One hundred fifty-nine features have been submitted for consideration in the Documentary Feature category for the 92nd Academy Awards®. Films submitted in the Documentary Feature category may also qualify for Academy Awards in other categories, including Best Picture.
Capernaum[/caption]
The World Cinema section of AFI FEST 2018 presented by Audi will showcase the most celebrated international films of the year and feature 28 titles from 27 countries. The section includes seven official Best Foreign Language Film Oscar® submissions: CAPERNAUM (DIR Nadine Labaki), DOGMAN (DIR Matteo Garrone), “I DO NOT CARE IF WE GO DOWN IN HISTORY AS BARBARIANS” (DIR Radu Jude), NEVER LOOK AWAY (DIR Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck), SHOPLIFTERS (DIR Hirokazu Kore-eda), SUNSET (DIR László Nemes) and THE WILD PEAR TREE (DIR Nuri Bilge Ceylan).
AFI FEST will also present the North American premiere of the first two episodes of MY BRILLIANT FRIEND as part of the section. Premiering on HBO November 18, the series is an adaptation of author Elena Ferrante’s celebrated international bestseller centered on the complicated friendship between two women across decades.
AFI FEST takes place November 8–15, 2018, in the heart of Hollywood. Screenings, Galas and other events will be held at the TCL Chinese Theatre, the TCL Chinese 6 Theatres, the Egyptian Theatre and The Hollywood Roosevelt.
Watergate[/caption]
Double Exposure Investigative Film Festival & Symposium, a project of 100Reporters, launches its fourth edition with world, U.S. and Washington premieres of fifteen new, investigative films that speak to our times in a newly urgent language, bridging investigative reporting and visual storytelling. This year’s themes: Demystifying. Exposing. Equalizing. Verifying.
Double Exposure opens with WATERGATE, in which celebrated director Charles Ferguson (INSIDE JOB) recreates the epochal White House scandal for a new generation, using interviews with key players, previously-classified documents and Richard Nixon’s own secret recordings as the spine for Oval Office dialogues with chilling resonance today.
The festival’s closing film, DIVIDE AND CONQUER, tracks the rise and fall of kingmaker Roger Ailes, the driving force behind Fox News, who lost it all following accusations of sexual harassment at the top.
GHOST FLEET investigates the hidden population of modern-day slaves who underpin industrial fishing, held captive at sea for years at a time.
THE PANAMA PAPERS details the unprecedented coordination of over 300 journalists who reveal the biggest global corruption scandal in history.
Our 2018 films explore the psychic cost of community-wide surveillance, uncovered through journalistic sleuthing and the Freedom of Information Act; wrongful criminal confessions; sexual assault and social media; the underside of savior complexes and much more. The films deliver illuminating stories from war-torn Afghanistan to middle America, from a middle-class apartment in Budapest to the Oval Office. Check the full lineup at dxfest.com.
“This year’s slate demonstrates the increasing relevance of film to the most pressing stories of our day,” said Double Exposure founder and co-director, Diana Jean Schemo. “Our Opening Night film revisits a scandal with searing relevance in 2018. And our Closing Night film on Roger Ailes and Fox News brings the story of an era that began with Watergate to our present time of social media, sexual reckoning and rampant truth-bending.”
“This is an extraordinary moment for investigative filmmaking. We are finding more and more filmmakers integrating journalistic practice into their storytelling, and more journalists moving into the visual realm,” said Double Exposure co-creator and co-director, Sky Sitney. “Each film on our slate not only tells an urgent story in itself, but shapes that story through a riveting, new visual language that stands at a crossroads between these two distinct practices.”
HISTORY’s definitive original documentary, WATERGATE, chronicles one of the biggest criminal conspiracies in modern American politics and features a roster of some of the most important media, legal and political figures from the scandal, including Bob Woodward, Carl Bernstein, John Dean, Jill Wine-Banks, Richard Ben-Veniste, and many others. Wednesday, Oct. 10, 7pm, Smithsonian’s National Portrait Gallery. Post screening discussion with director Charles Ferguson and special guests to be announced.
Following Opening Night, all screenings take place at the Naval Heritage Center, and are followed by conversations with the director, film subjects, and others.
