what (not) to doc

Coming to VOD via Mubi tomorrow, Friday, October 27:
A GERMAN YOUTH

Director:
Jean-Gabriel Périot

Premiere:
Berlin 2015

Select Festivals:
IDFA, Art of the Real, Cinéma du Réel, Visions du Réel, BAFICI, San Francisco, IndieLisboa, Docaviv, Moscow, Transilvania, Melbourne, Sarajevo, Bergen, Hamptons, New Horizons

About:
A rich portrait of key members of the Red Army Faction, composed entirely through found footage.

Without offering explicit condemnation or valorization, Périot chronicles the shift of the Baader-Meinhof group from intellectual debate to violent revolution through a progression of talk show appearances, political student films, protest footage, and news reports, grounding their evolution within the larger public debate in the mid-1960s that saw the younger generation referenced in the film’s title question authority of the previous generation, one tinged with a Nazi past that they had not yet openly addressed. The film identifies key RAF figures like journalist Ulrike Marie Meinhof, artists Andreas Baader and Gudrun Ensslin, attorney Horst Mahler, and filmmaker Holger Meins, among others, before their later radicalization, as they reflected the growth of progressive far-leftist movements around Germany and the world and took on symbols of the establishment, such as Axel Springer and his monopoly on the news media. As Périot artfully charts their move to increasing militancy, he engages with fundamental questions which position these figures as revolutionaries to some, terrorists to others, and which resonate with the modern day.

Coming to theatres and to Netflix today, Friday, October 20:
ONE OF US

Directors:
Heidi Ewing and Rachel Grady

Premiere:
Toronto 2017

Select Festivals:
DOC NYC, Mill Valley, Philadelphia

About:
A candid look at what happens when individuals try to leave the insular Hasidic community of NYC.

The film is screening as part of DOC NYC’s Short List, for which our program notes read:
Oscar®-nominated directors Heidi Ewing and Rachel Grady (JESUS CAMP, DETROPIA), recipients of the Robert & Anne Drew Award for Documentary Excellence at this year’s DOC NYC Visionaries Tribute, “have made their most powerful and complex film” (The Hollywood Reporter). Their latest project profiles three members of New York’s Hasidic Jewish community who wish to explore more secular lives. To do so puts them at risk of leaving behind their families and facing hostile opposition. As their stories unfold over several months, the film plays like a suspenseful thriller.