Best of 2023: CPH:INTER:ACTIVE: Breaking the Code

For me, one of the hands down highlights of 2023 was the Copenhagen International Documentary Festival’s Inter:Active exhibition, which featured the ballsy theme “Breaking the Code.” Expertly assembled by risk-taking Immersive Curator Mark Atkin, it starred “artists using the 1s and 0s of computer code to explore the messiness of nature and humanity beyond binary definitions...The creators are for the most part neurodiverse, non-binary, queer, marginalised and activists, subverting established visual languages in order to address our existence between the physical and digital realms from an non-heteronormative standpoint.” And that mission statement was certainly accomplished in droves.

To read all about it visit Global Comment.

Art for Everybody

When one hears the words “the most successful artist of his time” the name Thomas Kinkade likely won’t spring to mind (at least not for those reading these words). But then, what is your definition of success? Like art itself it’s in the eye of the beholder; and for Kinkade’s (working-class white) superfans and true-believing business partners – upon which the QVC-ubiquitous painter’s multimillion-dollar empire was built in the 90s – success meant idyllic tableaus for the nostalgic masses. Which inevitably put Kinkade at odds with an elite establishment built on secret knowledge and scarcity, on the belief that art should only be interpreted and owned by the (rich white) few. In other words, one individual’s precious keepsake is another’s eye-rolling mall kitsch.

To read the rest of my review of Miranda Yousef’s (inexplicably undistributed) SXSW-premiering Art for Everybody visit Hammer to Nail.

A Hard Place: Rock Hudson: All That Heaven Allowed

For those looking for some head-spinning holiday viewing, Stephen Kijak’s Tribeca-premiering, HBO-streaming Rock Hudson: All That Heaven Allowed is a biopic chockfull of hall of mirrors contradictions: first and foremost it centers on a world-famous, well-adjusted, publicly closeted gay man who proudly (miraculously) lived his truth by hiding in plain sight. Indeed, for over three decades the titular Hollywood heartthrob succeeded in simultaneously abiding by the (straights and closeted folks-only) facade of the studio system that micromanaged his career and media persona – the omertà code unbroken until minutes after Hudson died of AIDS-related complications in 1985 – while unabashedly embracing all the perks naturally afforded an Adonis-hot friend of Dorothy. (You go girl!)

To read the rest of my review visit Global Comment.

A Conversation With Elan Golod (NATHAN-ISM)

A cinematic twister lensed with abundant patience and empathy by first-time feature director Elan Golod, a former Israeli soldier and a veteran editor, Nathan-ism tells the stranger-than-fiction saga of outsider artist Nathan Hilu, a WWII vet and NYC-born son of Syrian Jews, who was tasked to guard the top Nazi war criminals during the Nuremberg trials. He then spent the next seven decades obsessively preserving his historical record through “Nathan-ism,” the nonagenarian’s self-invented art form. Which allowed for some truly bizarre and troubling encounters (it was Hitler’s architect/armament procurer Speer himself who advised the 18-year-old private to “keep your eyes open and write what you see here”) to be transformed into a striking visual memoir, complete with counterintuitively, sunnily-colored drawings. By piecing together interviews with academics and historians (including the Hebrew Union College caretaker of the Hilu collection who stresses that Nathan uses art to “stand up for his memories” and even the DOJ’s former “Nazi hunter” Eli Rosenbaum) with the oftentimes controlling and pugnacious protagonist himself from his tiny LES apartment, a bigger picture emerges. Though not necessarily a clearer one; especially after Golod decides to hire a dogged researcher to verify Hilu’s incredible tales (many of which are likewise made visual through some wonderfully evocative animation). But then, as the passionate creative himself earnestly emphasizes, it’s important for the audience to understand that his life produces his art: life the way he sees it.

To read my interview visit Hammer to Nail.

The Sisterhood: Kaouther Ben Hania’s Cannes-winning “Four Daughters”

Co-winner of the Cannes ’23 Golden Eye, Kaouther Ben Hania’s Four Daughters is a “fictional documentary” as compelling as it is troubling. The film stars a pious Tunisian mother named Olfa and her two (secular-leaning) youngest daughters, Eya and Tayssir. And also their two elder (religiously zealous) siblings Ghofrane and Rahma; though they are played by a pair of professional actors, Ichraq Matar and Nour Karoui, since the sisters are unable to speak for themselves onscreen, having “disappeared” as teenagers nearly a decade ago. As the film attempts to piece together the events – sometimes traumatic, which is when acclaimed actor Hend Sabri (Noura’s Dream) steps in to serve as Olfa’s double – leading up to the heartbreaking loss, painful secrets emerge. Along with the often-at-odds stories they tell us, the public at large, and of course themselves.

To read the rest of my review visit Global Comment.

“Where Exactly Does Consent Live?” Rea Tajiri on Wisdom Gone Wild

Rea Tajiri’s Wisdom Gone Wild takes a hard look at a difficult subject. Tajiri’s 93-year-old mom Rose is a witness to the US’s dark concentration camp history, having been incarcerated along with the rest of her Nikkei farming family during the Second World War. Primarily through Rose’s engaging tales, alongside home video and family photos, Tajiri goes (and takes us) on a decade-plus, nonlinear cinematic journey— neatly paralleling Rose’s own thought process, as the veteran filmmaker’s mom began her dementia decline at the age of 76 — or should I say, dementia “reinvention.” For far from being a tragic story about “losing” one’s mind, Wisdom Gone Wild is actually a celebration of life in all its remarkable phases, as both Tajiri and her mother have decided to embrace the new woman Rose is forever transforming herself into, an identity complete with different surname and metaphorical past, Herzog’s “ecstatic truth” in perpetual motion. Just prior to the doc’s November 20th airing on POV, Filmmaker reached out to the multi-award-winning director (History and Memory, Strawberry Fields) and interdisciplinary artist, whose choice to put her career on hold to care for her main character seems to have paid off in spades.

To read my interview visit Filmmaker magazine.

“Understanding Taiwan on Its Own Terms”: Vanessa Hope on Invisible Nation

Though producer-director Vanessa Hope has spent her career zeroing in on China — from producing Wang Quanan’s The Story Of Ermei and Chantal Akerman’s Tombee De Nuit Sur Shanghai to directing her own short China In Three Words and feature-length debut All Eyes and Ears — Hope’s followup feature is nonetheless a bit of a surprise. An intimate portrait of Taiwan’s first female president Tsai Ing-wen, Invisible Nation weaves the tale of President Tsai’s contemporary rise with the (often buried) history of the long-colonized island itself. Through archival footage and in-depth interviews with activists, historians and, of course, the head of (a disputed) state, what emerges is a narrative as surreal as it is tragic: The story of a country and a culture that, according to the People’s Republic, never really was. Soon after the start of the doc’s fall US festival run (and prior to its international premiere at IDFA), Filmmaker caught up via email with the Chinese-fluent, award-winning multihyphenate, who also runs Double Hope Films with her producer husband Ted, to learn about Invisible Nation and working as a foreigner in a forbidden land.