STOLEN DAUGHTERS: KIDNAPPED BY BOKO HARAM revisits a shocking story that made global headlines. In 2014, 276 Nigerian school girls were kidnapped from a school in Chibok, Northern Nigeria, and hidden in the vast Sambisa forest for three years by Boko Haram, a violent Islamic insurgent movement. Granted exclusive access to the 82 girls who were freed last year and taken to a secret government safe house in the capital of Abuja, the film explores how the young women might adapt back to life after having experienced such trauma, and how the Nigerian government is navigating, and at times commandeering, their reentry into society. Thursday, Oct. 11, 6pm. Naval Heritage Center.
ROLL RED ROLL goes behind the headlines of a notorious high school sexual assault case to witness the social media-fueled “boys will be boys” culture that let it happen, and defended them when it did. Thursday, Oct. 11, 8:30pm, Naval Heritage Center. Post-screening discussion with director Nancy Schwartzman, film subjects Alexandria Goddard and Rachel Dissell, and others to be announced.
In UNPROTECTED, an acclaimed American charity said it was saving some of the world’s most vulnerable girls from sexual exploitation. Then the girls were raped, and that was only the beginning. Friday, Oct. 12, 4pm, Naval Heritage Center. Post-screening discussion with director Nadia Sussman, and others to be announced.
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The Feeling of Being Watched[/caption]
For THE FEELING OF BEING WATCHED, filmmaker Assia Boundaoui follows the trail of her neighbors’ suspicion that their community just outside Chicago has been under surveillance for over a decade. While investigating their experiences, Boundaoui uncovers tens of thousands of pages of FBI documents that prove her Muslim community was indeed the subject of one of the largest counter-terrorism investigations ever conducted in the U.S. before 9/11, code-named “Operation Vulgar Betrayal.” Friday, Oct. 12, 6pm, Naval Heritage Center. Post-screening discussion with director Assia Boundaoui, and others to be announced.
GHOST FLEET follows a small group of activists who risk their lives on remote Indonesian islands to find justice and freedom for the enslaved fishermen who feed the world’s insatiable appetite for seafood. Bangkok-based Patima Tungpuchayakul, a Thai abolitionist, has committed her life to helping these “lost” men return home. Facing illness, death threats, corruption, and complacency, Patima’s fearless determination for justice inspires her nation and the world. Friday, Oct. 12, 8:30pm Naval Heritage Center. Post-screening discussion with director Shannon Service, producer Jon Bowermaster, and others to be announced.
THE TRUTH ABOUT KILLER ROBOTS is an eerie, eye-opening work of science-nonfiction, that charts incidents in which robots have caused the deaths of humans in an automated Volkswagen factory, in a self-driving Tesla vehicle and from a bomb-carrying droid used by Dallas police. Though they are typically treated as freak anomalies, each case raises questions of accountability, legality and morality. Exploring the provocative views of engineers, journalists, and philosophers, and drawing on archival footage, the film goes beyond sensational deaths to examine more subtle ways that robots pose a threat to society. Saturday, Oct. 13, 10am, Naval Heritage Center. Post-screening discussion with director Maxim Pozdorovkin.
THE UNAFRAID (dirs. Anayansi Prado & Heather Courtney) follows the personal lives of three DACA students in Georgia, a state that has banned them from attending their top state universities and disqualifies them from receiving in-state tuition at any other public college. Shot in an observational style over a period of four years, this film takes an intimate look at the lives of Alejandro, Silvia and Aldo as they navigate activism, pursuing their right to education, and fighting for the rights of their families and communities. Saturday, Oct. 13, 12:30pm, Naval Heritage Center. Post-screening discussion with director Heather Courtney, film subjects and others to be announced.
FALSE CONFESSIONS. Each year innumerable American suspects confess to crimes they did not commit, and experts say that trained interrogators can get anybody to confess to anything.
The film follows indefatigable defense attorney Jane Fisher-Byrialsen, who is determined to put an end to interrogation techniques that all too often pressure innocent people into false confessions. As we weave through four of Fisher-Byrialsen’s cases, all involving false confessions, the film examines the psychological aspect of how people end up confessing to crimes they have not committed and the consequences of these confessions – for those accused, for their families and for society at large. Saturday, Oct. 13, 3pm, Naval Heritage Center. Post-screening discussion with director Katrine Philp, subject Jane Fisher-Byrialsen, and others to be announced.
In making OF FATHERS AND SONS, Syrian-born filmmaker Talal Derki travels to his homeland in Syria, where he gains the trust of a radical Islamist family, sharing their daily life for over two years. His camera focuses primarily on the children, providing an extremely rare insight into what it means to grow up with a father whose only dream is to establish an Islamic caliphate. Osama (13) and his brother Ayman (12) both love and admire their father and obey his words, but while Osama seems content to follow the path of jihad, Ayman wants to go back to school. Winner of the Grand Jury Prize for World Documentary at the Sundance Film Festival, OF FATHERS AND SONS is a work of unparalleled access that captures the chilling moment when childhood dies and jihadism is born. Saturday, Oct. 13, 5:30pm, Naval Heritage Center.
