Winner of the 2023 British Independent Film Award for Best Debut Feature Documentary THE TASTE OF MANGO, the debut feature from filmmaker and video artist Chloe Abrahams (Trust Me), is an enveloping, hypnotic, urgently personal meditation on family, memory, identity, violence, and love. At its center are three extraordinary women: thedirector’s mother,Rozana; her grandmother,Jean; and the director herself. Their stories, by turns difficult and jubilant, testify to the entangled and ever-changing nature of inheritance, and the ways in which we both hurt and protect the ones we love. Director Chloe Abrahams joins us for a insightful conversation on her intimate and beautifully rendered ode to friendship, beauty, memories lost, generational relationships and how to hold on to the things that matter most.
About the filmmaker – Chloe Abrahams is a Sri Lankan British artist and filmmaker. Using methods drawn from both documentary and fiction practices, she investigates the therapeutic potential of the confessional, culminating in visceral work spanning moving image, sound, writing and performance. Chloe’s debut non-fiction film, The Taste of Mango, premiered at True/False 2023 where it was named the #1 film by Sight & Sound. The film went on to win the Audience Award for Best Documentary at the BFI London Film Festival, followed by the BIFA for Best Debut Director – Feature Documentary. In 2020 Chloe was awarded the John Brabourne Award and has three times been shortlisted for the Bloomberg New Contemporaries (2018, 2019, 2022). She had her first solo exhibition at OVADA (2014), and has since been selected for exhibitions worldwide, including The London Open at the Whitechapel Gallery 2022. Previously, Chloe worked as the Marketing Coordinator for documentary distributor Dogwoof, responsible for the execution of all UK theatrical campaigns, and recently completed a Master’s in Moving Image at the Royal College of Art where she was nominated for the HIGH Prize for Excellence.
“The sum effect is at once densely textured and appealingly direct, its experimental aspects only serving to communicate more vividly the bonds tested but also strengthened by great adversity.” – Dennis Harvey, Variety
“Abrahams’s film-making language has a supple informality and immediacy, revealing what you might call the unofficial drama of family life, the guilt and pain which she has brought out of the shadows.” – Peter Bradshaw, Guardian
“The Taste of Mango is most notable for making a compelling argument for nonfiction cinema as therapy.” – Clara Cuccaro, In Review Online
“Abrahams’ film reaffirms the strength of generational bonds and champions the desire of the new generation to question and provoke and demand answers.” – Tom Davidson, London Evening Standard
“Patriarchal violence and rape culture have impacted this family deeply, but it’s a genuine honour to be privy to this filmic act of reconciliation and hope.” – Isy Santini, The List
YOU & I is a tender slice of life romance about former flames, Sara (Summer Shelton) and Joseph (Clayne Crawford), who are reunited for a weekend. An accident of circumstance leaves the two of them alone at his house after the small celebration, and what unfolds feels like a stage play as the former couple descends into the maelstrom of their past relationship. Through long takes and emotional dialogues, Shelton carries a film that leaves the audience questioning the past, present, and future of Sara and Joseph’s love, while pondering the parallels of their own current or former relationships, They intensely explore the “what ifs?” that might have been with “the one that got away.” Director, writer, co-producer, editor and co-lead actor Summer Shelton joins us for a conversation on why she decided to make this particular script her directorial debut, how working with her co-lead actor and co-producer Clayne Crawford helped her navigate the challenges of being behind and in front of the camera, and why the reaction to You & I has been so gratifying.
Polish Film Institute General Director’s Award (US & Canada in Progress, 2021)
American Film Festival (International Premiere, 2023 Official Selection; Spectrum Competition)
Nashville Film Festival (2023 Official Selection; Grand Jury Nominee, Best Tennessee Feature)
New Orleans Film Festival (2023 Official Selection; Narrative Competition)
River Run International Film Festival (2024 Official Selection; Carolina Stories)
About the filmmaker – In 2023, her directorial debut YOU & I which she also wrote, produced and co-starred opposite veteran actor Clayne Crawford screened as an Official Selection at the Nashville Film Festival, New Orleans Film Festival, River Run International Film Festival and debuted internationally at the American Film Festival. The film will be released in 2024 by Slated Distribution.Feature works she produced included MAINE (Orion Classics, 2018 Tribeca Film Festival) and KEEP THE CHANGE (KINO LORBER, 2017 Tribeca Film Festival Best Narrative Feature; FIPRESCI Critics’ Prize at the 2017 Karlovy Vary International Film Festival). She was Executive Producer of PEOPLE PLACES THINGS which premiered in the U.S. Dramatic Competition at the 2015 Sundance Film Festival, produced ICARUS (short) which premiered at the 2015 New Directors/New Films Festival and produced LITTLE ACCIDENTS, which had its World Premiere at the 2014 Sundance Film Festival. She worked alongside critically acclaimed director Ramin Bahrani as Associate Producer of GOODBYE SOLO (2008), an official selection of the Venice Film Festival; Co-Producer of PLASTIC BAG (2009), opening night short film of the Corto Cortissimo at the Venice Film Festival and Associate Producer of AT ANY PRICE (2012), which premiered in main competition at the Venice Film Festival and most recently as Co-Producer of short documentary IF DREAMS WERE LIGHTING, RURAL HEALTH CRISIS (2023), which premiered at the Telluride Film Festival. She was the recipient of the inaugural Bingham Ray Creative Producing Fellowship, awarded by the Sundance Institute (2012), a Rotterdam Producing Fellowship (2013), Film Independent Sloan Producing Fellowship (2014) and Cannes Producing Fellowship (2021) awarded by the Gotham. Prior to her filmmaking career, Shelton was a former high school English teacher, she remains connected to the classroom as a University Lecturer, Adjunct Professor and provides educational consulting services to arts non-profits.
“You & I is passionate without being overtly explicit, yet the reverberating echoes of those instinctual feelings are intense and even morose in their own way.” – Don Shanahan, Film Obsessive
“I so loved Summer Shelton’s “You and I.” Her feature directorial debut was a gem with so many different facets and edges, and complexities of beauty. It’s a sexy film, with intense emotions.” – Rebecca Martin, Editor of Cinema Femme magazine
Sandi DuBowski’s epic documentary SABBATH QUEEN — shot over the span of 21 years—follows Amichai Lau-Lavie, an Israeli descended from an unbroken line of 38 rabbis stretching back a thousand years. Yet as the film opens, Lau-Lavie is newly arrived in New York in the late 1990s, a young gay man declaring “Artists are the new rabbis” and appearing around the city in drag as Rebbetzin Hadassah Gross, the widow of six Hasidic rabbis (all from the same extended family). As the years pass, Lau-Lavie embraces a range of creative spiritual endeavors, including Storahtelling and Lab/Shul—until he shocks everyone with his decision to become a rabbi himself, studying in the Conservative tradition of Judaism. Sabbath Queen is witness to Lau-Lavie’s unfailing courage and grace, as he grapples with key questions of who we are and who we will be. Stimulating and moving, DuBowski’s film ends with Lau-Lavie’s words on Israel and Palestine post-October 7th as he evokes the challenge of our lifetime: “How do we reimagine our sacred traditions to achieve peace?” SABBATH QUEEN director Sandi Dubawski joins us to talk about Amichai and his lifelong quest to creatively and radically reinvent religion and ritual, challenge patriarchy and supremacy, champion interfaith love, and stand up for peace, ceasefire, and an end to the Occupation in Israel/Palestine. The film interrogates what Jewish survival means in a difficult rapidly changing 21st century.
About the filmmaker – Sandi DuBowski, Director/Producer of Sabbath Queen, Director/Producer of Trembling Before G-d, Producer of A Jihad for Love, and Co-Producer of Budrus. His award-winning work has screened at Sundance, Berlin, Tribeca and Toronto, theatrically released in 150 cities, and broadcast on ZDF/Arte, BBC, Channel 4, PBS. In 2020, he was invited to become a member of the Documentary Branch of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. DuBowski spearheaded a groundbreaking impact campaign with the award-winning Trembling Before G-d, personally conducting 850 live events, for over 250,000 people, which changed the lives of countless individuals, their families, religious leaders, and communities around the world. Feature stories on the project appeared in The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, NPR, The Globe and Mail, and BBC News. From 2009-2016, DuBowski worked with over 125 of the world’s best social justice documentaries as the Outreach Director of Doc Society’s Good Pitch. He is Co-Founder of The Creative Resistance, a collective of media makers who create award-winning political ads and design. In the mid-1990’s he began his media and activism work at Planned Parenthood Federation of America focused on the Christian right and the anti-abortion movement. Three generations of DuBowski’s family made chocolate syrup in Deep Coastal Brooklyn.
“The director delicately contextualizes his subject’s desired legacy by threading Lau-Lavie’s harrowing familial history into the narrative.” – Robyn Bahr, The Hollywood Reporter
“That’s all well and good, but something special happens in the film’s last quarter that makes it required viewing not just for queer people, not just for Jews, but for everyone.” – Dan Bayer, Next Best Picture
“DuBowski affords his subject’s spiritual journey the epic quality it deserves where triumph is simply waking up at peace with where you are, recognizing all the places emotionally – and in Lau-Lavie’s case, geographically – you have to go to get there.” – Stephen Saito, Moveable Fest
“This fast-paced, well-shot doc does place its finger on the quickening pulse of an ever-wider gap between liberalizing Western social values and the Orthodox sphere that believes they are antithetical to Judaism.” – Dennis HarveyVariety
“Though some may not agree with all of his opinions or the way he practices his religion, this documentary makes it impossible to deny his startlingly authentic spirituality.” – Abe Friedtanzer, Awards Buzz
OBSESSED WITH LIGHT pulls back the curtain on Loïe Fuller (1862-1928), a wildly original performer who pioneered modern dance though combining fabric and movement to develop a completely new kind of spectacle. Creating a dialogue between the past and the present, filmmakers Sabine Krayenbühl and Zeva Oelbaum delve into the astonishing influence Fuller’s work has had on contemporary culture including artists like Taylor Swift, Bill T. Jones, Shakira, William Kentridge, and the Red Hot Chili Peppers, among many others. “A rich tapestry of discoveries by a passionately devoted mover and transformer of light and shape,” (Eye On Dance) OBSESSED WITH LIGHT is a close study of a woman who became famous on her own terms – unapologetic about her body type, open about her sexuality, and protective of her signature, often mimicked, style. OBSESSED WITH LIGHT is a meditation on light and the enduring obsession to create as well as about how Marie Louise Fuller became famous on her own terms– unapologetic about her body type and open about her life partner, a woman. It is about a visionary artist who disrupted the prevailing notions of dance and the imagined limits of the human body. Co-directors Sabine Krayenbuhle and Zeva Oelbaum join us for a conversation on how her friendship impacted contemporaries like inventor Thomas Edison, dancer Isadora Duncan and sculptor Auguste Rodin and why Loïe Fuller’s story is crucial to understanding both early cinema and theatre, as well as why contemporary artists like William Kentridge, singer / songwriter Taylor Swift, fashion designers Alexander McQueen and Dior continue to draw inspiration from her visionary work.
About the filmmaker – Sabine Krayenbühl is an award-winning filmmaker with over twenty theatrical documentaries and narrative features to her credit. She co-directed and edited the NEH-supported documentary Letters from Baghdad, which showed in the US in over 70 venues and was broadcast on PBS, ARTE and the BBC. Her editing work includes Oscar and Independent Spirit Award nominated My Architect for which she received an American Cinema Editors (ACE) Eddie Award nomination and the Emmy-winning The Hunt for Planet B. Additional credits include Mad Hot Ballroom, one of the top twenty highest grossing documentaries, The Bridge produced by IFC, Picasso and Braque go to the Movies, produced by Martin Scorsese, Virgin Tales, Ahead of Time, Jennifer Fox’s Emmy nominated My Reincarnation, Salinger on which she consulted and HBO’s The Price of Everything. Krayenbühl has a BFA from NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts and is a member of NYWIFT and the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.
