After a week away, we return with a rather sparse memo, with most of the action happening on the festival circuit. The 21st annual Full Frame Documentary Film Festival ran over the weekend, and Tom Roston spoke with the festival’s artistic director Sadie Tillery about why the festival has succeeded at being a filmmaker’s festival as well as an audience favorite over at Doc Soup. Outlining the festival’s program, Basil Tsiokos noted that Hugo Berkeley’s THE JAZZ AMBASSADORS, Anne de Mare’s CAPTURING THE FLAG, Katie Galloway and Dawn Valadez’s THE PUSHOUTS, and Heather Courtney and Anayansi Prado’s THE UNAFRAID would all be making their world premiere, along with a handful of others. RaMell Ross’ HALE COUNTY THIS MORNING, THIS EVENING won the Reva and David Logan Grand Jury Award for Best Documentary, while Bing Liu’s MINDING THE GAP nabbed the Audience Award. The full list of award winners can be found here. The week prior saw the 65th annual Belgrade Documentary and Short Film Festival conclude, with Andrijana Stojković’s WONGAR winning Best Feature Documentary and THE OTHER SIDE OF EVERYTHING taking home the awards for Best Editing and Sound Design, reports Vladan Petkovic at Cineuropa. The Parisian Cinéma du Réel also finished up last week, with a wealth of film reviews and interviews from the festival coming in from the fine folks at DesistFilm.
Overseas a pair of major doc pitching events took place. Filmmaker Magazine’s Pamela Cohn wrote an extensive outline of this year’s CPH:FORUM, “which was exceptionally well-produced and organized by Daniella Eversby, Kartrine Kiilgaard, and their team in a beautiful, comfortable, convivial setting with good coffee, tea and glorious pastries because: Denmark.” Meanwhile at Realscreen, Daniele Alcinii covered this year’s MIPDoc International Pitch in Cannes, where “director Mina Keshavarz’s feature-length documentary SOORA: BREAKING THE SILENCE impressed the judges…with its story following the efforts of four women battling to outlaw domestic violence in Iran,” winning the pitch prize and receiving editorial coverage in MIPTV’s Daily News, on the MIPDoc website and MIPBlog; entrance to MIPDoc 2019; and one free project registration in the MIPDoc Screening Library in 2019.
Here at Stranger Than Fiction, you may have noticed that we’ve announced our 2018 Spring Season which is set to kick off on April 17th with Sara Driver’s BOOM FOR REAL: THE TEENAGE YEARS OF JEAN-MICHEL BASQUIAT and run through June 5th at IFC Center. Season tickets are now on sale here.
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It doesn’t seem possible, yet SXSW has swiftly come and gone, with the festival’s award winners having been announced on Tuesday of last week. Hao Wu’s PEOPLE’S REPUBLIC OF DESIRE won the Grand Jury prize for in the documentary feature competition, while Charlie Tyrell’s MY DEAD DAD’S PORNO TAPES took home the Jury Award in Documentary Shorts, and TRANSMILITARY by Gabriel Silverman and Fiona Dawson took home the Audience Award. Meanwhile in Denmark, CPH:DOX is just getting started, and unsurprisingly, Basil Tsiokos whipped up a rundown of all the new docs making their debut at the festival over at What (not) To Doc, including those in its international competition for the Dox:Award and its regional competition for the Nordic:Dox Award.
Looking forward, Hot Docs has revealed another wave of titles in its Special Presentations program, bringing the total up to 32 films “showcasing high-profile premieres, award winners, and works by masters or featuring star subjects.” The festival, which runs April 26 through May 6, also revealed the 20 projects set to compete at this year’s Hot Docs Forum. Those that made that cut include new work by Brett Story, Nanfu Wang, Liz Marshall, and Lyric R. Cabral, reports Pat Mullen of POV Magazine. Additionally, the San Francisco International Film Festival unveiled its generous documentary program for this year’s edition, featuring lots of imports from Sundance, TIFF and SXSW.
Tomorrow at IFC Center, our 2018 Winter Season rolls on with Ian Olds and Garrett Scott’s 2005 Falluja doc classic, OCCUPATION: DREAMLAND. Co-director Ian Olds will be in attendance for a live Q&A following the screening. Tickets are still available here.
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Sensible filmgoers might hope that with ICARUS and HEAVEN IS A TRAFFIC JAM ON THE 405 winning big last week at the Oscars (read Brian Newman‘s piece on breaking the “rules” to win an Oscar for Short Doc at Sub-Genre Media) and awards season coming to its logical conclusion, we could all take a collective sigh of relief and maybe a ever so short cinematic reprieve, but instead film festivals across the land have either just wrapped, are currently in motion, or are just gearing up. Just last week, Columbia, Missouri’s True/False Film Festival took over the modest college town for its 15th edition, garnering universal praise from Daniel Kasman at MUBI’s Notebook, Ben Godar at Nonfics, and Vikram Murthi of RogerEbert.com (my own coverage of the festival will soon be found over at Senses of Cinema). Looking further back, Dan Sullivan covered this year’s edition of the Berlinale for Film Comment, singling out Corneliu Porumboiu’s INFINITE FOOTBALL and Kristina Konrad’s epic ONE OR TWO QUESTIONS, as Eric Hynes dissected a pair of my favorites from this year’s Sundance in Bing Liu’s MINDING THE GAP and Sandi Tan’s SHIRKERS. As I write, four fests around the globe are taking place, each of which Basil Tsiokos wrote previews for at What (not) To Doc: Miami Film Festival, SXSW, Ambulante, and Tempo Documentary Festival.
Meanwhile, both the Tribeca Film Festival and the Full Frame Documentary Film Festivals announced their full 2018 lineups. Tribeca is holding the world premieres of 12 new nonfiction films in its documentary competition, in addition to its closing night film, THE FOURTH ESTATE by Liz Garbus, about how the challenges of journalism in the age of Trump, while Full Frame has 14 world premieres on its docket, including David Schalliol’s THE AREA, Katie Galloway and Dawn Valadez’s THE PUSHOUTS, and Anne de Mare’s CAPTURING THE FLAG.
Tonight night, Stranger Than Fiction continues at IFC Center with a rare opportunity to preview the first two episodes of one of the most anticipated documentary series of the year – Maclain and Chapman Way’s WILD WILD COUNTRY, featuring a live Q&A with the directors and Executive Producer Mark Duplass. Tickets are still available here.
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