Category Archives: Recommendations

Outfest, the Los Angeles LGBT film fest, opens its 34th edition tonight, Thursday, July 7. Over 60 features will screen before the event comes to a close on Sunday, July 17, including 25 documentaries. Among these are its doc centerpiece, KIKI, Sara Jordenö’s intimate look at NYC’s youth ballroom scene, which debuted earlier this year at Sundance.

The festival’s remaining nonfiction includes a mix of highlights from Sundance and other notable events, as well as lesser known or brand new work. Among these are: Dante H Alencastre’s RAISNG ZOEY, a profile of a typical teenage girl, who happens to be trans; Annalise Ophelian’s MAJOR! (pictured), a biography of a notable black trans community leader; C Fitz’s JEWEL’S CATCH ONE, about the long-running African-American owned disco; Tiffany Rhynard’s FORBIDDEN: UNDOCUMENTED AND QUEER IN RURAL AMERICA, on a young man’s dual activism around immigration and LGBT rights; Robyn Symon’s UNCLE GLORIA: ONE HELLUVA RIDE!, about a criminal who found her true gender after crossdressing to escape the law; and Yony Leyser’s hybrid DESIRE WILL SET YOU FREE, an exploration of Berlin’s queer art scene.

Tomorrow, Thursday, July 7, sees the start of the 33rd Jerusalem Film Festival, which will present more than 100 new feature films before its closing night on Sunday, July 17. With more than 40 documentaries, the festival demonstrates an increase from last year’s nonfiction numbers, though still fewer than it has shown in past editions. The following offers some highlights, focused primarily on new Israeli offerings:

This year’s Documentary Competition once again presents seven titles: Michael Alalu’s PEPE’S LAST BATTLE (pictured), which follows the director’s secular father in his longshot Jerusalem mayoral run; Yariv Mozar’s BEN-GURION, EPILOGUE, constructed from a long-lost interview conducted with the Israeli pioneer late in his life; Michal Aviad’s DIMONA TWIST, about the experiences of women who immigrated to a small Israeli desert community in the 1950s and ’60s; Maya Zinshtein’s FOREVER PURE, which chronicles the racist backlash that followed the inclusion of Muslim players on a Jerusalem soccer team; Kobi Faraj’s PHOTO FARAJ, a personal excavation of the director’s family’s photography business; Yonatan Nir’s MY HERO BROTHER, about a group of Down syndrome youth trekking through the Himalayas with their siblings; and Era Lapid and Haim Lapid’s KINDERGARTEN, which re-examines an accusation of abuse against a schoolteacher.

Among the Israeli work appearing outside of competition are Maayan Schwartz’s MY FRIEND, YANIV, about a man who longs to finally find his independence; and Neta Shoshani and David Ofek’s HOUSE CALL (pictured), an intimate look at home hospice care for the terminally ill. Additional newer, non-Israeli, titles appearing at the festival and focused on Middle Eastern concerns include Stephen Apkon and Andrew Young’s DISTURBING THE PEACE, on former enemies turned peacemakers; and David Schisgall’s THEO WHO LIVED, about an American journalist kidnapped and later freed by Al-Qaeda forces in Syria.

Tonight, Friday, July 1 sees the start of the Karlovy Vary International Film Festival. The 51st edition of the Czech Republic’s most notable film event offers audiences approximately 150 new and recent features, including just under 40 works of nonfiction, before it wraps on Saturday, July 9. In contrast to last year’s program, which included standalone competitive and non-competitive documentary strands, this year’s features only the former, with the latter parceled out amongst various other non-competitive sections. Some of the highlights include the following.

Among the dozen titles included in this year’s Documentary Film Competition are: Manuel Abramovich’s SOLAR, in which the director struggles to control his portrait of a New Age author; Leire Apellaniz’s THE LAST SUMMER (pictured), on a traveling film projectionist’s final season; Vitaly Mansky’s CLOSE RELATIONS, the Ukrainian filmmaker’s personal meditation on the complex case of his homeland; Tomáš Bojar and Rozálie Kohoutová’s FC ROMA, about the chilly reception received by an all-Roma Czech soccer team; Alice Diop’s ON CALL, an observational portrait of a French doctor who tends to immigrants for free; and Miroslav Janek’s NORMAL AUTISTIC FILM, an attempt to reframe autism not as a condition but as a different way of seeing the world.

Nonfiction appearing out of competition includes: Helena Třeštíková and Jakub Hejna’s DOOMED BEAUTY (pictured), about a Czech actress whose career suffered after an affair with Nazi Joseph Goebbels; and Pavel Štingl’s COURAGE, which captures a celebrated Czech sculptor as he works on his latest high-profile commission; Christophe Bisson’s SFUMATO, a portrait of French artist Bernard Legay; and the hybrids BROTHERHOOD, Pepe Diokno’s inside look at the secret social mores that govern the Philippines; and HOUSTON, WE HAVE A PROBLEM!, Žiga Virc’s speculative exposé of Yugoslavia’s secret 1960s space program.