To read my interview visit Filmmaker magazine.

“I Rejected the Concept of Linearity”: Leslie Tai on How to Have an American Baby

Sprawling in scope, observational in form and jaw-dropping in access, Leslie Tai’s How to Have an American Baby shows exactly what its title describes. The title is also the name of a sales talk one of the doc’s characters gives to Chinese moms with the financial means to travel and gift their future offspring US citizenship. The Chinese-American director takes her viewers on the wildest of rides through a birth tourism industry hiding in plain, sunny SoCal sight: underground maternity hotels run by shady operators and filled to the brim with expectant mothers, local hospitals employing doctors in on the lucrative enterprise, cars of hired help serving as 24/7 deliverymen and caretakers, Beijing offices where travel agents facilitate all this illegal action from a continent away, tense community meetings with civic officials patiently taking public lashings from the hotels’ fed-up white neighbors. As one father ironically puts it, Chinese of every economic strata desire to have an American baby because in today’s security state, “We have no sense of security.” Prior to the Field of Vision and POV production’s November 14th screening at DOC NYC, Filmmaker reached out to the San Francisco-raised filmmaker, whose impressive bicultural bio includes five years working in Beijing’s underground documentary movement.

To read my interview visit Filmmaker magazine.

“The History of Racist Ideas”: Roger Ross Williams on Stamped From the Beginning

Though I’ve not read Dr. Ibram X. Kendi’s New York Times bestseller Stamped From the Beginning: the Definitive History of Racist Ideas in America, I’m guessing the National Book Award-winner might not be the most obvious material for the big screen. Which is why I was a bit surprised when I finally watched the TIFF-debuting Netflix doc Stamped From the Beginning, Roger Ross Williams’ cinematic and often playful take on the professor-author’s quite heavy subject matter. Indeed, any film that opens with its (Black) director ambushing his (Black) talking heads with the query/salvo, “What is wrong with Black people?” is announcing a rather anti-staid-academic vibe. To learn all about weaving archival footage with intellectual interviews (mostly with Black, female Ph.D. heavyweights, including Imani Perry and Angela Davis), and reenactments with evocative animation — all set to a lively hip-hop score, Filmmaker caught up with the unbelievably busy, Oscar-winning director-producer-writer (whose Cassandro and Love to Love You, Donna Summer —not to mention The 1619 Project television series — also released this past year). Stamped From the Beginning hits theaters on November 10th with a Netflix global release to follow on November 20th.

To read my interview visit Filmmaker magazine.

“We Cannot Underestimate the Collective Power of Those Who Have No Access to Power”: Tana Gilbert Discusses Malqueridas

A heartfelt departure from the prison life documentaries that have become so ubiquitous in recent years, Tana Gilbert’s Malqueridas takes a novel approach to this thorny topic through a most unusual lens. Comprised solely of clandestinely shot cellphone footage — in its original vertical format — from inside a Santiago women’s prison by incarcerated mothers, the film is narrated by “Karina,” a mom who spent six years behind bars. In the film, she voices the experience of and for the collective whole, specifically the 20 or so women who participated in “extensive conversations” during the film’s research phase. This makes Malqueridas not just a fascinating glimpse into a little-seen world, but also a rare testament to directorial empathy — with the Chilean filmmaker staying as far from the frame and hands off the story, which does not belong to her, as she possibly can. Shortly after Malqueridas premiered at Venice, Documentary reached out to the debut feature filmmaker, whose shorts have screened internationally, including at Hot Docs and Chicago IFF, to learn all about bringing this “illegal” film (phones are banned in Chile’s prisons) to the big screen. Malqueridas is playing next at IDFA.

To read my interview visit Documentary magazine.

Behind the Lens at the SCAD Savannah Film Festival 2023

As the US’s largest university-run fest, the SCAD Savannah Film Festival (October 21-28) smartly caters to an overwhelmingly collegiate audience, which means bringing in loads of celebrities for red carpet events (Kevin Bacon! Ava DuVernay! Eva Longoria!) balanced with veteran Hollywood craftspeople for numerous nuts and bolts panels (this year’s Artisans series included “The Creators of Worlds: The Artisans of Oppenheimer”). Not to mention there’s a puppy dog enthusiasm with which these young industry aspirants gobble up the eight-day “celebration of cinematic excellence.” It’s both contagious and, for someone like me long past their dorm room years, dauntingly exhausting. (FOMO on steroids is the cliche that most comes to mind.) That said, even the most jaded critic (i.e., me) can be impressed. Todd Haynes and Christine Vachon showed up this 26th edition for the “homecoming” of their Savannah-shot May December, which boasted an impressive 80-plus Savannah College of Art and Design students, faculty and alum behind the scenes. And also in front of the lens — D.W. Moffett, who plays Tom Atherton, ex to Julianne Moore’s Gracie, is the chair of film and television at the school. Moffett also played host to our (too-early-on-a-Monday-morning) Hollywood backlot tour, the centerpiece of which was an impressive replica of...Savannah. (Luckily, there was also enough coffee and catering for my brain to digest this surreal touch.)

To read the rest of my coverage visit Filmmaker magazine.

“My Film is For the Pigs”: Heather Dewey-Hagborg on Hybrid: an Interspecies Opera

Heather Dewey-Hagborg is on a mission to confront the uncomfortable future, especially when it comes to emerging tech. Stranger Visions features portrait sculptures crafted from analyses of genetic material the transdisciplinary artist, educator and filmmaker literally picked up in public places (one person’s discarded cigarette butt is another’s way into a stranger’s DNA). T3511, a collaboration with cinematographer Toshiaki Ozawa (Laurie Anderson’s Heart of a Dog), sees an anonymous saliva sample become fodder for the alchemizing of the perfect romantic partner. Now there’s Hybrid: an Interspecies Opera, perhaps Dewey-Hagborg’s most ambitious work to date. Opening at NYC’s Fridman Gallery on November 1, the multimedia project includes a short documentary/personal narrative set to an original score alongside a set of (robotically-constructed and clay-fired) “memorial pig sculptures,” which allude to the xenotransplantation topic at hand as well as the question of whether genetically engineering bovine for the sole purpose of harvesting hearts for human transplantation is the ethical easy call Big Tech would like us to make (and believe). Just prior to the artwork’s New York debut, Filmmaker reached out to Dewey-Hagborg to learn more about “enmeshing the scientific and the personal” to shape a career in “biopolitical art.”