About the filmmaker – Zeva Oelbaum is an award winning filmmaker. She co-directed and produced the NEH- supported documentary Letters from Baghdad, which showed theatrically in over 125 theaters in the U.S. and U.K. and premiered on PBS in 2018. The film is voiced and exec. produced by Tilda Swinton. Oelbaum also produced Ahead of Time, a feature length documentary about journalist Ruth Gruber, which premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival before garnering six Best Documentary awards. She comes to film from a career in still photography and her work has been published in periodicals such as The New York Times Magazine and collected in public collections such as the Bibliothèque nationale de France, The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston and The Brooklyn Museum. Two monographs of Oelbaum’s photographs have been published by Rizzoli International Publishers. She is a magna cum laude graduate of Brandeis University with a degree in anthropology and a member of the Producers Guild.
“With someone as fascinating as Fuller, a more lyrical approach might draw all the pieces together more fruitfully. Still, I liked “Obsessed With Light” for that older footage.” – Alissa Wilkinson, New York Times
“As is often the case with films like this, it is both baffling that it took this long to tell Fuller’s story and comforting that finally great women pioneers like her are getting the attention they deserve.” – Louis Roberts, Loud and Clear Reviews
“A captivating, well-edited and illuminating albeit often hagiographic documentary biopic on Loïe Fuller. The breathtaking footage of Fuller dancing ultimately speaks louder than words.” – Avi Offer. NYC Movie Guru
In this fascinating documentary of self discovery Director Alison Tavel set out to reconstruct the story behind inventor and her father, Don Tavel. Tavel died suddenly when, Alison, his newborn daughter was just ten weeks old. Growing up surrounded by mythical stories of her “genius” father, Alison’s life is consequently absent from any meaningful connection to him. Not until she is in her mid-twenties and on tour with rock musician Grace Potter is the seed planted to discover what he invented. RESYNATORis a narrative documentary that begins when Alison rescues Don’s synthesizer prototype from her grandmother’s attic. What starts off as a curious resurrection project of her dad’s Resynator soon launches into an insatiable, globe-trotting quest to untangle the web of myths and unlock the deep secrets surrounding his life and invention. Aided by estranged family, lost friends, fellow inventors and celebrated musicians(Grace Potter, Peter Gabriel, Fred Armisen, Gotye, Jon Anderson, Mark Ronson and more), Alison soon comes to discover Don’s brilliance herself. But in unpacking his life, she also discovers unsettling truths about her father that don’t align with her long-held perception of him, as the picture of a vulnerable man emerges to replace the superhero version she had imagined all her life. Not only can she finally relate to him on a human level, but their parallel Resynator journeys reveal an indomitable bond between them. Director Alison Tavel joins us for a conversation about gripping and heartfelt multi-layered journey into an unknown world of musicians, artist, engineers, friends and family who were touched by her father and how they have now inspired her.
“It’s bursting with heart, and genuinely moving in its improbable journey to close the distance between the dead and the living.” – Kimberley Jones, Austin Chronicle
“Tavel puts the emotion first, making it a powerful experience. She builds and builds to a singular conclusion, and it’s impressive to see something so intricate from a debut feature.” – Alan French, Sunshine State Cineplex
“While a rock doc on the surface, Resynator showcases all the conflicting nuances of reality with higher clarity than previous documentaries.” – Michael Talbot-Haynes, Film Threat
“Much like the device itself, “Resynator” hardly feels revolutionary among its contemporaries, but there’s enough charm and heart beneath it to make it stand out from a crowded field.” – Clint Worthington, RogerEbert.com
“At its core, this is a daughter’s love letter to someone whom the world knew as a Renaissance man ahead of his time, but whom she wished she’d always known as just ‘dad’.” – Paul Emmanuel Enicola, The Movie Buff
“Rather amazing and completely fascinating…it’s a fabulous film.” – Screen Anarchy
“Fascinating…an honest and moving experience.” – Loud and Clear Reviews
Director Pirie Martin’s mind-bending PSYCHOSIS combines surrealist Noir, Horror, and ‘Arthouse Action’ to create a truly unique audio-visual experience inspired by the limitation and manipulation of human perception. It follows Cliff Van Aarle (played by breakout talent Derryn Amoroso); a criminal fixer with a unique psychological condition that gives him an edge in the criminal underworld, but when he’s hired by two amateur drug dealers claiming they were attacked by ‘zombies,’ Van Aarle is dragged into a terrifying and bizarre mystery that will test him to his limits. Amid a cacophony of hallucinatory voices guiding him from his subconscious, Van Aarle digs for answers along a hauntingly familiar path of death and psychological torture… the same path that once nearly killed him and gave rise to his unusual condition. Aiding him on his journey is a troupe of unusual allies; his gung-ho ex business partner Hess (Kate Holly Hall); the hopelessly naïve drug dealing duo Brodie & Aaron (Henry Errington and Michael Wilkop); a ‘sharehouse shaman’ and master chemist inexplicably named ‘No-Arms’ (Mark Healy);The case gets stranger still with the arrival of a delusional vigilante LoneWolf (PJ Van Gyen), and the revelation that the mastermind behind it all may be more monster than man. A surreal conspiracy of mind control, psychedelic drugs, and a criminal underbelly terrified of the enigmatic drug lord ‘Joubini’, who uses hypnosis with lethal effect. Van Aarle may be the only one equipped to bring him down, but only if his mind survives the trip. South Australian independent writer/director Pirie Martin talks about the meticulous detail that went into telling a Noir-Horror story with a heavy dose of Paracusia, an auditory verbal hallucinations, and 1930’s expressionist staging.
About the filmmaker – Writer, Director, Producer Pirie Martin is a filmmaker, writer and artist based in Adelaide, South Australia – where he’s been making films in one form or another since the age of five. In 2010 he co-founded the partnership ‘Kessel Run Productions’ where he filled numerous production roles on corporate videos, music videos, promotional media and commercials for 11years. During this time Pirie co-produced, shot, and edited a number of short films, including ‘Cheaters’ (2017, dir. J. Bhatia) which screened at 12 international festivals and took home a handful of awards. Pirie was also on the writing team for MarVista Entertainments ‘Raising the Bar’ (Dir. Clay Glen, 2016) Pirie’s first independent short film, ‘Andy’s Venture’ (2017) was nominated ‘Best short Comedy’ at the 2017 Houston Comedy Film Festival, followed by a Special Mention at The 2018 London Worldwide Comedy Festival, and was later picked up for limited online distribution. ‘Psychosis’ is Pirie’s debut feature film.
“It’s the precise type of unconventional visual storytelling that evokes extreme reactions. But it’s so daring in form and mythology that it’s hard not to be impressed.” – Meagan Navarro, Bloody Disgusting
“a disorienting take on film noir, as distorting stylizations and unhinged plotting play out like nightmares in a damaged brain, hoodwinking and gaslighting the viewer from any sure grip on what is going on.” – Anton Bitel, Projected Figures
“Its square aspect ratio occasionally host to brief, jarring color, Psychosis is a noirishly styled nightmare that in content is closer to the arch surrealism of something like Donnie Darko, albeit on a much smaller budget…” – Dennis Harvey, 48 Hills
Oscar-nominated Waad Al-Kateab’s, DEATH WITHOUT MERCY is wrenching feature documentary that focuses on the early hours of February 6, 2023, when a devastating earthquake measuring 7.8 struck a vast region of Turkey and Syria that resulted in over 55,000 deaths and illustrated the destructive instability that had torn this region apart. DEATH WITHOUT MERCY, directed by Waad Al-Kateab, is a powerful record of the disaster from the personal perspective of two Syrian families searching for their loved ones over 10 days in the earthquake’s aftermath. The shock of this disaster soon gives way to a damning record of human failure highlighting official incompetence and the lack of humanitarian aid impeding the search for these survivors. Through intimate first-hand survivor footage from under the rubble interwoven with television news reports, social media interaction, and closed circuit tv and drone footage, the film is at once a moving testament to human dignity and a heartfelt tribute to the lives that have been lost in this catastrophic event. Director Waad Al-Kateab (For Sama) joins to talk about shattering experience of watching the real time footage of buildings, bridges collapsing and knowing that as horrific as that was, knowing that the regional and international leadership essentially turned their collective back on the unspeakable misery that has been visited upon these innocent people. And when she knew she had to make DEATH WITHOUT MERCY.
About the filmmaker – In 2011, when protests against the Assad regime swept the country, Waad taught herself how to film and became a citizen journalist, determined to document the horrors around her. During that time, Waad began reporting for Channel 4 News in the UK. This series of reports – titled Inside Aleppo – on Channel 4 News became the most watched pieces on the UK news program and received almost half a billion views online and won 24 awards – including the 2016 International Emmy for breaking news coverage. Waad documented her whole life over 5 years in Aleppo, as she fell in love with a doctor, Hamza; gave birth to their first daughter Sama (Sky); up until their forced displacement out of Syria and the birth of their second child, Taima. This footage became the basis of the feature documentary released in 2019, For Sama. Directed together with Edward Watts, For Sama won the Prix L’Œil d’or for best documentary at the 2019 Cannes Film Festival, receiving a six-minute standing ovation. At the 73rd British Academy Film Awards in 2020, For Sama became the most nominated documentary in the history of the BAFTAs with four nominations, ultimately winning for Best Documentary. The same year, For Sama received a nomination for Best Documentary Feature at the 2020 Academy Awards. Waad has received numerous personal recognitions for her work as an activist and filmmaker, including the IDA Courage Under Fire Award, a Special Recognition for Courage in Filmmaking at DOC NYC Festival, and a place in the 2020 Time100 List of Most Influential People. She now works as a filmmaker on various projects, including a documentary on the Olympic Refugee Team, and dedicates time to her advocacy campaign, Action For Sama, which was set up to turn the worldwide reaction to For Sama into positive action for Syrians. The campaign, launched in 2019, focuses on utilizing For Sama as a unique educational tool to build more empathetic responses to the situation in Syria and end impunity for the war crimes committed there. Action For Sama’s ultimate aim is to see the perpetrators of war crimes in Syria be held to account – and thereby end the ongoing targeting of civilians and hospitals in Syria. Waad’s latest film, Death Without Mercy is a powerful, personal and moving piece about the stories of two families over the course of 10 days following the devastating Syria-Turkey earthquake in Feb 2023.
After 20 years away, Odysseus (Ralph Fiennes) washes up on the shores of Ithaca, haggard and unrecognizable. The King has returned from the Trojan War, but much has changed in his kingdom. His beloved wife Penelope (Juliette Binoche) is a prisoner in her own home, hounded by suitors vying to be king. Their son Telemachus (Charlie Plummer) faces death at the hands of these suitors, who see him as merely an obstacle to their pursuit of the kingdom. Odysseus has also changed—scarred by his experience of the Trojan war, he is no longer the mighty warrior from years past— but he must rediscover his strength in order to win back all that he has lost.Director, Co-producer and Co-screenwriter Uberto Pasolini (Nowhere Special) joins us for a conversation on the when, where and why he made the decision to move forward on a project that he began working on over 30 years before, his collaboration with The Returns principal actors, Ralph Fiennes and Juliette Binoche and how this 3,000 year old story still captures the essence of so many of our basic and base human motivations.
Interview with The Return Director Uberto Pasolini
About the filmmaker – Uberto Pasolini founded Red Wave Films in 1993. He produced THE FULL MONTY, which took over 250 million dollars at the worldwide box office, won a Bafta for Best Film and was nominated for four Oscars. Other Red Wave produced films include PALOOKAVILLE and THE EMPEROR’S NEW CLOTHES. Pasolini made his directorial debut in 2008 with Sri Lanka set MACHAN which won numerous international awards. He followed this with STILL LIFE which starred Eddie Marsan and Joanne Froggatt and premiered at the Venice Film Festival where he was awarded Best Director, Orizzonti. NOWHERE SPECIAL starring James Norton which also premiered in Orizzonti was recently released in the US to great critical acclaim.
