The 53rd New York Film Festival taking place
September 25 to October 11, 2015, revealed the complete lineup for the Spotlight on Documentary section. The Spotlight on Documentary section will launch on Sunday, September 27, with a program highlighting episodic, short-form nonfiction, which will include a preview of new work by Laura Poitras, who follows up her Oscar-winning CITIZENFOUR (which had its World Premiere at NYFF last year) with the series Asylum, an intimate look at one of the most revolutionary and controversial thinkers of the digital age, unfolding in episodes. A behind-the-scenes drama, Asylum follows Julian Assange as he publishes classified U.S. State Department cables and eventually seeks political asylum inside the Ecuadorian embassy in London. The evening will include a preview of episodes from the series, as well as the premiere of new, multi-part work from other acclaimed filmmakers, which will be announced at a later date.
This year’s lineup also includes three films centered on iconic figures within the arts: Nora Ephron, Ingrid Bergman, and Jia Zhangke. Everything Is Copy director Jacob Bernstein delivers a vibrant portrait of his mother Nora Ephron, through her own words and the memories of her sisters, colleagues, former spouses, friends, and scenes from her movies. Stig Björkman’s focus in Ingrid Bergman in Her Own Words is not on Bergman the star but on Bergman the woman and mother, using excerpts from her letters and diaries (extracts of which are read by Alicia Vikander); memories shared from her children (Pia Lindström and Isabella, Ingrid, and Roberto Rossellini); and clips from Super-8 and 16mm home movies shot by Bergman herself. Jia Zhangke, A Guy from Fenyang is the latest film from Brazilian director Walter Salles, who accompanies the director (whose latest, Mountains May Depart, is screening in this year’s NYFF Main Slate) on a visit to his hometown and other locations he has returned to in his vast body of work.
NYFF welcomes back director Frederick Wiseman with his 40th feature documentary, In Jackson Heights, which centers around one of New York City’s liveliest and most culturally diverse neighborhoods caught in the crunch of economic “development,” like so many other neighborhoods in the city and around the country. Joaquim Pinto returns to the festival, following his 2013 film What Now? Remind Me (NYFF51), with Fish Tail, co-directed with his husband Nuno Leonel, set in the Azorean island of Rabo de Peixe, where small-scale fishermen introduce the filmmakers to the rhythms of their labor-intensive routines—artisanal traditions that face extinction in the global economy.
Politics play a role in several of the selections in the lineup. Michael Camerini and Shari Robertson, who premiered a series of immigration films How Democracy Works at NYFF51, return with their final film on the subject, Immigration Battle. The duo have continued to chronicle the struggle for American immigration reform over the past 16 years, crossing the country numerous times to film politicians and activists on both sides of the issue. The North American Premiere of We Are Alive from Chilean filmmaker Carmen Castillo (her Calle Santa Fe was a selection of the 2007 NYFF) is a documentary essay asking the questions: What comprises political engagement in 2015? Is it still possible to influence the course of events in this world? She structures her film in dialogue with the writings of her late friend Daniel Bensaïd, organizer of the Paris student revolts in May ’68 and France’s leading Trotskyite philosopher.
