“Muslim American Stories Can be Messy, Complicated and Beautiful All at the Same Time”: Zeshawn Ali on his Hot Docs Debut Two Gods

Making its world premiere at this year’s virtual Hot Docs on May 28 and running through June 6, Two Gods (which had also been selected for the canceled Full Frame fest) follows one unlikely trio. Hanif is a devout Muslim, and an African-American man fully committed to his work as a casket maker and ritual body washer in his Newark, New Jersey community. He’s also unwaveringly dedicated to the two neighborhood kids he’s taken under his wing, 12-year-old Furquan and 17-year-old Naz, the former dealing with an unsafe home life, the latter with unsafe streets. But as the story unfolds — in sumptuous black and white images — several startling questions emerge. Is it the mentor saving his protégés or vice-versa? And what happens when, inevitably, a precarious three-legged stool comes apart?

To learn more about this auspicious debut Filmmaker turned to the doc’s first-time feature director Zeshawn Ali, who along with his brother Aman, the film’s producer, has crafted a poetic meditation on life, death and the struggle to survive in between.

To read my interview visit Filmmaker magazine.

Hot Docs 2020: Decision Makers Discuss the Newly Virtual Edition of the Forum, Deal Maker and Distribution Rendezvous

Hot Docs was one of the first of the Spring, 2020 film festivals to forge ahead through the pandemic chaos and reemerge on the online side as a more streamlined event. North America’s largest doc fest took the hybrid approach of postponing public screenings while providing a Hot Docs at Home streaming option to those social distancing in Canada. It also transferred its conference and market to the digital realm. Hot Docs also expanded its industry running dates to a whopping full month (April 30-May 31) of online accessibility, uploading everything from the “Why Art Matters in a Time of Crisis” keynote address by Kenyan filmmaker Sam Soko (director of the Sundance-premiering doc Softie), to live streamed panel discussions like “Surviving and Thriving in the Age of COVID,” to micro-meetings and “Close Up With…” sessions. Add to this the Hot Docs Hangouts (informal Zoom networking events) and a significant number of the Hot Docs 2020 official selections available for guests to stream through The Doc Shop, and one could almost forget that sheltering in place was supposed to be a trying thing.

And business did indeed get done, including hundreds of one-on-one pitch meetings during Hot Docs Deal Maker and the Distribution Rendezvous. But beyond the impressive quantity, what quality was found through these laptop connections and transactions? To find out the answer to this question and more, Filmmaker reached out to a handful of Hot Docs participating movers and shakers and doc-makers to give us the clear-eyed scoop.

To read Part 2 visit Filmmaker magazine.

Hot Docs 2020: Doc-Makers Discuss the Newly Virtual Deal Maker and Distribution Rendezvous

Hot Docs was one of the first of the Spring, 2020 film festivals to forge ahead through the pandemic chaos and reemerge on the online side as a more streamlined event. North America’s largest doc fest took the hybrid approach of postponing public screenings while providing a Hot Docs at Home streaming option to those social distancing in Canada. It also transferred its conference and market to the digital realm. Hot Docs also expanded its industry running dates to a whopping full month (April 30-May 31) of online accessibility, uploading everything from the “Why Art Matters in a Time of Crisis” keynote address by Kenyan filmmaker Sam Soko (director of the Sundance-premiering doc Softie), to live streamed panel discussions like “Surviving and Thriving in the Age of COVID,” to micro-meetings and “Close Up With…” sessions. Add to this the Hot Docs Hangouts (informal Zoom networking events) and a significant number of the Hot Docs 2020 official selections available for guests to stream through The Doc Shop, and one could almost forget that sheltering in place was supposed to be a trying thing.

And business did indeed get done, including hundreds of one-on-one pitch meetings during Hot Docs Deal Maker and the Distribution Rendezvous. But beyond the impressive quantity, what quality was found through these laptop connections and transactions? To find out the answer to this question and more, Filmmaker reached out to a handful of Hot Docs participating movers and shakers and doc-makers to give us the clear-eyed scoop.

To read Part 1 visit Filmmaker magazine.

“The Most Important Thing in an Image is the Feeling That What You’re Seeing is Completely True — Like an Accident...”: Bruno Santamaría on his Hot Docs Digital-Debuting Things We Dare Not Do

Executive produced by Charlotte Cook, and making its debut at this year’s (virtual) Hot Docs, Bruno Santamaría’s Things We Dare Not Do is a stunning look at the small Mexican town of Roblito through the eyes of its deeply impoverished, yet happy-go-lucky, youngsters. Serving as mother hen to the carefree kids, for whom random violence seems no more noteworthy than water delivery day or a taco snack, is 16-year-old Ñoño. Though the vivacious teen’s exploration of his own gender identity forms the basis of the film’s title, Things We Dare Not Do is no mere coming out saga. It’s a visually risk-taking, multilayered portrait of growing up and learning to live out loud.