“By telling a decidedly bare-bones version of a story known for its scale and excess, The Return’s harsh landscape and violent undertones highlight the all-too-human struggles at its center in ways that make its ancient source material feel brand new.” – Lacy Baugher, Paste Magazine
“Fiennes displays an impressively sinewy and shredded physique through much of “The Return.” He uncorks fiery machismo and badassery in his action scenes that we seldom see from him.” – Ankit Jhunjhunwala, The Playlist
“As tender and somber as it is thrilling, The Return proves a sword-and-sandals saga rooted in life’s biggest issues, all of them written on the unforgettable countenance of its illustrious star.” – Nick Schager, The Daily Beast
“Reminiscent of another Pasolini, Pier Paolo, in its minimalist take on a classic story, the film relies mainly on the elemental power of Fiennes and Binoche, both suitably haunting as the long-separated lovers who have lapsed into emotional despair.” – Frank Scheck, The Hollywood
A stunning tribute to the resilience of Native people and their way of life, SUGARCANE, the debut feature documentary from Julian Brave NoiseCat and Emily Kassie, is an epic cinematic portrait of a community during a moment of international reckoning. In 2021, evidence of unmarked graves was discovered on the grounds of an Indian residential school run by the Catholic Church in Canada. After years of silence, the forced separation, assimilation and abuse many children experienced at these segregated boarding schools was brought to light, sparking a national outcry against a system designed to destroy Indigenous communities. Set amidst a groundbreaking investigation, SUGARCANE illuminates the beauty of a community breaking cycles of intergenerational trauma and finding the strength to persevere. Co-directors Julian Brave NoiseCat and Emily Kassie join us for a conversation on how their focus changed during the filming of SUGARCANE, getting to know the dedicated people like Whitney Spearing and Charlene Belleau who devoted themselves to uncovering the repugnant history of St. Joseph’s Residential School and the “Indian Problem”, capturing the unfolding relationship between Julian and his father, Ed Archie NoiseCat and filming the disturbing conversation between Former First Nation Chief Rick Gilbertand the Vatican’s Superior General Louis Lougen concerning san acknowledgment or apology from the Catholic Church regarding their administration of Residential Schools in North America.
About the filmmaker – Julian Brave NoiseCat is a writer, filmmaker and student of Salish art and history. His first documentary, Sugarcane, directed alongside Emily Kassie, follows an investigation into abuse and missing children at the Indian residential school NoiseCat’s family was sent to near Williams Lake, British Columbia. Sugarcane premiered at the 2024 Sundance Film Festival where NoiseCat and Kassie won the Directing Award in the U.S. Documentary Competition. A proud member of the Canim Lake Band Tsescen and descendant of the LilWat Nation of Mount Currie, he is concurrently finishing his first book, We Survived the Night, which will be published by Alfred A. Knopf in North America, Profile Books in the United Kingdom and Commonwealth, Albin Michel in France and Aufbau Verlag in Germany. NoiseCat’s journalism has appeared in dozens of publications including The New York Times, The Washington Post and The New Yorker and has been recognized with many awards including the 2022 American Mosaic Journalism Prize, which honors excellence in long-form, narrative or deep reporting on stories about underrepresented and/or misrepresented groups in the present American landscape. In 2021, NoiseCat was named to the TIME100 Next list of emerging leaders alongside the starting point guard of his fantasy basketball team, Luka Doncic. For more go to: julianbravenoisecat.com
About the filmmaker – Emily Kassie is an Emmy® and Peabody®-nominated investigative journalist and filmmaker. Kassie shoots, directs and reports stories on geopolitical conflict, humanitarian crises, corruption and the people caught in the crossfire. Her work for The New York Times, PBS Frontline, Netflix, and others ranges from drug and weapons trafficking in the Saharan desert, to immigrant detention in the United States. In 2021, she smuggled into Taliban territory with PBS Newshour correspondent Jane Ferguson to report on their imminent siege of Kabul and targeted killing of female leaders. Her work has been honored with multiple Edward R. Murrow, World Press Photo and National Press Photographers awards. Her multimedia feature on the economic exploitation of the Syrian and West African refugee crises won the Overseas Press Club Award and made her the youngest person to win a National Magazine award. She previously oversaw visual journalism at Highline, Huffington Post’s investigative magazine, and at The Marshall Project. Kassie was named to Forbes 30 under 30 in 2020 and is a 2023 New America fellow. Her first documentary, I Married My Family’s Killer, following couples in post-genocide Rwanda, won a Student Academy Award in 2015. For more go to: emilykassie.com
“The product of humane and insightful filmmakers who are determined to never let anyone forget” – Variety
“A powerful reckoning” – The Hollywood Reporter
“Beautiful and compassionate” – PASTE
“As much a piece of art about the sins of the past as it is about living with the memory of those sins in the present.” – Indiewire
“Sugarcane is essential viewing. Emily Kassie and Julian Brave Noise Cat’s documentary film is a haunting and overwhelmingly powerful examination of religious assimilation.” – M.N. Miller, Geek Vibes Nation
“DEVASTATING…This is no superficial recounting of yet another injustice against native people. It goes bone deep.An important record and an artistic reckoning.” – Finn Halligan, SCREEN DAILY
“This is documentary filmmaking at its best. A credit to the genre. Compelling, spiritual and enlightening.” – Dwight Brown, DwightBrownInk.com
Director Elan Golod’s latest documentary film, NATHAN-ISM recounts the wildly improbable life and times of former US Army soldier Nathan Hilu. Nathan is the son of Syrian Jewish immigrants to New York, who at the end of World War II receives a life-changing assignment from the superiors. He and his group are ordered to guard the top Nazi war criminals at the Nuremberg trials. This experience fueled a lifetime of artistic inspiration for Nathan, a virtually unknown “outsider artist”, who spent the next 70 years obsessively creating a visual narrative from his memories. But what happens when those memories take on a life of their own?This gripping exploration follows the extraordinary journey of 18-year-old Nathan Hilu, the son of Syrian-Jewish immigrants to New York, who at the end of World War II receives a life-changing mission from the U.S. Army: to guard the most notorious Nazi war criminals at the Nuremberg trials. For a whole year, Hilu keeps suicide watch while getting an up-close and personal look at these men and the horrors they committed. This first-person exposure to humanity’s greatest evil serves as Nathan’s coming of age. Nathan, a virtually unknown “outsider artist”, would spend the next 70 years obsessively creating a visual narrative from his memories. Nathan-ism delves into Nathan’s relationship with his own stories, and the compulsion he has to share them with a world that doesn’t always listen. Filmmaker Elan Golod has created an enthralling documentary portrait of the aging artist but what begins as a peek at a unique witness to history grows into an absorbing study of the function of art as archive and invention. Daring to question an artist’s stories, “Nathan-ism” is a fascinating look at one man’s need to share truths with a world that doesn’t always want to listen. Nathan-ism offers not only a narrative of historical significance but a captivating study of the function of art as archive. It offers an opportunity to confront the nature of memory, and the significance of collective memory in today’s global context.
Shortlisted for IDA Documentary of the Year Award 2023 Yad Vashem Award winner for “Cinematic Excellence in Holocaust Documentary Filmmaking
About the filmmaker – After transitioning from a background in visual arts to filmmaking, Director /Editor Elan Golod made his mark in the New York film industry as an editor on a diverse array of projects and as a short-form documentary director. He was part of the editing team for Mike Birbiglia’s film “Sleepwalk with Me” (Sundance, SXSW) and co-directed and edited the documentary short “Mike Birbiglia: How to Make Whatever This Is.” While working on his feature documentary “Nathan-ism,” he co-edited Birbiglia’s “Don’t Think Twice” (SXSW, Tribeca) and Maya Zinshtein’s documentary “‘Til Kingdom Come” (DocAviv, IDFA).
“Nathan-ism feels like a journey toward understanding the intersection of art and memory, truth and trauma, time and creativity…much like its subject matter, is far more complex than that which meets the eye.” – Richard Propes, The Independent Critic
“Drawing from the real-life inspiration and using animation to recreate key moments, this is an engaging story told with compassion by Golod.” – Dallas KingFlick Feast
“…one of the most salient examinations of the vagaries of memory and the role of non-fiction filmmaking to weed out truth from the remembrances of a subject, no matter how charismatic or sympathetic they may be.” – POV Magazine
“Nathan-ism is a great exploration of an artist who dared to speak out loud about the monsters of war,all through the very special art he made.” – Movieblogger.com
“Nathan-ism is an intimate portrait of a peculiar and complex artist, the individual challenge of making art and the quest to keep memories alive and have them transcend the limits of our own existence.” – Hoy Sale Cine
The Anchorage International Film Festival (AIFF) is thrilled to unveil the official program for its 24th edition, set to take place from December 6th to December 15th across venues in Anchorage, Alaska. This year’s festival is a landmark event, marking the first program curated by newly appointed Festival Directors, Pat McGee and Adam Linkenhelt. Both filmmakers, McGee and Linkenhelt, have committed to elevating the quality of films showcased at the festival and enhancing the experience for visiting filmmakers and the local film community.The 10-day festival will spotlight more than 100 films spanning all genres, with a particular emphasis on independent films that have enjoyed successful festival runs and are vying for one final screening push before the Oscars shortlist is announced. “Our festival represents the last opportunity for some of these remarkable independent films to be discovered before the shortlist is released,” said McGee. “We’re raising the bar this year, and as we see the caliber of films elevate, we could very well becalling the Anchorage International Film Festival ‘The Icy Road to the Oscars.”
AIFF’s Opening Night screening will be Bob Trevino Likes It, The film won Best Narrative and Audience Award at this year’s SXSW film festival. Director Tracie Laymon will be in attendance.
Festival Highlights
Festival highlights include The Way We Speak, starring Patrick Fabian (Better Call Saul), with both Fabian and director Ian Ebright in attendance. Porcelain War, Sundance Feature Documentary Grand Jury Prize Winner, will also be featured, with directors Brendan Bellomo and Slava Leontyev in attendance. Set amid the backdrop of Ukraine, Porcelain War follows artists who remain behind during wartime, defying the destruction around them with resilience and beauty.Other notable films include the Belgian comedy Life’s a Bitch by director Xavier Seron, who will be in attendance, and Queen of the Ring, the inspirational true story of Mildred Burke, the first million-dollar female athlete in history, directed by Ash Avildsen and starring Josh Lucas and Emily Bett Rickards.
Spotlight on Narrative Features
This year’s lineup also features an exciting mix of narrative films from both seasoned and first-time filmmakers. First-time feature directors T.J. Sandella (Battersea) and Adam Boyer (Uphill), who grew up and filmed his debut feature just outside of Anchorage, will showcase their work at the festival. On the other end of the spectrum, AIFF welcomes prolific independent filmmaker Ryan Balas, whose latest narrative Midwinter marks his 25th independent feature in the past decade.
Special Events and Festival Experience
In addition to the remarkable film lineup, AIFF promises unforgettable Alaskan experiences for visiting filmmakers, including Northern Lights excursions, glacier hikes, and for the bold, a polar bear plunge – all in the spirit of AIFF’s signature theme: Films Worth Freezing For.
About the Festival Director – Pat McGee is an acclaimed documentary director and producer known for his work on both film and television, with a focus on character-driven stories that seek to find common ground in polarizing subjects. His storytelling has been praised as “gripping,” “humanistic,” and “illuminating” by critics from the LA Times to Variety. Now, as the newly appointed Festival Director of the 24th Anchorage International Film Festival (AIFF), Pat, alongside longtime collaborator and fellow filmmaker Adam Linkenhelt, is building on AIFF’s long-standing tradition of showcasing “Films Worth Freezing For.” Together, they are crafting a new narrative, positioning the festival as the “Icy Road to the Oscars,” and curating a dynamic program of over 100 films that highlight bold, independent voices and thought-provoking stories from around the world.patmcgeepictures.com
About the Festival Director – Adam Linkenhelt is an innovative filmmaker who has spent the past decade immersed in the independent film world, focusing on documentary storytelling and shorts that explore the raw, emotional depths of real life. As a director, editor, and producer, his work has been praised as “gripping” and “humanistic” by LA Times and Variety, with films and series airing on HULU, VICE, A&E, DISCOVERY, and PEACOCK. Adam’s shorts have toured the festival circuit, resonating with audiences worldwide for their authenticity and emotional impact. Now, as Festival Director of the Anchorage International Film Festival, Adam is committed to elevating bold, independent voices and fostering collaboration within the vibrant creative community of Alaska.
