard’s FOR DEAR LIFE, which follows a theatre director with a terminal disease as he plans his own funeral; as well as screenings of Koldo Almandoz’s GHOST SHIP (pictured), which focuses on haunting maritime stories; Félix Lamarche’s FAR AWAY LANDS, about life aboard a cargo ship; Julia Ivanova’s LIMIT IS THE SKY, about people drawn to the promise of easy money in Canada’s oil sands industry; and Guilherme B Hoffmann’s PRAIA, about Brazil through its beaches.
what (not) to doc 