A Conversation With Poulomi Basu (Maya: The Birth of a Superhero)

Who knew knocking down taboos could be so much fun? With Maya: The Birth of a Superhero, a VR piece that exhibited in the Immersive Competition, first edition at Cannes, and is currently available on Meta Quest, the UK-based Indian neurodiverse artist Poulomi Basu, along with her collaborator CJ Clarke, have crafted a coming of age tale that playfully tackles a topic usually discussed behind closed doors (if at all): menstruation. Indeed, with the titular, South Asian teen as our guide, we’re taken to a threatening land (contemporary London) filled with emotional minefields, forced to navigate everything from bullying classmates to a conservative mom for whom shaming comes easier than any expressions of love. Fortunately, Maya’s got some kickass girl moves – able to hurl tampons with Herculean strength! – which allow her (and us) to ultimately overcome insidious patriarchal stigma, the greatest hurdle of all.

To read my interview visit Hammer to Nail.

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“Stereotypes Help People Delegitimize Other People and Ideas They Want to Distance Themselves From”: Michael Premo on Homegrown

While the eruption of violence at the US Capitol on January 6th left most Americans dazed and confused — and too many journalists and talking heads scrambling to dissect the psyche of the rioters as if they were extraterrestrial beings and not our actual next-door neighbors — multimedia artist Michael Premo had been listening and filming throughout the summer of 2020 with open ears and eyes all along. His Venice-debuting Homegrown follows three diverse (yes, diverse) Trump-supporting “patriots”: an excited young father-to-be (to a biracial child) in New Jersey, an Air Force vet and rightwing organizer in “liberal” NYC, and the only person of color and red state resident of the trio, an activist in Texas who finds common cause with BLM. It’s an up close study in how movements get built by true believers seeking camaraderie and connection. Albeit ones whose passion and enthusiasm can sometimes reach a dangerous tipping point, spiraling beyond any single individual’s control. Just prior to the DCTV Firehouse Cinema theatrical premiere of Homegrown (December 6th, with Amy Goodman moderating the Q&A), Filmmaker caught up with the award-winning director, whose past co-creations, with his longtime collaborator and producer Rachel Falcone, include the participatory documentary Sandy Storyline (recipient of the Jury Award at the 2013 Tribeca Film Festival), the site-specific performance Sanctuary (for the Working Theater), and the multiplatform exhibit 28th Amendment.

To read my interview visit Filmmaker magazine.

IDFA 2024: Winners and Winners

This year’s IDFA (November 14-24) starred Polish filmmaker Maciej J. Drygas’s Trains, a cinematic ride through 20th century industrial revolution-propelled European history via a trove of archival found footage; it unanimously nabbed Best Film in the International Competition. And while the doc is undoubtedly a tour de force of editing and sound design (unsurprisingly, it also took Best Editing in the International Competition), not to mention hypnotically reminiscent of the work of Bill Morrison, it was actually the other B&W archival-heavy film in that section that I just couldn’t shake.

To read the rest visit Filmmaker magazine.

“The Film Is Not About AI, Not About Werner Herzog, and Never Aimed To Embrace AI Technology”: Piotr Winiewicz on His IDFA Opening Night Doc About a Hero

Piotr Winiewicz’s About a Hero is as mindbogglingly complex as its eye-catching logline is simple: “A murder mystery – unwittingly starring Werner Herzog.” More precisely, the Polish filmmaker’s doc is actually an adaptation of a script in which the aforementioned cinematic maverick travels to the fictional Getunkirchenburg to investigate the strange death of a local factory worker named Dorem Clery. Even stranger, that screenplay was written by “Kaspar” (as in Kaspar Hauser), an AI trained on the Herzog oeuvre. With a look inspired by the work of German photographer Thomas Demand, the film, shot mostly across northern Germany, also features “real” sit-down interviews with scientists, philosophers and artists; along with AI-generated visuals and a Herzog voiceover (artificially created by machine learning models naturally). There’s even a deep fake Herzog, albeit one that registers as more creepy than real. (Though perhaps that makes it extra Herzogian.) So to learn all about this meditation on “originality, authenticity, immortality and soul in the age of AI,” Filmmaker reached out to the Copenhagen-based director (and artist and production designer) just after the film’s debut as the opening night selection at this year’s IDFA (November 14-24).

To read my interview visit Filmmaker magazine.

“I Grow as I Make a Film”: Nanfu Wang on Her HBO Documentary, Night Is Not Eternal

It’s a bit surprising to think that when I last interviewed Nanfu Wang it was for her six-part HBO docuseries Mind Over Murder, which revisited an infamous case of justice gone haywire in a small town in Nebraska back in the 1980s. Which, in terms of subject matter, is a far cry from this year’s followup (also for HBO). Night Is Not Eternal is a deep character study, a format the acclaimed director has long embraced, that charts the rise of Rosa Maria Paya, daughter of Oswaldo Paya, a five-time Nobel Peace Prize-nominated activist assassinated by the Cuban government in 2012. Over seven years, as Paya takes up her late father’s mantle, eventually becoming a respected freedom fighter in her own right, Wang follows the often fraught journey while being keenly aware of its many similarities to her own experiences in China and as an exile in America. Only to find, quite unexpectedly, that the differences between herself and her heroine might need to likewise take centerstage. Filmmaker caught up with the globetrotting documentarian, also a busy mother of two young sons, a few days before the film’s Nov 19th release.

To read my interview visit Filmmaker magazine.

“Doc Filmmaking Can Be a Very Weird Process of Interpersonal Negotiations”: Debra Granik on Conbody vs Everybody

Though Debra Granik is no stranger to Sundance — 2004’s Down to the Bone, 2018’s Leave No Trace and 2010’s Oscar-nominated (in four categories) Winter’s Bone all premiered in Park City — I was a bit surprised to see the indie vet’s name attached to a project at the fest’s 40th edition earlier this year. Unlike the director’s prior critically-acclaimed films, Conbody vs Everybody is neither narrative nor a traditional feature doc, but a documentary in five chapters (six at Sundance, of which only parts four and five were screened) that took Granik and her longtime collaborators, EP Anne Rosellini and EP/editor Victoria Stewart, close to a decade to make. Over eight years the team followed Coss Marte, a man on a Herculean mission to “de-stigmatize the formerly incarcerated community, ease their integration back into society, and change the systemic inequity of the criminal justice system,” according to the website for ConBody, the business Marte founded based on his self-invented, prison-style fitness method; and also the ConBody instructors, all formerly incarcerated individuals like Marte determined to defy both statistics and preconceived notions. Needless to say, many days bring an uphill battle, especially since Marte, a native son of New York’s Lower East Side, is doggedly waging it on his now privileged-white-gentrified (on steroids) home turf. To learn all about this unexpected, longitudinal cinematic study Filmmaker caught up with Granik soon after the project’s Sundance (Episodic program) debut, and again prior to its DOC NYC premiere on November 17th. (Parts one and two of the newly revamped version will screen in the Metropolis Competition.)