Director and co-writer Klaudia Reynicke’s slow-burn family drama takes place during time of political upheaval. It follows sisters Lucia and Aurora as they are preparing to permanently leave their native country, Peru, with their mom, but they need their absentee father, Carlos, to sign exit papers. It’s been convenient for Carlos to not be a dad, but now if he wants his daughters love, he has to earn back his place before they leave. Reynicke subtly weaves a tale of shifts and sacrifices that shows, whatever the familial configuration, strength and loss are necessary parts of growth. Grounded by a strong performance from Jimena Lindo as Elena and a wonderfully inquisitive Abril Gjurinovic, a family is brought to life. Reynicke’s effective direction honors each community the camera focuses on, and her Lima, the city where Reynicke grew up, feels personal, like a memory or a version of a city that no longer exists but emerges vibrant and alive in the film. Reinas is truly an emotional trip, transporting the viewer to Lima in the ’90s, right into the heart of a family faced with a universal challenge: the search for a safer place. Director and co-writer (Diego Vega) Klaudia Reynick joins us to talk about the inspiration for her film about a family with a complicated dynamic that, while no longer together is brought together for the purpose of splitting up again, perhaps forever. Reynicke assembles a superb cast of actors that all deliver terrific performances, including the young sisters Abril Gjurnovic (Lucia) and Luana Vega (Aurora) and the parents Jimena Lindo (Elena) and Gonzalo Molina (Carlos). We also discuss Queens / Reinas designation as Switzerland’s 2024 Oscar submission for Best International Feature.
Opens exclusively in New York and Los Angeles on November 29th at the Cinema Village and Laemmle Royal on November 30 & December 1 with in-person Q&A’s in Los Angeles
SWITZERLAND’S 2025 OSCAR SUBMISSION
WINNER BEST DIRECTOR, BERLIN – Grand Prix, Generations WINNER, AUDIENCE AWARD – Locarno Film Festival SUNDANCE – Official Selection
About the filmmaker – Klaudia Reynicke is a Swiss-Peruvian filmmaker raised in Peru, Switzerland, and the US. She holds a background in Fine Arts and Social Sciences. Her debut film, “Il Nido” (2016), competed at the Locarno film festival, followed by “Love Me Tender” (2019) at Locarno and TIFF. Her third feature, “Reinas,” had its world premiere at Sundance 2024, participating in the World Cinema competition. Subsequently, it premiered in Europe at the Berlinale Film Festival, competing in the Generation Kplus category, where it won the Grand Jury Prize for Best Feature.
“Klaudia Reynicke has crafted an authentic, poignant piece of cinema that will resonate with so many. It’s a personal, small-scale story told in the shadow of world-altering events, a perfect environment in which characters can be explored and developed.” – Rhys Bowen Jones, Talking Films
“Reinas is… a nostalgic love letter for home as well as a persuasive and provoking historical record.
All that we look for in good cinema” – New Indian Express
Reinas is a film with a lot of heart. Each person is multifaceted, with strengths, shortcomings, nightmares, and dreams – Carlos Aguilar, Variety
PORCELAIN WAR is a powerful account of life amidst the chaos and destruction of the brutal Russian invasion of Ukraine. The film follows three artists who defiantly find inspiration and beauty as they defend their culture and their country. In a war waged by professional soldiers against ordinary civilians, Slava Leontyev, Anya Stasenko and Andrey Stefanov choose to stay behind, armed with their art, their cameras and, for the first time in their lives, their guns. Despite daily shelling, Anya finds resistance and purpose in her art, Andrey takes the dangerous journey to get his young family to safety abroad, and Slava becomes a weapons instructor for ordinary people who have become unlikely soldiers. As the war intensifies, Andrey picks up his camera to film their story, and on tiny porcelain figurines, Anya and Slava capture their idyllic past, uncertain present and hope for the future. Co-directed by Slava Leontyev and Brendan Bellomo, with extraordinary footage from first-time cinematographer Andrey Stefanov, PORCELAIN WARembodies the passion and fight, that only an artist can put back into the world when it’s crumbling around them. PORCELAIN WAR debuted at the Sundance Film Festival in January where it won the Grand Jury Prize in the U.S. Documentary Competition and has gone on to win audience awards at festivals around the world. Porcelain War is a true cinematic gem. Co-directors Slava Leontyev and Brendan Bellomo manage to gracefully capture the dissonance between the horrors of war and the fragile beauty of nature and artistic practice. Anya’s and Slava’s porcelain pieces come to life in delicately crafted animations that offer context to their makers’ story and a stunning outlet for processing grief.
About the filmmaker – SLAVA LEONTYEV (Director, Participant) is a first-time director born into a family of biologists in Ukraine. Merging his love of nature and art, Leontyev has spent his life studying painting, photography, graphic design and art theory. Alongside his wife and longtime collaborator Anya Stasenko, Leontyev now creates the porcelain sculptures featured in Porcelain War. He is also a former soldier of the Ukrainian Special Forces and a highly regarded weapons instructor for civilians who are currently defending their country against Russian aggression.
About the filmmaker – BRENDAN BELLOMO (Director, Writer, Editor) was the recipient of a 2009 Student Academy Award® for Live Action Narrative. Bellomo’s passion for storytelling was first sparked when he was a child. Beginning his career in visual effects, he supervised the 2012 Sundance Grand Jury Prize winner and Oscar® nominee for Best Picture Beasts of the Southern Wild (Fox Searchlight). Most recently, Bellomo was the executive producer on the Netflix Original Chupa. Bellomo worked closely with Annie Leibovitz on the global exhibit “Women: New Portraits” and designed the curriculum for the first visual effects course at NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts, which led him on the path to eventually pair with his directing partner, Slava Leontyev.
About the subject – ANYA STASENKO (Associate Producer, Participant) is a ceramics artist and experienced nature photographer who has been deeply engaged in the fine arts since her early childhood in Kharkiv, Ukraine. As such, Stasenko’s paintings have become her lifelong language. While studying at the Kharkiv School of Arts and Academy of Design and Arts, she developed a unique style of painting on ceramic miniatures. This is also where she began to collaborate with Slava Leontyev, now her husband. Together, they create the widely recognized tiny porcelain figurines featured in Porcelain War.
About the filmmaker and subject – ANDREY STEFANOV (Cinematographer, Participant) was born in Feodosia, a town in Crimea, Ukraine, and received his artistic education in Kharkiv. He then returned to his home in Crimea, where he became an artisan winemaker and recognized oil painter. For many years Stefanov created fine art photography, landscape paintings and still lifes. When Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022, Stefanov and his friend Slava Leontyev decided to pick up film cameras, discovering a new medium to express their artistic perspectives. This is Stefanov’s first feature credit as a cinematographer.
“A powerful testament to the resilience of the artistic spirit…” – Peter Howell, Toronto Star
“Cinematic essays take many forms: few are as fragile and contemplative as Porcelain War.” – Fionnuala Halligan, Screen Daily
“The importance of art in the fight against fascism is the point of “Porcelain War,” a documentary in competition at this year’s Sundance Film Festival about artists who have turned into soldiers in the Ukrainian war against Russia.” – Sarah Manvel, In Their Own League
“A united resistance effort: war balanced by love, bloodshed by beauty.” – Guy Lodge, Variety
“A combination of whimsy and devastation.” – The Wall Street Journal
“Porcelain War masterfully illustrates the enduring power of art in the face of adversity.”- Awards Daily
Oscar-nominated filmmaker Raoul Peck’s ERNEST COLE: LOST AND FOUND is a new documentary chronicling the life and work of Ernest Cole, one of the first Black freelance photographers in South Africa, whose early pictures, shocking at the time of their first publication, revealed to the world Black life under apartheid. Cole fled South Africa in 1966 and lived in exile in the U.S., where he photographed extensively in New York City, as well as the American South, fascinated by the ways this country could be at times so vastly different, and at others eerily similar, to the segregated culture of his homeland. During this period, he published his landmark book of photographs denouncing the apartheid, House of Bondage which, while banned in South Africa, cemented Cole’s place as one of the great photographers of his time at the age of 27. After his death, more than 60,000 of his 35mm film negatives were inexplicably discovered in a bank vault in Stockholm, Sweden. Most considered these forever lost, especially the thousands of pictures Cole shot in the U.S. Telling his own story through his writings, the recollections of those closest to him, and the lens of his uncompromising work, the film is a reintroduction of a pivotal Black artist to a new generation. Director Raoul Peck joins us to talk about his approach to telling Ernest Cole’s story, including the decision to bring in Lakeith Stanfield to voice Ernest narrative, why he has always shied away from doing “talking heads” documentaries and how Cole’s life experience growing up in apartheid South Africa and then coming to the promised land of America informed his clear-eyed photographs of societies living in delusion and informed by dangerous fairy tales.
2024 Cannes Film Festival – World Premiere, Special Screening
2024 Toronto International Film Festival
About the Subject – Born in 1940 as Ernest Levi Tsoloane Kole in Eersterust, Pretoria, Ernest Cole began his career sweeping the floors of a photography studio in Johannesburg in the late 1950s. He finally broke through ten years later, when he was hired as a freelance photographer for the famous Black magazine DRUM. His photos made him a target of the South African government and, having become a “persona non grata,” he left Johannesburg for Europe in 1966. He shipped some of his negatives and prints out of the country and left the rest of his work behind, safe in the hands of friends. After a stay in Europe, he settled in New York where he worked for the Magnum agency and published his first book of photographs denouncing apartheid. Entitled House of Bondage (1967), this book was inspired by the work of Henri Cartier-Bresson. Although banned in South Africa, the book was a landmark and earned Cole his status amongst the Black cultural community of the time. Later, Cole received a grant from the Ford Foundation to photograph the lives of Black people in the rural South and Northern cities of the United States. For unknown reasons, the book was never published. By the end of the 1970s he seemed to have abandoned photography and lost control of his archives. He went through periods of homelessness and died of pancreatic cancer in 1990, a few days after Nelson Mandela was released from prison. Ernest Cole, one of South Africa’s first Black photojournalists, created powerful images that shed light on the lives of Black people under the apartheid regime. These images represent his best-known and most widely distributed work. Anyone familiar with this chapter of South African history will recognize Cole’s iconic photo of a middle-aged white woman sitting on a park bench bearing the warning: “European’s only.”