Filmmaker took the opportunity to learn more about the project from its Mexican cinematographer-director prior to the film’s Hot Docs digital debut.

To read my interview visit Filmmaker magazine.

Doc Star of the Month: Barbora Kysilkova, 'The Painter and the Thief'

One of the stranger stranger-than-fiction sagas to premiere at Sundance (where it picked up a Special Jury Award for Creative Storytelling) in January — yes, back when film festivals still happened in real life — Norwegian director Benjamin Ree's The Painter and the Thief follows the unconventional relationship as it unfolds between Barbora Kysilkova and Karl-Bertil Nordland, one a Czech naturalist painter, the other a petty criminal who steals two of the former's paintings from an Oslo gallery. Quickly arrested after the theft, Nordland refuses to give up his accomplices, or to even lift a finger to help recover the artwork. What he does agree to is Kysilkova's unusual request that he sit for a portrait. And then another. And another. Years go by. And even as the pictures remain frustratingly elusive, a man struggling with his own demons slowly transforms from nemesis to muse.

Luckily for Documentary, artist Barbora Kysilkova agreed to sit for May's Doc Star of the Month — and to let us in on the unexpected alchemy that occurred right before her eyes and through Ree's lens. The Painter and the Thief debuts digitally worldwide through Neon on May 22.

To read my interview visit Documentary magazine.

European Documentary Distributors Speculate on Post-Pandemic Market at Docudays UA

One of the most jarring aspects of the global pandemic is the rapidity with which every part of life as we know it has been upended, forcing us to nimbly pivot at the drop of a hat. And the film world, of course, has not been spared the disease’s speedy domino effect, nor its subsequent demands. This seemed to be the consensus among the array of international panelists streamed in live from lockdown in their various home countries to participate in a DOCU/CLASS titled "International market after the quarantine: how to distribute documentary films tomorrow?" at this year's 17th Docudays UA International Human Rights Documentary Film Festival's all-digital edition. 

Moderated from Kiev by Ukrainian Illya Gladstein, a producer at Phalanstery Films and a co-owner and managing partner of the city's KINO42 cinema (as well as the owner of a rental company called 86PROKAT) from the empty Docudays office — strangely made sadder by all the festive white balloons in the background — the panelists included Parisian editor and director Qutaiba Barhamji; ZagrebDox Director Nenad Puhovski; Doc Alliance's executive director and head of acquisitions, Diana Tabakov; CAT&Docs sales agent Maëlle Guenegues; and German public broadcaster MDR's commissioning editor and head of documentaries Ulrich Brochhagen.

To read all about the doc market discourse visit Documentary magazine.

The Audience as a Virtual Jury: Roee Messinger on Tonight’s Screening of American Trial: The Eric Garner Story

How does one relitigate a case that was never litigated (outside the media) in the first place? This is the challenge at the heart of Roee Messinger’s American Trial: The Eric Garner Story, which premiered at last year’s New York Film Festival and releases online today, May 21st, accompanied by a live stream Q&A and interactive audience component. The film is an unscripted courtroom drama that casts real-life prosecutors and defense attorneys (though none directly involved with the 2014 case of the NYPD officer videotaped choking Staten Islander Eric Garner to death), alongside real-life evidence, expert testimony, and rules of criminal procedure. Add in the real-life witnesses, and even the victim’s widow Esaw Snipes Garner, and American Trial transforms a “what if” thought experiment into a smart and sophisticated, cinematic reckoning.

Though Officer Daniel Pantaleo ultimately was never brought to trial, on May 21st the character Officer Pantaleo (played by actor Anthony Altieri) will be. And the audience/jury, via online voting during the virtual screening, will determine his fate. Which is why Filmmaker decided to reach out to Messinger a week prior to “the verdict” (and the film’s online release) to learn more about his unusual hybrid.

To read my interview visit Filmmaker magazine.