To read my interview visit Filmmaker magazine.

“Shifting Focus from Political Agendas To the Real Faces of Conflict”: Sareen Hairabedian on Her DOC NYC-Premiering My Sweet Land

Admittedly, Artsakh (Nagorno-Karabakh) was not in my geographic vocabulary before this region in the Caucasus Mountains took centerstage at last year’s IDFA, when first-time filmmaker Shoghakat Vardanyan nabbed top prize for 1489. The heartbreaking doc details the Armenian director’s real-time, smartphone-shot search for her brother, a young student and musician who’d been conscripted into the most recent war over their disputed homeland. And now we have Sareen Hairabedian’s cinematic, Gotham-supported My Sweet Land screening DOC NYC (where Emily Mkrtichian’s There Was, There Was Not, which follows four women in Artsakh, is also playing). Starring a bright 11-year old citizen of Artsakh named Vrej, it’s a coming-of-age story spanning years, always with the multigenerational war as backdrop; and it’s made all the more poignant by the Armenian-Jordanian filmmaker’s insistence on witnessing the up-and-down journey through her young protagonist’s all-to-aware eyes. Just prior to the film’s DOC NYC (U.S. Competition) premiere on Saturday, November 16, Filmmaker reached out to the US-based Hairabedian, whose directorial debut, HBO’s We Are Not Done Yet, received a Best Documentary Short nomination at the IDA Awards back in 2018.

To read my interview visit Filmmaker magazine.

18 Recommended Titles at 2024’s DOC NYC

Wondering what to see at DOC NYC, "America's largest documentary film festival" (November 13-December 1)? Start with these titles at Filmmaker magazine.

“It Was a Process of Experience Meets Intuition Meets Dancing with the Unknown”: Jacob Perlmutter and Manon Ouimet on Their DOC NYC-Debuting Two Strangers Trying Not To Kill Each Other

Jacob Perlmutter and Manon Ouimet’s Two Strangers Trying Not To Kill Each Other is as breathtakingly understated as its title is arresting. The doc, which picked up a Special Mention: DOX:AWARD when it world-premiered at CPH:DOX last March, stars the celebrated and prolific photographer Joel Meyerowitz (a two-time Guggenheim Fellow and NEA and NEH awards recipient with 50-plus books and over 350 museum and gallery exhibitions to his credit) and his less famous partner of 30 years, the British artist-musician-novelist Maggie Barrett. It’s also an up close and personal (literally — the filmmaker couple lived with their protagonists during production) encounter with the highs and lows of a long-term relationship, staged in a manner more reminiscent of a theater piece. For now that Joel, in his mid-eighties, is forced to become caregiver to his 75-year old wife after she breaks her femur, the pithy phrase “in sickness and in health” is put to the test. What unspools over the next 100 minutes is a painfully raw and refreshingly honest reckoning with both a bumpy past and an uncertain future — and in Maggie’s case, thwarted ambition as a result of decades of living in the shadow of a creative giant. Until, that is, a talented duo enter with a camera and smartly shine a spotlight on the unsung heroine at the heart of this forever love affair. Just prior to the film’s DOC NYC (Metropolis Competition) premiere Filmmaker reached out to the British co-directing couple, both acclaimed photographers in their own right, to learn all about the bold and auspicious nonfiction debut.

To read my interview visit Filmmaker magazine.

A Conversation With Svitlana Lishchynska (A BIT OF A STRANGER)

“I am afraid for the future of Ukraine only if Russia gets what it wants and shows the effectiveness of its system“ – Svitlana Lishchynska on A Bit of A Stranger. Ukrainian filmmaker Svitlana Lishchynska has been “a bit of a stranger” all her life. Growing up in Russian-speaking Mariupol under the Soviet regime, she became a dutiful mother there, but then took off to Kyiv in pursuit of a career in the newly independent Ukraine – leaving her young daughter in the care of her own mom back home. And now her adult daughter has her own young daughter, and is raising her with the Russian values (including support for its leader) she herself imbibed from living in the border town. If not directly from her skeptical if not cynical grandmother, whose own family ended up in Mariupol as a result of having been forcibly dispossessed by the Soviets. In other words, the intergenerational dynamics are complicated between these three very different women to say the least. And then came the full-scale invasion, which forced a reckoning with national identity and the Russian-colonized mindset for them all. Just after the film’s Berlinale debut I caught up with the director and screenwriter, who is also a veteran of the entertainment tv industry, to learn all about turning the camera on family, and grappling with existential questions in the middle of a war. A Bit of A Stranger most recently screened in the International Competition and In Focus: Ukraine programs at the Verzió International Human Rights Documentary Film Festival (November 6-13).

To read my interview visit Hammer to Nail.

“Telling a Story Together Creates Another Story”: Milo Rau on the Utopian Documentarism in His ‘Antigone in the Amazon’

I first encountered the work of Milo Rau back in 2020, when his reimagining of the story of Jesus, The New Gospel, premiered in Venice. Set in the Italian town of Matera, where both Pasolini’s The Gospel According to St. Matthew and Mel Gibson’s The Passion of the Christ were likewise shot, the project was an on-the-ground collaboration with local residents, specifically African migrants locked in a real-life battle for human rights. Blurring fact and fiction, the film notably featured Enrique Irazoqui (Pasolini’s Jesus) and Maia Morgenstern (Gibson’s Mother Mary) alongside newcomer Yvan Sagnet, a Cameroon-born political activist and labor organizer who went from taking on the mafia in an agricultural workers strike to taking on the role of Jesus. And now the artist’s latest example of “utopian documentarism,” Antigone in the Amazon, has arrived on these shores, having recently played NYC’s Skirball Cultural Center. The multimedia piece combines theater and film, and stars professionals onstage (two Europeans and two Brazilians), along with members of the MST (Brazil’s Landless Workers’ Movement) onscreen. It also manages to deftly weave together the story of Antigone—played by the Indigenous activist Kay Sara—with an infamous 1996 massacre on Native land. It includes a harrowing recreation at the site of the military dictatorship’s crime by a “Greek chorus” comprised of several survivors and their descendants. But perhaps the most unexpected “act” of all is one of radical transparency, as the onstage participants recount the story of the process itself, narrating the making of the film as its images appear on the giant screen behind them. “The pavilion where we performed is actually a classroom” and “In Indigenous cosmology, the past is in front of you,” an actor explains, marveling at his faraway colleagues’ ability to seamlessly inhabit several worlds and times simultaneously. But there are also nods to Zoom calls during Covid, and the irony of Europeans traveling to the jungle in an anticapitalist, anti-colonialist creative pursuit. Mentions of “guilt complex disguised as activism” and “privileged self-doubt” likewise pepper monologues. As does a recollection from the Indigenous philosopher cast as the seer Tiresias, who once told a European journalist that he feared for the white people in this era of rampant environmental destruction as they had never experienced the Apocalypse. “I’m not afraid of the end of the world,” he states. “Our world died 500 years ago. And we’re still here.” To learn all about this physical and metaphysical journey, Documentary reached out to the busy Swiss director-writer-filmmaker (and lecturer, author, and TV critic), and founder of the International Institute of Political Murder, a theater and film production company. Rau’s also the former artistic leader at Belgium’s NTGent, and is currently the new curator of the Wiener Festwochen in Vienna.

