Whose revolution?: As I Want

FEMINISM: Following a string of sexual assaults, As I Want documents a burgeoning women’s rebellion. Samaher Alqadi’s As I Want is a much-needed corrective to the feel-good stories we like to tell ourselves about those on the frontlines of righteous rebellion. On the second anniversary of the 2011 Egyptian uprising that brought down the government of Hosni Mubarak, another gathering in Cairo’s infamous square ignited a second reckoning. One that forced many of the country’s citizens, including the filmmaker herself, to ask a difficult question: Whose revolution?

To find out read my critique at Modern Times Review.

Youth, migration, and documentary decolonisation: Don Edkins and Tiny Mugwe discuss the Generation Africa project

Could one small step for African doc-makers lead to one giant leap in the decolonisation of nonfiction filmmaking itself? That seems to be the premise behind Generation Africa, "a documentary film project to produce a new narrative on migration through stories made by African filmmakers." Comprised of 25 films (of various running times) from 16 mainly West and East African countries, this cinematic brainchild of STEPS (Social Transformation and Empowerment Projects) in South Africa is currently making its global mark through two extraordinary features. Malian director Ousmane Zoromé Samassékou’s The Last Shelter (screening both CPH:DOX, winning its Dox:Award, and Hot Docs) is a rich glimpse inside the House of Migrants, a way station on the edge of the Sahel desert where hopeful travellers headed to Europe cross paths with those returning home lugging dashed dreams. Aïcha Macky’s (Visions du Réel and CPH:DOX-selected) Zinder – its title taken from Niger’s second-largest city from which the filmmaker herself hails – is an eye-opening dive into the lives of a group of lawless bodybuilders (raised to embrace a toxic masculinity perhaps best exemplified by naming themselves the Hitler gang). To find out more about Generation Africa, from origin story to global distribution strategy, Modern Times Review reached out to STEPS. And via email from several time zones away, the project’s executive producer Don Edkins and producer Tiny Mungwe graciously gave us the scoop on this righteous Pan-African cause.

To learn all about it read my interview at Modern Times Review.

“How Do You Build Trust with People Who… Do Not Remember They Have Ever Met You?”: Louise Detlefsen on Her Hot Docs Debuting It is Not Over Yet

A feel-good film about end-of-life care for those whose minds have already departed might strike some as a radical notion. But no more so than the philosophy behind the Danish retirement home at the heart of Louise Detlefsen’s uplifting It is Not Over Yet, world-premiering at this year’s Hot Docs (April 29-May 9). With this latest project Detlefsen — whose last doc Fat Front delved into another unconventional subject, Scandinavia’s feminist body-positive movement — embeds, almost imperceptibly, in a female-founded, women-run facility. And one that covertly gives the finger to Big Pharma and corporate nursing homes by going back to basics and deploying “compassion as treatment.” Indeed, far from depressing, the residents of this joyful haven spend their final days drinking fine wine and nibbling chocolate cake, visiting the chickens out back in the coop — even in the middle of the night if they so choose (though a helper will probably ask if they’d might like to put on a coat). Rather than dictate, to impose “acceptable behavior” or (our collective version of) reality on these folks with dementia, the caregivers simply listen intently and adjust “reality” to the residents’ version of it. It’s a process so gloriously humane – and sane – as to expose the true madness, that of drug-led geriatric capitalism. Filmmaker reached out to Detlefsen the week before the doc’s digital debut to learn more about this Florence Nightingale-inspired oasis and how she received permission to film from its tenants that can’t consent.

To read my interview visit Filmmaker magazine.

“To Cut Through the Stigma of Wuhan Being This ‘Virus City’": Yung Chang on His Hot Docs-Premiering Wuhan Wuhan

I last interviewed Yung Chang (Up the Yangtze, China Heavyweight) before the TIFF premiere of 2019’s This Is Not a Movie, which follows the uncompromising humanitarian war correspondent Robert Fisk (who died just this past October) on his eternal mission to give the lie to bothsidesism. And while Chang’s latest doc Wuhan Wuhan – an on-the-ground account of life during lockdown from the perspective of several brave and traumatized frontline workers – might seem a breaking news departure, it’s actually very much in line with the multiple award-winning filmmaker’s character-first approach. Whether tackling issues of capitalist exploitation, controversial righteous journalism, or the birth of a global pandemic, it’s the people Chang frames in painterly detail that always take centerstage. Filmmaker was able to catch up with the Canadian director prior to a Toronto debut once again — the world premiere of Wuhan Wuhan at this year’s virtual Hot Docs (April 29-May 9).

To read my interview visit Filmmaker magazine.

“Decolonization Has to Work in Both Directions; Both the Colonized and Colonizer Have to be Decolonized”: Camilla Nielsson on President

Currently competing for both the Dox:Award and the Politiken Danish:Dox Award at this year’s hybrid CPH:DOX (April 21-May 5), Camilla Nielsson’s President is a riveting followup to 2014’s Democrats, which centered on two political rivals in a Sisyphean quest to transform Zimbabwe from a corrupt dictatorship into a fledgling democracy. It’s also a film Nielsson never intended to make. But that was before a ban, a military coup, and the rise of two new political rivals led the undaunted director to pick up her camera once again.


 To read my interview with the fearless doc-maker visit Filmmaker magazine.

CPH:DOX 2021: A Man And A Camera

Guido Hendrikx’s work is similar in spirit to master provocateur Kazuo Hara’s cinema of confrontation – a style that places the director’s role as “accomplice and collaborator” front and center. Or perhaps it’s a highbrow version of the might-just-get-punched-in-the-face antics of the Jackass franchise. Either way, with his latest A Man and a Camera, a brisk 64-minute film world-premiering in the Dox:Award competition at this year’s CPH:DOX, the Dutchman behind the equally spontaneous and unnerving Stranger in Paradise (CPH:DOX 2017) takes the cinéma vérité conceit to its logical absurdist extreme. A man (who we never see, as we witness all from his POV) roams a small village with a video camera, recording everything from plants and animals to people – often ones whose doorbells he’s randomly rung. But rather than engage with the dwellers who answer in confusion the director just keeps on shooting while remaining unbudgingly mute – acting as the very embodiment of the “neutral” objective lens (and of course simultaneously upending the pretense of fly on the wall passivity). So what could possibly go wrong?

To find out read my review at Hammer to Nail.

Doc Star of the Month: Larry Krasner, 'Philly D.A.'

To say that longtime civil rights attorney Larry Krasner was a long shot to become the very head of the agency that had been his most despised nemesis is an understatement. As one skeptical progressive puts it in in Ted Passon, Yoni Brook and Nicole Salazar’s riveting, eight-episode docuseries, Philly D.A. (Prods.: Nicole Salazar, Josh Penn, Michael Gottwald; Exec. Prod.: Dawn Porter), he had about as much of a chance as David Duke taking the reins of the ACLU. And yet not only did Krasner win his election campaign back in 2017, he did so in a landslide. And that’s when the real drama began.

To get the scoop direct from the unlikely prosecutor (and April Doc Star) himself visit Documentary magazine.