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Divide and Conquer: The Story of Roger Ailes[/caption]
In DIVIDE AND CONQUER Alexis Bloom sheds light on the current moment in American political life by following the arc of Roger Ailes: long-time Republican Svengali and controversial founder of Fox News. By coaching an unrivaled stable of politicians over the course of fifty years, Ailes heavily influenced Republican politics, steering the conservative movement from Nixon to the Tea Party to Trump. Under his tutelage, anger and fear became the coin of the realm, both on the ballot and on national television. This is a story of serial cruelty, both on the public stage and in private life. Like a true Shakespearean figure, ambition and desire were Ailes’ undoing. He was finally toppled when victims of his sexual harassment stepped forward. The accounts of these women—raw and infuriating—are the axis around which Ailes’ story inexorably turns. Saturday, Oct. 13, 8:30pm, Naval Heritage Center. Post-screening discussion with director Alexis Bloom, and others to be announced.
For A WOMAN CAPTURED, director Bernadett Tuza-Ritter follows the life of a European woman who has been held by a Budapest family as a domestic slave for 10 years. She is one of over 45 million victims of modern day slavery today. Drawing courage from the filmmaker’s presence and the camera as witness, the woman captured attempts to escape the unbearable oppression and become a free person. Sunday, Oct. 14, 11am, Naval Heritage Center. Post-screening discussion with director Bernadett Tuza-Ritter.
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People’s Republic of Desire[/caption]
THE PEOPLE’S REPUBLIC OF DESIRE dives deep into world of young stars of live streaming in China, where the shift to a virtual life in place of flesh-and-blood relationships has gone far. The stars build followings among the rich and poor, with the rich lavishing online personalities with gifts worth millions of dollars, and the poor cheering the wealthy patrons on and rooting for their idols. The scene culminates with a once-a-year competition, a cross between the Hunger Games and Black Mirror, in which the winner is the one whose patrons buy the most votes. Sunday, Oct. 14, 1:45pm, Naval Heritage Center. Post-screening discussion with filmmaker Hao Wu.
Filmed over three years, ANGELS ARE MADE OF LIGHT follows students and teachers at a school in an old neighborhood of Kabul that is slowly rebuilding from past conflicts. Interweaving the modern history of Afghanistan with present-day portraits, director James Longley offers an intimate and nuanced vision of a society living in the shadow of war. Sunday, Oct. 14, 4:30pm, Naval Heritage Center. Post-screening discussion with filmmaker James Longley.
In THE PANAMA PAPERS, Alex Winter delivers a powerful, illuminating film that paints a complete picture of the biggest global corruption scandal in history. The “Panama Papers” leak involved the unprecedented coordination of hundreds of journalists from 107 media organizations in more than 80 countries, who broke the story in 2015. The papers included over 11.5 million documents that detail financial and attorney-client information for nearly 214,500 offshore accounts. Winter includes interviews with whistleblowers and key journalists on the investigation, to tell the story of the massive data breach which uncovered murky political and financial corruption, bribes, election rigging and even murder. Sunday, Oct. 14, 7:30pm, Naval Heritage Center. Post-screening discussion with filmmaker Alex Winter, and others to be announced.
The Feeling of Being Watched[/caption]
The Camden International Film Festival (CIFF) handed out the awards to the winners of the 2018 Festival, with the Audience Award going out to Assia Boundaoui’s The Feeling of Being Watched.
CIFF hosted their annual Awards Ceremony, presenting four awards for documentary features and one for a documentary short, in addition to its Points North Pitch Award.
In the Pitch, the six teams of Points North Fellows who worked with industry members in a year-long mentorship, presented their feature documentary works-in-progress to a top-level panel of funders, producers and broadcasters — all before a live audience at the Camden Opera House. For the 2nd year, Showtime Documentary Films was the Presenting Sponsor of the Fellowship.
This year’s Points North Pitch Award, which included in-kind post-production services from Boston-based Modulus Studios, went to director Sierra Urich’s work-in-progress feature documentary, Joonam.
