Category Archives: Recommendations

Coming to PBS’s POV tonight, Monday, August 29 and to DVD via Criterion Collection tomorrow, Tuesday, August 30:
FAYA DAYI

Director:
Jessica Beshir

World Premiere:
Sundance 2021

Select Festivals:
Hot Docs, BlackStar, True/False, Full Frame, Visions du Reel, Seattle, New Directors/New Films, Rotterdam, Melbourne

Notable Recognition:
The doc was shortlisted for the Academy Awards.

About:
A poetic, sensorial journey into the highlands of Harar in eastern Ethiopia, the birthplace of khat.

I profiled the doc before Sundance here.

Coming to DVD and VOD today, Tuesday, August 23:
THE EARTH IS BLUE AS AN ORANGE

Director:
Iryna Tsilyk

World Premiere:
Sundance 2020

Select Festivals:
Berlin, IDFA, Hot Docs, Doc Fortnight, Thessaloniki Doc, ZagrebDox, Docs Against Gravity, Biografilm, Docudays UA, Reykjavik, Zurich, Dokufest, Adelaide, Seattle

About:
A Ukrainian family processes life in a war zone by making films about their experience.

Coming to theatres today, Friday, August 19:
THREE MINUTES — A LENGTHENING

Director:
Bianca Stigter

World Premiere:
Venice 2021

Select Festivals:
Sundance, Toronto, IDFA, DOC NYC, Philadelphia, Göteborg, Thessaloniki Doc, Provincetown, Sydney, Cleveland, Docs Against Gravity

About:
A home movie shot by David Kurtz in 1938 in a Jewish town in Poland – the only moving images left of the Jewish inhabitants of Nasielsk before the Holocaust – is examined to unravel the stories hidden in the celluloid.

Coming to theatres tomorrow, Friday, August 19:
THE TERRITORY

Director:
Alex Pritz

World Premiere:
Sundance 2022

Select Festivals:
True/False, CPH:DOX, It’s All True, Docs Against Gravity, Philadelphia Environmental, Jerusalem, Movies That Matter, Cleveland, Seattle, Sydney

About:
When a network of Brazilian farmers seizes a protected area of the Amazon rainforest, a young Indigenous leader and his mentor must fight back in defense of the land and the people living deep within the forest.

Coming to OVID this Friday, August 19:
SILVERLAKE LIFE: THE VIEW FROM HERE

Director:
Peter Friedman, Tom Joslin

World Premiere:
Sundance 1993

About:
A video diary of life with AIDS, told with guts and humor by longtime lovers Tom Joslin and Mark Massi, celebrates the power of love in the face of a devastating illness.

Coming to HBO and HBO Max tomorrow, Saturday, August 13:
THE PRINCESS

Director:
Ed Perkins

World Premiere:
Sundance 2022

Select Festivals:
Biografilm

About:
Princess Diana’s story is told exclusively through contemporaneous archive, creating a bold and immersive narrative of her life and death, illuminating the profound impact she had, and demonstrating how the public’s attitude to the monarchy was, and still is, shaped by these events.

Coming to theatres today, Friday, August 12:
FREE CHOL SOO LEE

Director:
Julie Ha, Eugene Yi

World Premiere:
Sundance 2022

Select Festivals:
BAMcinemaFest, Santa Barbara, Milwaukee, CAAMFest, Los Angeles, Asian Pacific, Asian American fests in New York, Seattle, San Diego, Denver, Chicago, Austin

About:
After a Korean immigrant is wrongly convicted of a 1973 San Francisco Chinatown gang murder, Asian Americans unite as never before to free Chol Soo Lee.