Category Archives: Film Festivals

Croatia’s ZagrebDox launches its 12th edition this Sunday, February 21 and runs through next Sunday, February 28. More than 160 new and retrospective features and shorts will screen as part of the event, the nation’s largest documentary showcase. While much of this includes local debuts of films that are already well-traveled on the international festival circuit, the festival also affords the opportunity to view new regional work, a sampling of which is provided below. Continue reading →

Tomorrow night, Friday, February 19, sees the start of the 15th anniversary edition of MoMA’s annual nonfiction showcase, Documentary Fortnight, with the NYC premiere of Billy Woodberry’s AND WHEN I DIE, I WON’T STAY DEAD, about unheralded African American Beat poet Bob Kaufman. Eighteen features and several shorts will screen before the series wraps on Monday, February 29 with the world premiere of Adam Khalil and Zack Khalil’s INNATE/SE/ [IT SHINES A CERTAIN WAY. TO A CERTAIN PLACE./IT FLIES. FALLS./], which reclaims the Ojibway story for the Native American people themselves.

Also making its world premiere is Beth B’s CALL HER APPLEBROOG (pictured), a portrait of the filmmaker’s mother, artist Ida Applebroog. North American premieres include: John Gianvito’s WAKE (SUBIC), an exploration of the damage done to the Philippines by continued US military presence; Jacques Perconte’s ETTRICK, an experimental film manipulating Scottish landscapes into abstract art images; K8 Hardy’s OUTFITUMENTARY, a portrait of the artist through a dozen year’s of personal fashion choices; and Ane Hjort Guttu’s TIME PASSES, which follows a student’s solidarity with a homeless Roma woman as part of a performance art project.

This Friday, February 19 kicks off the 13th Big Sky Documentary Film Festival in Missoula MT. Running through Sunday, February 28, the state’s largest film event will present several competitions, as well as a diverse range of non-competitive sidebars on themes including native concerns, conflict resolution, nature, culture, history, adventure, local filmmaking, and retrospectives of the work of Lucy Walker and Ondi Timoner. A selection of the more than 60 new and recent feature docs is included below: Continue reading →

The 66th edition of the Berlinale opens tonight, Thursday, February 11 and runs through Sunday, February 21. A massive undertaking, the world-class festival, Germany’s largest, annually screens approximately 400 new and retrospective films across a wide range of programming strands. Among the new features on offer this year are just about seventy documentaries and hybrids, a sampling of which are noted below. Additionally, the festival is once again presenting Meet the Docs, a networking platform that is part of its corresponding European Film Market. The latter includes fifteen documentaries not in the official Berlinale fest program co-presented under the Docs Spotlight series by festivals IDFA, CPH:DOX, and DOK Leipzig; Meet the Festivals sessions; and a series of nonfiction-focused panels and conversations. Beyond this, the festival also presents Doc Station as part of the Berlinale Talents program, featuring ten projects in development. While my schedule continues to make attending the festival inconvenient, my attention would be drawn to the following programmed documentary features, were I to be heading to Berlin this weekend: Continue reading →