About the filmmaker – Raoul Peck’s complex oeuvre includes such films as: The Man by the Shore (Competition, Cannes Film Festival 1993); Lumumba (Directors’ Fortnight, Cannes Film Festival 2000); Sometimes in April (Competition, Berlinale 2005); Moloch Tropical (TIFF 2009, Berlinale 2010) and Murder in Pacot (TIFF 2014, Berlinale 2015). Raoul Peck was a member of the Berlinale jury in 2002 and of the Cannes Festival jury in 2012. In 2001, the Human Rights Watch Association awarded him the Irene Diamond Lifetime Achievement Award for his commitment to human rights. In 2017, his documentary on writer James Baldwin, I Am Not Your Negro, was nominated for an Oscar for Best Documentary and won the Audience Award at the Toronto Festival and the Berlinale. In 2018, it won the BAFTA and the Cesar for Best Documentary. This film was co-produced with ARTE. His film, The Young Karl Marx, co-produced with Agat Films, was presented at the Berlinale the same year. Exterminate all the Brutes, is a groundbreaking four-part mini- series, produced for HBO, which tells a counter-narrative to white Euro-centric history and was also co-produced by ARTE. The mini-series won a Peabody Award in 2022. His latest film, Silver Dollar Road, had its world premiere at the 2023 Toronto International Film Festival. His company Velvet Film was founded in 1989 and operates in the United States, France and Haiti. All of Peck’s documentaries, feature films and television dramas have been produced or co-produced by Velvet Film. For more go to: velvet-film.com/RaoulPeck
“Peck spends so much time unpacking Cole’s inner life from his diaries and notebooks, because while the photos may live on in archives, those are the stories most at risk of disappearing from the frame.” – Monica Castillo, RogerEbert.com
“Peck’s film stands as a requisite biography, but also a personal homage: The response of one politically conscious artist to the call of another.” – Lisa Kennedy, New York Times
“Watching “Lost and Found,” you’re moved by a life that veered into tragedy, yet the place it lands lifts you up. More than a great photographer, Ernest Cole captured something essential. By the end you feel the ghost is speaking to you.” – Owen Gleiberman, Variety
“At the heart of Raoul Peck’s latest documentary “Ernest Cole, Lost And Found,” a stirring lament of the exiled South African photographer, is the devastating image of a life deferred” – Robert Daniels, Screen International
“You’re left feeling that he deserved better, a longer lasting legacy, for he was a pioneer in his field who deserved his flowers while he was alive.”- Chalice Williams, Black Girl Nerds
While fleeing a neglectful household, thirteen-year-old RITA (Giuliana Santa Cruz) is placed in an oppressive state-run orphanage. Rita’s arrival provides a glimmer of hope to the girls inside, who share a prophecy that an angel will appear to release them. Encouraged by one another, the girls plan an escape to claim their freedom and expose the orphanage’s abuses of power. Based on the true story behind one of Guatemala’s most harrowing tragedies, RITA shines a light on the brave orphans whose fight for survival inspired a nationwide outcry for justice and reform. THE BACKSTORY of RITA – In Guatemala, 56 low-income girls and adolescents were burned on March 8, 2017. They were in a state protection home. Forty-one of them died, and 15 survived. Since 2013, there were reports of sexual violence and possible trafficking within the home, and it seems that “girl consumers” held important positions in the country. The fire occurred after all the girls in that institution created an escape riot to report the mistreatment and sexual abuse they were suffering, using the date of International Women’s Day as a reason. The 56 girls considered to be the leaders of the riot were locked up against their rights in a 4×4 square meter room. When the fire started inside the room, the police and guards who controlled the door to the outside waited 9 minutes before opening, despite the smoke, the piercing screams, and the smell of burning flesh. The firefighters tried to intervene immediately, but other guards made it difficult for them to enter the place. I am keen to explore the girls’ everyday lives, dispelling misconceptions of delinquency and delving into their camaraderie, friendship, love, and aspirations. I want to portray them as loyal companions united in their plight, despite the harsh conditions they faced. They strived to preserve their innocence amidst the harsh realities imposed on them at a young age. By narrating their stories, I aim to challenge societal norms, honor their resilience, and ensure that their voices are heard, resonating far beyond the confines of their tragic past. Director & Writer Jayro Bustamante joins us to talk about the heinous and despicable events that serve as the foundation for his powerful rebuttal to bigotry, misogyny and the absence of accountability that created the conditions for this to happen.
About the filmmaker – Jayro Bustamante is a film director, producer, and writer. He was born in Guatemala and grew up in a Maya community on the shores of Lake Atitlán, an experience that deeply influenced his storytelling style. While studying social communication at the University of San Carlos of Guatemala, he worked at Ogilvy & Mather as a director and producer of advertising, where he took his first steps in the audiovisual world. He studied Film Directing in Paris at the Conservatoire Libre du Cinema Francais, and continued his studies in screenwriting at the Centro Sperimentale di Cinematografia in Rome. In 2009 he returned to Guatemala and founded La Casa de Produccion. He produced four short films and his debut feature, Ixcanul, which won him the Silver Bear at the 2015 Berlin Film Festival and more than 60 awards in international festivals. In 2018 he produced and directed his second film, Tremors, which premiered at the 2019 Berlin Film Festival and received several international awards. In September 2019 he premiered his third film, La Llorona, in Venice, winning the Best Director award in the Giornate degli Autori. Jayro is currently developing a number of films and series, as well as producing for other Guatemalan and foreign directors. He has been juror at Berlinale 2016, Brussels Film Festival 2018, Biarritz Festival 2018, Platino Awards and Fenix Awards, and Los Cabos Film Festival. He was President of the Jury for Horizontes Latinos in the San Sebastiaan 2020 Festival, and President of the Jury at the Tallinn Black Nights Film Festival in Estonia, 2021. His film La Llorona was nominated as Best Foreign Language Film at the Golden Globes and Best Ibero-American Film at the Goya Awards, both in 2021; it was nominated in eleven categories at the 2021 Platino Awards, and won five. In 2021, he directed and produced his fourth film, “Rita,” in co-production with Jonathan King. In 2022, he directed and produced his fifth film, “Cordillera de Fuego,” currently in post-production. In 2023, he directed the pilot for the series “The Border” for Disney and FX and earlier this year, he was honored as a Knight of the National Order of Merit of France. Currently, he is simultaneously directing and producing socially impactful advertising campaigns. He is also writing a new series titled “The Hacienda” for Apple TV and collaborating with other producers and directors to develop several feature film scripts, documentaries, and series.
“Jayro Bustamante delivers one of the most impactful movies of the year in Rita, a difficult, haunting depiction of a real-life tragedy.” – Maxance Vincent, Loud and Clear Reviews
““Rita” serves both as a damning indictment of a corrupt system and as a showcase for a fearless filmmaker who continues to open the world’s eyes to injustices being done.” – Randy Myers, San Jose Mercury News
“[Rita is] a harrowing, heartbreaking examination of both the oppression of the downtrodden and the exploitation that lead to a real-life 2017 tragedy that claimed the lives of forty-one young girls, and it is exceptional.” – J Hurtado, ScreenAnarchy
“There is blistering anger in its melange of baubles and feathers and tulle.” – Jennie Kermode, Eye for Film
“To powerful, even shocking effect, Bustamante’s incisive writing slowly deploys revelations that point us to rethink what we thought we knew about the narrative.” – Carlos Aguilar, Variety
In an election year where the battle over reproductive healthcare rights is at the heart of America’s political discourse, Zurawski v Texas reveals a historic courtroom challenge led by women demanding change. At the forefront is Amanda Zurawski, who suffered septic shock when doctors, constrained by restrictive abortion laws, refused to provide her with necessary medical care, leaving her ability to have children compromised. Amanda’s story is not unique. Samantha Casiano, a mother of four, faced the devastating loss of her daughter, who was diagnosed with a fatal condition in utero. Forced to carry her baby to term, Samantha endured the heartbreak of her child’s near-immediate death. Lawyer Molly Duane leads the legal fight against a Texas law so oppressive that it has made doctors fearful of acting, even when their patients’ lives are at risk. Among these doctors is Austin Dennard, a plaintiff in the case who had to travel out of state to obtain her own abortion after learning that her pregnancy had a fatal diagnosis and a miscarriage was inevitable.These deeply personal stories from the emotional core of Zurawski v Texas, a documentary that uncovers the traumatic consequences of restrictive healthcare legislation. Directed by Emmy Award-winning filmmaker Maisie Crow (Jackson) and Abbie Perrault, the film exposesthe staggering personal costs of near-total abortion bans and the relentless fight to restore essential healthcare rights.
Zurawski v Texas was produced, in part, by HiddenLight Productions. Executive producers include HiddenLight founders Hillary Clinton and Chelsea Clinton, with Jennifer Lawrence and Justine Ciarrocchi also serving as executive producers through their company, Excellent Cadaver.
About the filmmaker – Abbie Perrault is a documentary filmmaker and journalist based in Chicago, Illinois. She is a director and producer of the feature documentary Zurawski v Texas. Previously she produced At The Ready, which premiered in the U.S. Documentary Competition at Sundance Film Festival in 2021 and streams on MAX. She has associate produced the documentary shorts An Abortion in Mississippi and Reproductive Rights Road Trip for The Intercept and was the impact producer on the Emmy-award winning documentary Jackson, which premiered on Showtime in 2016. Her previous work as managing editor of The Big Bend Sentinel and Presidio International newspapers in Marfa, Texas has been recognized by the Texas Press Association for general excellence and her reporting received awards for outstanding feature writing and outstanding news writing. Her film work has been supported by the IDA Enterprise Documentary Fund, The Gotham, Catapult Film Fund, Ford Foundation, XTR, and the Austin Film Society, and she was a 2019 fellow in New Orleans Film Society’s Southern Producers Lab. For more go to: weareoutofnowhere.com
About the filmmaker – Maisie Crow is a documentary filmmaker and photojournalist based in Texas. Her films have aired on HBO and Showtime. She is a director and producer of Zurawski v Texas. Her 2021 documentary At the Ready premiered at the Sundance Film Festival and can now be seen on MAX. In 2018, her documentary, Jackson, received a News and Documentary Emmy award for Outstanding Social Issue Documentary. The film won 15 film festival awards for best documentary and audience favorite. In 2022, she was part of This American Life’s reporting team on the Peabody-winning episode The Pink House at the Center of the World. Her short films The Last Clinic and A Life Alone were both nominated for News and Documentary Emmy awards. Her work has also been recognized by the Overseas Press Club, American Society of Magazine Editors, Pictures of the Year International and World Press Photo. Maisie has taught photojournalism and video storytelling as an adjunct professor at Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism, CUNY Graduate School of Journalism and the Salt Institute for Documentary Studies. In 2019, Maisie and her husband took the helm of The Big Bend Sentinel and Presidio International newspapers in Far West Texas, building a community gathering space around the publications to help bolster readership and revenue. For more go to: weareoutofnowhere.com
“For the unconvinced, the informative Zurawski v Texas reframes abortion as, above all else, a lifesaving healthcare right.” – Lovia Gyarkye, The Hollywood Reporter
“This unflinching survey of Texas’s overly restrictive abortion laws smartly presents reproductive healthcare as a bipartisan issue.” – Tomris Laffly, Variety
“It’s the defiantly unslick, urgent intertwining of teamwork and private grief that lifts “Zurawski v Texas” out of the usual sea of issue documentaries, Crow and Perrault toggling between the high-stakes courtroom drama and raw human tragedy.” – Robert Abele, Los Angeles Times
“In many ways, “Zurawski v Texas” is a film about America itself and the governmental failings that have brought us to this moment.” – Jourdain Searles, indieWire
“Though “Zurawski v Texas” may be straightforward and conventional in its presentation, that doesn’t take away from how vastly powerful and important this film is as it relates to current events.” – Ema Sasic, Next Best Picture
FACING THE WIND follows two women, whose lives are irrevocably changed by their husbands’ diagnosis with Lewy body dementia (LBD) —a widespread, but little-known condition. After struggling to find information about her husband’s disease, Linda Szypula starts a podcast about LBD with Curry Wisenhunt, a Texan truck driver, who also has the disease. Their efforts grow into a unique online support community for those living with the disease and those caring for them. In a support group, Linda meets Carla Preyer, who has just quit her job to care for her husband Patrick. They bond over their shared challenges and the dark humor they use to cope.Linda and Jim plan a “go-for-broke” road trip to see the country and visit friends from the support group. But only weeks into the trip, things begin to go awry, as Jim struggles with the travel. Meanwhile, Carla plans a ceremony to renew her wedding vows, but Patrick takes a turn for the worse. As their husbands begin to disappear into dementia, Linda and Carla grow closer. Their friendship and their connection to the support group help them deal with their grief, rise to the demands of caregiving, and emerge whole on the other side. Director Deirdre Fishel stops by for a conversation on the slow-motion tragedy that Lewy Body Dementia (LBD) brings to those having to navigate its challenges. Fishel lovingly spotlights the afflicted and their care givers like Linda, Carla and LBD diagnosed Curry Whisenhunt as they endeavor to do the best they can. As Fishel puts it “every person will eventually need care or be a caregiver, our ageist, ablest, individualistic society expects each person or family to manage care on their own despite more cries for government and community support.”