FILMS & DESCRIPTIONS
Everything Is Copy
Jacob Bernstein, 2015, USA, DCP, 89m
Jacob Bernstein’s extremely entertaining film is a tribute to his mother Nora Ephron: Hollywood-raised daughter of screenwriters who grew up to be an ace reporter turned piercingly funny essayist turned novelist/screenwriter/playwright/director. Ephron comes vibrantly alive onscreen via her words; the memories of her sisters, colleagues, former spouses, and many friends; scenes from her movies; and, above all, her own inimitable presence. Watch any given moment of Ephron being her sparkling but caustically witty self (for instance, this response to a scolding talk show host—“You have a soft spot for Julie Nixon, don’t you. See, I don’t…”) and you find it hard to believe that she’s been gone from our midst for three years. Everything Is Copy (Ephron’s motto, inherited from her mother) is a lovingly drawn but frank portrait and, incidentally, a vivid snapshot of an earlier, livelier, bitchier, and funnier moment in New York culture. An HBO Documentary Films release. World Premiere
Field of Vision: New Episodic Nonfiction
Laura Poitras, USA/Germany, 2015, HDCAM
A selection of short-form episodic works, including installments of Asylum, in which Laura Poitras (whose CITIZENFOUR had its world premiere at last year’s NYFF) shadows WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange as he publishes classified diplomatic cables and seeks asylum in London’s Ecuadorian embassy. World Premiere
Fish Tail / Rabo de Peixe (pictured above)
Joaquim Pinto & Nuno Leonel, Portugal, 2015, DCP, 103m
Portuguese with English subtitles
In his 2013 masterpiece What Now? Remind Me (NYFF51), Joaquim Pinto turned a first-person diary about chronic illness into an all-encompassing meditation on what it means to be alive. His latest film, co-directed with his husband Nuno Leonel, pulls off a similar balancing act between intimacy and expansiveness. The setting is the Azorean island of Rabo de Peixe, where small-scale fishermen introduce the filmmakers to the rhythms of their labor-intensive routines, artisanal traditions that face extinction in the global economy. Initially broadcast on Portuguese television in an abbreviated version, this new director’s cut is a tender portrait of a community that, through Pinto’s associative narration, frequently extends into more personal and philosophical realms, contemplating such topics as the value of manual work and the meaning of freedom. Fish Tail is as lovely as it is quietly profound, a film that at once acknowledges and transcends cinema’s long romance with maritime ethnography. North American Premiere
Homeland (Iraq Year Zero)
Part 1: Before the Fall
Part 2: After the Battle
Abbas Fahdel, Iraq/France, 2015, DCP, 160m/174m
Arabic with English subtitles
In February 2002—about a year before the U.S. invasion in 2003—Iraqi filmmaker Abbas Fahdel traveled home from France to capture everyday life as his country prepared for war. He zeroed in on family and friends as they went about their business, with much of the action seen through the eyes of the director’s 12-year-old nephew, Haider. When Fahdel returned in 2003, two weeks after the invasion, daily activities like going to school or shopping at the market had become nearly impossible; many areas of Baghdad had been closed off to ordinary citizens, yet everyone pressed on. The young Haider represents, in various ways, the voice of his people: “They are occupiers and we can’t oppose them. Our country has become like Palestine,” he tells a neighbor. Fahdel’s epic yet intimate film paints a compelling portrait of people simply trying to exist in the midst of constant turmoil, and describes the fine line between life and death that civilians in a war zone must walk from day to day. North American Premiere
Immigration Battle
Michael Camerini & Shari Robertson, USA, 2015, DCP, 111m
Michael Camerini and Shari Robertson have been chronicling the protracted struggle for American immigration reform over the past 16 years, crossing the country numerous times to film politicians and activists on both sides of this great and divisive issue. They gained unprecedented fly-on-the-wall access to the key players in Washington as they rode the momentum toward the passage of a bipartisan bill, only to see it shot down, which meant that they had to begin pushing the boulder back up the hill all over again. Two years ago, NYFF51 screened Camerini and Robertson’s series of immigration films, How Democracy Works, and now we present Immigration Battle, their final film on the subject. The key player this time is Democrat Luis Gutiérrez, the charismatic U.S. Representative for the 4th congressional district of Illinois, who negotiates his way through this political minefield—past an obstructionist majority playing to an anti-immigrant base and a President who has just been dubbed the “Deporter-in-Chief” by the pro-reform community—while keeping his eyes firmly fixed on the prize. World Premiere
Ingrid Bergman in Her Own Words
Stig Björkman, Sweden, 2015, DCP, 114m
Swedish with English subtitles
This is a lovingly crafted film about one of the cinema’s most luminous and enchanting presences, composed from her letters and diaries (extracts of which are read by Alicia Vikander), the memories of her children (Pia Lindström and Isabella, Ingrid, and Roberto Rossellini), and a few close friends and colleagues (including Liv Ullmann and Sigourney Weaver), photographs, and moments from thousands of feet of Super-8 and 16mm footage shot by Bergman herself throughout the years. Stig Björkman’s focus is not on Bergman the star but on Bergman the woman and mother: orphaned at 13, drawn to acting on the stage and then on film, sailing for Hollywood at 24 and then leaving it all behind for a new and different life with Roberto Rossellini. Ingrid Bergman in Her Own Words is, finally, a self-portrait of a truly independent woman. A Rialto Pictures release.
