“A Deteriorating Mind Condemned to Hell…”: Sadri Cetinkaya on Fantasia Doc Lost Boys

I first encountered Joonas Neuvonen’s Lost Boys, a sort of “unintended sequel” to 2010’s spectacular look at self-destructive Subutex addicts in rural Finland, Reindeerspotting: Escape from Santaland – which was co-written and edited by Lost Boys co-director Sadri Cetinkaya – at this year’s virtual CPH:DOX. At the time I tried but failed to take notes while watching. The film just got under my skin in a way that froze me to my laptop screen. 
 Atmospherically, Neuvonen’s decade-later doc brought to mind the sensation of being trapped inside a Nine Inch Nails video. Memorably narrated by Pekka Strang (Tom of Finland), Lost Boys picks up where Reindeerspotting left off: After serving a seven-year sentence for drug dealing, protagonists Jani and Antti escape to Thailand to celebrate with Neuvonen and his camera in tow. Predictably, the round-the-clock bacchanal revolves around sex, drugs, alcohol, more sex and more drugs. Unpredictably, while Neuvonen returns home at the end of the revelry the duo choose instead to fly off to Cambodia – where they promptly disappear. And then Jani turns up dead, his demise officially ruled a suicide, and that verdict prompts Neuvonen to return to Southeast Asia once again in a herculean effort to separate fact from fiction.
 Which also happens to be the task of the viewer. For though Lost Boys is a thoroughly engrossing, seamless journey into a very real heart of darkness, the film was actually shot piecemeal during the course of several trips. So how much footage was staged? How much of this madcap adventure truly occurred? And what effect did the director’s own arrest for drug trafficking – the takedown suspiciously captured on camera – have on production? Or is this film all one highly stylized, hallucinatory dream?
 To get answers to this and more Filmmaker decided to reach out to the Finnish filmmaking team just after the doc’s Fantasia International Film Festival North American premiere (August 5-25). Though Neuvonen himself seems to have now also disappeared, his longtime collaborator Sadri Cetinkaya was kind enough to shine a light on all the dark matter.

So to read all about it visit Filmmaker magazine.

“We Edited the Film in a Sort of Circle – Without the Credits It Could Even Be Played in a Loop”: Tea Lukač on Her Karlovy Vary International Film Festival Debut Roots

Premiering in the East of the West Competition at this year’s Karlovy Vary International Film Festival (August 20-28), Roots is an unexpected documentary gem from filmmaker and video artist Tea Lukač. Through striking cinematography and the simplest of concepts the Serbian director takes us on a journey to present-day Dvor, the Croatian town that Lukač and her family fled when war came and she was just six years old. Intriguingly, we get to know the rural locale not through travelogue but through the back seat of a moving car, where seven distinct stories unfold via passengers of ascending age. Costumed kiddies debate the merits of carnival treats. A loquacious old veteran attests to the superhuman immunity he gained after surviving a hornet attack. And dividing these delightfully surprising scenes are arresting images of a vast forest, one which has steadfastly weathered storms and war and now perhaps nuclear waste – its final story yet to be told. Filmmaker reached out to Lukač, whose 2016 doc The Most Important Boy in the World follows “the biggest Justin Bieber fan in the Balkans,” just prior to the film’s KVIFF debut.

To read my interview visit Filmmaker magazine.

Doc Star of the Month: Denilson Garibo, 'Homeroom'

Winner of the Jonathan Oppenheim Editing Award: US Documentary at this year’s Sundance, Homeroom is the final piece in Peter Nicks’ Oakland Trilogy. The vérité project began with 2012’s The Waiting Room and continued on through 2017’s The Force, which notably provided Documentary with the chance to chat with the Oakland Police Department’s Deputy Chief LeRonne Armstrong for this very column. Interestingly, the OPD — specifically the battle over where and how it should be deployed — also figures quite prominently in Homeroom. Embedding with Oakland High School’s class of 2020, Nicks and his team follow along as a group of highly engaged BIPOC seniors navigates the everyday stresses of tests and college applications all while trying to rid their school district of its divisive police force. And this is before a global pandemic and a season of racial justice protests turn their microcosmic teenage world even more upside down. One of the OHS leaders centered most prominently in Nicks’ doc is Denilson Garibo, who served as a student director on the Oakland Unified School District board, and now graciously serves as our August Doc Star of the Month. Just prior to the film’s Hulu release on August 12, Documentary spoke with the tenacious activist — and onetime Dreamer — about the pros and cons of being trailed by a camera during what turned out to be one roller coaster of a final year.

To read my inspiring interview visit Documentary magazine.

Review: Pier Kids

Pier Kids, the latest doc from Elegance Bratton (executive producer and creator of Viceland’s My House) captures both the struggles and the joys of three queer and trans youth who make their home on NYC’s Christopher Street Pier. Currently in production on his upcoming narrative feature The Inspection, an autobiographical story starring Jeremy Pope and Gabrielle Union, the director himself spent a decade living on the streets before finding filmmaking while serving as a US Marine. (Bratton then went on to earn degrees from NYC’s notorious gentrifying institutions Columbia and NYU.) In other words, Pier Kids, which made its US broadcast debut on August 2nd on PBS’s POV, paints a loving and respectful insider’s portrait; while also managing to be a cinematic clarion call urging us to bear witness to the unhoused hiding in plain sight. (Except of course when they’re being heavily policed. And ironically in this case, in the West Village and on its waterfront – historically safe spaces for LGBTQ+ youth ever since the Stonewall Uprising supposedly put an end to such injustice.)

To read the rest visit Global Comment.