“We Read Adam’s Blog Every Day...So It Was Like a Daily Script”: Pia Hellenthal on Her Social Media-Themed Doc, Searching Eva

Having made my “Best Yet-to-be-Distributed Docs 2019” list, Pia Hellenthal’s Searching Eva, currently streaming on Mubi USA and with a virtual release upcoming on June 2nd through Syndicado, can now be shifted to the “best docs of 2020” category. My assessment of this “portrait of a restless, gender-ambiguous, philosophical millennial who documents her entire life — from fashion week to freelance sex work —  online” might not make the film seem like must-see viewing. But that’s precisely the point — and what makes Hellenthal’s talent all the more apparent. As an often cynical critic who couldn’t care less about a globetrotting poet with an Instagram account, I found myself absolutely riveted when I accidentally discovered the film at last year’s CPH:DOX. As I wrote at the time, “Between Hellenthal’s exquisitely composed shots and her titular protagonist’s surprising bon mots (Eva longs to “go to the beach or start a revolution — depends on what my friends are up to”),” this “addictively cinematic” doc is “also pure poetry in motion.”

Filmmaker took the opportunity to find out more about this unusual work of cinematic nonfiction from its Cologne and Berlin-based (and Teddy Award-nominated) director a few weeks prior to the doc’s digital debut.

To read my interview visit Filmmaker magazine.

“You Can Only Sit on a Zoom Call for So Long”: Tamara Mariam Dawit (Finding Sally) on Online Markets and the Hot Docs 2020 Digital Experience

Splitting her time between Toronto and Addis Ababa, Canadian-Ethiopian filmmaker Tamara Mariam Dawit is no stranger to international workshops and events. (Or to Hot Docs. When the pandemic hit the longtime alum had been set to premiere her latest Finding Sally, a personal investigation into the life of a long-lost communist rebel aunt four decades after her disappearance.) “I think the upside of online meetings is that the cost is less. You don’t have to pay for flights and hotels, which is what often makes attending a market like Cannes or the EFM too expensive for many people,” Dawit offered. “And right now for me, attending events this spring — like Sheffield, Cannes and Hot Docs — online is better than having them canceled. But I find that online markets are really only helpful for following up with people you already know in the real world. I think it is a bit more challenging to make a meaningful connection with a new producer or decision-maker who you don’t have any past interactions with.”

To read the rest of my interview visit Filmmaker magazine.

Docudays UA’s Digital DOCU/CLASS: “Force majeure has happened - and it’s global. How will festival policies change now?”

“Will our world ever be the same after this crisis?” moderator/IDFA artistic director Orwa Nyrabia asked via live stream to the likewise virtually-attending panelists at this year’s (digital) Docudays UA DOCU/CLASS "Force majeure has happened – and it’s global. How will festival policies change now?" The doc industry vet’s opening question is one that’s been on the minds of many of us. (At least here in the West. Among the many surprising things the pandemic has revealed is the extent to which other populaces – such as the Ukrainians who host Docudays UA – have taken this global crisis with a grain of salt. Yet one more uncertainty in their eternally unstable world.)

To read my rundown on the insightful panel visit Modern Times Review.

Praise local, mourn global (and celebrate your neighborhood journos)

As a non-coastal-dwelling American, the need to know what’s going on in my own backyard has led me to a renewed appreciation for the importance of local journalism in all its forms – and to even wonder whether the current pandemic might end up putting a positive dent in the scourge of parachute reporting and extractive filmmaking we’ve seen in recent years.

To read my ode to local media visit Global Comment.

“People’s Relationships to Their Moms is Always Deep”: Director Rachel Grady on the Comedy Central Doc Call Your Mother

The latest film from the Academy Award-nominated team of Heidi Ewing and Rachel Grady, Call Your Mother is a laugh-out-loud love letter to one of the most universally defining figures in all of our lives. (That would be our moms.) Executive produced by Caroline Hirsch, the force behind legendary comedy club Carolines on Broadway and the New York Comedy Festival, the doc airs on Comedy Central on May 10th (Mother’s Day, naturally).

Featuring a vast and eclectic array of interviews with famous funny folks — everyone from Awkwafina, to Tig Notaro, to Jim Gaffigan and Jo Koy discuss their mother’s influence on their work — interspersed with clips from mom-based stand-up routines, the film notably also goes in a deeper and more poignant direction. Bookended by a startlingly transparent Louie Anderson, whose mother is deceased, and featuring longer scenes of comics interacting with their moms (including Bridget Everett, David Spade, Roy Wood Jr., and even Norm Macdonald), Call Your Mother ultimately transforms into an unexpectedly sincere exhortation to — as Anderson himself urges directly to the camera — reach out to and celebrate those you love while you still can.

Filmmaker took the time to reach out to Rachel Grady, co-owner with Heidi Ewing of Loki Films, a week before the airdate to learn how the two turned a one-liner into a feature-length doc.

To read my interview visit Filmmaker magazine.