In Jackson Heights
Frederick Wiseman, USA, 2015, DCP, 190m
Fred Wiseman’s 40th feature documentary is about Jackson Heights, Queens, one of New York City’s liveliest and most culturally diverse neighborhoods, a thriving and endlessly changing crossroad of styles, cuisines, and languages, and now—like vast portions of our city—caught in the gears of economic “development.” Wiseman’s mastery is as total as it is transparent: his film moves without apparent effort from an LGBT support meeting to a musical street performance to a gathering of Holocaust survivors to a hilarious training class for aspiring taxi drivers to an ace eyebrow-removal specialist at work to the annual Gay Pride parade to a meeting of local businessmen in a beauty parlor to discuss the oncoming economic threat to open-air merchants selling their wares to a meeting of undocumented individuals facing deportation. Wiseman catches the textures of New York life in 2015, the music of our speech, and a vast, emotionally complex, dynamic tapestry is woven before our eyes. A Zipporah Films release.
Jia Zhangke, A Guy from Fenyang
Walter Salles, Brazil/France, 2014, DCP, 99m
Mandarin with English subtitles
Brazilian filmmaker Walter Salles accompanies the prolific Chinese director Jia Zhangke (whose latest, Mountains May Depart, is screening in this year’s Main Slate) on a walk down memory lane, as he revisits his hometown and other locations used in creating his vast body of work. At each location, they visit Jia’s family, friends, and former colleagues, and their conversations range from his mother’s tales of him as a young boy to amusing remembrances of school days and film shoots to memories of his father and the fact that if not for pirated DVDs, much of Jia’s work would go unseen in China. All the roads traveled are part of one journey—the destination of which is Jia’s relationship to his past and to his country. And the confluence of storytelling, intellect, and politics informing all of Jia’s work is brought to light in this lovely, intimate portrait of the artist on his way to the future. North American Premiere
Rebel Citizen
Pamela Yates, USA, 2015, DCP, 75m
Pamela Yates’s new film grew out of her friendship with master cinematographer and fellow activist Haskell Wexler, who’s still going strong at 93. Wexler asked Yates to represent him at a retrospective of his documentary work at this year’s Cinéma du Réel festival in Paris, and she responded by making a film portrait of her mentor and longtime collaborator. Wexler—in an interview with Yates shot by Travis Wilkerson, another comrade-in-arms—speaks with warmth, lucidity, and absolute certitude about his left-wing political beliefs, his craft, and his aesthetics, which are fundamentally one in the same. Rebel Citizen takes us on a revelatory tour of Wexler’s work, and it includes clips from his early documentary The Bus, shot aboard a bus on its way across the country to the 1963 March on Washington, as well as Medium Cool and Underground, his film about the Weatherman co-directed with Emile de Antonio and Mary Lampson. A Skylight Pictures release. World Premiere
Troublemakers: The Story of Land Art
James Crump, USA, 2015, DCP, 72m
The titular troublemakers are the New York–based Land (aka Earth) artists of the 1960s and 70s, who walked away from the reproducible and the commodifiable, migrated to the American Southwest, worked with earth and light and seemingly limitless space, and rethought the question of scale and the relationships between artist, landscape, and viewer. Director James Crump (Black White + Gray) has meticulously constructed Troublemakers from interviews (with Germano Celant, Virginia Dwan, and others), photos and footage of Walter De Maria, Michael Heizer, Robert Smithson, Nancy Holt, and Charles Ross at work on their astonishing creations: Heizer’s Double Negative, a 1,500-feet long “line” cut between two canyons on Mormon Mesa in Nevada; Holt’s concrete Sun Tunnels, through each of which the sun appears differently according to the season; De Maria’s The Lightning Field in New Mexico; and Smithson’s Spiral Jetty, built on the Great Salt Lake in Utah. A beautiful tribute to a great moment in art.
We Are Alive / On est vivants
Carmen Castillo, France/Belgium, 2015, DCP, 100m
French, Spanish, and Portuguese with English subtitles
What comprises political engagement in 2015? Is it still possible to influence the course of events in this world? These are the questions posed by the great Chilean filmmaker Carmen Castillo (her Calle Santa Fe was a selection of the 2007 NYFF) in this new documentary essay. Castillo, herself a one-time MIR militant expelled from Chile by the Pinochet regime, structures her film in dialogue with the writings of her late friend Daniel Bensaïd, organizer of the Paris student revolts in May ’68 and France’s leading Trotskyite philosopher. In Europe and Latin America, Castillo finds the ones who have resisted, from the masked Zapatistas of Chiapas in Mexico to the Water Warriors of Cochabamba in Bolivia, from the Landless Workers movement in Brazil to the striking workers at the Donges refinery in western France to the homeless squatters of Marseille. A mournful premise lays the groundwork for a radiantly hopeful film.