To read my interview visit Documentary magazine.

“The Streamers Have Eaten All the Bananas”: Behind Her Lens: Producers at the 27th SCAD Savannah Film Festival

The 27th edition of the SCAD Savannah Film Festival boasted a number of unexpected bonuses this year. First there was the eclectic,“Hollywood meets indie” mashup guest list to accompany the stellar program (much of which had recently premiered at the top tier fests). Actors in town to pick up awards at the sold out screenings included Amy Adams, Pamela Anderson, Kieran Culkin, Colman Domingo, Natasha Lyonne, Demi Moore, Lupita Nyong’o and Sebastian Stan among others; while the producers and directors attending to nab honoraries ran the gamut from Jerry Bruckheimer, Kevin Costner and Jason Reitman, to Richard Linklater, RaMell Ross, Pablo Larraín, and Sir Steve McQueen. (Though admittedly, I wasn’t really starstruck until I spotted James Carville, in town for Matt Tyrnauer’s Carville: Winning is Everything, Stupid, in the lobby of the Drayton Hotel on Halloween. Naturally costumed as James Carville, complete with striped shirt and running shoes.) That said, it was the Behind Her Lens: Producers panel at the lovely Gutstein Gallery, perennially one of the highlights of the “largest university-run film festival in the world,” that far exceeded my expectations, particularly for providing a no holds barred assessment of the industry today.

To read the rest visit Filmmaker magazine.

The Edge of Nature

“I guess you could call that instinct – or insanity,” states the director-writer-environmental activist Josh Fox about his compulsion to build a high platform in the middle of the Pennsylvania forest where he’d gone to convalesce from long Covid. Later, after a monologue about deer trails being the precursor to roads, the Oscar-nominated filmmaker (for 2010’s Gasland) likewise notes that “Nature is an X-ray – upon which our entire system is a hologram.” Equal parts self-deprecating and painfully earnest, Fox serves as our passionate guide in The Edge of Nature, a documentary theater piece that recently premiered at NYC’s La MaMa Experimental Theatre Club to rave reviews (including from none other than Bernie Sanders, who’s long supported Fox through The Sanders Institute. Fox also wrote parts of the Democratic platform on energy and environment in 2016).

To read the rest of my review visit Hammer to Nail.

“A Deep Dive Into My Trauma”: Shiori Ito on Black Box Diaries

Shiori Ito’s Black Box Diaries is a film the Japanese journalist should never have had to make. Based on her international bestseller, the Sundance-premiering doc is a dogged investigation into a rape perpetrated by another Japanese journalist, Noriyuki Yamaguchi, a longtime friend of the late former Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, whose biography the offender penned as well. It’s also a somewhat surreal journey, given that the brave survivor in the purposely stalled case is Ito herself. Through an engaging mix of secret recordings, vérité shooting and confessional video, we’re invited along on an increasingly maddening odyssey through the shockingly antiquated Japanese judicial system; exposing a hidden world where, prior to production, rape laws hadn’t been changed for 110 years. As a result the minimum sentence for rape was shorter than for theft, and was provable not by a lack of consent but only by physical violence or threats. Add to this the chances of a female officer taking on your case being next to nil (since women make up less than 8% of the force), and the fact that you’ll likely have to re-traumatize yourself by reenacting the incident with a life-sized doll for the assigned policeman, and it’s easy to see why only four percent of violated women even bother to report the crime. That is, until an undaunted reporter suddenly decided to seek justice for herself and others by documenting everything, and calling BS on it all. Just prior to the October 25th theatrical release of Black Box Diaries, Filmmaker reached out to the gender-based human rights-focused writer and filmmaker, who in 2020 also made Time magazine’s list of 100 most influential people in the world.

To read my interview visit Filmmaker magazine.

“The illusion of immortality”: A Photographic Memory

Rachel Elizabeth Seed’s A Photographic Memory is a very intimate investigation into the life of a globetrotting journalist (and photographer and filmmaker) whose interviews with legendary lensers like Henri Cartier-Bresson, Gordon Parks and Lisette Model formed the basis for a trailblazing audiovisual series you’ve likely never heard of. Though “Images of Man” was produced with the renowned International Center of Photography founder Cornell Capa and Scholastic, the eight-part program (each episode pairing a photographer’s images with descriptions of their philosophies in their own words) had been time-capsuled in the ICP archives since 1979; at the behest of the journo’s grieving widower, Time-Life photographer Brian Seed, who sent the raw materials to the center for safekeeping upon the sudden death of his wife at the age of 42.

To read the rest of my review visit Global Comment.

‘My Undesirable Friends: Part 1 — Last Air in Moscow’ Review: A Scary and Riveting Portrait of Russia’s Last Independent News Channel

“Sadism disguised with the lacework of words” is how Anna Nemzer, a talk show journalist with TV Rain, Russia’s last independent news channel, describes Putin’s twisting of phrases in “My Undesirable Friends: Part I — Last Air in Moscow.” And “being at the right place at the right time — or the wrong place at the wrong time,” is how “The Loneliest Planet” director Julia Loktev has described the circumstances that led to the documentary she’s made about Nemzer’s work. First conceived as a look at the daily lives of reporters who’ve been branded “foreign agents” by their own government, the essence of the project — now a five-part, five-and-a-half-hour epic — was profoundly transformed four months into production, when Russia launched a full-scale invasion against Ukraine.

To read the rest of my New York Film Festival review visit IndieWire.

Reality Show: Julia Loktev on ‘My Undesirable Friends: Part I — Last Air in Moscow’

It’s been a while since the acclaimed director-screenwriter-video artist Julia Loktev (The Loneliest Planet, Day Night Day Night) last traversed the nonfiction landscape with her 1998 feature debut Moment of Impact. That Sundance Documentary Directing Award-winning doc, shot on Hi8 and edited by Loktev herself, dealt with the aftermath of an accident that left her father severely disabled and forced her mother to give up her career as a computer programmer in order to care for him. It was yet another life-changing event for the Russian immigrant couple who, along with their young daughter, traded Leningrad (now St. Petersburg) for northern Colorado. And now Loktev returns to her roots in more ways than one, with an epic doc titled My Undesirable Friends: Part I — Last Air in Moscow (part two is yet to be released). Unspooling in five discrete chapters, the film brings Loktev back to familiar territory to tag along with her friend Anna Nemzer, a talk show journalist for TV Rain, and her fellow “foreign agents,” who are also independent media makers branded such by the Kremlin. They navigate the ever-twisting reality of dictatorship in the run-up to and aftermath of the full-scale invasion of Ukraine. A few weeks prior to the NYFF premiere of My Undesirable Friends, Documentary reached out to Loktev to learn all about the project.