To read my interview visit Filmmaker magazine.

“A Journey That Allowed Us to Harness the Power of Storytelling”: Kaouther Ben Hania on her Cannes-winning Four Daughters

Co-winner of the Cannes 2023 Golden Eye, Kaouther Ben Hania’s (Zaineb Hates the Snow, Beauty and the Dogs) Four Daughters is both compellingly crafted and deeply disturbing. The “fictional documentary” looks back on an infamous, winding and tumultuous Tunisian saga involving five women: the titular quartet of older siblings Ghofrane and Rahma and youngest Eya and Tayssir, along with their mother Olfa Hamrouni. The younger daughters appear as themselves, and the film features two actors taking on the roles of the oldest, a necessity since Ghofrane and Rahma can’t “play” themselves, having “disappeared” back in 2015 at the tender ages of 16 and 15, respectively. Then there is veteran Tunisian-Egyptian actor Hend Sabri (Noura’s Dream), who plays Olfa when events get too traumatic to recount, a circumstance that happens often when such strong-willed real-life protagonists — especially the domineering Olfa — are as messy and complicated as the stories they tell to us, as well as themselves. Soon after the film’s TIFF premiere (and just prior to its debut at the Hot Springs Documentary Film Festival, where I saw it as part of my Critics Jury duty), Filmmaker reached out to the Tunisian writer-director to learn all about this most unexpected followup to her Oscar-nominated, Monica Bellucci-starring The Man Who Sold His Skin. Four Daughters is released today by Kino Lorber.

To read my interview visit Filmmaker magazine.

From Sundance to Spa City: Hot Springs 2023

“Everything old is new again” was the phrase that kept coming to mind during this year’s 32nd edition of the Hot Springs Documentary Film Festival (October 6–14). The first time I attended the Arkansas festival was for the 22nd edition, a much smaller affair. Southern hospitality and charm, it seems, cannot be outgrown in Hot Springs. That sentiment applied to the inaugural two-day Filmmaker Forum, a refreshingly laidback series of panels and one-on-one meetings that took place at the Arlington Hotel, a nearly 150-year-old structure that has long hosted the “longest-running all-documentary film festival in North America.” The Arlington has also hosted everyone from Al Capone to Hot Springs homeboy Bill Clinton, who ensconced himself and his entourage in a private suite to catch a Razorbacks game the sole year I took the role of Hot Spring’s director of programming, causing a wave of autograph hounds to clear out that afternoon’s screening.

To read the rest visit Documentary magazine.

“We Offered to Bear Witness”: Sonia Kennebeck on Reality Winner

Reality Winner was a US Air Force vet and NSA employee whose leaking of an intelligence report about Russian interference in the 2016 election to The Intercept, which subsequently handed it over to the FBI in a bungled, source-disclosing attempt to verify it wasn’t a hoax, in turn led to her arrest. The saga has been well-documented, to say the least: Just this year, Tina Satter premiered her Sydney Sweeney-starring HBO film Reality, adapted from the playwright’s IS THIS A ROOM: Reality Winner Verbatim Transcription. Now we have Sonia Kennebeck’s Reality Winner, itself an extension of the 25 New Faces alum’s 2021 doc United States vs. Reality Winner, which is basically an earlier version released specifically to bring attention to the inhumane prison conditions the whistleblower was facing at the time. So, it’s a bit of a surprise to learn that during Winner’s first pre-trial hearing, Kennebeck (no stranger to the whistleblower’s plight, having directed 2016’s National Bird) was one of only a handful of journalists that even bothered to show up. Though she then became the only one the family trusted enough to stick around with a camera for the surreal drama of the next five years. Just prior to the doc’s NYC debut (October 11th at IFC Center) Filmmaker caught up with Kennebeck to learn all about Reality Winner—and the process of bringing Reality back to a more nuanced reality for the big screen.

To read my interview visit Filmmaker magazine.

“Geographies of Survival”: Kumjana Novakova Discusses Her Sarajevo Film Festival Human Rights Award-Winning Silence of Reason

Described as “performative research into the court archive of the Kunarac et al. case known as the ‘Foca Rape Camp Trial’” before the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY), Kumjana Novakova’s Silence of Reason took this critic’s prize for the most powerful nonfiction film at the 29th Sarajevo Film Festival (August 11–18). Silence of Reason, which runs a swift 63 minutes, follows Novakova’s prior feature, the Oscar-shortlisted Disturbed Earth (2021), co-directed with Guillermo Carreras-Candi. Along with eerie images of rural stillness and an ambient sound design, in which nature is heard loud and clear, the breathtakingly cinematic, archive-based essay pairs a poetic voiceover with the scrolling testimonies of anonymized women, whose voices are necessarily distorted. These are the survivors of rape and sexual enslavement during the war that shattered the Balkans — and birthed the Sarajevo Film Festival — and for whom these pastoral locations can only evoke memories of unbearable unseen pain. Just prior to the closing night ceremony, where Silence of Reason walked away with the Human Rights Award, Documentary reached out to the Macedonia-born Novakova, a busy multihyphenate who is also an international teacher and curator, and even a co-founder of her own Sarajevo-based fest. This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

To read my interview visit Documentary magazine.

“Is There an Orchestra Playing in the Depths of the Glacier?”: Margreth Olin on Her TIFF-Debuting Documentary, Songs of Earth

My DOX:AWARD top pick for the Ekko jury grid I participated in at this year’s CPH:DOX, Margreth Olin’s Songs of Earth, was also number one in my critic’s notebook for the doc most needing to be experienced on the big screen. In this palpably loving portrait of the veteran filmmaker’s elderly parents and the country that shaped them (and her), “Olin juxtaposes jaw-dropping, drone-captured images of the awe-inspiring Norwegian landscape with closeups of her dad’s bald pate, his tender hand on her mother’s back, as the environment and humankind become one” (per that notebook, and my coverage). Thus, it comes as little surprise that Wim Wenders (Olin directed “The Oslo Opera House” segment for Cathedrals of Culture) and Norway’s cinema treasure Liv Ullmann are both credited as EPs. Or that the Toronto International Film Festival will be debuting the stunner on these shores. So to discuss all this and more — including the doc’s big screen soundtrack performed by the London Contemporary Orchestra — Filmmaker reached out to the human rights-focused director (26 honorary awards and counting) just prior to Songs of Earth’s September 13th premiere.

To read my interview visit Filmmaker magazine.