North American Premiere
The Witness
James Solomon, 2015, USA, DCP, 96m
On March 13, 1964, in Kew Gardens, Queens, Kitty Genovese was stabbed, raped, robbed, and left to die by a man named Winston Moseley. On March 27, at the urging of Metro editor A.M. Rosenthal, The New York Times published an investigative report asserting that 38 eyewitnesses saw the attack and retreated to their apartments, and the case quickly became a symbol of urban apathy. Genovese’s family lost her twice: once to a murderer and once more to legend, a legend that would be questioned, dismantled, and discredited 40 years later in the very paper that had created it. James Solomon’s quiet, concentrated, and devastating film closely follows the efforts of Genovese’s brother Bill, 16 at the time of Kitty’s death, to track down the people who knew her, loved her, and tried to help her, to arrange a possible meeting with her killer, and to recover the presence of his beloved sister. A Submarine release. World Premiere
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The controversial award-winning film DIFRET, directed by Zeresenay Berhane Mehari and executive produced by Angelina Jolie Pitt, finally has a release date in time for the awards season. DIFRET which premiered at the 2014 Sundance Film Festival where it won the World Cinematic Dramatic Audience Award, and the Panorama Audience Award for Best Fiction Film at the Berlin Film Festival 2014, will be released on October 23.
Difret is a powerful drama based on a true story. In Addis Ababa, lawyer Meaza Ashenafi has established a network providing poor women and children with free legal representation. She takes on the case of 14-year-old Hirut who is abducted and raped on her way home from school and shoots dead her tormentors as she escapes. Accused of murder, Hirut may face the death penalty even though she was acting in self-defence – for in rural Ethiopia the tradition of ‘Telefa’ or marriage by abduction still exists.
The NY Post’s Page Six reported that the woman who said she inspired the project, Aberash Bekele, had reportedly sought an injunction on the night of its Ethiopian premiere to block its release, saying she didn’t give filmmakers permission to use her story. However, the matter was eventually settled out of court.
Fox Searchlight has released the official poster and second trailer for the documentary HE NAMED ME MALALA from acclaimed documentary filmmaker Davis Guggenheim (An Inconvenient Truth, Waiting for Superman). HE NAMED ME MALALA opens in select theaters on Friday, October 2nd 2015.
HE NAMED ME MALALA is an intimate portrait of Nobel Peace Prize Laureate Malala Yousafzai, who was targeted by the Taliban and severely wounded by a gunshot when returning home on her school bus in Pakistan’s Swat Valley. The then 15-year-old (she turned 18 this July) was singled out, along with her father, for advocating for girls’ education, and the attack on her sparked an outcry from supporters around the world. She miraculously survived and is now a leading campaigner for girls’ education globally as co-founder of the Malala Fund.
Documentary filmmaker Davis Guggenheim (An Inconvenient Truth, Waiting for Superman) shows us how Malala, her father Zia and her family are committed to fighting for education for all girls worldwide. The film gives us an inside glimpse into this extraordinary young girl’s life – from her close relationship with her father who inspired her love for education, to her impassioned speeches at the UN, to her everyday life with her parents and brothers.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3ghiYve6k68
“One child, one teacher, one book and one pen can change the world.” – Malala
Image: Malala Yousafzai in HE NAMED ME MALALA. Photo courtesy of Fox Searchlight Pictures. © 2015 Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation All Rights Reserved
Filmmaker Jose Nestor Marquez’s sci-fi thriller, REVERSION will be released on October 9, 2015 in Los Angeles, New York and Chicago, with a wider national release to follow. Filmmaker Jose Nestor Marquez created REVERSION intertwining technology and identity, a continuation of the theme from his 2014 feature film ISA, which premiered on the Syfy channel.
