Teenage Wasteland

“Someone has to keep track of where everything is buried. It’s not just poison in the earth, it’s poison of the spirit as well,” notes Fred Isseks, an unconventional high school English teacher in Middletown, New York, a city 70 miles north of Manhattan that few New Yorkers have ever heard of (as confirmed by decades-old footage of a younger Isseks conducting man-on-the-street interviews). He delivers this missive while rifling through boxes of videotapes in his basement right at the start of Jesse Moss and Amanda McBaine’s (Girls State, Boys State) September 4th Netflix-premiering Teenage Wasteland, a film I’ve been eagerly awaiting the release of since Sundance 2025, where it debuted with the more mundane but perhaps less confusing title Middletown.

To read the rest and subscribe for free visit Beyond Nonfiction on Substack.

The Balkan Cowboy

Premiering at this year’s Sarajevo Film Festival (August 14-21), The Balkan Cowboy is a magical doc feature debut from acclaimed visual artist Dragana Jurišić, an “exile not an expatriate” long based in Ireland. Returning to the site of her homeland that vanished “like Atlantis in the realm of imaginary places and people,” as she narrates in VO, Jurišić captures the fracturing of Yugoslavia through the story of Harry Jackson, a cult director of Westerns, family friend and childhood hero (despite her iconoclastic idol repeatedly noting that she had “such an ugly name for such a pretty girl.” Though she goes on to explain that her distinctly Serbian moniker was bestowed by her dad just to piss off his Croatian nationalist father, and that rather than change it she decided it was wiser to change the country).

To read the rest and subscribe for free visit Beyond Nonfiction on Substack.

Yugo Goes to America

I’ve now taken my Sisyphean battle against streamer slop to Substack as well, posting pieces on an inspiration-strikes timeline! For my inaugural exclusive I’ve decided to review one of the most bonkers docs I've seen so far this year. The road-tripping Yugo Goes to America, in which a trio of buddies from Belgrade make their way across the US in a Soviet-era Yugo (widely deemed the worst car ever built), next plays the Sarajevo Film Festival. Note to US fests and distributors: Please import. (Note to readers: Please read for free and subscribe.)

Revolutionaries Never Die — Mohanad Yaqubi [Locarno ’26 Review]

Mohanad Yaqubi’s Revolutionaries Never Die is the Palestinian filmmaker and archivist’s cinematic “answer” to the pioneering Lebanese journalist and filmmaker Jocelyne Saab’s invitation to collaborate, a request sent via email in 2018. Unfortunately, Yaqubi was unable to respond before Saab passed away several months later, leaving behind a storied career spanning documentary and fiction (and docu-fiction) filmmaking, as well as photography and video art.

To read the rest visit In Review Online.

The Golden Spurtle

Much like the dish at the heart of the World Porridge Making Championships, Constantine Costi’s The Golden Spurtle is more than the sum of its simple ingredients.

Read my capsule review of the delicious Wes Anderson-esque doc in the Summer 2026 issue of Documentary magazine.

The Welcome Table

The latest creative endeavor in award-winning filmmaker Josh Fox’s (Gasland, How to Let Go of the World, The Edge of Nature) decades-long mission to spur climate action, The Welcome Table follows the connected tale of environmental destruction across six continents (and one very long art installation), centering the stories of those who call the frontlines home, from Paradise, CA to the paradise lost of the Peruvian Amazon. In turn, these climate refugees are brought together at a thousand-foot table along a New Orleans levee (at least those not denied Visas) to share their experiences, take inspiration from one another, and of course, enjoy some musical interludes as Fox is a fervent believer in “protests that sing.” (Among the acclaimed New Orleans musicians featured is the jazz artist John Boutté of “Treme Song” fame, who serves as both EP and primary offscreen narrator alongside the director-writer-environmental activist who likewise performs.)

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

“Do You Love Me” Reassembles Lebanon’s Cultural Memory

Lana Daher’s debut feature, Do You Love Me (2026), is a kaleidoscopic exploration of Lebanon’s cultural memory. The Beirut-based multidisciplinary artist drew from 70 years of found footage and archival material to assemble this visceral 76-minute portrait of Lebanese history, which premiered at Venice Days and is now playing at Metrograph in New York. Daher stitches together clips from her country’s independent cinema, newsreels, and home movies, causing the past and the present to collide and recontextualize each other anew.

To read my interview with the exceptional director visit Filmmaker magazine.

