'The Edge of Democracy' Tracks Brazil's Slide to Fascism

Though The Edge of Democracy is Brazilian filmmaker Petra Costa's final piece in a personal trilogy, it's the first to nab her an Oscar nomination for Best Documentary Feature. A year after the doc was acquired by Netflix at the 2019 Sundance Film Festival, the cinematic exploration appears to have struck a timely chord far beyond the borders of the divided nation in which it is set.

Costa's epic film is a sweeping mélange made up of the director's expert cinéma vérité camerawork and vast trove of home movies, plus archival footage and media coverage spanning decades of her country's history — from the military dictatorship that Costa's wealthy maternal grandfather wholeheartedly supported; to the workers' rebellion that brought the iconic future president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva to prominence (and forced Costa's own left-wing parents underground for a decade); to the more recent corruption scandals that fatefully led to the impeachment of Brazil's first female president, Lula protégé Dilma Rouseff; the jailing of Lula himself, and the rise of strongman Jair Bolsonaro to the highest office. With remarkably intimate access to all the players, and guided by the director’s own philosophical voiceover, we’re given a front-row seat to what Rouseff (a former militant and victim of dictatorship torture) calls in a powerful farewell speech her greatest fear: the death of democracy.

Documentary took the opportunity to chat with Costa soon after the Academy Award nominations were announced.

To read my interview visit Documentary magazine.

“I Believe That Stories Need to Try to Communicate Beyond Their Intended Audiences”: Sam Soko on His Sundance Doc Softie

Politics is a dirty business for sure. But too often we in America take for granted what younger democracies would view as unthinkable. That a strongman and his opponent might not broker a shared power arrangement behind closed doors. That police would not blithely shoot people who protest electoral outcomes in the streets. That one uncorrupt citizen determined to make change without paying constituents directly for their votes might be a viable candidate. These are the hopes and dreams embodied by Boniface “Softie” Mwangi, the grassroots activist turned politician star of Nairobi-based director Sam Soko’s intimate, Sundance (World Cinema Documentary Competition) debuting portrait Softie.

Prior to the doc’s January 25th premiere Filmmaker caught up with Soko to learn more about following this idealistic Kenyan’s run for office in a regional election – a rollercoaster ride filled with both inspiring optimism and very real death threats.

To read my interview visit Filmmaker magazine.

Impact Partners Executive Director Jenny Raskin on Financing, Fellowships, and Following the Filmmakers’ Lead

From 2018’s feature doc Oscar winner Icarus, to 2019’s Independent Spirit Award for Best Documentary recipient Won’t You Be My Neighbor?, to the Sundance Grand Jury Prize nabbing Of Fathers and Sons and Dina (in 2018 and 2017, respectively), Impact Partners has been behind some of the most critically acclaimed nonfiction work of recent years.

The company’s winning streak, however, actually goes back a decade, all the way to 2010’s Academy Award for Documentary Feature recipient The Cove. And Impact Partners itself goes back even further. Founded in 2007 by Dan Cogan and Geralyn Dreyfous with a mission to bring about social change through cinema (and without sacrificing artistry), Impact Partners recently raised veteran doc producer and director Jenny Raskin to the role of Executive Director.

And since Raskin was in Park City with the company’s slate of five Sundance-selected features — Kim Snyder’s Us Kids, Matt Wolf’s Spaceship Earth, Jim Stern’s Giving Voice, Hubert Sauper’s Epicentro, and most controversially, Amy Ziering and Kirby Dick’s On the Record — Filmmaker decided to pick Raskin’s brain about everything from the current documentary landscape to equity investing to supporting filmmakers who find themselves in the media’s crosshairs.

To read my interview visit Filmmaker magazine.

“Since My Background was from Journalism I Had to Learn Film Language, and Relearn What I Thought About Storytelling”: Benjamin Ree on His Sundance Doc The Painter and the Thief

Spectacularly cinematic and employing a risk-taking structure that keeps the viewer as off-balance as the film’s emotionally fragile protagonists, The Painter and the Thief is the second feature-length doc from Norwegian director Benjamin Ree. (Ree’s prior film Magnus, a coming-of-age tale about the chess prodigy Magnus Carlsen, premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival in 2016.)

The film follows the stranger-than-fiction story of Barbora Kysilkova and Karl-Bertil Nordland, the former a Czech naturalist painter living in Oslo, the latter a Norwegian ex-con struggling with drug addiction. Their worlds collide when Nordland and an accomplice steal two of Kysilkova’s artworks from a local gallery, resulting in the men’s fast apprehension but not the recovery of the paintings.

Instead of leaving things to the authorities, however, the curious artist approaches Nordland at his court hearing. While he gives up no information as to the whereabouts of the missing pictures, he does agree to her request to paint his portrait. And sit for her he does. Over many years, many portraits, and many twists and turns in their separate but ultimately intertwining lives.