REVERSION centers on Sophie Clé (Aja Naomi King), a delighted user of the Oubli, a wisp of high-tech jewelry that wraps behind the ear and uses neuroscience to help its users experience their most joyful memories as if they were happening for the first time. In addition to being the head of marketing for the company that makes this revolutionary memory-enhancing wearable device, she is also the daughter of its inventor, Jack Clé (Colm Feore).
Sophie’s most joyful memory is the last day she saw her mother alive, fifteen years earlier. But on the eve of the Oubli’s worldwide launch, a stranger named Isa (Jeanette Samano) kidnaps Sophie, setting off a chain of events that remind us all, you can’t escape what you can’t forget.
REVERSION is directed and Co-written by Jose Nestor Marquez (pictured above) (Ana Maria in Novela Land) and stars Aja Naomi King (How to Get Away With Murder), Colm Feore (Gotham, The Chronicles of Riddick), Gary Dourdan (CSI: Crime Scene Investigation, Being Mary Jane) and Jeanette Samano (ISA, Speechless).
THE PRIME MINISTERS: Soldiers and Peacemakers, the follow up to the critically acclaimed “The Prime Ministers: The Pioneers”, will open at the AMC Empire in New York on Friday, October 9, and at the Royal in Los Angeles and Town Center in Encino on Wednesday, October 14. A national release will follow.
Directed by Richard Trank, the documentary film, THE PRIME MINISTERS: Soldiers and Peacemakers, the fourteenth production of the Simon Wiesenthal Center’s two-time Academy Award®- winning Moriah Films, follows the experiences of the late Ambassador Yehuda Avner during the years he worked for Prime Ministers Yitzhak Rabin and Menachem Begin. Based on Ambassador Avner’s best-selling book, The Prime Ministers, the film examines Rabin’s election as the country’s first native born Israeli leader in 1974, his negotiating the first bilateral treaty between Israel and Egypt in 1975, the dramatic events surrounding Israel’s rescue of hostages in Entebbe in 1976, the tense relationship between newly elected US President Jimmy Carter and Rabin, and Rabin’s subsequent downfall in a financial scandal involving his wife Leah. The movie also explores Ambassador Avner’s decision to work for Menachem Begin when he surprised the world in 1977 by being elected the Prime Minister of Israel. It looks at the drama behind Anwar Sadat’s historic visit to Jerusalem, the Camp David negotiating process, the difficult relationship between President Carter and Menachem Begin as well as the tense relations that arose between Begin and President Reagan over the 1982 Lebanon War. The documentary also recounts Begin’s decline after the death of his beloved wife Aliza, and Yehuda Avner’s career as a diplomat in the UK and Australia before returning to Israel to work with Yitzhak Rabin not long before his assassination in 1995, after he had been elected a second time as Israel’s Prime Minister.
Starring the voices of Michael Douglas as Yitzhak Rabin and Christoph Waltz as Menachem Begin and introducing Nicola Peltz as the voice of Esther Cailingold, THE PRIME MINISTERS: Soldiers and Peacemakers is full of emotion and rich history with rare, never before seen photos and film footage.
https://vimeo.com/74139176
JAMES WHITE, the directorial debut from writer/director Josh Mond and starring Christopher Abbott, Cynthia Nixon and Scott “Kid Cudi” Mescudi has set a Fall release date of November 13th via The Film Arcade. The film which had its world premiere at the 2015 Sundance Film Festival, where it won the “Best of Next” Audience Award, is “a coming-of-age story about a young New Yorker struggling to take control of his self-destructive behavior in the face of momentous family changes.”
A confident and closely observed directorial debut by MARTHA MARCY MAY MARLENE producer Josh Mond, JAMES WHITE explores loss and the deep relationship between a mother and son. James White (Abbott) is a troubled twenty-something trying to stay afloat in a frenzied New York City. He retreats further into a hedonistic lifestyle, but his mother’s battle with a serious illness forces James to take control of his life. As the pressure mounts, James must find new reserves of strength or risk imploding completely. Shot on location in New York City with an intimate visual style, the film follows its lead into deep, affecting places while still maintaining its fragile humanity.
The film marks the first lead film role for stage and screen actor Christopher Abbott, whose previous film and TV credits include HELLO, I MUST BE GOING, THE SLEEPWALKER and “Girls.”