To read my interview visit Documentary magazine.

‘A Sisters’ Tale’ Review: An Iranian Woman Pursues the Musical Dreams Her Country Is Determined to Stifle in an Affecting Doc

Leila Amini’s “A Sisters’ Tale” centers on the filmmaker’s sister Nasreen, a Tehran housewife with a traditional husband, two young kids, and one big unrealized dream to sing. It’s an unfulfilled desire she shares with many a fellow “sister” in Iran, all of whom have been banned from expressing themselves through public singing since the establishment of the Islamic Republic in 1979. And it’s a story Amini followed closely with her camera as a not neutral observer for seven years, forever rooting for Nasreen to pursue her passion while simultaneously fearing the consequences if she in fact succeeds.

To read the rest of my Toronto Film Festival review visit IndieWire.

‘Viktor’ Review: Powerful Documentary on Russian Assault in Ukraine Plays with Silence

“Silence is not emptiness. It is not the absence of something. It is the presence of the self, and nothing else,” says the riveting titular protagonist in “Viktor.” “In this silence, I find my peace.” One of the unexpected gems of this year’s fest, “Viktor” is a (Darren Aronofsky-produced) doc from the multi-award-winning director/DP Olivier Sarbil, a globetrotting conflict photojournalist who’s now chosen to set his latest in Ukraine. (Sarbil is also behind the 2019 Frontline doc “On the President’s Orders,” co-directed with James Jones (“Antidote”), a nail-biting investigative look at the former Philippines strongman Rodrigo Duterte’s deadly “war on drugs” through both its mostly addict victims and chillingly remorseless perpetrators.) But what makes the film so extraordinary is that the ongoing invasion is not the focus but merely backdrop for a window into a truly unique POV on the Russian assault.

To read the rest of my Toronto Film Festival review visit IndieWire.

The Feedback: Emily Packer’s Many Forms of Hybridity in ‘Holding Back the Tide’

In Holding Back the Tide, Emily Packer’s “docu-poetic meditation on New York’s oysters,” the humble bivalve becomes much more than the sum of its pearls. Indeed, the experimental filmmaker has inventively chosen to reimagine the once ubiquitous mollusk as a queer icon, and cast the gender-fluid creature alongside a host of other thought-provoking characters, both real and fictional. We’re introduced to folks like Moody “The Mothershucker” Harney (real), who’s bringing oysters back to the average diner through his cart, taking inspiration from Thomas Downing, the 19th-century Black Oyster King of New York. And Pippa Brashear of SCAPE Landscape Architecture, which is harnessing the oyster to protect Staten Island’s Tottenville neighborhood through its Living Breakwaters project. Even former WNBA star Sue Wicks has gotten in on the mollusk action, having retired to her Violet Cove Oyster Co. farm (where she knows each of her bivalves by name). Between scenes with these colorful individuals in their natural environment are staged encounters with Packer’s gender-unbounded collaborators, who pass along the cinematic baton through striking visuals and lyrical words. A woman emerges from a shell on a beach. Diners feasting on oysters discover a new identity. Social constructs like race and binary categorizations fall by the wayside, ultimately swept out to sea by the power of “we.” Or as the director themself optimistically puts it, “We took inspiration from the oyster, which thrives when connected and fails when isolated.” Before its theatrical debut, Documentary recently caught up with Packer to learn all about Holding Back the Tide, from its Hurricane Sandy origins to the intersectional queer production process.

To read my interview visit Documentary magazine.

“With Viktor I Approached Sign Language Just Like Any Other Language”: Olivier Sarbil on His TIFF-premiering doc Viktor

One of the cinematic highlights of this year’s TIFF, Olivier Sarbil’s Ukraine-set (and Darren Aronofsky-produced) Viktor follows the titular protagonist, a Kharkiv resident who lives with his widowed mother and faces a most unusual conundrum. Desperate to defend his country, Viktor — a sword-loving giant of a man whose bible is Miyamoto Musashi’s The Strategy of the Samurai — is nevertheless blocked from joining the war effort because he just so happens to be Deaf. Fortunately, Viktor possesses the dogged determination of a noble warrior and manages to convince the local army to take him on as a volunteer photojournalist since he also happens to be an artist behind the lens, stunning B&W images his specialty. It’s a talent he shares with the film’s director/DP, a veteran conflict photojournalist who likewise has a knack for coloring in B&W; and like his riveting star has a hearing disability, having lost the use of his right ear while covering the civil war in Libya over a decade ago. A few days prior to the doc’s September 8th debut in the Platform section Filmmaker reached out to the Corsica-born, NY-based director to learn all about the intricate crafting of this “audiovisual experience,” a process that included members of the Sound of Metal team along with “Ukrainian-speaking Ukrainians, Russian-speaking Ukrainians, as well as individuals who are Deaf, Hard of Hearing, and Hearing.”

To read my interview visit Filmmaker magazine.

“My Father Started Using the Hidden Camera to Send Messages Expressing What Seemed Like Regrets”: Lina Vdovîi and Radu Ciorniciuc on their TIFF-Premiering Doc Tata

Lina Vdovîi and Radu Ciorniciuc’s TIFF-debuting Tata originated with a cry for help from a migrant worker being physically assaulted by his boss. The Romania-based filmmakers, partners in life and art, are both veteran investigative journalists in their region — Vdovîi an award-winning reporter from the Republic of Moldova who’s been nominated for the European Press Prize, Ciorniciuc a co-founder of the first independent media organization in Romania — so worker exploitation was a familiar beat. More troubling, however, was the familiarity of the man video messaging the duo from Italy: Vdovîi’s dad, a father who she’d long been estranged from, having grown up in a household rife with domestic abuse. Thus begins a fraught, country-hopping journey, one in which the pair go from simply outfitting Vdovîi’s dad with a hidden camera in pursuit of justice to deeply reckoning with a multigenerational past of toxic masculinity. And then somewhere along the way Vdovîi happily becomes pregnant, raising the stakes of truth and reconciliation ever more urgent and profound. Just prior to the September 7th world premiere of Tata (Romanian for father), Filmmaker caught up with the couple, last on the North American festival circuit with their Sundance 2020 Best Cinematography Award-winning Acasă, My Home.

To read my interview visit Filmmaker magazine.

‘TWST — Things We Said Today’ Review: Beatlemania Is Big Again in This Head-Spinning Combo of Craftsmanship and Execution

“TWST — Things We Said Today,” the latest work of cinematic magic from the Romanian director and screenwriter Andrei Ujica, is both elaborately crafted and a heck of a lot of fun. With its title aptly referring to the 1964 Beatles song that McCartney described as a “future nostalgia,” the all-archival documentary leisurely begins with the band’s arrival in NYC for their August ’65 concert at Shea Stadium, and then propels fast and furiously forward, zig-zagging back in time and through multiple spaces.

