IDFA 2024: Winners and Winners

This year’s IDFA (November 14-24) starred Polish filmmaker Maciej J. Drygas’s Trains, a cinematic ride through 20th century industrial revolution-propelled European history via a trove of archival found footage; it unanimously nabbed Best Film in the International Competition. And while the doc is undoubtedly a tour de force of editing and sound design (unsurprisingly, it also took Best Editing in the International Competition), not to mention hypnotically reminiscent of the work of Bill Morrison, it was actually the other B&W archival-heavy film in that section that I just couldn’t shake.

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“The Film Is Not About AI, Not About Werner Herzog, and Never Aimed To Embrace AI Technology”: Piotr Winiewicz on His IDFA Opening Night Doc About a Hero

Piotr Winiewicz’s About a Hero is as mindbogglingly complex as its eye-catching logline is simple: “A murder mystery – unwittingly starring Werner Herzog.” More precisely, the Polish filmmaker’s doc is actually an adaptation of a script in which the aforementioned cinematic maverick travels to the fictional Getunkirchenburg to investigate the strange death of a local factory worker named Dorem Clery. Even stranger, that screenplay was written by “Kaspar” (as in Kaspar Hauser), an AI trained on the Herzog oeuvre. With a look inspired by the work of German photographer Thomas Demand, the film, shot mostly across northern Germany, also features “real” sit-down interviews with scientists, philosophers and artists; along with AI-generated visuals and a Herzog voiceover (artificially created by machine learning models naturally). There’s even a deep fake Herzog, albeit one that registers as more creepy than real. (Though perhaps that makes it extra Herzogian.) So to learn all about this meditation on “originality, authenticity, immortality and soul in the age of AI,” Filmmaker reached out to the Copenhagen-based director (and artist and production designer) just after the film’s debut as the opening night selection at this year’s IDFA (November 14-24).

To read my interview visit Filmmaker magazine.

“I Grow as I Make a Film”: Nanfu Wang on Her HBO Documentary, Night Is Not Eternal

It’s a bit surprising to think that when I last interviewed Nanfu Wang it was for her six-part HBO docuseries Mind Over Murder, which revisited an infamous case of justice gone haywire in a small town in Nebraska back in the 1980s. Which, in terms of subject matter, is a far cry from this year’s followup (also for HBO). Night Is Not Eternal is a deep character study, a format the acclaimed director has long embraced, that charts the rise of Rosa Maria Paya, daughter of Oswaldo Paya, a five-time Nobel Peace Prize-nominated activist assassinated by the Cuban government in 2012. Over seven years, as Paya takes up her late father’s mantle, eventually becoming a respected freedom fighter in her own right, Wang follows the often fraught journey while being keenly aware of its many similarities to her own experiences in China and as an exile in America. Only to find, quite unexpectedly, that the differences between herself and her heroine might need to likewise take centerstage. Filmmaker caught up with the globetrotting documentarian, also a busy mother of two young sons, a few days before the film’s Nov 19th release.

To read my interview visit Filmmaker magazine.

“Doc Filmmaking Can Be a Very Weird Process of Interpersonal Negotiations”: Debra Granik on Conbody vs Everybody

Though Debra Granik is no stranger to Sundance — 2004’s Down to the Bone, 2018’s Leave No Trace and 2010’s Oscar-nominated (in four categories) Winter’s Bone all premiered in Park City — I was a bit surprised to see the indie vet’s name attached to a project at the fest’s 40th edition earlier this year. Unlike the director’s prior critically-acclaimed films, Conbody vs Everybody is neither narrative nor a traditional feature doc, but a documentary in five chapters (six at Sundance, of which only parts four and five were screened) that took Granik and her longtime collaborators, EP Anne Rosellini and EP/editor Victoria Stewart, close to a decade to make. Over eight years the team followed Coss Marte, a man on a Herculean mission to “de-stigmatize the formerly incarcerated community, ease their integration back into society, and change the systemic inequity of the criminal justice system,” according to the website for ConBody, the business Marte founded based on his self-invented, prison-style fitness method; and also the ConBody instructors, all formerly incarcerated individuals like Marte determined to defy both statistics and preconceived notions. Needless to say, many days bring an uphill battle, especially since Marte, a native son of New York’s Lower East Side, is doggedly waging it on his now privileged-white-gentrified (on steroids) home turf. To learn all about this unexpected, longitudinal cinematic study Filmmaker caught up with Granik soon after the project’s Sundance (Episodic program) debut, and again prior to its DOC NYC premiere on November 17th. (Parts one and two of the newly revamped version will screen in the Metropolis Competition.)