‘Do You Love Me’ Review: Lana Daher’s All-Archival Cinematic Love Letter to Lebanon

“In Lebanon, contemporary history is not taught in schools,” reads the opening text of Lana Daher’s Do You Love Me. The documentary is a stunning visual and sonic excursion through Lebanon’s history comprised of material obtained from over 20,000 sources — a feat made all the more impressive by the fact that the country has no national archive. As images start to fly by too fast to read their accompanying (and not always subtitled) Arabic and French text, we’re cautioned that the narrative doesn’t follow a strict chronology as “disorientation is part of the journey...welcome to Lebanon.” Indeed.

To read the rest visit Slant Magazine.

“Refreshingly self-aware”: Boy George & Culture Club review

Admittedly, despite having grown up with the chart-topping pop band Culture Club a ubiquitous presence on the airwaves of my youth, I’m not the target nostalgia audience for Alison Ellwood’s Boy George & Culture Club, a film whose subject is apparent to anyone familiar with such prefabricated 80s tunes as “Karma Chameleon” and “Miss Me Blind.” Indeed, for likeminded new wave aficionados, the band’s tired mainstream sound always undercut any rebellious bonafides its theatrically-clad titular singer may have had. (Music snob queer kids much preferred the gender-bending vocals of Bronski Beat’s Jimmy Somerville and Yaz’s Alison Moyet.) Which is why it felt so refreshingly self-aware to hear George himself candidly stress from the start, “We were never cool.” (This after noting that the aforementioned 1983 hit “Karma Chameleon” was supposedly the “nail in our cool coffin.”)

To read the rest of my review visit Global Comment.

Shock Value: The Filmmakers Behind ‘The Haunting of Pennhurst’ Talk Horror, Disability, and Care

A “horror film about care” is how multi-disciplinary artist Nathan R. Stenberg has described his initial concept for the Tribeca-premiering The Haunting of Pennhurst, a simultaneously disturbing and empowering doc he’s crafted along with fellow interdisciplinary artist Katarina Poljak and filmmaker Mike Attie (2014’s In Country). The film is an archival and vérité look at the Pennhurst Asylum, a tourist destination in Spring City, Pennsylvania, famous for its visceral “haunted attractions” and likewise infamous for having once been home to the Pennhurst State School and Hospital, a facility that systematically tortured and experimented on its disabled residents for close to 80 years. But what makes the multimillion-dollar enterprise truly stand out is that the majority of the “haunters” staging those spooky attractions are themselves disabled, including museum director and volunteer trainer/makeup artist Autumn Werner, who serves as the main guide in the doc. For this group of creatives, what was once a house of horrors has become a space to retake the narrative and to educate others so that the dark, ableist policies of the past are never instituted again. (Whether that message stays with visitors as they exit the gift shop or browse the Etsy store is less clear.) Soon after The Haunting of Pennhurst’s debut in the Escape From Tribeca section, Documentary reached out to the diverse trio of directors to learn all about their unique collaboration, as well as filming in a place of preservation financed by fear.

To read my interview visit Documentary magazine.

How to Feed a Dictator

FOOD / The elderly personal chefs of five strongmen expose the uneasy bond between cuisine, loyalty, and violence. Andrew Neel’s Tribeca and Sheffield Doc/Fest-debuting How to Feed a Dictator, shot across seven countries, teases out the stories of the now elderly personal chefs to Saddam Hussein, Idi Amin, Pol Pot, Augusto Pinochet, and Kim Jong-il while they recreate the strongmen’s favourite dishes, the final creations framed as if in a culinary magazine. These contemporary images are then juxtaposed with archival footage, along with sit-downs with journalists, academics, and even several victims of the regimes who link food itself to extractive power (as crucial as guns, according to political science prof Bruce Beuno de Mesquita). This allows a sensational premise to ultimately become something much more satisfying, a thorny exploration of the line between banal complicity and circumstantial desperation.

To read the rest visit Modern Times Review.

Kids Like Me — Cynthia Lowen [Tribeca ’26 Review]

Designed to please any movie lover with a heart, Cynthia Lowen and Jon Cohrs’ Kids Like Me follows Oliver Odwazny-Beebe, a passionate indie filmmaker with a murder mystery obsession who is bent on bringing his latest vision to the screen, even if it means corralling everyone from friends, neighbors, and family members, to Tony Shalhoub and the local police. Indeed, the smart and scrappy director is convinced that “people are finally gonna recognize my artistic talents through the delightfully macabre world of murder.” Never mind that Odwazny-Beebe is only 12 years old, and with a rare genetic condition that requires him to be tethered to numerous life-saving (and quality of life-preserving) medical gadgets around the clock. His creative savant imagination seems to be fully operating at warp speed.