To find out more about Ree’s unconventional approach to a highly unusual story Filmmaker caught up with the director a few days before the film’s Sundance (World Documentary Competition) debut on January 23rd.

To read my interview visit Filmmaker magazine.

Doc Star of the Month: Yusuf Abdurahman, 'Accept the Call'

For many years Yusuf Abdurahman, the charismatic protagonist of Eunice Lau's Accept the Call, seemed to be living the American Dream. A refugee who fled civil war in the '90s, Abdurahman went from a life filled with famine and death in Somalia to one of hope and possibility in Minnesota. One of the founders of what is now the largest Somali community in the United States, Abdurahman married, had kids, and today works as a translator and facilitator at a Head Start office. Though divorced, he continues to lovingly devote himself to his seven children - including his eldest, Zacharia, the reason Lau picked up her camera.

At the age of 19, Zacharia was arrested in an FBI counterterrorism sting, which split both the son from his family (Zach is currently serving a 10-year sentence) and the father from his community. A practicing Sufi, Abdurahman became convinced that the metastasizing Wahhabi influence in the neighborhood mosques was at fault for his son’s radicalization. (And Zach was indeed radicalized. Though the FBI's heavy-handed tactics could be considered entrapment in many people's eyes — including those of Abdurahman’s activist daughter Ikraan, who continues to advocate for her brother's release — the fact that Zach had made a prior, ultimately failed, attempt to leave the country to join ISIS in Syria has never been in dispute.) In other words, Abdurahman believed that his own community needed to take a hard look at itself. Which, needless to say, is a radical POV that could easily be construed as victim-blaming in this current age of aggressive anti-immigrant policies and dubious law enforcement surveillance of non-white folks.

Documentary spoke with this deep-thinking, courageously clear-eyed "Doc Star of the Month" a week before the film’s January 20th premiere on PBS' Independent Lens.

To read my interview visit Documentary magazine.

“Human History is Created by People with the Courage To Do the Right Thing”: Eunice Lau on Accept the Call

Based in NYC but born in Singapore, filmmaker Eunice Lau is intimately familiar with the immigrant experience. And yet, her own history seems a far cry from that of the family portrayed in her most recent (IFP supported) doc Accept the Call. One of my top picks for the Human Rights Watch Film Festival last summer, the nuanced character study centers around Yusuf Abdurahman, a refugee from Somalia who fled that country’s civil war in the ’90s. Abdurahman now lives in Minnesota, where he married (and subsequently divorced), had seven kids who he’s wholeheartedly devoted to, and currently serves as a translator and facilitator at a Head Start program. On the surface this refugee’s life would seem to resemble that of many men in his Somali community — the largest in the US — if not for one personal (and political) tragedy. His eldest son Zach is currently serving a 10-year prison term, the result of having been arrested (and many, including Abdurahman’s activist daughter Ikraan, would say entrapped) in an FBI counterterrorism sting at the age of 19.

Filmmaker took the opportunity to discuss the thought-provoking doc with Lau prior to her film’s January 20th airdate on PBS’s Independent Lens.

To read my interview visit Filmmaker magazine.

“The Act of Listening Requires a Sort Of Surrender to the Narrative of the Other”: Ofra Bloch on Afterward

Born in Jerusalem but based in NYC, Ofra Bloch is a longtime psychoanalyst, an expert in trauma, who’s been making short documentaries for the past decade. Which makes her the perfect guide on the unconventional cinematic journey that is her feature-length debut Afterward. The film follows the director on her own healing excursion, from Germany to Israel and Palestine, in an effort to understand the mindset of those brought up with the tag of victim or victimizer — or in her case both. In Germany Bloch, whose great uncle lost his wife and children in the Holocaust, meets directly, one on one, with the children of SS officers and even a former neo-Nazi. While in Israel and the Occupied territories the setup is the same. Bloch engages in intimate conversations with everyday Palestinian men and women who were raised to hate her as she was raised to loathe the Germans (and fear those who now sit right across from her and in front of her lens). It’s both a revelatory social experiment and a profile in courageous vulnerability.

Filmmaker was fortunate to catch up with Bloch a few days before the film’s January 10th theatrical release.

To read my interview visit Filmmaker magazine.

The Whitewashing of Mayor Pete

Let me begin by stating the obvious. For the majority of his life, US presidential candidate Pete Buttigieg passed as a straight white male. This is how others viewed him, and thus treated him accordingly. So the notion that the South Bend, Indiana politician can possibly “relate” to, say, the African-American experience – or that of a drag queen for that matter – is ridiculous at best, insulting at worst. People are defined by the society in which they live, by how others see them, with rewards and punishments doled out accordingly. And Mayor Pete did not challenge – and indeed profited from – that fact.

To read all about why I can't come out for (former) Mayor Pete visit Global Comment.