CUFF.Docs, the 7th Annual Documentary Film Festival presented by Calgary Underground Film Festival (CUFF), starts this Wednesday night, November 27, with the Sundance hit THE AMAZING JOHNATHAN DOCUMENTARY, about the final tour of a dying magician, “The Amazing Johnathan”, which turns into an unexpected and increasingly bizarre journey as the filmmaker struggles to separate truth from illusion. The 5-day festival runs until Sunday, Dec 1 at Globe Cinema.
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The Slamdance Film Festival today announced the Narrative and Documentary Feature Film Competition programs, as well as the lineup for its new Breakouts section, for their 25th edition, taking place January 25-31, 2019 in Park City.
The feature competition lineup boasts 18 premieres, including 10 World, 4 North American, and 4 U.S. debuts. In addition to the United States, films come to Slamdance from countries around the globe, including Argentina, Belarus, Brazil, Germany, India, Italy, Kenya, Poland, South Africa, and the United Kingdom. All competition films are feature length directorial debuts with budgets of less than $1 million USD, and without US distribution. Featured films were selected by a team of Slamdance alumni via a blind submission process and are programmed democratically. Films in both categories are also eligible for the Audience Award and Spirit of Slamdance Award, the latter of which is voted upon by filmmakers at the festival.
“When it comes to discovering talent, Slamdance has consistently shown that its artist led community can do it themselves,” said Slamdance Co-founder and President, Peter Baxter. “In a milestone year, our competition lineup symbolizes this ongoing endeavor. It’s full of incredible talent representing a global diversity that we believe will play a significant role in our cultural future.”
In addition, the 2019 festival will see the return of the Russo Fellowship — a $25,000 prize launched in 2018 by celebrated festival alumni Anthony and Joe Russo (Captain America: Civil War, Captain America: The Winter Soldier, Avengers: Infinity War) to enable a deserving filmmaker the opportunity to continue their journey with mentorship from the filmmaking duo. Presented by AGBO Films in partnership with the festival, the inaugural fellowship was awarded to filmmaker Yassmina Karajah for her narrative short Rupture.
Also announced today is the lineup for the festival’s all-new Breakouts section. Breakouts are films by non-first-time-feature directors who demonstrate a determined vision of filmmaking that is instinctively becoming their own. These artists continue to push boundaries in genre and form, and are beacons of light that predict the future of film. Slamdance’s goal is to help daring and resilient filmmakers connect with bigger audiences and take their well-deserved place on the world cinema stage. The 2019 Breakouts feature the work of several Slamdance alumni, including Steven Soderbergh, who executive produced Beats,and Canadian filmmaker Alexandre Franchi who received the Audience Award for best Narrative Feature at the 2010 festival for The Wild Hunt.
“Our newly minted Breakouts section celebrates a group of experienced directors, including some Slamdance alumni, who are genuinely intent on taking bigger risks with their storytelling and career paths,” said Paul Rachman, Slamdance co-conspirator and Breakouts programmer. “These are films from around the world that deliver a bold vision from filmmakers with drive and intent to establish their unique cinematic voices.”
Established in 1995, Slamdance is dedicated to discovering and supporting new talents in independent filmmaking. In addition to the Russo Brothers, notable Slamdance alumni include: Christopher Nolan (Dunkirk), Oren Peli (Paranormal Activity), Bong Joon Ho (Okja), Lena Dunham (Girls), Ari Aster (Hereditary), Gina Prince-Blythewood (Shots Fired), and Sean Baker (The Florida Project).
Thirty-three independent documentary films have been selected for 2015 Sundance Institute Documentary Film Program support.
The Sundance Documentary Fund moved to a limited rolling open call in 2015, encouraging filmmakers to submit applications only when they feel their film is ready to share. Rahdi Taylor, Film Fund Director, said, “This past year was one of experimentation and change. We eliminated deadlines, embraced risk taking in form, filmmaker and subject matter, but we stayed true to our core purpose of discovering contemporary stories of meaning and moral purpose. Overall the selections are characterized by risk, inclusion and innovation as well as addressing the most vital conversations of our time.”
DEVELOPMENT
The Acali Experiment (Sweden) (pictured above)
Director: Marcus Lindeen
Producer: Erik Gandini
In 1973 five men and six women went on a dramatic raft expedition across the Atlantic Ocean for 101 days to study human aggression and sexuality. This documentary reunites them forty years later to reveal what actually happened during one of history’s strangest group experiments.
Afterglow (Hungary)
Director: Noémi Veronika Szakonyi
Producer: Julianna Ugrin
The filmmaker found her missing brother, who was kidnapped at age six by his father, a man with extraordinary connections in communist Hungary.
Casting JonBenet (Australia/U.S.)
Director: Kitty Green
Producer: Scott Macaulay and Kitty Green
An artful exploration of the legacy of the world’s most sensational child-murder case, the unsolved death of six-year-old American beauty queen JonBenet Ramsey.