To read the rest visit In Review Online.

The Haunting of Pennhurst — Nathan R. Stenberg, Mike Attie, and Katarina Poljak [Tribeca ’26 Review]

Nathan R. Stenberg, Mike Attie, and Katarina Poljak’s The Haunting of Pennhurst is an archival and verité look at the transformation of the notorious Pennhurst State School and Hospital from a real-life house of horrors that warehoused the disabled for nearly 80 years to what could be considered a form of problematic dark tourism. But what sets today’s Pennhurst Asylum — which consists of “haunted attractions” as well as history and ghost tours — apart from the usual capitalistic ventures designed to profit from tragedy is that its marquis fright nights are sustained and run by a group of performers with a wide variety of disabilities. And they’re all as firmly dedicated to making visitors question why the unfamiliar often feels so threatening as they are to scaring them. In fact, Stenberg, a multidisciplinary artist and disability scholar who assumed he’d be documenting an “entertainment attraction commodifying atrocity,” has said that he instead discovered something far more nuanced — folks finding “community on grounds once designed for their death.”

To read the rest visit In Review Online.

Cannes Film Festival 2026: Lila Pinell’s ‘Shana’ and Pierre le Gall’s ‘Flesh and Fuel’

Lila Pinell’s narrative feature debut, Shana, playing in the Directors’ Fortnight at this year’s Cannes, revolves around a twentysomething with no filter, endless chutzpah, and nonstop boyfriend problems. From the film’s disorienting opening—in which Shana (Eva Huault), who appears to be the only white face in a diverse group of friends, storms out of a game involving werewolves—we’re thrown into the day-to-day life of a one-woman, slow-motion train wreck, as Shana approaches every delicate situation with hurricane force.

To read the rest visit Slant Magazine.

A Conversation With Nicole Bazuin And Andrea Werhun (MODERN WHORE)

Modern Whore, which world-premiered at TIFF, is the latest sex-work-destigmatizing project in an unusual multiyear collaboration between director Nicole Bazuin and the hybrid doc’s co-writer and star Andrea Werhun (who also served as a consultant on EP Sean Baker’s Anora). It’s based on Werhun’s book Modern Whore: A Memoir, which features Bazuin’s photos, and comes on the heels of Bazuin’s 2020 shorts Modern Whore and Last Night at the Strip Club, which likewise center on Werhun. In other words, this prolific pair have long been on a fierce artistic mission to bring the oldest and perhaps most misunderstood profession in the world out of the closet, and simultaneously slay some tired tropes in an inventively stylish and often cheeky manner along the way. A few days after the film’s May 1st VOD release (via Quiver Distribution), Hammer to Nail caught up with the Canadian duo to learn all about the productive partnership, along with what they’ve dubbed the “Modern Whore Cinematic Universe.”

To read my interview visit Hammer to Nail.

Humboldt USA

NATURE / Across fractured American landscapes, Alexander von Humboldt’s forgotten legacy links endangered species, damaged infrastructure and the technological urge to measure nature into disappearance. Alexander von Humboldt is likely the most ubiquitous name that very few have ever heard of. Indeed, the «father of ecology,» who came up with nature’s theory of interconnectedness, is both everywhere – with more species and places named after him than anyone else – and yet nowhere in the public imagination. It’s an oversight, director-writer (and producer, DP, and editor) G. Anthony Svatek hopes to correct with his subtly head-spinning, Visions du Réel – and MoMI’s First Look-debuting Humboldt USA.

To read the rest visit Modern Times Review.

Visions du Réel 2026: ‘Jaripeo,’ ‘Ghost Town,’ and ‘Humboldt USA’

Like CPH:DOX, Visions du Réel has long been an island in the sea of content slop that gluts far too many festivals these days. Indeed, for the big U.S. streamers seeking to nab the usual nonfiction comfort food, this renowned fest in Nyon, Switzerland, is probably not the event for their acquisitions execs (though there is a VdR-Industry component). But if you’re a docuphile like me in the market for artistic discoveries that challenge and surprise, then the 2026 lineup has much to recommend—especially with guest of honor Kelly Reichardt and special guest Sergei Loznitsa both getting fêted with retrospectives.

To read the rest visit Slant Magazine.

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.