To read the rest of my Venice Film Festival review visit IndieWire.

Screen Time: Summer/Fall 2024

Lana Wilson’s Look Into My Eyes, an elegantly crafted portrait of seven NYC psychics, contends with the theme of connection — that of the psychics to their clients and to the loved ones those clients desperately want to reach. Everyone is also connected to the director herself, who has made the inspired choice of casting a very New York–type of cinephile psychic, who has likewise pursued a career as an actor, writer, or artist, and similarly views their clairvoyance as a creative calling.

To read the rest of my review visit Documentary magazine.

The Feedback: Amy Nicholson on Embedding in the Community of ‘Happy Campers’

Though veteran director-producer Amy Nicholson has crafted feature-length films (2012’s Zipper: Coney Island’s Last Wild Ride, 2005’s Muskrat Lovely), she first appeared on my radar in 2016 with her memorable short Pickle, which was nominated for an IDA Documentary Award and the Cinema Eye Honors, and went on to be featured in the New York Times’ Op-Docs as well as on the Criterion Channel (alongside Errol Morris’ Gates of Heaven no less). And while Nicholson’s latest work of cinematic nonfiction does include her trademark approach of “chuckling along with” (never at) her sometimes offbeat characters, Happy Campers is actually much more elegiac in tone. This is understandable since this 2023 DOC NYC debut follows the final years of the soon-to-disappear blue-collar community of Inlet View, an RV park off the coast of Virginia that the director herself embedded with (i.e., bought a camper and moved in); and has since been sold to developers looking to cash in on its multimillion-dollar locale. But rather than focus on any battle against The Man (spoiler alert: there is none), Nicholson instead chooses to train her lens squarely on the longtime denizens to be displaced, many of whom have been summering there for generations and have morphed into one big loving family. And thereby capture a view money can’t buy. Documentary recently caught up with Nicholson, fresh off the film’s festival run, to learn all about Happy Campers, which has journeyed from a 2022 DocuClub NY work-in-progress screening all the way to acquisition by Grasshopper Film. It plays theaters in NY and LA this month.

To read my interview visit Documentary magazine.

Wide Awake: dream hampton’s It Was All a Dream,

Filmmaker and cultural critic dream hampton was both shaping and reshaping the world around her decades before she was named in the TIME 100 most influential people list of 2019 (not coincidentally, the year Surviving R. Kelly, the Lifetime docuseries hampton executive produced, received an Emmy nomination – and kickstarted the downfall of the titular sexual predator). In fact, between writing her first opinion piece all the way back in ’91 for The Source, now the world’s longest-running rap periodical, and hanging out with folks like her neighbor Christopher Wallace, aka The Notorious B.I.G., hampton had both a front row seat to the birth of hip hop – and a seat at the table. Which is what makes It Was All a Dream, hampton’s “visual memoir” (EP’d by Biggie’s son C.J. Wallace) much more than a walk down an early 90s memory lane.

To read the rest of my essay visit Global Comment.

“A probing journey into the imperialist mindset”: Intercepted

“A Russian wouldn’t be a Russian if they didn’t steal something!” an anonymous woman wryly exclaims with a hint of pride in Oksana Karpovych’s Berlinale-premiering Intercepted, a probing journey into the imperialist mindset through a most unusual route. The film’s title is a nod to the trove of phone conversations, between Russian soldiers fighting and dying (and pillaging and looting) on the ground in Ukraine and the men’s often supportive (in denial?) families back home, that were intercepted by the Ukrainian Secret Service in 2022.

To read my review visit Global Comment.

“Nature Is a Concept That Exists to Divide Us From the Land”: Josh Fox on His Documentary Theater ‘The Edge of Nature’

Josh Fox’s (Gasland) The Edge of Nature is as description-defyingly complicated as the simple question behind its conception might imply: What is nature? It’s both a subdued, standalone feature-length doc consisting almost entirely of Fox’s narration and a Pennsylvania forest filled with equally alive beings; and a rousing theater piece with Fox reprising/mirroring his role onstage alongside an 11-member ensemble (from International WOW Company, the activist troupe Fox founded nearly three decades ago) who add an experimental, American folk music-filled dimension to the film playing above and behind them. The Edge of Nature is also an exploration of our long-forgotten, inherent integration with nature, intergenerational trauma, the effects of long Covid and even longer colonialism. Indeed, with the fast-moving urgency of a flooded Pennsylvania waterway, Fox and his team reconnect topics ranging from the climate crisis, to the Native American genocide, to the Holocaust, to the pandemic, to global corporate capture and the MAGA movement — all culminating in a passionate call to once and for all return humanity to its original role as environmental caretakers. Post-show Q&As frequently include climate activists and celebrity travelers such as Extinction Rebellion and DJ Spooky. To learn all about this multimedia extravaganza, Documentary caught up with the veteran director-playwright-environmental activist the week after The Edge of Nature’s run at NYC’s LaMaMa Experimental Theatre Club, which critic Bernie Sanders succinctly deemed “great work.”

To read my interview visit Documentary magazine.

“My Hope Is That the Film Itself Is An Impact Campaign”: Alex Hedison on Her Sundance Short Alok

“What lives outside of the frames of this camera and your own eyes?” is the question the poet/comedian/actor/public speaker Alok Vaid-Menon challenges the viewer to ponder at the very start of Alex Hedison’s Sundance-premiering short Alok. Currently on the Sundance Film Festival Short Film Tour, and premiering at IFC Center on June 14th (with both the nonbinary star and Hedison, who also happens to be married to her EP Jodie Foster, in attendance), the doc is based on footage Hedison shot during the performer’s recent international tour and is supplemented with highly stylized interviews with the spiritually enlightened artist and their equally deep-thinking friends (including Dylan Mulvaney, who poignantly self reflects that “replacing fear with fascination” is what has made her life worth living). Indeed, for Alok, eliminating the binary between “us” and “them” is more important than the blurring of he and she. (Alok likewise stresses that the most controversial pronoun they have is “we,” which requires acknowledging our interconnectedness.) Transphobia is just another form of pain, they firmly believe. And by the end, as in the beginning, we’re faced with another potentially revolutionary question: “What would it look like if our weapon was love?” To learn more about Alok and Alok, Filmmaker reached out to Hedison, likewise an internationally-acclaimed artist and actor (and fine art photographer whose work has graced galleries throughout Europe); along with producers Natalie Shirinian and her wife Elizabeth Baudouin (also credited as music supervisor), who together founded indie production company Not All Films.

To read my interview visit Filmmaker magazine.