“Forgetfulness is Fought with Words”: Lina Soualem on Her TIFF-Premiering Doc, Bye Bye Tiberias

"I wonder if we can find ourselves fully in a world we invented,” the French-Palestinian-Algerian filmmaker and actor Lina Soualem eloquently ponders in the role of ever-questioning narrator of Bye Bye Tiberias, her extraordinary, multigenerational, female-focused family portrait. Seen through contemporary footage and 90s home movies — expertly interwoven with material from historical archives — the women include not only Soualem’s conservative, customs-observing grandmother and great-grandmother, who never left the Palestinian village their entire community had been forcibly displaced to, but also her mother, Hiam Abbass, a rebellious dreamer set on becoming an international actress. And now, 30 years on and nearly a hundred roles later (most recently as Marcia Roy in Succession), Abbass returns with her camera-wielding daughter, the only Euro-born-and-raised member of the clan. As the globetrotting thespian offers in one especially poignant scene, “I think we know how to become mothers, but never know how to separate from a mother.” No doubt the same can be said of the attachment one feels to the stories that create home. So to learn all about this personal-political (and emotional) cinematic journey, Filmmaker reached out to Soualem, whose prior doc Their Algeria delved into her paternal history — specifically the divorce of her grandparents (mère et père to the French actor Zinedine Soualem) after 60 years of marriage. Bye Bye Tiberias debuts September 11th at the Toronto International Film Festival.

To read my interview visit Filmmaker magazine.

Heart of Darkness (and Light): The 29th Sarajevo Film Festival

Taking place from August 11-18, this year’s 29th edition of the Sarajevo Film Festival, the largest film fest in (and focused on) Southeast Europe, unsurprisingly presented a wealth of cinematic gems to choose from. (And in a variety of venues, from the storied National Theater, built during the Austro-Hungarian takeover, to the evening-only Open Air Cinemas.) That is, when one wasn’t scrambling to catch the numerous talks and masterclasses—taught by this year’s Honorary Heart of Sarajevo recipients/hot tickets Mark Cousins, Lynne Ramsay and Charlie Kaufman—or attending the equally busy CineLink Industry Days (which, like the festival itself, is smartly geared towards filmmakers working in the region). But as a first-time visitor (okay, clueless American) to the festival and surrounding Balkan neighborhood, I first needed to absorb a bit of history to get my bearings. And serendipitously for me, I was able to learn about both in one of the most unexpected ways.

To read the rest of my cinematic travelogue visit Filmmaker magazine.

No justice, no peace: A Day, 365 Hours and The Silence of Reason

TRAUMA / Two Sarajevo Film Festival-premiered films take a justice-seeking women's journey, revealing the resilience of rape survivors. Eylem Kaftan’s A Day, 365 Hours follows Reyhan, Asya and Leyla, a trio of young (pseudonymous) women in Turkey attempting to come to terms with – and to seek justice for – the horrific abuse they suffered growing up, a victimisation made all the more monstrous by the fact that each knew her perpetrator not only intimately but genetically. As Reyhan so eloquently puts it in the third «chapter» of the film (titled «Can You Change Your DNA?»), «You want to tear yourself apart and recreate yourself.» Not an overblown sentiment coming from a brave survivor who’d experienced sexual abuse at the hands of her own father – and thus will never escape the traits of her perpetrator no matter how far she flees. Even a glance in the mirror might read as a threat to this band of sisters.

To read the rest of my paired-film essay visit Modern Times Review.

“We Didn’t Want an Audience Member To Be Able To Say, ‘Oh, That Was Just One Bad Cop’”: Stanley Nelson and Valerie Scoon on Sound of the Police

Stanley Nelson and Valerie Scoon’s Sound of the Police is an exhaustive exploration of the oppositional dynamics between African Americans and law enforcement, from slavery right up to today. Through a wealth of archival imagery, interviews with academics, authors and assorted deep thinkers of various backgrounds and colors as well as an ear-catching soundtrack (indeed the doc’s title is a nod to rapper KRS-One’s 1993 anti-police brutality anthem “Sound of da Police,” which serves as a sort of sonic exclamation point throughout the ABC News Studios doc), the veteran filmmakers make a compelling case that any relationship built on the racist foundation of the slave patrol is one systemically doomed from the beginning. Which, of course, demands nothing less than a new start. (Let the reimagining begin!) Just prior to the film’s August 11 Hulu debut, Filmmaker checked in with the busy Oscar-nominated, Emmy Award-winning MacArthur Fellow and his producer-director-FSU professor collaborator (who’s also a former executive at Oprah’s Harpo Films).

To read my interview visit Filmmaker magazine.

Unstill life: Apolonia, Apolonia

IDENTITY / A mesmerising documentary delving into themes of art, love, motherhood, and overcoming societal challenges. Lea Glob’s (2015’s Olmo & the Seagull, co-directed with Petra Costa) Apolonia, Apolonia is an auspicious solo feature debut on multiple levels. Crafted patiently over a span of 13 years, the poignant doc, which took top prize in the international competition at last year’s IDFA, follows Apolonia Sokol, a young and wildly ambitious French figurative painter of Danish and Polish descent, who seems forever to be globetrotting headlong into the future – one that sees her catching up with the great masters of the art world. But perhaps also escaping a rather chaotic past that includes growing up in an underground theatre that her bohemian parents founded on the «wrong» side of the Seine.

To read the rest of my essay visit Modern Times Review.

“I Realized This Was a Film Not Necessarily About Things Seen…But Things Felt”: Elaine McMillion Sheldon on King Coal

Like many Filmmaker readers, I first encountered the work of Elaine McMillion Sheldon a decade ago, when the West Virginia native landed on our annual 25 New Faces of Independent Film list in 2013. She’d just completed Hollow, which began as a documentary about her home state’s struggling McDowell County, and ultimately transformed into a sprawling interactive project; and per Randy Astle’s profile, “a community portrait that includes about three hours of video — including a lot shot by members of the community — audio recordings, text, photographs and user-generated material via Instagram.” Sheldon then popped back onto my radar two years later when I covered FilmGate 2015 down in Miami, where the multidisciplinary artist was working on another interactive piece (and doc feature) about the Sunshine State’s most colorful resident predator (pre-Trump), the insatiable and destructively invasive lion fish. Since then of course, Sheldon’s become much wider known as the Oscar-nominated and Emmy-winning filmmaker behind Netflix docs Heroin(e) and Recovery Boys, both of which drew her back once again to her West Virginia roots. And now fans old and new can look forward to the director’s latest (Sundance-selected) feature King Coal, a Central Appalachia-set tour de force that uses both archival imagery and a fictional narration to explore the complicated legacy of living in a once thriving, now dying, fossil fuel monarchy; ruled capriciously by a sedimentary rock determining the fates of generations from deep underground. Filmmaker caught up with the artistic coal miner’s daughter (and granddaughter and great granddaughter) just prior to King Coal’s August 11th theatrical premiere at NYC’s DCTV Theater (with a national rollout to follow).