About the filmmaker – Deirdre Fishel is a director of documentaries and dramas that have been broadcast in 35 countries worldwide. Her latest documentary, Women in Blue (2020) looks at the lives of women officers trying to reform the Minneapolis Police Department in the years leading up to the murder of George Floyd. It premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival and was broadcast on PBS’ Independent Lens. Fishel’s Ford and MacArthur Foundation funded documentary Care (2016)looks at the lives of elder care workers and their clients and how America’s care system is failing both. It premiered at Sheffield Doc Fest and was broadcast on America Reframed. Fishel’s other projects include the groundbreaking documentary STILL DOING IT: The Intimate Lives of Women Over 65 which premiered at SXSW, Suicide on Campus a web documentary produced in conjunction with The New York Times Magazine and Risk a dramatic feature which premiered in competition at Sundance. Fishel is a professor and the director of the BFA in Film/Video at the City College of New York. For more go to: mindseyeprods.com
“The memorable documentary Facing the Wind takes a candid look at two married couples coping with each husband having Lewy body dementia. It shows real and raw experiences from the caregivers’ perspectives.” – Carla Hay, Culture Mix
MUCH ADO ABOUT DYING begins when the filmmaker Simon Chambers receives a call from his elderly gay uncle, David Newlyn Gale, – “I think I may be dying!” – Simon takes it as a summons. As it turns out, eccentric Uncle David, a retired actor living alone in a cluttered, mouse-infested London house, is being dramatic, sort of: For the next five years, Chambers both cares for and documents David, through all his performative exuberance (constantly acting out passages of King Lear) and anarchic charisma (swinging from boisterous humor to short temper), as various people (including a sexy young hustler) possibly take advantage of him.As their lives become encumbered by hospital visits, a house fire, and Britain’s inadequate eldercare system, the younger man (also single and queer) reflects with aching honesty on what may await him in the years to come, in this moving yet hilarious film. Director Simon Chambers for a conversation on the reasons he didn’t think he had a film about his uncle until he realized that he did, the push and pull that was his own life in service to David, saving him from himself and the pure joy that made being with David brought until the very end.
Winner of Best Directed Film at International Documentary Festival Amsterdam
Winner: Best Documentary at Merlinka International Queer Film Festival (Serbia)
Winner: Audience Award for Best Film at North East International Film Festival
Winner: Best Film at Jakarta Independent Film Festival Winner : Best Film at Milton Keynes International Film Festival
About the filmmaker – Director, writer, producer Simon Chambers taught disadvantaged teenagers in London for 14 years before turning his hand to films. In 2006, with his first feature ‘Every Good Marriage Begins With Tears’, he realised that he had a knack for making the kind of documentaries that people want to watch. ‘Every Good Marriage’ was shown on BBC Storyville, and on TV in around 30 countries. In 2009 he completed feature length documentary ‘Cowboys in India’ which has also won several prizes and has shown on TV In 2010 he moved to New Delhi where he taught at an Islamic university. In 2015 he moved back to London to become the carer for his uncle, David Newlyn Gale, a retired gay actor who was living in squalor and needed support. When Uncle David died in 2020 Simon decided to make a film from the footage they had shot together.
“With Much Ado About Dying, Mr. Chambers has given us a sensitive portrait of a man playing his final part — which is, really, a little bit Lear but mostly David Gale. It’s a sui generis performance.” – Zachary Barnes, Wall Street Journal
“Joyous clarity…bittersweet empathy… in this achingly funny-sad film.” -Variety
“In its refreshingly frank look at the end of life, Much Ado About Dying becomes a thought-provoking study of what it means to live.” -Screen Daily
“The best kind of documentary. It will make you laugh and cry. It will also make you pause for thought.” -BackSeat Mafia
“One of the biggest hits emerging at IDFA…simultaneously touching, endearing and often riotously funny.” – Deadline
“Chambers’ family-filming-family masterpiece is a tender and often funny chronicle of a dying man who secretes his brilliant charisma…” -The Film Verdict
BOGART: LIFE COMES IN FLASHES is the first official feature documentary to explore the remarkable life and career of Hollywood legend Humphrey Bogart. For the first time ever, narrated in Bogart’s own words and using previously unseen archives, letters, and interviews from those closest to him, the film definitively explores the impact of one of the most influential cinematic and cultural icons of all time.Set against the glitz and glamour of Jazz Age Broadway to the Golden Age of Hollywood, and framed around the five key women in his life – his mother and four wives, including his final marriage to screen icon Lauren Bacall – the film intricately weaves together his most important relationships against a backdrop of world events which defined Bogart’s career trajectory.A nuanced portrait of the man behind the myth, and a fresh perspective on the legacy of one of Hollywood’s most revered stars. Director Kathryn Ferguson (Nothing Compares, Taking the Waters) joins us to talk about her reasons for taking on Bogart as a documentary subject, how seeing him and his career through the prism of the women he was closes to; his mother Maude, his four wives, Helen Menken, Mary Philips, Mayo Methot and Lauren Bacall provided her with the depth of field she needed to bring to life the story of a man who embodied masculinity for the better part of the 20th century.
About the filmmaker – Belfast-born Kathryn Ferguson is an Emmy-nominated director and writer. She recently established Tara Films with producer Eleanor Emptage. Her innovative and boundary-pushing documentary work has screened globally, and in 2022 was awarded the inaugural BFI & Chanel Award for Creative Audacity. In 2018, Kathryn’s short documentary TAKING THE WATERS premiered at Sheffield Doc Fest, and was longlisted for a BAFTA. Then, in 2021, Kathryn worked with Passion Pictures on the short SPACE TO BE for The Guardian’s acclaimed documentary series. In 2022 Kathryn released her debut feature documentary NOTHING COMPARES – which takes as its subject Sinéad O’Connor’s artistry and activism. The film premiered at Sundance Film Festival 2022 then toured the international festival circuit, where it picked up multiple awards, before hitting cinemas in October 2022. It has received over thirty award nominations internationally, including Emmy, Critics Choice, IDA, and PGA Awards, and was awarded winner of Best Feature Documentary at BIFA 2022, IFTA & Rose D’Or 2023. In 2023 she was selected as a BAFTA Breakthrough, a cohort that celebrates ‘must-watch’ creatives working in film and television. 2024 sees the launch of a new feature documentary BOGART: LIFE COMES IN FLASHES – released by Universal.
“A new documentary, “Bogart: Life Comes in Flashes,” the first ever made in cooperation with his estate, pleasingly reveals that the actor had both the dry wit and the soul of his most memorable characters.” – Kyle Smith, Wall Street Journal
“Bogart: Life Comes in Flashes approaches Bogie’s life from a new perspective, adding to Bogie’s legacy.” – Danielle Solzman, Solzy at the Movies
“Bogie telling his own story in his own words, along with those of friends and co-workers, this captures his complex personality as never before seen. Whether or not you are a Bogie fan, it’s one not to be missed.” – Tony Medley, tonymedley.com
“This doc has no startling revelations—but it does view Bogart through a different lens than usual: the women in his life. I’m a sucker for this kind of film & enjoyed going through the beats of Bogie’s life and career, aided by precious home movie footage” – Leonard Maltin, leonardmaltin.com
Award-winning filmmaker Ondi Timoner latest film, ALL GOD”S CHILDREN,explores the intersection of race, religion and family and explores whether the truism “we’re more alike than we are different” is more than a pithy bumper sticker. In an unprecedented attempt to heal centuries of racism and antisemitism, and combat the rising racial and ethnic tension in their Brooklyn communities, the largest reform synagogue and the oldest black Baptist Church in Brooklyn attempt to quell the racism and anti-semitism that has plagued their communities for decades and bring about peace, by becoming family. Shot over five years, ALL GOD’S CHILDREN follows her sister, activist Rabbi Rachel Timoner, and her Congregation Beth Elohim’s partnership with Reverend Dr Robert Waterman of Antioch Baptist Church as their faith is put to the test, and both congregations struggle to not let their differences drive them apart. Though it’s a fraught partnership, they refuse to walk away, no matter how hard it gets, and ultimately emerge with a powerful model for how other communities might bridge divides and foster enduring partnerships across religious, racial, economic differences. The rabbi and the pastor lead delegations to their places of worship to learn from each other, but soon tensions emerge, testing their dreams of unity. Tackling their complex histories head on, these two New York City devotional institutions find communal traction, fighting side-by-side for justice and compassion. Director Ondi Timoner (Last Flight Home) joins us for a conversation on all the different way this high wire enterprise could have gone sideways, what it was like working along side her sister on this project while at the same time helping their mom during their father his last days and the level of satisfaction this project has brought to her as a filmmaker and as a sister.
About the filmmaker – Ondi Timoner is an internationally-acclaimed filmmaker whose work focuses on “impossible visionaries.” She has the rare distinction of being the only person to win the Grand Jury Prize at Sundance twice: for DIG! (2004), about the collision of art and commerce through the eyes of two rival rock bands, and for WE LIVE IN PUBLIC (2009), which predicts the loss of privacy with life online and the advent of social media through a bunker in Manhattan over the turn of the millennium. Both films were acquired by New York’s MoMA for its permanent collection. Ondi’s most personal film, LAST FLIGHT HOME, about the extraordinary life and intentional death of her father, Eli Timoner, premiered at Sundance and Telluride in 2022, was acquired by MTV Documentary Films / Paramount for a theatrical release, Shortlisted for the Academy Award, nominated for the WGA Award for Best Documentary and for the Emmy for Exceptional Merit, and received The Humanitas Award for Best Documentary, the Impact Award at Hamptons Docfest, the Critics Award at Key West Film Festival, the Grand Jury Prize at the Woodstock Film Festival. Ondi’s 2023 film, “THE NEW AMERICANS: Gaming a Revolution”, is a visceral journey into the intersection of finance, media and extremism which uncovers the explosive and irreversible ramifications of our digital future. It premiered at SXSW where it was acquired by Paramount, and it is currently on Netflix. In 2023, Ondi and her brother David reunited to create DIG! XX, enhanced, extended and reimagined cut of her cult classic film DIG! – which premiered at Sundance in 2024, in honor of its 20th anniversary. DIG! XX features a new narration from BJM frontman Joel Gion and brings this timeless tale up to today and is having a theatrical release across the world in January 2025. Ondi’s catalog of distinguished feature documentaries also includes: the award-winning feature COMING CLEAN (2020) about solutions to the opioid epidemic; BRAND: A Second Coming (Opening Film, SXSW 2015) about the evolution of comedian / author / activist Russell Brand; COOL IT (TIFF Premiere / Roadside Attractions 2010) about controversial economist Bjorn Lomborg and solutions to climate change; the award-winning JOIN US (2007) about mind control; the award-wining film THE NATURE OF THE BEAST (1994) about Bonnie Jean Foreshaw and the miscarriage of justice she endured; and the critically-acclaimed 10-hour nonfiction series JUNGLETOWN about building “the world’s most sustainable town” (Viceland, 2017.) Her first scripted film, MAPPLETHORPE, which she also wrote, produced and edited, starred Matt Smith and premiered at TriBeCa Film Festival in 2018, winning the 2nd Audience Award, & nine Audience and Best Feature Awards at festivals across the world before being acquired by Samuel Goldwyn for a theatrical release and Hulu. The original version, “MAPPLETHORPE The Director’s Cut” was Official Selection for Sundance 2018, can be found on Amazon now and is the recommended version. Ondi’s most notable short films include: Recycle (2005), Library of Dust (SXSW 2011), Amanda F***ing Palmer On The Rocks (TriBeca 2013), Obey The Artist (SXSW 2014), RUSSELL BRANDS THE BIRD (2014), The Last Mile (SXSW 2015). Her career began with a Grammy nomination for Best Long-Form Video (“Fastball: They Wanted the Highway”) and since, she has directed music videos for The Jonas Brothers, The Vines, OK GO, DMC, The Dandy Warhols and commercials for State Farm, Ford, and President Clinton, among others. Ondi is an Emmy and WGA-Nominated filmmaker who was awarded the prestigious Humantis Award and the Visionary Award for Observational Filmmaking at Doc NYC in 2022. Some other career achievement awards include Kodak’s Auteur Award, the Maverick Award, the Rogue Award, and the No Limits Award. She serves as the Chair of Nonfiction for Special Projects at the DGA, is a member of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences, the WGA, the IDA, Film Fatales & Women in Film.