Shirkers (U.S.-Singapore)
Writer-Director-Producer: Sandi Tan
In 1992, an enigmatic American named Georges shot Singapore’s first indie film with a group of female teenage film-buffs, then absconded with all the footage. Nearly twenty years later, his widow uncovers the 16mm cans in New Orleans—and ships them to the film’s screenwriter-actress, who embarks on a new voyage to Singapore, Cambridge, New Orleans, and into the past.
Three Identical Strangers (U.K.)
Director: Tim Wardle
Producer: Grace Hughes-Hallett
There’s no-one else on Earth quite like you. Or is there…?
Untitled Kronos Project (U.S.)
Director: Sam Green
Untitled Kronos Project is an experimental, live documentary that will tell the story of legendary classical group the Kronos Quartet and its 40 year career.
Untitled Prison Project (U.S.)
Director: Roger Ross Williams
Producer: Femke Wolting, Bruno Felix, Roger Ross Williams
Filmmaker Roger Ross Williams sets out on a deeply personal journey to understand why so many friends from his childhood town of Easton, Pennsylvania are in prison.
Yoghurt Utopia (U.K./Spain)
Directors: Anna Thomson, David Baksh
Producer: Adrian Pennink
Christopher Columbus gives 200 mental patients an opportunity to live, work and lead productive lives producing La Fageda, a top yogurt brand from Catalonia, Spain. Can this Yoghurt Utopia survive the mounting internal and external pressures?
Young Men and Fire (US)
Director: Kahlil Hudson and Alex Jablonski
Producer: Kyle Dickman
Young Men and Fire tells the story of working class men in a single wildland firefighting crew as they struggle with fear, loyalty, love, and defeat all over the course of a single fire season.
When God Sleeps
Director: Till Schauder (U.S/ Germany)
Producer: Sara Nodjoumi & Till Schauder (U.S./Germany)
When God Sleeps depicts the journey of an Iranian musician who is forced into hiding after hardline clerics offer a $100,000 reward for his murder
Whose Streets? (U.S.)
Director: Sabaah Jordan and Damon Davis
Producer: Flannery Miller
The murder of a teenage boy became the last straw for a community under siege. Whose Streets? follows the journey of everyday people turned freedom fighters, whose lives intertwine with a burgeoning national movement for black liberation.
PRODUCTION
All These Sleepless Nights (Poland/UK)
Director: Michal Marczak
Producer: Marta Golba, Michal Marczak, Julia Nottingham, Thomas Benski and Lucas Ochoa
A new era is coming, and Warsaw stands uncomfortably at its edge. Christopher and Michal, on the precipice of their own coming of age, restlessly roam their city’s streets in search of living forever inside the beautiful moment. Never content with answers, they push each experience to its breaking point, testing what it might mean to be truly awake in a world that seems satisfied to be asleep.
Audrie & Daisy (U.S.)
Director: Bonni Cohen, Jon Shenk
Producers: Richard Berge and Sara Dosa
Two teenage girls are sexually assaulted while unconscious by boys who they thought were their friends. Each girl is harassed relentlessly online, both attempt suicide, and tragically, one girl dies. High school assault in the age of social media is explored from the perspective of the girls –and the boys –involved in the assaults.
Cecilia (India)
Director/Producer: Pankaj Johar
When Cecilia Hasda’s 14 year old daughter is trafficked and found dead in Delhi, the filmmaker and his wife decide to help her seek justice. As they battle a web of corruption at all levels, they find themselves navigating a complex network of cops, traffickers, judges, lawyers, villagers and family members.
Eagle Huntress (UK/Mongolia)
Director: Otto Bell
Producer: Stacey Reiss and Sharon Chang
This spellbinding documentary follows Aisholpan, a 13-year-old nomadic Mongolian girl as she battles a culture of misogyny to become the first female Eagle Hunter in 2,000 years of male-dominated history.
Forgiveness (U.K.)
Director: Elizabeth Stopford
Producer: Nicole Stott
A modern American ghost story and a house that vanished. In the wake of two seemingly inexplicable shooting sprees, can a community forgive the teenage boy at the heart of its tragic past? .
Greywater (U.S.)
Director: Jeff Unay
Greywater is the story of Joe, a blue-collar family man who breaks the promise he made years ago to never fight again. Now forty years old, with a wife and four children who depend on him, he risks everything—his marriage, his family, his financial security— to go back into the fighting cage for one last time and come to terms with his past.
The Keepers (U.S.)
Director: Ryan White
Producer: Jessica Lawson
A documentary thriller unraveling a longstanding mystery in Baltimore.
Untitled Newtown Documentary (U.S.)
Director: Kim A. Snyder
Producer: Maria Cuomo Cole, Kim A. Snyder
We witness residents of Newtown, CT navigate the aftermath of the deadliest mass shooting of schoolchildren in American history.