JAMES WHITE is considered a high profile release for the distributor The Film Arcade, and as a result the film will receive a traditional theatrical release followed by an awards campaign highlighting the career-best performances by Christopher Abbott and Cynthia Nixon. Both actors topped Indiewire’s Sundance Criticwire poll for Best Lead Actor and Best Supporting Actress, respectively.
Fox Searchlight Pictures 
The 7th Annual 
The Black Bear (L’ours noir) (France, Belgium / 2015 / Directors: Méryl Fortunat-Rossi, Xavier Séron) (pictured above)
DRIVING (USA / 2014 / Director: Nate Theis)
Limbo Limbo Travel (France / 2014 / Directors: Zsuzsanna Kreif, Borbála Zétényi)
Polaroid (Norway / 2015 / Director: Lars Klevberg)
Primrose Lane (USA / 2014 / Director: Nick Phillips)
Kajutaijuq: The Spirit That Comes (Canada / 2015 / Director: Scott Brachmayer)
teeth (United Kingdom, Hungary, USA / 2015 / Directors: Tom Brown, Daniel Gray)
Zepo (Spain / 2014 / Director: Cesar Diaz Melendez)
Shorts: Date Night
You should be sure to swipe right on this fun, fluffy, and relatable collection of love in all of its messy glory. We celebrate heart-pounding puppy love, sobbing-in-the-shower breakups, and all the love emojis in between. Be it young love, old love, new love, or no love at all, these relatable bite-sized bits are sure to do a number on your heartstrings.
Digits (USA / 2015 / Director: Alexander Engel)
Forever Over (Germany / 2014 / Director: Erik Schmitt)
In the Clouds (En las Nubes) (Argentina / 2014 / Director: Marcelo Mitnik)
One-Minute Time Machine (USA, United Kingdom / 2014 / Director: Devon Avery)
Say Nothing (No Digas Nada) (Spain / 2014 / Director: Silvia Abascal) (pictured above)
We’ll Find Something (USA / 2015 / Director: Casey Gooden)
Who’s Up? (Qui de Nous Deux?) (France / 2014 / Director: Benjamin Bouhana) (pictured in main image above)
Shorts: Let’s Get Animated
This diverse, unexpected, and beautiful grouping of animated offerings presents an ever-shifting series of stories where anything can and will happen. Ranging from silly and absurd to heartfelt and personal, each short is perfectly matched with its technique, form, and function in animated harmony. The wide variety is sure to provoke post-screening conversations in the lobby.
Automatic Fitness (Germany / 2015 / Directors: Alberto Couceiro, Alejandra Tomei) (pictured above)
Beach Flag (Vosta) (France / 2014 / Director: Sarah Saidani)
Edmond (United Kingdom / 2015 / Director: Nina Gantz)
The Five Minute Museum (Switzerland / 2015 / Director: Paul Bush)
Light Motif (France, United Kingdom / 2014 / Director: Frédéric Bonpapa)
Queen Bum (Königin Po) (Switzerland / 2015 / Director: Maja Gehrig)
Storm Hits Jacket (Tempête sur anorak) (France / 2014 / Director: Paul E. Cabon)
We Can’t Live Without Cosmos (Russia / 2014 / Director: Konstantin Bronzit)
Shorts: Modern Families
All the love and drama one can expect from everyday life surrounded by family is on display here — a daughter becomes a woman, a son becomes a man in the absence of his incarcerated father, a husband seeks to reconnect with his wife after the birth of their child, and a mother relies on the kindness of strangers to be there for her family.
De Smet (Belgium, Netherlands / 2014 / Directors: Thomas Baerten, Wim Geudens) (pictured above)
The Emperor (Der Kaiser) (Netherlands / 2014 / Director: Eché Janga)
Gloria (Mexico / 2014 / Director: Luis Hernández de la Peña)
Grounded (Au sol) (France / 2014 / Director: Alexis Michalik)
Personal Development (Ireland / 2014 / Director: Tom Sullivan)
SexLife (United Kingdom / 2014 / Director: Stefan Georgiou)
Shorts: Out of This World
Do you prefer your shorts a little askew? Perfect for those looking to have the rug pulled out from under them, these effects-filled tales of the fantastical are tailored to your sensibilities. Just remember to keep a close eye on your clone, don’t get overly attached to that imaginary friend, and watch out for the end of days, because it’s nearly here and it’s going to look amazing.