Take one look at award-winning songwriter / artist Allee Willis and you see someone unafraid to be themselves. Dressed in a cacophony of prints and colors, her signature asymmetrical haircut and famed parties at her real-life Pee-wee’s Playhouse, Allee didn’t waste any opportunity to tell you what she was about. But privately, Allee struggled with not fitting established gender and sexual norms. She buried herself in her work, until true love manifested her ultimate masterpiece – self-acceptance. Allee began filming her life in 1950s Detroit and never stopped. THE WORLD ACCORDING TO ALLEE WILLIS is the realization of her wish that her “final art piece be someone putting together the trail I have left behind.” The film features interviews with Mark Cuban, Cyndi Lauper, Brenda Russell, Lily Tomlin, Paul Reubens, Lesley Ann Warren, Michael Patrick King, Patti LaBelle, Pet Shop Boys, Siedah Garrett , Pamela Adlon, Stephen Bray, Paul Feig, Patti LaBelle, Mark Mothersbaugh and many others.Her music includes the massively popular songs that include September and Boogie Wonderland, recorded by Earth, Wind and Fire, The Pointer Sister’s Neutron Dance, the Beverly Hills Cop soundtrack, the theme song for the sitcom Friends and dozens of songs written for Pet Shop Boys, Patti LaBelle, Cyndi Lauper, Gladys Knight, Herbie Hancock and many, many other recording artists. Director Alexis Spraic stops by to talk about the dazzling life of Allee Willis, her creativity, her boundless energy, her generosity, her embrace of collaboration, her Museum of Kitsch and her impact on the world of music, television, film, art and the people who came to know her.
About the filmmaker – Alexis Manya Spraic is an award-winning filmmaker and screenwriter based in Los Angeles. As a fourth generation Angeleno, she’s drawn to stories hidden-in-plain-sight: stories of women and people of color languishing in the footnotes of history and culture. Previous documentary credits include “Shadow Billionaire” (Hulu), “Ray Charles’ America” for A&E (produced by Academy Award winner Morgan Neville), State of Play: War on Sports (HBO / produced by Peter Berg) and is finishing a docuseries about the family that started the Magic Castle in Hollywood. She also produced and edited: “Jean-Michel Basquiat: The Radiant Child” (PBS), “Respect Yourself: The Stax Records Story” (PBS, Grammy-nominated)), “Cat Dancers” (HBO), “Search and Destroy: Iggy & The Stooges’ Raw Power” (Sony) and “Maxed Out” (Showtime). Alexis also works as a screenwriter. She sold her first original pilot to A&E Networks and has written for Warner Bros, Macro Film Studios, Storyline Entertainment, Flower Films and others. She is currently prepping for her upcoming narrative directorial-debut DOROTHEA starring Holly Hunter starring and packaged by CAA. Alexis is a member of the DGA and WGA and is repped by CAA.
About the filmmaker – Prudence Fenton is a producer, filmmaker, executive, animator, multi-media artist, and Internet visionary, she has changed the ways things look, and our experience of them for over thirty-five years. Credits include MTV IDs, Pee-wee’s Playhouse, animated Peter Gabriel Videos, Liquid Television, ABC’s One Saturday Morning, Drew Carey’s Greenscreen Show, and many others. She spent over 11 years as a think tank consultant at Disney R&D. Six years at Magic Leap with the digital human team and working on spatializing data. Prudence has won three Emmys, a Grammy, and a Clio, as well as MTV VMAs. Since 2020 after the death of her partner Allee Willis Prudence founded the Willis Wonderland Foundation whose mission is to amplify the songwriters of the upcoming generation.
“Director Alexis Manya Spraic crafts a documentary that strives to be just as fascinating as its subject.” – Jourdain Searles, Hollywood Reporter
“The World According to Allee Willis is one of the best films I saw at SXSW” – Vulture
“Digs through a dizzying mountain of material in Willis’s archive from childhood on – of multi-hit, award-winning songs, art, fashion, parties, to internet plans, with Famous Friends interviews. Doc sensitively slows down to reveal her personal struggles.” – Nora Lee Mandel, Maven’s Nest
How is happiness measured? Can satisfaction with one’s life be rated on a scale from one to ten? The Kingdom of Bhutan’s famous – and highly exoticized – government policy measuring its nation’s Gross National Happiness operates on the idea that the basic tenets of fulfillment can and should be quantified when calculating their nation’s development. Happiness Agents Amber Gurung and Guna Raj Kuikel traverse the Himalayan mountains to survey the contentment of citizens from different households and lifestyles. While Amber dutifully administers this census, he too is forced to confront his own struggles with fulfillment, and question what makes him happy. Filmmakers Arun Bhattarai and Dorottya Zurbó join us to talk about their own journey documenting the lives of the Agents of Happiness, Amber and Guna, as they look into the people and the stories of the Bhutanese people behind the “survey” as well as getting to know each other, in this carefully crafted and visually stunning, and revealing of the age-old quest to find the purpose of life.
About the filmmaker – Arun Bhattarai (director, cinematographer, co-producer, Bhutan) premiered his first feature-length documentary ‘The Next Guardian’ (co-directed by Dorottya Zurbó) – an intimate family story set in Bhutan – at IDFA in 2017. The lm has been screened at more than 40 international festivals (True/False, Ambulante, SFFILM, MoMA DocFortnight etc.). Before becoming an independent lmmaker, he worked as a TV director at the Bhutan Broadcasting Service for 5 years. He graduated from the rst edition of DocNomads Joint Master in documentary directing in 2014. His recent short documentary ‘Mountain Man’, about Bhutan’s only glaciologist won the best pitch prize at If/Then Global Short-Pitch at IDFA 2019 and is supported by the IDA-XRM Media incubator program. The lm has been screened at IDFA, DOC NYC, Chicago IFF ect. His new lm ‘Agent of Happiness’ is supported by the Sundance Film Institute, Catapult Film Fund and DMZ Docs Fund among others. The project was developed at the Points North Fellowship 2022, True False Rough Cut Retreat 2023 and Doc.incubator 2023. He established his own production company – Sound Pictures – dedicated to creative documentaries in 2015. He is one of the few independent documentary filmmakers in Bhutan.
About the filmmaker – Dorottya Zurbó (co-director, Hungary) premiered her first feature-length documentary ‘The Next Guardian’ (co-directed by Arun Bhattarai), – an intimate family story set in Bhutan – at IDFA in 2017. Since then, it has been screened at more than 40 international festivals (True/False, San Francisco IDFF, MoMA DocFortnight etc.). Parallelly, she worked on her rst directorial debut ‘Easy Lessons’, a feature-length documentary about a young Somalian refugee girl who tries to adapt to Hungary, premiered at the Locarno Film Festival Critics Week section in 2018. The lm participated in more than 40 international festivals (HotDocs, Camden IDFF, Sarajevo IFF etc.) receiving awards such as the Hungarian Critics Award for Best Documentary in 2019. Her new lm ‘Agent of Happiness’ is supported by the Sundance Film Institute, Catapult Film Fund and DMZ Docs Fund among others. The project was developed at the Points North Fellowship 2022, True False Rough Cut Retreat 2023 and Doc.incubator 2023. Beside lmmaking she has been teaching at the prestigious DocNomads Joint Master program in Europe.
“This quiet, gently absorbing documentary follows two “happiness agents” as they travel door-to-door, like census workers, collecting data for the government’s happiness survey.” – Cath Clarke, Guardian
“A complex, observant, and bittersweet look at the nature of fulfilment viewed through the infrequently glimpsed lens of Bhutanese culture.” – Andrew Parker, The Gate
“The quiet, intimate charms of Agent of Happiness pulse from poignant collective consideration, filtered through the personal experience of a professional happiness inspector.” – Jacob Oller, Paste Magazine
“Something this personal kind of inspires you to reflect as well. This is a lovely and kind documentary that handles big subjects with an unusual amount of honesty.” – Sarah Manvel, Critic’s Notebook
““Agent of Happiness” uses meaningful visual contrast to scrutinize Bhutan’s narrative about itself. It re-injects a vibrant sense of nuance into an exercise that, though nominally geared toward gauging humanity, too often reduces it to a number.” – Siddhant Adlakha, Variety
American Coup: Wilmington 1898tells the little-known story of a deadly race massacre and carefully orchestrated insurrection in North Carolina’s largest city in 1898 — the only coup d’état in the history of the US. Stoking fears of “Negro Rule,” self-described white supremacists used intimidation and violence to destroy Black political and economic power and overthrow Wilmington’s democratically-elected, multi-racial government. Black residents were murdered and thousands were banished. Following the white supremacist insurrection, many newspapers throughout the country reported the incident as a “race riot” and suggested that Black citizens were the aggressors. More than 2000 African Americans fled the city. Wilmington, which had a Black majority of 56% in the 1890s, became a majority-white city. In 1899, North Carolinians passed a Constitutional amendment requiring voters to pay a poll tax and take a literacy test unless a father or grandfather had voted before 1867 — effectively disenfranchising the Black population. No Black citizen from Wilmington served in public office again until 1972, and no Black North Carolinian was elected to statewide office for nearly 100 years. No one was ever prosecuted or held responsible for the violence. The story of what happened in Wilmington was suppressed for decades until descendants and scholars began to investigate. Today, many of those descendants — Black and white — seek the truth about this intentionally buried history. Directed by award-winning filmmakers Brad Lichtenstein and Yoruba Richen in association with PBS North Carolina and executive produced by Cameo George and Rachel Raney, American Coup: Wilmington 1898, premieres Tuesday, November 12, 2024, 9:00-11:00 p.m. ET (check local listings) on AMERICAN EXPERIENCE on PBS, PBS.org and the PBS App.
About the filmmaker – Yoruba Richen (Director, Writer, Producer) is a Peabody Award-winning documentary filmmaker and founder of Promised Land Film. She was recently awarded the Trailblazer Award by Black Public Media, and her work has been featured on multiple outlets, including Netflix, MSNBC, Peacock and FX/Hulu. Her film, The Rebellious Life of Mrs. Rosa Parks,won a Gracie Award and was honored by the Television Academy. Other recent work includesthe Emmy-nominated films American Reckoning, How It Feels to Be Free, The Sit In: Harry Belafonte Hosts the Tonight Show, and Green Book: Guide to Freedom. Her film, The Killing of Breonna Taylor,won an NAACP Image Award. Her films The New Black and Promised Land won multiple festival awardsbeforeairing on PBS’s INDEPENDENT LENS and POV. Richen’s other work includes directing an episode of the award-winning series Black and Missing for HBO and High on the Hog for Netflix. Richen is a recipient of the Chicken & Egg Breakthrough Filmmaker’s Award and a Guggenheim Fellowship. She is the Founding Director of the Documentary Program at the Craig Newmark Graduate School of Journalism at CUNY.
About the filmmaker – Brad Lichtenstein (Director, Writer, Producer) is an award-winning filmmaker and founder of 371 Productions. He won a 2022 Primetime Emmy for When Claude Got Shot. He was nominated for a Sports Emmy for the VR filmAshe ’68, which premiered at Sundance in 2019, and a News and Documentary Emmy for the 2012 INDEPENDENT LENS/PBS filmAs Goes Janesville. He’s won two Dupont Awards: one for the 2016 Al Jazeera America series Hard Earned (with Kartemquin Films) and another for his 2001 filmGhosts ofAttica (with Lumiere Productions). His 2022 film,American Reckoning (with producer/director Yoruba Richen) for the PBS series FRONTLINE, was nominated for a Peabody and a News & Documentary Emmy for Best Historical Documentary. With Emily Kuester, he directed Messwood for Participant, which premiered in 2021 at DocNYC. His radio series about gun violence,Precious Lives, was nominated for a Peabody. Since 2003, his company has been committed to nurturing the careers of emerging women and BIPOC storytellers.
