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.