To read my interview visit Filmmaker magazine.

“Shifting Focus from Political Agendas To the Real Faces of Conflict”: Sareen Hairabedian on Her DOC NYC-Premiering My Sweet Land

Admittedly, Artsakh (Nagorno-Karabakh) was not in my geographic vocabulary before this region in the Caucasus Mountains took centerstage at last year’s IDFA, when first-time filmmaker Shoghakat Vardanyan nabbed top prize for 1489. The heartbreaking doc details the Armenian director’s real-time, smartphone-shot search for her brother, a young student and musician who’d been conscripted into the most recent war over their disputed homeland. And now we have Sareen Hairabedian’s cinematic, Gotham-supported My Sweet Land screening DOC NYC (where Emily Mkrtichian’s There Was, There Was Not, which follows four women in Artsakh, is also playing). Starring a bright 11-year old citizen of Artsakh named Vrej, it’s a coming-of-age story spanning years, always with the multigenerational war as backdrop; and it’s made all the more poignant by the Armenian-Jordanian filmmaker’s insistence on witnessing the up-and-down journey through her young protagonist’s all-to-aware eyes. Just prior to the film’s DOC NYC (U.S. Competition) premiere on Saturday, November 16, Filmmaker reached out to the US-based Hairabedian, whose directorial debut, HBO’s We Are Not Done Yet, received a Best Documentary Short nomination at the IDA Awards back in 2018.

To read my interview visit Filmmaker magazine.

18 Recommended Titles at 2024’s DOC NYC

Wondering what to see at DOC NYC, "America's largest documentary film festival" (November 13-December 1)? Start with these titles at Filmmaker magazine.

“It Was a Process of Experience Meets Intuition Meets Dancing with the Unknown”: Jacob Perlmutter and Manon Ouimet on Their DOC NYC-Debuting Two Strangers Trying Not To Kill Each Other

Jacob Perlmutter and Manon Ouimet’s Two Strangers Trying Not To Kill Each Other is as breathtakingly understated as its title is arresting. The doc, which picked up a Special Mention: DOX:AWARD when it world-premiered at CPH:DOX last March, stars the celebrated and prolific photographer Joel Meyerowitz (a two-time Guggenheim Fellow and NEA and NEH awards recipient with 50-plus books and over 350 museum and gallery exhibitions to his credit) and his less famous partner of 30 years, the British artist-musician-novelist Maggie Barrett. It’s also an up close and personal (literally — the filmmaker couple lived with their protagonists during production) encounter with the highs and lows of a long-term relationship, staged in a manner more reminiscent of a theater piece. For now that Joel, in his mid-eighties, is forced to become caregiver to his 75-year old wife after she breaks her femur, the pithy phrase “in sickness and in health” is put to the test. What unspools over the next 100 minutes is a painfully raw and refreshingly honest reckoning with both a bumpy past and an uncertain future — and in Maggie’s case, thwarted ambition as a result of decades of living in the shadow of a creative giant. Until, that is, a talented duo enter with a camera and smartly shine a spotlight on the unsung heroine at the heart of this forever love affair. Just prior to the film’s DOC NYC (Metropolis Competition) premiere Filmmaker reached out to the British co-directing couple, both acclaimed photographers in their own right, to learn all about the bold and auspicious nonfiction debut.

To read my interview visit Filmmaker magazine.