An Academy-qualifying festival for short films, the winner of the Camden Cartel Award for Best Short is eligible to enter the Documentary Short Subject competition for the Academy.This year’s winner is Circle by Jayisha Patel. The runner-up was David Freid’s Guns Found Here.
For the fourth year, CIFF collaborated with long-time partner, Documentary Educational Resources, to present the John Marshall Award for Contemporary Ethnographic Media. The Jury of Alice Apley (Documentary Educational Resources), Alijah Case (Documentary Educational Resources), Ilisa Barbash (Producer/Director), Ernst Karel (Sound Artist), Irina Leimbacher (Critic, Educator), and Maple Razsa (Anthropologist, Filmmaker) awarded this year’s John Marshall Award to Ramell Ross’s Hale County This Morning.
Jurors Enat Sidi (editor), Meghan Monsour (Creative Director, Ambulante Film Festival) and Sean Farnel (producer) awarded the 2018 Cinematic Vision Award to Vadym Ilkov’s My Father Is My Mother’s Brother, with Special Jury Mention going to Exit Music, directed Cameron Mullenneaux. The Jury noted: “Surprising, tender and quietly profound, My Father Is My Mother’s Brother is non-fiction filmmaking at its finest. A raw, creative, and unconventional family portrait.”
This year’s jury of Andrea Meditch (producer), Justine Nagan (POV), Talal Derki (Filmmaker, OF FATHERS AND SONS) awarded the 2018 Harrell Award for Best Documentary Feature to On Her Shoulders, directed by Alexandria Bombach: “For using an intimate but respectful gaze to convey suffering through subtle gestures and the use of silence. The film captures the weight of bearing witness by allowing the protagonist to speak for herself. On Her Shoulders transforms a traumatic personal experience into a realization of horrifying and memorable collective responsibility.”
The Harrell Jury awarded two Special Mentions: one each to Vitaly Mansky’s Putin’s Witnesses and James Longley’s Angels Are Made of Light.
The 2018 Camden International Film Festival Audience Award went to Assia Boundaoui’s The Feeling of Being Watched.
The 15th edition of the Camden International Film Festival will take place September 12 to 15, 2019. Submissions will open in January 2019. Divide and Conquer: The Story of Roger Ailes[/caption]
This year’s lineup for the Spotlight on Documentary section of the 56th New York Film Festival features intimate portraits of artists, depictions of the quest for political and social justice, and much more. Selections include three documentaries spotlighting controversial political figures, including former FOX News chairman Roger Ailes in Divide and Conquer: The Story of Roger Ailes, directed by Alexis Bloom (Bright Lights, NYFF54); The Waldheim Waltz, in which director Ruth Beckermann employs archival footage to examine the media’s role in the political ascension of former UN Secretary-General and Austrian president Kurt Waldheim; and returning NYFF filmmaker Errol Morris’s American Dharma, an unflinching, unnerving interrogation of former Trump strategist Steve Bannon. Other notable documentary subjects include Maria Callas, the legendary soprano whose rise to stardom, tumultuous public life, and vocal decline are vividly portrayed in Tom Volf’s Maria by Callas, and iconic New York street photographer Bill Cunningham, whose ruminations on his life and career are depicted in new archival footage in Mark Bozek’s lovely and invigorating The Times of Bill Cunningham.
In a double feature presentation, Ron Mann’s Carmine Street Guitars and returning NYFF director Manfred Kirchheimer’s Dream of a City portray uniquely New York stories: Mann’s film is centered on Rick Kelly, luthier of the eponymous music shop, as he builds new guitars with repurposed timber from storied New York spots like the Hotel Chelsea and McSorley’s, while the astonishing Dream of a City captures old New York firsthand, featuring stunning black and white 16mm images of city life shot by Kirchheimer and Walter Hess from 1958 to 1960. The documentary lineup also features stories of war past and present, showcasing perspectives from both the front lines and the home front. In a new restoration, William Wyler’s essential 1944 WWII combat documentary The Memphis Belle: A Story of a Flying Fortress will screen as a companion piece to Erik Nelson’s The Cold Blue, which combines the remaining unused 16mm footage from Wyler’s film with the spoken recollections of nine of the last surviving World War II veterans to craft an experience of a different kind. Capturing the devastating effects of the ongoing war in the Middle East, James Longley’s Angels Are Made of Light follows schoolchildren as they come of age alongside the adults preparing them for an unstable future in the shattered, wartorn city of Kabul, Afghanistan.