To read my interview visit Filmmaker magazine.

From Pitch to Finish: “Local Stories, Global Audiences” with Wondery at the Hot Docs Podcast Festival Showcase

Returning to Toronto for my first post-pandemic visit to Hot Docs for this year’s 30th anniversary celebration (April 27-May 7) was well worth both the (red-eye) trek and (three-hour) time zone change. Besides getting my spring sneak peek at some of the best documentaries likely to land at a US fest/theater/streamer this fall, I was able to experience the added bonus of an inaugural festival within the fest: the Hot Docs Podcast Festival Showcase. In addition to five live events at the Hot Docs Ted Rogers Cinema — including buzzy evenings with the Radiolab guys, the Scamfluencers ladies, and the ubiquitous Kara Swisher — the Hot Docs Podcast Festival Showcase dedicated May 3-4 to six podcast-centric panels and masterclasses at the gorgeous TIFF Bell Lightbox (a cinema treasure built on donated land long-owned by hometown hero Ivan Reitman and family). Experts from Jazmín Aguilera, Head of Audio for the LA Times, to Renan Borelli, Deputy Audience Director for Audio at the NY Times, to Arif Noorani, Director of CBC Podcasts, took the stage over two jam-packed days to provide both insight and guidance into navigating a too-often opaque, still-evolving podcasting world. And one of these hour-long discussions, “‘Local Stories, Global Audiences’ with Wondery,” featured a trio of international panelists who certainly knew a thing or two about locating the universal in the niche. Wondery is the (currently) Amazon Music-owned audio storytelling entity behind such true crime juggernauts as Dr. Death, Over My Dead Body, The Shrink Next Door, Scamfluencers, and many more. (No word on whether a podcast about the company’s original founder, former head of Fox International Channels Hernan López — convicted back in March of participating in a FIFA-involved bribery scheme to secure exclusive World Cup broadcasting rights for 21st Century Fox — is in the works.)

To read all about it visit Documentary magazine.

A League of His Own: Sam Pollard on The League

Admittedly, as a white, baseball-phobic critic (I’ve never seen A League of Their Own or anything starring Kevin Costner and a bat), I’m not exactly the target demographic for The League, which takes a deep dive into America’s pastime through the parallel sports universe of the Negro League. Nevertheless, the doc was a must-catch, no pun intended, for me during Tribeca since I also happen to have a baseball-obsessed (Bronx-born/Brooklyn Dodgers-raised) father and (Mets-maniacal) sister who visited the Negro Leagues Baseball Museum several years back, and still speak of that trip as some sort of exotic holy pilgrimage. (For the record, the NLBM is in Kansas City.) In other words, I figured that watching would at least shed some light on a baffling family fixation. And surprisingly enough, it actually did. Or maybe not so surprisingly as The League is the latest from Oscar-nominated (and Peabody and Emmy Award-winning) director Sam Pollard and has the Summer of Soul team (including EP Questlove) onboard. Which means the engaging film not only showcases a treasure trove of newly discovered interviews and archival imagery, introducing us to a slew of cinematic characters both on and off the field, but also offers a vital US history lesson – from the empowerment of African American entrepreneurship to the thorny downside of integration; the final strike for a once-vibrant Negro League.

To read my interview with the doc's veteran director-editor-producer-screenwriter visit Filmmaker magazine.

Subverting the Algorithms

"Returning from CPH:DOX’s INTER:ACTIVE program, Lauren Wissot speaks with four innovators working at the frontiers of gaming and immersive work. This year’s 20th anniversary edition of CPH:DOX (March 15–26) was packed with celebratory gems, especially when it came to the radically assembled INTER:ACTIVE exhibition, curated by Mark Atkin. Here are talks with four of the exhibition’s artists, all workng in XR and games, about the boundary-pushing work they presented."

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Requiem for a dream: The Last Relic

RUSSIA / The absurdity of life in Yekaterinburg and the clash between those longing for imperial greatness and a small group of dissidents standing against Putin's impending invasion of Ukraine. Marianna Kaat’s Hot Docs world-premiering (International Spectrum) The Last Relic is a work of thought-provoking – and often head-spinning – contradiction. Over the four years leading up to Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, the Estonian filmmaker embedded with several brave activists in the seemingly blissfully ignorant city of Yekaterinburg, where Tsar Nicholas II and his family met their grisly fate, and which now celebrates its imperialist past with extravagant balls and military marching parades. (Needless to say, an anti-Putin sign proclaiming «He is not our tsar!» is firmly in the minority position.) Divided into easily digestible, single slogan chapters («power,» «solidarity,» «secrets,» «rules,» «revelation,» «survival,» etc.), the film’s clear-eyed prescience is at times downright startling as is seeing the colourful and festive, and buoyantly youthful, anti-Putin protests that Kaat’s hyperaware eye captures. In fact, the tick-tock closing in of the state apparatus on these would-be revolutionaries basically renders The Last Relic a real-time docu-thriller.

To read the rest of my essay visit Modern Times Review.

Weaponising art: Rule of Two Walls

UKRAINE / The profound impact of art as a means of survival and resistance against cultural erasure. Culture is an «action and a product of a people,» stresses a character in Ukrainian-American writer-director David Gutnik’s Tribeca-winning (Documentary Competition Special Jury Mention) and Liev Schreiber EP’d Rule of Two Walls, a rivetingly meta look at the war in Ukraine through the narratives of defiant artists that have chosen to stay in their country and fight – by continuing to make their art. And that includes not just painters and musicians but even a sound recorder and an editor, a producer and a director, all banding together to develop a documentary drama ultimately named after the directive to stay in a windowless space between two walls when the bombs start to fall.

To read the rest of my essay visit Modern Times Review.

“A Call to Action for Everybody To Preserve Their History Before It’s Gone”: Kristen Lovell and Zackary Drucker on The Stroll

Kristen Lovell and Zackary Drucker’s Sundance-premiering The Stroll is a beautifully and lovingly crafted time capsule of NYC’s Meatpacking District that mostly spans from Giuliani’s infamous “broken windows” reign of terror through Bloomberg’s post-9/11 “gentrification on steroids,” as one knowledgeable interviewee ruefully reflects (seconds after I coincidentally yelled those same words at my screener). Unsurprisingly, our billionaire mayor did indeed view unrestrained capitalism as the solution to every problem, including that of the “undesirable” communities — starving artists and sex workers — that called the neighborhood home. For me, the most revelatory aspect of this heartfelt walk down memory lane isn’t that it’s offered from the POV of the mostly Black trans sex workers (including director Lovell) who made their money working the area nicknamed “The Stroll,” but that the filmmakers were able to track down so many that both survived and thrived (at least a dozen, with some whose time went all the way back to the early ’80s, remarkably enough). Clear-eyed and unapologetic, this band of sisters somehow managed to avoid the fate of famous activist contemporaries like Marsha P. Johnson (whose body was found floating in the Hudson River in ‘92) and Sylvia Rivera (who died of complications from liver cancer in 2002 at age 51). Just prior to the film’s June 21 release on HBO, Filmmaker reached out to the co-directors to learn all about the process of using cinema to set the record on queer sex work history straight.