“A Shapeshifter in Constant Motion”: Sandi DuBowski Spent 21 Years Filming ‘Sabbath Queen’

It’s been 23 years since Sandi DuBowski’s groundbreaking Trembling Before G-d, which uncloaked the lives of Hasidic and Orthodox gays and lesbians, made its Sundance debut. Since that time DuBowski has built a career at the intersection of religion and queerness, social activism and filmmaking, always avoiding the binary choice in favor of the “and.” This insistence is a bond shared by the director-producer and the riveting Israeli-American star of his latest feature Sabbath Queen—a doc over 21 years in the making focused squarely on Rabbi Amichai Lau-Lavie, a descendant of 38 generations of Orthodox rabbis. This member of rabbi royalty is also the creator of drag persona Rebbetzin Hadassah, the founder of Jewish congregation Lab/Shul, and a queer dad to three young kids. And also a Jewish Theological Seminary-trained Conservative rabbi with a loving family entangled in a heartbreaking war back home. In other words, it’s complicated. Which is why Documentary decided to reach out to the veteran activist-filmmaker to learn all about his Tribeca-premiering Sabbath Queen, the film’s unconventional lead, and embracing the messy nonbinary nature of humankind itself.

To read my interview visit Documentary magazine.

Moscow Syndrome: A Bit of A Stranger

"Everything has to burn, so that we live in the future not in the past.” These words come not from the Kremlin but from the elderly mother of filmmaker Svitlana Lishchynska, one of the four female stars (including the director herself) of A Bit of a Stranger, a Berlinale-debuting doc from Ukraine. The film, which fittingly just nabbed the Andriy Matrosov Prize “for its brave examination of identity issues” at Docudays UA, takes us on an intriguing (mind) trip to a Kafkaesque world – specifically the brainwashed headspace of the many Russian-speaking Ukrainians sharing the frontlines with their Russian tormentors.

To read the rest of my review visit Global Comment.

“I Was Shocked To Be the Only Person There with a Camera”: Kelly Anderson and Jay Arthur Sterrenberg on their Tribeca-Debuting Doc about Industry City Development, Emergent City

From Elizabeth Nichols’s Flying Lessons, to Brett Story and Stephen Maing’s Union, to now Kelly Anderson and Jay Arthur Sterrenberg’s Emergent City (likewise EP’d by Stephen Maing), corporate takeovers of NYC and the inherent Gotham vs. Goliath battles they spawn seem to be in the documentary air this year. And while Flying Lessons and Union clearly cast entities like corrupt Croman Real Estate and anti-labor Amazon as the respective baddies, Emergent City is surprisingly not much interested in blaming Jamestown Properties, the conglomerate behind Industry City, the largest privately owned industrial property in New York, for the rapid gentrification of the Sunset Park neighborhood the longtime Brooklyn filmmakers call home. Indeed, the veteran duo prefer to play the fly-on-the-wall long game, over a decade actually, patiently turning their lens every which way, from the aforementioned developers of IC, to the area’s long-established Latino and Chinese communities, to the caught-in-the-middle council members, as each side publicly makes its case for the future of the Brooklyn waterfront. And by extension, the rest of NYC as well. A week before the film’s June 11th Tribeca premiere, Filmmaker reached out to Anderson, who’s been documenting gentrification in the borough since 2012’s My Brooklyn, and Sterrenberg, whose arts collective and production cooperative Meerkat Media is based in Sunset Park, to learn all about Emergent City and being part of the “creative class” Industry City caters to.

To read my interview visit Filmmaker magazine.

“Production Was a Kind of Durational Epic”: Nesa Azimi Reflects on ‘Driver’

“No one enters trucking from charm school,” notes Desiree Wood, star of Nesa Azimi’s long-haul road trip film Driver, which follows the founder of REAL Women in Trucking as she works her minimum wage on (18) wheels job from coast to coast. Indeed, Wood, a forty-something who retired from stripping and now finds herself in a financially precarious gig (that puts her at far greater risk of sexual assault to boot), serves as our no-nonsense guide to a sightseeing-cinematic world hidden in plain sight. As another seasoned trucker attests, it’s a beautiful country and she gets paid to see it—though another veteran later caveats, “Seeing the United States is awesome—but it’s not a vacation.” Which makes sense if, like Desiree, you can’t afford to ever leave your home on the road. The day before the Tribeca premiere of Driver, Documentary caught up with Azimi, a TV producer who abandoned her own secure job to pursue her first independent feature from the cab of a truck.

To read my interview visit Documentary magazine.

“Our Film Highlights the Bravery of Those Willing to Stand Up to Putin Despite the Personal Cost, But It Should Also Act as a Wakeup Call”: James Jones on his Tribeca-Debuting Antidote

A real-life high stakes thriller from Emmy (and BAFTA and Cinema Eye)-winning filmmaker James Jones (Chernobyl: The Lost Tapes, Wanted: The Escape Of Carlos Ghosn), Antidote follows a few brave men who have chosen to put their lives (and thus those of their families) on the line to bring down the Putin regime: a whistleblowing insider to Russia’s poison program; the twice-poisoned, Russian-British activist-journalist (and current political prisoner) Vladimir Kara-Murza; and Bellingcat’s Christo Grozev, last seen in Daniel Roher’s Oscar-winning Navalny exposing the murderers who unsuccessfully poisoned the late activist before confinement to a Siberian prison finished the job. Which, inevitably and predictably, has now resulted in Grozev’s own name being added to the cascading kill list. A week prior to the doc’s Tribeca debut, Filmmaker reached out to the Russian-fluent British director — a onetime resident of Russia as well — to learn all about making this latest feature, including safety precautions taken and why it won’t be coming to any UK theaters soon.

To read my interview visit Filmmaker magazine.

“I Don’t Think We Ever Expected To See a Carbon Copy of China’s Industrial Experience [in Ethiopia], and We Certainly Didn’t”: Max Duncan and Xinyan Yu on Their Tribeca-Debuting Made in Ethiopia

While Max Duncan and Xinyan Yu’s Made in Ethiopia takes place in the titular country, it in many ways echoes last year’s Central African Republic-set Eat Bitter, co-directed by Ningyi Sun and Pascale Appora-Gnekindy, which similarly explored China’s capitalist push throughout the continent; and specifically from the POV of the shared personal toll it’s taking on individuals from very unalike cultures. In this case we’re introduced to an inexhaustibly optimistic woman named Motto, the upbeat Chinese head of a mega industrial park in a rural Ethiopian town. She’s also a true believer that the Chinese dream can be exported to provide a “win-win-win” situation for all. Unfortunately for Motto, a long-distance mom often unable to make it home even for the holidays, everyday Ethiopians — women like the underpaid/overworked factory employee Beti and soon-to-be displaced farmer Workinesh — are finding the promise of globalization to be closer to a curse. Which inevitably brings up the question of whether today’s rising tide of industrialization is only lifting yachts not boats. Just prior to the doc’s Tribeca premiere today, June 6, Filmmaker caught up with the co-directors to learn all about Made in Ethiopia (and of course, making a film in Ethiopia).

