Little People problems: The Tallest Dwarf review

The title of Julie Forrest Wyman’s The Tallest Dwarf is a reference to the filmmaker and performer herself, who grew up questioning why her body didn’t share the proportions of those of her classmates. To which her loving parents, who gamely appear throughout the thought-provoking film, always reassured, “It doesn’t matter what you look like.” (Which is different from, “You have a big butt and it is fantastic!” as Wyman confesses to her older sister, whose own body never attracted outsized scrutiny.) But of course looks matter in every society, particularly today, a time when both Big Tech and Big Pharma are hard-selling, and lucratively profiting from, solutions to problems we never even knew we had.

To read the rest of my review visit Global Comment.

CPH:DOX 2026: Winners And Winners

This year’s edition of CPH:DOX (March 11–22) was as usual jam-packed with exciting discoveries. And unlike the Oscars, which aired the first weekend of the fest, many of the eventual doc award winners, competing in six categories, were well-deserving of those accolades. (Sorry Denmark, but I’ll choose The Perfect Neighbor or The Alabama Solution over Mr. Nobody Against Putin any day.) And three sections in particular showcased runaway stunners: the flagship DOX:AWARD, the emerging filmmakers-focused NEXT:WAVE, and the prestigious (International Federation of Film Critics-awarded) FIPRESCI.

To read the rest visit Hammer to Nail.

SXSW 2026: Unsigned Gems

When it came to the nonfiction slate, SXSW 2026 was less packed with artistry than with “content.” The golden age of documentary has now firmly given way to the not-so-golden age of streaming slop. Such a turn at SXSW shouldn’t come as a surprise since the massive event has long taken its home state’s “everything is bigger in Texas” slogan as a mission statement. Over the past decade, the cross-media festival (which bills itself as bringing music, film, tech, and comedy together) has increasingly turned toward building partnerships with an untold number of even more massive corporations that care less about “keeping Austin weird” than keeping safe, comfort-food content king. Yet despite all this, as I noted in last year’s dispatch, the Austin event remains a worthwhile festival for small discoveries, especially American-made ones.

To read the rest visit Documentary magazine.

Fungal Cinema: Otilia Portillo Padua on Profiling Two Indigenous Mycologists in her SXSW And CPH:DOX Doc ‘Daughters of the Forest’

Otilia Portillo Padua’s Daughters of the Forest is crafted with artistry that simply demands the big screen. Indeed, with a kaleidoscope of eye-popping colors, and an otherworldly sound design that feels both foreign and familiar, the film is truly mesmerizing — and more than lives up to its “immersive sci-fi documentary” hype. Set in Mexico’s magical forests (for now, as the logging industry is fast-decimating what’s left of the territory), Daughters of the Forest is guided by a pair of young female mycologists, Lis and Juli, both hailing from Indigenous communities where generational knowledge, from language to the secrets of fungi, is fast-vanishing as well. “Behind every mushroom there is a story,” as one scientist puts it, and the Mexican director is determined to follow not just the two humans on a mission to restore culture to science, but engage with the cinematically stunning fungi as well (some of which seem birthed from the Alice in Wonderland underground).

To read my interview visit Documentary magazine.

New ways of seeing: neurodiverse documentaries to watch

“Rubik’s Cube meets Rothko” is how Mark Cousins describes the style of Wilhelmina Barns-Graham (1912-2004), “one of the foremost abstract British artists” (per Wikipedia), though certainly not a household name. It’s an oversight the unconventional documentarian is determined to correct with 2024’s A Sudden Glimpse to Deeper Things. (And enthusiastically so. A rhapsodic monologue about one particular painting ends with the cinephile behind the 15-hour The Story of Film: An Odyssey proclaiming, “David Lynch would love this.”)

To read the rest visit Global Comment.

Barbara Forever, The Lake, Closure and Other Sundance Docs Still Seeking Distribution

For me, the fun of Sundance—and all festivals—is seeing not the films that everyone is buzzing about pre-fest (I can wait for the streaming release), but discovering the quieter gems that US distributors would do well to take a chance on. While this year’s nonfiction crop was weaker overall than 2025’s exceptional slate—which saw such cinematic revelations as Life After, The Perfect Neighbor and Seeds all competing in the US Documentary Competition—the docs that rose to the top, most notably the handful below, have continued to stay with me long after the final credits rolled in Park City.

To read the rest visit Filmmaker magazine.

Another Angle On: NATCHEZ

Natchez, Mississippi has a wealth of history, and a history of wealth – perhaps the only two facts its residents can agree on. Throughout much of the 19th century Natchez was one of the richest areas in the US thanks to the cotton boom – and the enslaved labor that kept its capitalism wheel churning. Today the small town is wholly dependent on tourism, especially its century-old tradition of “Pilgrimage” – when twice a year an onslaught of overwhelmingly white visitors descend upon the antique-packed antebellum mansions to gaze at pretty objects; and to hear the houses’s history, delivered by docents in full Scarlett O’Hara drag. It’s a romanticized account that includes benevolent white plantation owners like “Dr. Duncan” who “was good to his people.” At least according to one hoop-skirted guide featured in Suzannah Herbert’s captivating cinematic chronicle Natchez, a patient and unobtrusively-lensed look at a complicated community through the myriad characters that call the place home.

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