To read my interview visit Filmmaker magazine.

“The Result of On-Camera Conversations Spanning 15 Years”: Christian Einshøj on The Mountains

Shockingly (as the films I adore usually fly under the radar) but deservedly, this year’s winner of the Best International Feature Documentary Award at Hot Docs, first-time feature director Christian Einshøj’s The Mountains, proved to be a prime example of my mantra that the smaller and more specific the story, the more universal the reach. Influenced by Ross McElwee’s Sherman’s March (it thrills me just to type that), and also Jonathan Caouette’s Tarnation, the doc is equal parts oddball charming and emotionally devastating. As the (very specific) logline puts it: “Armed with 30 years of home video, 75,000 family photos and three tightly fit superhero costumes, the director Christian ventures into landscapes of long-lost time, in an attempt to confront a 25-year old tragedy, and the hidden wounds left in its wake.” Which translates into a brave and beautiful film involving a questioning son, a restless father, a Danish-speaking brother, a Norwegian-speaking brother, buried grief, unbridgeable disconnection, a quarter century of silence — and finally, an embrace of the reality that boys do cry. A week prior to the film’s UK premiere at Sheffield DocFest, Filmmaker caught up with the self-taught director-editor, and two-time Hot Docs award winner (2018’s Haunted took Best International Short), to learn all about this highly idiosyncratic, cinematic trip.

To read my interview visit Filmmaker magazine.

“Authenticity is More Important than Anything Else”: Maria Fredriksson on Tribeca 2023 Premiere The Gullspång Miracle

Maria Fredriksson’s astonishing feature debut The Gullspång Miracle isn’t just stranger than fiction — it’s batshit insane. In the broadest of outlines, the doc stars two devoutly religious Norwegian sisters, Kari and May. May visits Kari in Gullspång, Sweden, where Kari now lives. They go to an amusement park where they take a ride inside a fake whale. May finds herself stuck in Sweden for many months, so the two decide to go shopping for an apartment, and end up buying one based on a divine sign they witness there. At the closing, they meet the seller Olaug (formerly known as Lita), a woman who looks identical to the older sister (who also used to go by Lita) that committed suicide three decades before. And that’s when things get really bizarre. So they do what any diligent Scandinavians would do, I suppose — reach out to a documentary filmmaker. Which was likewise my compulsion, especially after realizing that this head-spinning yarn of a tale would not have unfolded (unraveled? gone off the rails?) at all had it not been for the presence of Fredriksson’s camera — a fact she makes unflinchingly transparent. So to learn all about collaborating with characters whose “desire to define their own truths becomes more important than knowing what is really true” (as Fredriksson claims in the press notes), Filmmaker caught up with the talented Swede just prior to the film’s Tribeca premiere.

To read my interview visit Filmmaker magazine.

“This Work is a Product of Survival”: Lea Glob on Tribeca 2023 Premiere Apolonia, Apolonia

Premiering in international competition at last year’s IDFA, where it took top prize, Lea Glob’s (2015’s Olmo and The Seagull) Apolonia, Apolonia is an intense character study of French figurative painter Apolonia Sokol. The Danish director met the artist, who is of Danish and Polish descent, while searching for the protagonist of her first doc while attending the Danish Film School, and then trailed her for the next 13 years. And while the bohemian free spirit, who was raised in a Paris underground theater founded by her eccentric parents (an old VHS tape Apolonia discovers comes with the written warning not to view before she turns 18, though watching one’s conception is arguably inappropriate at any age), is the star, Glob herself is also a main character, albeit mostly through the doc’s poetic narration. Indeed, the film is just as much about the evolving relationship between these two strong and vulnerable women on opposite sides of the lens as it is a “portrait of an artist.” And yet it’s also clearly a mash note from Glob to Apolonia, which likewise renders Apolonia, Apolonia a highly subjective, oftentimes rose-colored-glasses portrayal — transparently so. As Glob herself admits from the start, “No motif has ever caught my eye as she did.” Apolonia is this director’s muse and the film literally a cinematic following of one’s muse, no matter how long it takes, or to the unorthodox places — physical, psychological, emotional — such a journey might lead. Just prior to the doc’s Tribeca debut Filmmaker reached out to Glob to learn all about the passionate multiyear project, and the soaring highs and tragic lows of life itself she grew from along the way.

To read my interview visit Filmmaker magazine.

“I Cried a Lot During the Edit”: Jude Chehab on Tribeca 23 Premiere Q

Award-winning DP Jude Chehab’s cinematographic talents are on full display in her Tribeca-premiering feature debut Q, a haunting look at three generations of women whose lives were forever upended by a cult. In this case, the shadowy entity is the Qubaysiat — a matriarchal religious order founded in the Middle East, where the Lebanese-American filmmaker moved to from Florida at the tender age of 10 — and eagerly joined upon arrival in Beirut, having fallen under the influence of a particularly devout member – her own mother. Filmmaker reached out to Chehab, a 25 New Faces 2021 alum, to learn more about her powerful cinematic investigation not into the origins of the mysterious movement she was a part of, but into the end toll of sacrificing one’s personal narrative to any cause that demands all.

To read my interview visit Filmmaker magazine.

“A Ukrainian National Awakening on Multiple Fronts”: David Gutnik on Tribeca 2023 Premiere Rule of Two Walls

David Gutnik’s Rule of Two Walls, its title a reference to the best place to be between during bombing raids, is a unique take on an exhaustively mined (some would say extracted) story — that of the current war in Europe. Combining doc and fiction, the film follows Ukrainian artists who have chosen to stay and fight for their homeland by making art and preserving culture as a means of resistance. And that includes those involved in the crafting of this very film. To learn all about this meta look at creation in a time of destruction, Filmmaker reached out to the Ukrainian-American writer-director just prior to his (Liev Schreiber-EP’d) project’s Tribeca premiere.

To read my interview visit Filmmaker magazine.