Actor Seeks Role (USA / 2015 / Director: Michael Tyburski)
Francis (USA / 2014 / Director: Richard Hickey)
The No Look Dunk (USA / 2014 / Director: Dan Samiljan) (pictured above)
So You’ve Grown Attached (USA / 2014 / Director: Kate Tsang)
Sundays (Mexico, Netherlands / 2015 / Director: Mischa Rozema)
Zelos (USA / 2015 / Director: Thoranna Sigurdardottir)
Zero M2 (France / 2015 / Director: Matthieu Landour)
Shorts: Sports Shorts. Shorts about Sports.
Whether you’re a lifelong sports fanatic or you think a goalie can dunk a touchdown, these stories are for you. They all deal with some manner of underdog, and the humanity of these subjects shines through and leaves you rooting for their success. These populist parables of perseverance, as people push the limits of what’s possible, will leave you grinning ear to ear (and doing the wave).
The Bad Boy of Bowling (USA / 2015 / Director: Bryan Storkel)
Boxeadora (USA, Cuba / 2014 / Director: Meg Smaker)
The Edge of Impossible (USA / 2014 / Director: Conor Toumarkine) (pictured above)
Every Day (USA / 2014 / Director: Gabe Spitzer)
Giovanni and the Water Ballet (Netherlands / 2014 / Director: Astrid Bussink)
Run Fast (USA, Kenya / 2014 / Director: Anna Musso)
Shorts: Stories We Tell
Everybody’s got a story to tell — personal, provocative, funny, sad, or heartfelt, this program’s got ’em all. Between a love affair with a dolphin, a fateful camping trip that would irrevocably change the lives of many, and a family photo years in the making, this smattering of tales both true and fictional is sure to leave you satisfied.
{THE AND} Marcela & Rock (USA / 2014 / Director: Topaz Adizes)
Copycat (United Kingdom / 2015 / Director: Charlie Lyne)
Dolphin Lover (USA / 2015 / Director: Kareem Tabsch)
In the Hollow (USA / 2015 / Director: Austin Bunn)
The Little Deputy (Canada / 2015 / Director: Trevor Anderson)
Mother’s Song (USA / 2015 / Director: Matty Brown)
My Beefs with Taco Bell (USA / 2015 / Director: Connor Kerrigan)
Two Dosas (United Kingdom / 2014 / Director: Sarmad Masud)
Walls (Spain / 2014 / Director: Miguel López Beraza)
Shorts: Stranger Than Fiction
These extraordinary and unusual shorts beggar belief, but unbelievable as they may seem, they’re all true. Be it the story of an infamous murder house, a team risking life and limb to stop the spread of Ebola, or a boxing champion turned taxi driver, these documentaries prove true life can be as fascinating, sobering, and heartfelt as the finest of fictions.
Body Team 12 (USA / 2015 / Director: David Darg)
The Champion (USA / 2014 / Directors: Brett Garamella, Patrick McGowan)
The Face of Ukraine: Casting Oksana Baiul (Australia / 2014 / Director: Kitty Green)
The Many Sad Fates of Mr. Toledano (USA / 2015 / Director: Joshua Seftel)
The House is Innocent (USA / 2015 / Director: Nicholas Coles)
Spearhunter (USA / 2015 / Directors: Adam Roffman, Luke Poling)
Josh Mond’s JAMES WHITE will make its Canadian premiere at the 2015 Toronto International Film Festival in the Discovery Program. Starring Christopher Abbot, Scott “Kid Cudi” Mescudi, Cynthia Nixon, Ron Livingston, David Call, and Mackenzie Leigh, JAMES WHITE is a coming-of-age story about a young New Yorker struggling to take control of his reckless, self-destructive behavior in the face of momentous family challenges. 
MUSTANG directed by Deniz Gamze Ergüven is the winner of the Heart of Sarajevo Award for Best Feature Film at the 21st Sarajevo Film Festival. Mustang stars Güneş Sensoy, Doğba Doğuslu, Tuğba Sunguroğlu, Elit Işcan, Ilayda Akdoğan, Nihal Koldaş, and Ayberk Pekcan.
Waffle Street, a dramedy starring James Lafferty (One Tree Hill, Oculus, S. Darko) and Danny Glover (Lethal Weapon 1-4, The Color Purple, Dreamgirls), will World Premiere at the 16th annual On Location: Memphis International Film & Music Fest to be held