Untitled Reef Project (U.S.)
Director: Jeff Orlowski
Producer: Larissa Rhodes
Richard Vevers quit his job at a top London ad agency and sets out to become an underwater photographer. Face-to-face with stunning evidence of the human caused destruction of vibrant underwater ecosystems, Richard races the clock to save the oceans.
POST-PRODUCTION
Almost Sunrise (U.S.)
Director: Michael Collins
Producer: Marty Syjuco
Two friends, ex-soldiers, embark on an epic journey to heal from their time in combat. Filled with hope for veterans who’ve left the battlefield behind and are now seeking peace on the home front, Almost Sunrise follows Tom and Anthony as they walk 2,700 miles across America.
The Event (Ukraine/Russia)
Director: Sergei Loznitsa
Producers: Sergei Loznitsa & Maria Choustova
Three days that shook the world or much ado about nothing?
Holy Cow (Azerbaijan/Germany/Romania)
Director: Imam Hasanov
Producer: Andra Popescu, Veronika Janatkova, Stefan Kloos
One man’s dream of bringing a European cow in his remote village in Azerbaijan unsettles the conservative community that wants to keep their secular traditions intact.
Maman Colonelle (France/DR Congo)
Director: Dieudo Hamadi
Producer: Christian Lelong
Colonel Honorine works for the Congolese police force and heads the unit for the protection of minors and the fight against sexual violence. Having worked for 15 years in Bukavu, in the east of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, she learned she was being transferred to Kisangani. There, she found herself faced with new challenges.
Markie in Milwaukee (U.S.)
Director: Matt Kliegman
Producer: Matt Kliegman and Zac Stuart-Pontier
Markie dreams of completing her gender transition, but can she overcome the ghosts of her past as a Fundamentalist Baptist preacher?
The Pearl Button (El Boton de Nacar)
Director: Patricio Guzmán
Producer: Renate Sachse
The Pearl Button is a story about water, Cosmos and us. It all starts with the discovery of two mysterious buttons deep in the Pacific Ocean, off the Chilean coast.
Proposition for a Revolution (India)
Directors: Khushboo Ranka, Vinay Shukla
Producer: Anand Gandhi
Co-Producer: Ruchi Bhimani
Exec. Producer: Joris van Wijk
What happens when an insider challenges corruption in the world’s largest democracy? Proposition for a Revolution tells the extraordinary story of the 2013 New Delhi elections, which catapulted bureaucrat-turned-activist-turned-politician Arvind Kejriwal into power within a year of forming a new anti-corruption political party. A ground-level verite portrait depicting the transformation of a people’s movement into a political party, the film follows Arvind Kejriwal with unprecedented access as he takes on the oldest political party in India–The Congress Party.
The Reagan Years (U.S.)
Director: Pacho Velez
Producer: Sierra Pettengill
The Reagan Years is about a prolific actor’s defining role: Leader of the Free World. It uses the Reagan administration’s internal documentation to capture the spectacle of American might at its acme.
Teatro (U.S./Italy)
Director: Jeff Malmberg
Producer: Chris Shellen
For the past 50 years, the villagers of Monticchiello have confronted their communal issues through art in the form of a play that the entire town writes and performs. Teatro is a portrait of this tradition seen through the lens of the last man trying to keep it alive.
They Call Us Monsters (U.S.)
Director: Ben Lear
Producer: Sasha Alpert and Gabriel Cowan
They Call Us Monsters takes us behind the walls of The Compound, where Los Angeles houses its most violent juvenile offenders. To their advocates, they’re kids. To the system, they’re adults and to their victims they’re monsters. This film asks us to decide for ourselves.
AUDIENCE ENGAGEMENT
1971 (U.S.)
Director: Johanna Hamilton
Producer: Marilyn Ness
On March 8, 1971 a group of citizens broke into an FBI office in Media, PA near Philadelphia and raided thousands of secret files that revealed an illegal government program known as COINTELPRO. Never caught, they have remained anonymous. Until now.
Enter the Faun (U.S.)
Director & Producer: Tamar Rogoff and Daisy Wright
Executive Producer: Véronique Bernard
Art and science collide as a young actor with cerebral palsy and a dancer embark on a journey that leads to unprecedented physical transformation and challenges the limitations associated with disability.
SUNDANCE | ESPN FILMS FELLOW
Shot in the Dark (U.S.)
Director: Dustin Nakao Haider
Producers: Daniel Poneman, Daniel Dewes, Derek Doneen, and Ben Vogel
For the players on Orr Academy’s basketball team, the court is a haven. Outside, it’s the Westside of Chicago – a neighborhood racked with gangs, gun trafficking, and violence. Within those walls, each player has his own struggle. But they’ll need to fight together if they ever want to break out.