The White Savior Sin of A Still Small Voice

“Don’t just do something, stand there (or be there)” is the directive of Reverend David Fleenor, turning the “don’t just stand there, do something” admonition upside down. Or perhaps right side up. For attentiveness is crucial to this religious leader dauntingly tasked with supervising a group of aspiring chaplains, including a viscerally vulnerable protege named Mati Engel, as they undertake an emotionally exhausting residency in the spiritual care department of New York’s Mount Sinai Hospital. But the mantra could likewise apply to award-winning filmmaker Luke Lorentzen (2019’s Sundance-premiering Midnight Family) who has a knack for bearing silent witness through his cinéma vérité lens. That said, the intimate collaboration that led to his Sundance-debuting followup A Still Small Voice — and also to Lorentzen receiving an “honorary certificate” at the end of filming the yearlong program (not to mention the US Documentary Competition Best Directing award in Park City) — is both extraordinary and somewhat troubling.

To read the rest of my essay visit Hyperallergic.

Hot Docs 2023: Russian Films Depict the Brink of War at the Festival’s 30th Anniversary Edition

This year’s 30th anniversary edition of Hot Docs, North America’s largest doc fest, (which ran from April 27 to May 7) was, perhaps unsurprisingly, jam-packed with so many world-premiering films and one-of-a-kind industry events as to be a bit overwhelming. (Fortunately, Hot Docs also boasts one of the smoothest festival apps around to help alleviate all that scheduling stress.) Most unexpected though was the fact that, while once again there was rightly an entire program dedicated to the ongoing front-page war (“Made in Ukraine” consisted of five features, and also four shorts under the defiant banner “Films That Bring The Victory Closer: Civil Pitch 2.0 Winning Films presented by Docudays UA”), it was several films instead set in Russia during the lead-up — all expertly crafted by outsider eyes — that most rocked my world. Indeed, with the unlawful invasion as backdrop, as opposed to the main event, the following trio of films (from comedic to tragic, oftentimes both) provided a glimpse into daily surreal life on the “other side.” And left me with that head-spinning feeling I go to formidable fests like Hot Docs for.

To read the rest visit Filmmaker magazine.

Hot Docs Podcast Festival Showcase 2023: Non-Fiction Without Borders: A Co-Production Case Study with The LA Times and CBC Podcasts

Featuring LA Times head of audio Jazmín Aguilera and CBC Podcasts director Arif Noorani (and moderated by Lindsay Michael, Senior Podcast Manager for Amazon Music in Canada), “Non-Fiction Without Borders: A Co-Production Case Study with The LA Times and CBC Podcasts” covered an impressive amount of ground for an hour-long panel. Part of the Hot Docs Podcast Festival Showcase (a mini audio-storytelling fest nestled within this year’s 30th anniversary edition, April 27-May 7), the discussion began, ironically enough, with a high-adrenaline video teaser for Outlaw Oceans, the case study at hand. It starred both Somali pirates and Ian Urbina, the former NY Times investigative reporter who is also the pod’s originator and host. (Tapping into our latest financially lucrative obsession, the trailer concluded with the tagline: “If you want to understand true crime, start where the law of the land ends.”)

To read all about it visit Filmmaker magazine.

Hot Docs Podcast Festival Showcase 2023: Podcasts and Op-Docs at The New York Times: Meet the Decision Makers

An auspicious start to what turned out to be an insightful, audio-focused sidebar to the main cinematic event, “Podcasts and Op-Docs at The New York Times: Meet the Decision Makers” was the very first panel I caught during this year’s Hot Docs Podcast Festival Showcase, which spanned a whole two days across the “largest nonfiction fest in North America’s” 30th anniversary edition, April 27-May 7. It featured the Times’s Deputy Audience Director for Audio Renan Borelli and Op-Docs Senior Commissioning Editor Christine Kecher, in conversation with Media Girlfriends co-founder (and deft moderator) Hannah Sung. (Just the fact that it managed to keep me awake at the ungodly hour of 9:30AM —or 6:30AM for those of us still stuck on West Coast time — before I’d finished my complimentary morning coffee from the TIFF Bell Lightbox’s Luma lounge downstairs is really saying something.)

To read all about it visit Filmmaker magazine.

CPH:DOX 2023: The Platinum Anniversary Edition

If there’s one thing pandemic shutdowns have proven over these past few years, it’s that (far too) many film festivals can just as easily be covered online. (Do I really need to hop on a plane and into a faraway cinema to view the latest Netflix Original?) That, thankfully, is not the case when it comes to the Copenhagen International Documentary Film Festival, now in its 20th year and still one of the most punk rock rebellious events around, as evidenced by e.g. the fest’s decision this edition (March 15-26) to team up with Kunsthal Charlottenborg, the palatial contemporary art space (literally, as it’s housed in Charlottenborg Palace) that’s long served as festival HQ, to present British artist Jeremy Deller’s head-spinning Welcome to the Shitshow! Through a variety of media — everything from photography and film to graphics and sculpture — Deller takes the attendee on a time-warped trip through British culture from Bowie and Depeche Mode to The Troubles and Brexit. In other words, the perfect way to reenergize between screenings, caffeine optional (the fest’s pop-up cafe conveniently located a few steps from the entrance) but not required.

To read the rest visit Filmmaker magazine.

GET THE INTERNATIONAL FILM CRITICS’ VERDICT ON THE DOX:AWARD FILMS

How do the international film critics rate the main competition at this year’s CPH:DOX? Ekko’s jury grid gives you an overview. Filmmagasinet Ekko, the popular Danish film magazine, has assembled a team of international critics to rate all 13 world premieres in the DOX:AWARD competition at this year's CPH:DOX. The 6 members of the Ekko jury grid are as follows: British Wendy Ide covers CPH:DOX for leading industry publication Screen Daily, but she has also been reviewing films for Ekko for a long time. Carmen Gray is covering the festival for the European documentary magazine Modern Times Review; while Lauren Wissot represents the acclaimed American Filmmaker Magazine. The British magazine Sight and Sound, one of the world’s most respected film publications, has sent their reviewer Nick Bradshaw to cover CPH:DOX; while Vladan Petkovic from Serbia is covering the festival for Cineuropa. Finally, Ekko’s own editor-in-chief Claus Christensen completes the panel.

And the winner is...

A numbers game: Three Thousand Numbered Pieces

DOCUFICTION / After an unofficial five-year filmmaking ban, Hungary's Ádám Császi continues to oppose the authoritarian Orbán regime. «What you call realism is just you exploiting our misery. And what you call absurd is just plain racism», says a male member of an all-Roma theatrical troupe, confronting the white director of a play titled Gypsy Hungarian. To which a female thespian jumps in with, «And you call this «deconstruction.» Do you know what you’re deconstructing? Your own racism. And a deconstructive racist is still a racist.» (Ouch.) In other words, this collaborative work, based on the actors’ real-life experiences (which in today’s Orbán-land includes homelessness, juvenile delinquency, heroin addiction, rape and all manner of abuse), is a good-faith effort that has clearly gone off the rails. Strangely, something that tends to happen not under (non-collaborative, bad faith) authoritarian regimes but only in the wokest of white liberal spaces. Ay, there’s the rub! Fortunately (and unfortunately), Ádám Császi, the visionary director behind Three Thousand Numbered Pieces (and the next Ruben Östlund by my lights), knows a thing or two about working in both.