To read my interview visit Filmmaker magazine.

“I Was Much More Influenced by Andrea Arnold’s Work or That of the Safdie Brothers”: Boris Lojkine on His Cannes Jury Prize-Winning The Story of Souleymane

The Story of Souleymane follows an undocumented delivery worker as he prepares for an asylum application interview while pedaling through the Paris streets. But belying the innocuous title and unassuming premise, this latest narrative feature from veteran filmmaker Boris Lojkine is actually a fast-paced thriller. And also a logistical feat as Lojkine’s lens races to keep up with his less than honest protagonist (played by dazzling newcomer Abou Sangare, an immigrant from Guinea who, unlike his titular character, is a mechanic by trade) as he literally cycles through a Kafkaesque EU system in which even the most mundane move might unleash a disastrous domino effect. Shortly after the film’s Un Certain Regard premiere, where it nabbed both the Jury Prize and a performance award for the aforementioned dazzling newcomer, Filmmaker reached out to the French director, whose other award-winning projects have taken him from Vietnam to Africa. And now for the first time, back home.

To read my interview visit Filmmaker magazine.

“In Smoke Sauna Sisterhood, the Women are Voicing Out Their Deepest Feelings and Thoughts, But Here in Sauna Day the Focus is On the Unsaid”: Anna Hints and Tushar Prakash on their Cannes-Debuting short Sauna Day

When I last interviewed Estonian filmmaker Anna Hints it was to discuss her Sundance 2023-premiering Smoke Sauna Sisterhood, which would go on to win the World Cinema Documentary Competition Directing Award. (It also nabbed Best Documentary at the 36th European Film Awards on its way to becoming Estonia’s entry for Best International Feature Film at the Oscars.) The film offers quite a unique peek into a UNESCO-designated tradition that for centuries has allowed women like those the director (and contemporary artist and experimental folk musician) respectfully lenses to bond, heal and reveal in a safe space of smoke and sweat. And now Hints’s painstakingly crafted short Sauna Day, co-directed with her “partner in life and art,” Indian filmmaker Tushar Prakash (who also served as an editor on Smoke Sauna Sisterhood), transports us to “the world of Southern Estonian men who go to the dark-intimate space of a smoke sauna after a hard day’s work” (per the mysterious synopsis). But if you’re expecting a sort of “brotherhood” followup, think again. Not only is Sauna Day not a look at a group of guys experiencing emotional release as they free themselves from society’s gender-specific constraints, it’s not even purely nonfiction with two very intense actors woven into the otherwise vérité proceedings. Which admittedly made a certain sense to me since Sauna Day happens to include what could be viewed as some hot and sweaty catharsis of the homoerotic sort. Just after the 13-minute film’s Cannes (Critics’ Week Special Screening) debut, Filmmaker reached out to the unconventional duo to learn all about collaborating on such an unusual and rather provocative project.

To read my interview visit Filmmaker magazine.

Shame and punishment: Stormy Daniels takes the stand

While Israel’s war against Palestine and the Russian invasion of Ukraine still make above-the-fold news here in the US – mostly in the hyperbolic navel-gazing form of whether or not the former will tank Biden’s chances in this year’s election and thus end democracy as we know it, the latter whether the far-right wing of Congress will eventually withhold arms sales to Ukraine and thus tank its existence – it’s not the news. No, far more riveting than body counts a world away seems to be the real-life soap opera unfolding in a Manhattan courtroom, the recent star of which has been not the corrupt businessman and reality tv star on trial, but the savvy businesswoman and porn star at the center of the former president’s twisty election interference scheming. And to read the rest of my not-so-hot take visit Global Comment.

Euro Division: Hot Docs 2024

This year’s 31st edition of Hot Docs (April 25-May 5) was chockfull of drama, both onscreen and off. And while there were no protests (such as at IDFA) nor riot police dispatched (see Thessaloniki) there was quite an upheaval in the run up to the event itself. Which then led to much speculation as to the health and future of North America’s largest nonfiction fest.

To read all about it visit Filmmaker magazine.

“We Share a Common History”: Patricia Bbaale Bandak on Her Hot Docs-Debuting ‘Death of a Saint’

On Christmas Eve of 1989, a pregnant mother of nine named Imelda Bbaale was inexplicably shot and killed in her home. It was a shocking tragedy that forced Imelda’s husband to flee with his young children to a different continent with the murder remaining unsolved. Nearly a quarter century on, Imelda’s daughter Patricia Bbaale Bandak gave birth to her own baby girl (also Imelda) on that very same horrible yet holy date. The coincidence catalyzed Bandak, now an acclaimed Ugandan-Danish filmmaker, to return to her native land to seek answers — less about the circumstances surrounding her mother's death than about who this woman actually was. Unfortunately for this very direct and no-nonsense daughter, her mother was a saint. As are all deceased Ugandans — as speaking ill of the dead is not just unseemly but taboo. Luckily, the 2019 Nordic Talents-winning filmmaker proves extraordinarily attentive in her winkingly-titled Death of a Saint as she attempts to chip away at the cookie-cutter image of a flawless churchgoing Christian, while remaining highly empathetic to her reluctant family, including her still traumatized father who retired to the country of the crime. And while there are no easy answers, the dogged director, through utmost patience and unburied archive, ultimately does discover a crucial thing or two about her mortal mom — and thus, more importantly, about herself. Just prior to the film’s premiere in the International Competition of Hot Docs, Documentary reached out to the multifaceted director and screenwriter, whose work also includes an award-winning short (2019’s Villa Villekulla) and a critically-acclaimed TV series (2022’s Bad Bitch).

To read my interview visit Documentary magazine.

“All Documentary Filmmakers Should Receive or Seek Out Some Kind of Training in Vicarious Trauma”: Alix Blair on Her Hot Docs-Debuting Helen and the Bear

Fourth generation Californian Paul McCloskey — aka “Pete” and “Bear” — is a former US Congressman who represented San Mateo County from 1967 (when he trounced Shirley Temple in the Republican primary) to 1983; a decorated Korean War vet, who torpedoed Pat Robertson’s ’88 campaign by revealing his lies about having served in combat; and an ultimately unsuccessful challenger to President Nixon in ’72, when the maverick Stanford Law grad went on Firing Line to make the case for his anti-Vietnam War platform to an electorate likely more receptive than the program’s highly condescending, pro-Cambodia-bombing host. That particular clip from the McCloskey political archive is one of the very few that the award-winning director-cinematographer Alix Blair (Farmer/Veteran) uses in her riveting Helen and the Bear, a beautifully crafted portrait of the now-nonagenarian’s nearly 40-year marriage starring — and solely from the POV of — his even more fascinating, 26-years-younger wife (aka the director’s Aunt Helen). EP’d by another cinematographer-director, Kirsten Johnson, this perfectly paced vérité endeavor takes us on a journey back in time (through a trove of Helen’s personal photos and journal entries) and to the present day, where the restless protagonist keeps a grueling schedule that would exhaust your average teen. Caring for both a declining Bear and their sprawling farm, which includes a virtual Noah’s Ark of critters, from cats and dogs to birds, horses, pigs and more, Helen seems perpetually in motion, even when simply “relaxing” at a bar having smokes and beers with her fellow queer friends. And yet this unapologetic iconoclast is also in a forever fluctuating state of emotion as she faces a future without her longtime love and best friend — and the very real chance that the elusive freedom that’s always been her heart’s desire might finally be her last act. Just prior to the film’s April 28th debut in the World Showcase section at Hot Docs Filmmaker reached out to the award-winning nonfiction storyteller (and Gotham Doc Feature Lab recipient) to learn all about capturing Helen, the Bear, and the gorgeous complexities of a relationship based on a love of the land.

