Among the films making it to this year's Sundance Film Festival are (T)ERROR from directors Lyric Cabral and David Felix Sutcliffe.
This week the Sundance Film Festival continued its announcements of films that made the cut for 2015. Adam Benzine of Realscreen wrote on the docs premiering at the festival, as did Filmmaker Magazine and Daniel Fienberg of HitFix Magazine, along with Casey Cipriani of Indiewire. Christopher Cambpell of Nonfics.com had a guide to Sundance documentary titles, while Realscreen’s Kevin Ritchie took a look at the festival’s short docs. Alexandra Zeevalkink of DocGeeks also had a round-up of Sundance doc selections.
A slew of “Best of 2014” lists came out this week. Paste Magazine’s staff named the best 12 docs of 2014, while Susan Gerhard listed the top 10 docs of the year at Fandor. At Indiewire, Anthony Kaufman named the best 12 docs of the 2014. Gregg Kilday of The Hollywood Reporter had a list of 15 docs from the year that must be seen.
Indiewire’s Paula Bernstein made a useful meta-post rounding up their coverage of documentary filmmaking advice from the past year.
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THE SALT OF THE EARTH was among the films named to the Oscar shortlist for docs this week.
This week the shortlist for the 2015 Oscar doc race was released. At Realscreen, Adam Benzine had a rundown of the films on the list, as did Germain Lussier of Slash Film and Christopher Campbell of Nonfics.com. At Decider, Olivia Armstrong had a list of the shortlisted docs available for online screening. Gregg Kilday of The Hollywood Reporter wondered if Laura Poitras’ film CITIZENFOUR could become the first doc to earn consideration for the best picture award. Brooks Barnes and Michael Cieply took a look at the shortlisted films at the New York Times.
The Sundance Film Festival announced its U.S. and world competition docs this week. Writing for Realscreen, Adam Benzine had coverage of the announcement.
At The Hollywood Reporter, Rebecca Ford reported on the winners of the International Documentary Association (IDA) Awards, as did Manori Ravindran of Realscreen.
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STRAY DOG from director Debra Granik was among the films nominated for a Spirit Award this week.
This week the Film Independent Spirit Awards announced their nominations for best documentary, with nods going to STRAY DOG and CITIZENFOUR, among other films. Kevin Ritchie of Realscreen reported on the development, as did Christopher Campbell of Nonfics.com.
Also at Realscreen, Manori Ravindran reported on films up for awards at the International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam (IDFA). Ravindran also had two reports on the IDFA forum, you can read part one here, and part two here. Writing for the POV blog, Kel O’Neill had his own report of the IDFA DocLab interactive conference.
Writing for Ion Cinema, Jordan M. Smith had a report on docs in production that are also Sundance hopefuls. Smith also had a roundup of doc awards nominees and winners.
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CAIRO DRIVE from director Sherief Elkatsha took home a prize at this year's DOC NYC festival.
This week DOC NYC finished out it’s fifth year. Writing for Indiewire, Ben Travers reported that CAIRO DRIVE, HOMME LESS and MIRROR IMAGE took home DOC NYC’s jury awards this year, while THE HAND THAT FEEDS won the festival’s audience award. Manori Ravindran of Realscreen also had coverage of the awards. Also at Indiewire, Anthony Kaufman took note of DOC NYC’s emergence as a major documentary showcase. At the POV blog, Tom Roston covered Sundance Institute doc head Tabitha Jackson’s DOC NYC keynote address calling for increased focus on artistic practice in documentary, while Scott Macaulay covered the speech for Filmmaker Magazine. Paula Bernstein interviewed Jackson following her address. Writing for Nonfics.com, Daniel Walber shared six discoveries from the festival. VOD platform VHX shared a slideshow presented at the festival. Finally, Indiewire compiled all of their coverage on one DOC NYC news page, containing a host of links to recaps of panels and other events (definitely worth a browse.)
At Realscreen, Kevin Ritchie reported on this year’s winners of the BRITDOC Impact Awards. The POV blog also recapped the winners. In a piece for Indiewire, director Joshua Oppenheimer shared his thoughts on the role of the documentary filmmaker and the idea of impact.
At the What (Not) to Doc blog, Basil Tsiokos provided an overview of the International Documentary FIlm Festival Amsterdam (IDFA) in two parts: part one and part two. Writing for Realscreen, Manori Ravindran covered an IDFA panel on the issues faced by female directors and other women in the doc world. Ravindran also spoke with festival head Ally Derks about the event. At the POV blog, Kel O’Neill spoke with IDFA DocLab head Casper Sonnen. Also, The D-Word documentary forum has a dedicated thread to the festival (registration and professional status required). And Inoo Kang spoke with Eline Jongsma about her immersive documentary project EMPIRE.
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CITIZENFOUR from director Laura Poitras earned several nominations for the Cinema Eye Honors awards.
This week the Cinema Eye Honors announced the nominees for its awards. Anne Thompson and Ryan Lattanzio had coverage at Indiewire’s Thompson on Hollywood blog, as did Manori Ravindran at Realscreen. Indiewire’s Shipra Gupta also had coverage, as did Pete Bland of the Columbia Daily Tribune.
The DOC NYC festival kicked off this week. At Eye For Film, Anne-Katrin interviewed DOC NYC programmer Basil Tsiokos in two parts: part one here and part two here. At the New York Times Stephen Holden provided an overview of the festival, while Kevin Ritchie profiled it for Realscreen. At the POV blog, Tom Roston named his must-see films of the festival, while Lauren Wissot did the same at Filmmaker Magazine.
This week the doc community lost Kartemquin Films founding partner Jerry Blumenthal. At the Kartemquin website Tim Horsburgh shared an encomium for Blumenthal, while Manori Ravindran wrote on his passing for Realscreen.
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