To read the rest visit Modern Times Review.

“…The Costs of Turning Yourself from a Three-Dimensional Person into a Two-Dimensional Brand”: Miranda Yousef on Her SXSW-Premiering doc Art for Everybody

One of the most surprising revelations about the painter (and multimillion-dollar mass marketer) Thomas Kinkade, “the most successful artist of his time” according to the synopsis for Miranda Yousef’s SXSW-premiering doc Art for Everybody, is not that he was, well, “the most successful artist of his time.” Nor that after his death a decade ago from a drug and alcohol overdose his family discovered a secret trove of rather dark and sometimes disturbing work, images at complete odds with the sugary sweet depictions of small-town life that once graced the walls of the Thomas Kinkade Signature Gallery franchises, a ubiquitous presence at US malls throughout the ’90s. No, it’s that Kinkade was much more than some Trump-style showman, hawking branded kitsch on QVC. Ignored by the (white) art world cognoscenti and beloved by the (white) working class masses, Kinkade was likewise a dedicated family man and a practicing evangelical since college. Painfully earnest to his core, he was a man bent on fulfilling a populist mission to create art for everybody (or “Art for Anybody,” per the catty title of Susan Orlean’s 2010 New Yorker profile), one which, unfortunately, would lead to the “Painter of Light” (a lofty moniker originally given to J.M.W. Turner that Kinkade coopted and trademarked for himself) irrevocably flaming out. Just prior to Art for Everybody’s (March 13) SXSW launch, Filmmaker caught up with the first-time director (and veteran editor) to learn all about her impressively enlightening debut.

To read my interview visit Filmmaker magazine.

“The Inspiration To Donate a Kidney Was Not a ‘Project’ To Begin With”: Penny Lane on Confessions of a Good Samaritan

The drive to donate a kidney to a stranger is not a desire I — nor the majority of the population, for that matter — can relate to. (But then again I’ve personally no great love for humanity in general, as arguably the planet would be far better off had we gone the way of the dinosaurs. And luckily for Mother Earth, we still may!) Which puts me at philosophical odds with veteran filmmaker (and main protagonist) Penny Lane, whose latest doc Confessions of a Good Samaritan is a deep dive into the science as well as ethical implications behind altruistic donation. It’s also a surprisingly self-deprecatingly funny quest to discover why one person’s blatantly obvious decision can be another’s sign of inexplicable insanity. To learn all about the unusual project, I reached out to the altruistic donor director herself just prior to the film’s SXSW premiere on March 10th.

To read my interview visit Filmmaker magazine.

A LOOK BACK AT CPH:CONFERENCE At CPH:DOX 2022

Last year’s hybrid CPH:CONFERENCE at CPH:DOX, curated by The Catalysts and moderated by that multimedia consultancy’s founder AC Coppens, featured the theme “Business as Unusual” – an outside the box invitation to nonfiction filmmakers to boldly rethink an entire industry anew. Over three afternoons and under a trio of separate programs – “Claim your Story!”, “Follow the Money!” and “Shaping Success.” – veteran insiders down to novice directors (few from the white male demographic) came together to both debate best practices and to forge a status quo-upending future.

To read all about it visit Hammer to Nail.

Coming of age under fire: 5 Seasons of Revolution

SYRIA / Under bombs, an aspiring video journalist finds herself facing self-reckoning as the unexpected narrator of her own destiny. Until the Putin regime launched a reign of terror upon its neighbour, the ongoing civil war in Syria was perhaps the most documented conflict in recent (western) media. This inevitably made it prone to the usual dumbed-down, foreign-lensed tropes: Baddie Bashar propped up by the aforementioned baddie while launching his own parallel reign of terror against a Syrian populace longing to be free. But what happens when the lens gets widened to include Damascus’s rather prosperous and intact urban base in addition to the bombed-out and struggling cities of Homs and Aleppo? What happens when the picture shows a still bustling capital filled with folks who would just as soon get on with their middle-class lives and look away? Until, also inevitably, they can’t. Luckily, we have Lina (who, for safety reasons, goes only by her first name) and her stunning Sundance debut, 5 Seasons of Revolution, which brings an unexpectedly new perspective to a decade-plus-old story.

To read the rest visit Modern Times Review.

Ondi Timoner Chronicles Her Father’s Quest for Dignified Death

Last Flight Home is a warts-and-all account of assisted death best viewed by the terminally ill and their loved ones. Ondi Timoner’s Sundance-debuting Last Flight Home is both a celebratory tribute to, and a shockingly intimate portrait of, a hardworking business and family man, whom adversity rendered a mensch. Indeed, the nonagenarian entrepreneur at the heart of this vérité doc — a Miami native who founded Air Florida, the fastest-growing airline in the world during the 1970s — was living an idyllic life until a neck cracking by a masseuse left the vibrant extrovert partially paralyzed at the age of 53. To compound the tragedy, this freak accident occurred before the 1990 passage of the Americans with Disabilities Act, thus allowing the upstart air carrier to legally force out the man responsible for building it. Nonetheless, with Sunshine State optimism, grit, and drive — and the love and support of an adoring family, including a filmmaker daughter named Ondi — Eli Timoner managed to create a joyful, independent, and dignified life for himself. Which is why he ultimately decided to end that life, on his own terms.

To read the rest of my review visit Hyperallergic.

“We Underestimated the Violence of the Regime”: Lina on 5 Seasons of Revolution

Like most conflicts heavily documented by Western media, the ongoing Syrian civil war is one in which nearly all nuance has been left on the cutting room floor. Fortunately, Lina’s 5 Seasons of Revolution, a revelatory Sundance debut from a Damascus video journalist who (for safety reasons) goes simply by her first name, shatters the trend. Currently based in Europe, Lina spent 2011-2015 filming her country’s path from high revolutionary hopes to ultimately shattered dreams. But even more importantly, she did so in the most personal and truthful way, by turning the camera on herself and four of her closest friends — all educated, anti-regime, cosmopolitan twentysomethings in the capital city (and al-Assad stronghold) who find themselves surrounded by folks who’d just as soon look away. Until, of course, they — along with the rest of the world — could not. With the help of documentary heavies like producer Orwa Nyrabia and EP Laura Poitras, Lina has transformed that material into the most poignant of coming-of-age tales. To learn about her journey from college grad to accidental war journalist, Filmmaker reached out to the director soon after the film’s Sundance World Cinema Documentary Competition premiere.

To read my interview visit Filmmaker magazine.