Other highlights of the Spotlight on Documentary section include the World Premiere of Tom Surgal’s Fire Music, a fittingly wild and freeform tribute to the sights and sounds of the free jazz movement; John Bruce & NYFF alum Paweł Wojtasik’s End of Life, a supremely composed meditation on the act of dying; What You Gonna Do When the World’s on Fire?, Roberto Minervini’s urgent, lyrical portrait of African-Americans in New Orleans struggling to find social justice while maintaining their cultural identity; and Watergate, in which director Charles Ferguson (Inside Job, NYFF48) reopens the infamous investigation to create a real-life political suspense story built from archival footage, drawing disquieting parallels with the current presidency and criminal investigation.
American Dharma
Dir. Errol Morris, USA/UK, 2018, 100m
U.S. Premiere
Errol Morris’s productively unnerving new film is an encounter with none other than Steve Bannon—former Goldman Sachs partner and movie executive, self-proclaimed “populist” warrior, and long-time cinephile. Morris faces off with his subject in a Quonset hut set modeled on a Bannon favorite, Twelve O’Clock High, and questions him about the most disturbing and divisive milestones in his career as a media-savvy libertarian/anarchist/
Michael Moore’s Fahrenheit 11/9[/caption]
The World Premiere of Michael Moore’s Fahrenheit 11/9 , a radical and humorous look at the United States under Donald Trump, will open the Toronto International Film Festival 2018 documentary program. The Festival will screen 27 feature-length non-fiction films, representing 19 countries in the 2018 documentary program.
Other World Premieres include Rashida Jones and Alan Hicks’ Quincy, profiling musical icon Quincy Jones; Victoria Stone and Mark Deeble’s The Elephant Queen, narrated by Chiwetel Ejiofor, tracing the epic journey of an elephant herd; Billy Corben’s Screwball, a true-crime comedy on doping in Major League Baseball; and Maxim Pozdorovkin’s The Truth About Killer Robots, investigating the lethal consequences of automation.
One-third of this year’s doc features are directed or co-directed by female filmmakers including TIFF Docs closing film, Margarethe von Trotta’s Searching for Ingmar Bergman, which offers a multi-faceted look at the Swedish auteur’s life 100 years after his birth. Women creators, trailblazers, and the #MeToo movement are also examined within the lineup: Naziha Arebi’s Freedom Fields, about a Libyan women’s football team; Alex Holmes’ Maiden recounts the story of the first all-women sailing crew in the Whitbread Round the World Race (now the Volvo Ocean Race), skippered by Tracy Edwards; and Tom Volf’s Maria by Callas, narrated by Joyce DiDonato, profiles one of the major icons of the 20th century. More highlights include Alexis Bloom’s Divide and Conquer: The Story of Roger Ailes, covering the Fox News creator who was ousted for allegations of sexual harassment; and Tom Donahue’s This Changes Everything, an examination of gender dynamics in Hollywood, executive produced by Geena Davis. Mark Cousins’ Women Make Film: A New Road Movie Through Cinema , narrated by Tilda Swinton, explores international cinema through the lens of women directors.
Global politics and leaders of modern society are put under the microscope with films such as Werner Herzog and André Singer’s Meeting Gorbachev, on the former Soviet leader; Vitaly Mansky’s Putin’s Witnesses, focusing on Russia’s president; and Errol Morris’ American Dharma , looking at controversial Trump strategist Steve Bannon.
Grand adventures are at the heart of several docs in the selection. E. Chai Vasarhelyi and Jimmy Chin’s Free Solo captures Alex Honnold’s unprecedented climb of El Capitan without safety ropes; Andrey Paounov’s Walking on Water documents the artist Christo’s project The Floating Piers; John Chester’s The Biggest Little Farm chronicles an eight-year struggle to run a family farm; and Shannon Service and Jeffrey Waldron’s Ghost Fleet captures a nail-biting rescue of fishermen enslaved at sea.
After directing last year’s Festival opener Borg vs McEnroe, Janus Metz teams with Sine Plambech for the World Premiere of Heartbound, a longitudinal study 10 years in the making about the trend of Thai women marrying Danish men. And several documentaries represent eclectic perspectives told from around the world, including: Rithy Panh’s Graves Without a Name, on the legacy of Cambodia’s genocide; Jawad Rhalib’s When Arabs Danced, on Muslim performers pushing boundaries; James Longley’s Angels Are Made Of Light, about a group of Afghan children and their teachers; and Frederick Wiseman’s Monrovia, Indiana , about a small town in America’s Midwest.
The 43rd Toronto International Film Festival runs from September 6 to 16, 2018.