To read my interview visit Filmmaker magazine.

“The Charismatic Leader Leads People, But What Toward?”: Rory Kennedy and Mark Bailey on Their HBO Docuseries The Synanon Fix

Currently unspooling across four episodes on HBO and continuing to stream on Max is The Synanon Fix, the latest true-crime catnip from the cable channel that’s not a juggernaut of the genre. And while the Sundance-debuting docuseries does involve the usual “suspects” (a cult, a cache of weapons, attempted murder via a venomous snake), it’s also the latest HBO Original from director Rory Kennedy and writer Mark Bailey (Ethel, Downfall: The Case Against Boeing). Which means it’s less interested in lurid details and more focused on actual individuals with an optimistic vision who are drawn into — and failed by — a larger system. In this case the system was Synanon, an organization that was a drug rehab program, a New Age-y community and finally violent cult, founded by Charles “Chuck” Dederich, a former adman and Alcoholics Anonymous acolyte who in the ’60s welcomed “dopefiends” into his Santa Monica storefront. He then proceeded to experiment mentally and emotionally on these fragile recovering addicts with a scarily confrontational talk therapy he branded “The Game.” (Un)fortunately, it often worked, at least for awhile, and long enough to attract fawning media attention, celebrity visits and non-addicted “lifestylers” who just wanted to be part of this ever-expanding, model communal community. And then things got, well, really weird. Soon after the April 2nd premiere of episode one (“Here Come the Dope Fiends”), Filmmaker reached out over email to the veteran director along with her co-EP and writer (and husband), to learn all about The Synanon Fix and the risk of looking to quick fix a long-broken society.

To read my interview visit Filmmaker magazine.

“The Step from Being a Human to Becoming a Monster is Much Shorter than We Think”: Oksana Karpovych on Her ND/NF Doc, Intercepted

While the on-the-ground horrors of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine have been viewed around the world, often in real time — and even formed the basis of this year’s Best Doc Feature Oscar winner, Mstyslav Chernov’s 20 Days in Mariupol — Ukrainian-Canadian filmmaker Oksana Karpovych has chosen to take a much different and rather innovative approach to documenting the war. Intercepted premiered this year at the Berlin International Film Festival before traveling to CPH:DOX and now, tomorrow night, New Directors/New Films, and while it contains no shortage of cinematically-framed images of both devastation and defiant rebuilding, it predominantly captures our attention through an archive of voices — specifically those of Russian soldiers phoning home from the frontlines. The riveting conversations, all intercepted by the Ukrainian Secret Service back in 2022, veer from maddeningly heartless, to downright confused, to painfully clear-eyed and back again, culminating in a sort of audio X-ray of the imperialist psyche itself. Just after the film’s screening in the Urgent Matters section of this year’s CPH:DOX, Filmmaker caught up with the bi-continental, Kyiv-born director, who also worked as a local producer with international reporters covering the spring 2022 assault on her beloved homeland.

To read my interview visit Filmmaker magazine.

On Power and Solidarity : Brett Story and Yance Ford at CPH:DOX 2024

Produced in collaboration with Documentary Campus, this year’s five-day CPH:CONFERENCE featured a wide-ranging series of panels and conversations, diving in to everything from indigenous narratives to climate storytelling to the mind of Alex Gibney. Especially notable were the four mornings, FILM:MAKERS in Dialogue, all moderated by Wendy Mitchell (festival producer of Sundance London as well as a journalist for Screen International). In these sessions audiences were invited to listen in as the directors behind two films chose clips from each other’s work to engage with. One such pairing in particular proved both inspired and inspiring. Brett Story (The Hottest August, The Prison in Twelve Landscapes) took the stage with Yance Ford (Oscar-nominated Strong Island) on March 20th to probe one another about both the process and the politics behind their latest Sundance-premiering features, Union and Power, respectively. While the former takes us inside the fight by a scrappy band of activist-workers to unionize Amazon’s Staten Island warehouse back in 2021, the latter essayistic doc is a “sweeping chronicle of the history and evolution of policing in the U.S.”

To read the rest visit Filmmaker magazine.

“I Operate From a Trans Lens, or Frame, as Though It Is the Only Choice Available”: Jules Rosskam on Desire Lines

For me, watching Jules Rosskam’s Desire Lines, which won this year’s Sundance Special Jury Award in the NEXT competition, was a cinematic breath of fresh air. The experimental feature combines no holds barred interviews with transmen (of all shapes and colors) who are attracted to men, with a fictional storyline involving a real archive (one that includes shamefully buried history, like the story of author/ activist Lou Sullivan, probably the first transgender man to publicly identify as gay). The result is a riveting look back in time, and to the present and possible future, to reveal how, in the words of the director, “gender and sexuality animate each other.” Post-Sundance Filmmaker reached out to Rosskam, who is also a longtime artist and educator, to learn all about reframing queer history through a trans lens. After playing the Thessaloniki International Documentary Festival and BFI Flare, Desire Lines will screen at the upcoming Wicked Queer, Cleveland International and Milwaukee film festivals.

To read my interview visit Filmmaker magazine.

Bodiless Entities, Body Politics and Bodily Functions: CPH:DOX Inter:Active 2024

Expertly curated (under the direction of Londoner Mark Atkin, who also serves as Head of Studies of the CPH:LAB), this year’s edition of the Inter:Active exhibition at CPH:DOX (March 13-24) featured the provocative theme “Who Do You Think You Are: The Body Reexamined.” As the title might suggest, the 17 XR works were wide-ranging and eclectic, both in form (VR yes, but also mixed reality and AI chatbots) and substance (perhaps unsurprising coming from a group of creators with myriad intersectional identities). Indeed, quite a number of the works I experienced on the top floor of the invitingly designed (palace turned contemporary arts space turned festival headquarters) Kunsthal Charlottenborg actually spoke to me — a few literally as well as figuratively.

To read all about it visit Filmmaker magazine.