When 28-year-old aspiring journalist Shiori Ito goes public in May 2017 with her rape allegation against Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s closest journalist and biographer, she feels she has no other choice in order to change Japan’s antiquated sexual assault laws. Her press conference shocks the public in a society where speaking up on such matters is considered shameful. Within days, Shiori is swept into the center of Japanese politics — the right wing views her as a threat to bring down the Abe government and the left hails her a hero for the same reason. Death threats, cyberbullying, and hate mail take Shiori into a downward spiral. When she files a civil case, the accused rages all-out war against her. Determined not to set a bad example for other victims, Shiori pushes forward with her case and resolves to publish a book about her experience. Directed by herself with the most personal of material, BLACK BOX DIARIES captures Shiori’s tumultuous, heart-wrenching, and ultimately triumphant journey, going behind the headlines to reveal what it has been like to walk in her shoes. The documentary reveals the personal toll of a society’s web of politics, media, and technology on the humanity of its individuals. Being both victim and journalist investigating her own case, the documentary shows that what Shiori did was not only to create social change but ultimately to keep herself alive. Director and Subject, Shiori Ito joins us to talk about her emotionally grueling five year journey to tell her story, the challenge of being a journalist and a filmmaker, as well the support she received from Swedish journalist and filmmaker Hanna Aqvilin, and her videographer friends.
**DOC NYC Short List – 2024 Documentary Features**
**Golden Eye Award for Best Documentary – 2024 Zurich Film Festival**
**Audience Award – 2024 Zurich Film Festival**
**Human Rights Award – 2024 CPH:DOX Festival**
**Special Jury Award – 2024 San Francisco International Film Festival**
**Lena Sharpe Award for Persistence of Vision – 2024 Seattle International Film Festival**
**Audience Award – 2024 New Zealand International Film Festival**
**Audience Award – 2024 Sarajevo Film Festival**
About the filmmaker – Shiori Ito is a director, producer, camera person, journalist, and writer. Her primary focus is gender-based human rights issues. She co-founded Hanashi Films, a Tokyo and London-based production company that has collaborated with NHK, BBC, and Al Jazeera, amongst others. In 2017, Shiori wrote the book “Black Box,” based on her own experience of rape. The book reveals the sexism in Japan’s society and institutions and won the Free Press Association of Japan Award for Best Journalism in 2018. It has been translated into a number of languages. In 2020 she was listed as one of the 100 most influential people in the world by Time magazine. BLACK BOX DIARIES is her feature documentary debut. For more go to: shioriito.com
“Shiori Itō changed the world. And Black Box Diaries is a monument to her determination and sacrifice, as well as one of the best documentaries you’ll see all year.” – Marlow Stern, Rolling Stone
“A remarkably intimate non-fiction exposé about the ordeals women suffer after being sexually assaulted—and the strength, courage and togetherness required to change that status quo.” – Nick Schager, The Daily Beast
“Throughout the film we viscerally feel Ito’s courage as speaks truth to power.” – Marya E. Gates, RogerEbert.com
“Ito’s work is more than breaking down a systemic pattern of abuse but redefining how a country protects women, so it is a compelling mission that needs to be supported.” – Katie Smith-Wong, Flick Feast
Tommy Hyde’s beguiling feature documentary debut UNDERDOG follows a hardscrabble Vermont dairy farmer Doug Butler. Doug has an offbeat passion – dog mushing. A local folk hero, Doug trains his team of mutts on the family farm with a dream to compete at the world championships in Alaska. But the demands of being a small-scale family farmer in a changing world are constant. Keenly aware of the fate of the other family farms that used to dot the landscape, Doug has managed for years to play one creditor off against the next to survive another season. But with the debt now insurmountable and Doug’s thoughts plunging into depression, his dogs offer solace…and perhaps a way out. On a cold March morning Doug pulls out of his driveway in a rusted-out truck carrying 22 dogs, bound for Alaska. The journey will prepare him for what he’ll confront when he gets back: the sale of his farm and a race to craft a new destiny. Director, cinematographer, editor Tommy Hyde joins us for a conversation on how met his charismatic subject, being welcomed into Doug’s energetic world, traveling across country with Doug and working how working with UNDERDOG producer and writer, Aaron Woolf and producer Kyra Schaefer from Mosaic Films Productions made this possible.
About the filmmaker – Tommy Hyde (Director, Camera, Editor) is a documentary filmmaker whose work explores people and stories at the fringes of society. Underdog, a film ten years in the making, is his directorial debut. He frequently collaborates with Mosaic Films, and is currently in production on two docu-series with them as a producer and writer. He is a graduate of Middlebury College and resides in Burlington, VT.
Kyra Schaefer (Co-Producer) is a NY-based documentary producer and editor whose work centers around the intersection of faith and feminism. She holds a B.A. in digital media and video production from Marymount Manhattan College. She is the co-producer of The Happening (in production) and Ordinary Saints (in production), both Mosaic Films Productions.
Aaron Woolf (Producer & Writer) is a Rockie, Logie and Peabody award-winning documentary filmmaker who tells stories that depict the human dimension of government policy. His work has been released theatrically in the US, Europe and Japan and broadcast on PBS, the Sundance Channel, and numerous international networks including RAI, ARTE, and SBS. Aaron is active in community and conservation efforts in New York’s Adirondack North Country, and in 2014 he was the Democratic nominee for Congress from the New York’s 21st district.
“Tommy Hyde’s heartwarming documentary traces the life of an aging Vermont dairy farmer. Hyde’s subtlety as a filmmaker, along with the fabulous, eccentric central figure, bring to mind David Lynch’s The Straight Story. Both films are remarkable for how seemingly unremarkable they are. Stick with it, and the film’s subliminal power will sneak up on you.”-Alex Saveliev, FILM THREAT
In AFTER: POETRY DESTROYS SILENCE, contemporary poets confront the Holocaust. In this dramatic hybrid documentary, with performances by Melissa Leo, Géza Röhrig, and Bo Corre, poets respond to the Holocaust and address the responsibility and necessity for art. The first of its kind, where poetry and cinema combine and transcend time. AFTER is an exploration of poetry written about the Shoah. Contemporary poets respond to the Holocaust and talk about the importance and necessity for poetry in a world that still grapples with genocide. Rather than seeing the devastation, AFTER shows how poets respond to catastrophe and write in its aftermath. The film is ultimately about human resiliency, the power and courage to forge new lives, and the value of poetry in looking to the past to help create a better future. Weaving a narrative, each poem has its own story, main character(s), and point of view, each acting as a short island with the entire film. AFTER also interlaces sequences of music, archival footage, personal photographs, and documents. The power of the words, performances, commentary, cinematic interpretations, sounds, and silences bring the poems to life on screen, offering a modern chronicle of poets examining history and the current day. As survivors leave us each day, their voices live inside the poems we include in AFTER. One poet speaks the line, her father, a survivor, told her, “Home is anywhere they let you in.” The film serves as both a model and a warning for an increasingly divided and violent planet. Director Richard Kroehling (Albert Einstein: How I See The World, Confessions) joins us to talk about his powerful and eerily prescient multi-dimensional documentary film that benefits from a spectacular contribution from cinematographer Lisa Renzler, and bolstered by a cast of actors, poets, writers and educators that includes; Melissa Leo, Geza Rohrig, Bo Corre, Joanna Wallfisch, Josh Harto, Taylor Mali, Janet Kirchheimer, Paul Celan, Yehuda Amichai, Edward Hirsch, Sabrina Orah Mark, Charles Carter, Christine Poreba, Walter Fiden and Cornelious Eady
About the filmmaker – Richard Kroehling’s work includes dramatic features, documentary, crime TV, and intimate portraits of some of the world’s renowned thinkers, as well as film and video art that looks to transcend existing forms. He directed “Albert Einstein: How I See The World” with William Hurt for PBS American Masters and the feature “World Without End” for England’s Film Four. A two-time Emmy award winner, he has directed over fifty hours of crime docudramas for networks in the United States and Europe. He created the controversial TV series “Confessions”, hailed as “visionary and stunning”, which was later installed at the Palazzo della Triennale in Milan. His films and video art installations have been exhibited at film festivals, networks, and art museums around the world, including MOMA, The Jewish Museum in New York City, and the Lars Von Trier’s Gesamt project at the Kunsthalle in Copenhagen. “Dollarland”, a multi-screen installation of an imaginary American city, is a collaboration with his long-time cinematographer Lisa Rinzler. “Dollarland” premiered at the Woodstock Artist Association Museum (WAAM) and showed at Art Basel Miami in 2019. Richard Kroehling will direct his adaptation of Swedish playwright Lars Noren’s “War” in 2024. He received grants from the National Endowment for the Arts, the National Endowment for the Humanities, and the New York Council on the Arts. richardkroehling.com
About the filmmaker – Lisa Rinzler is known as a master of lighting, has an international reputation, and lensed many documentaries, feature films, and experimental works. Her credits include Academy Award nominated “Pollock“, “Dead Presidents”, “Menace II Society”, and she worked with Martin Scorsese on “American Masters” and “No Direction Home: Bob Dylan”, as well as “It’s The Soul of a Man” with Wim Wenders. Lisa Rinzler won the Sundance Independent Spirit Award in 1993 and 1999. She was featured in the American Film Institute’s “Visions of Light: The Art of Cinematography” featuring nine of the world’s greatest motion picture camera artists. In 2016, Lisa Rinzler shot the documentary “Don’t Blink”, a portrait of Robert Frank. Most recently, she lensed “A Man of His Word”, a portrait of Pope Francis directed by Wim Wenders, as well as the Academy Award winning documentary short in 2019 called “How to Skate in a Warzone (If you are a Girl)”. lisarinzler.com
“The film’s look and sound are lyrical, providing an apt setting for the poets who recite their work and discuss the kind of communication that fills in the gaps left by recitations of fact, archival images, or dramatic re-enactments.” – Nell Minow, RogerEbert.com
“A provocative, enlightening and engrossing protest against hate.” – Avi Offer, NYC Movie Guru
STARRING JERRY AS HIMSELF drops the viewer into the “normal” life of Jerry Hsu. Jerry is a retired, divorced Taiwanese immigrant living in Orlando. All of the normal is knocked out of Jerry’s world when he gets an urgent call from a People’s Republic of China’s Chinese police officer. The officer informs him that he’s the prime suspect in an international money laundering investigation where $1.28mm was illegally moved through his Florida bank account. Under threat of arrest and extradition to China, the police force Jerry to cooperate and be an undercover agent in their case. Over the next few weeks, Jerry helps the police investigate an international money laundering case by taking surveillance photos of his bank, making top secret transfers, and even wearing a wire to spy on bank tellers. After months of keeping the investigation a secret, Jerry finally reveals everything to his family. His three sons decide to document his ordeal and discover the truth about what really happened and how it changed Jerry’s life forever. Director Law Chen and screenwriter Jonathan Hsu join us to talk about their genre-busting “documentary” family drama suspense story that stars all of Jerry’s American-based family and gives the audience a unique cinematic experience.
About the filmmaker – Law Chen is an award winning director based in Brooklyn His narrative, documentary, and commercial films have earned 19 Cannes Lions, as well as multiple Webby Awards, Vimeo Staff Picks, and screened at film festivals around the world. His first feature ‘Starring Jerry as Himself’ will premiere at Slamdance, and tells a personal story about an immigrant’s pursuit of the American Dream.
About the filmmaker – Jonathan Hsu has been making films since he could first get his hands on his family’s Digi8 Camcorder. Since then he has produced multiple award winning commercials, music videos, and films. He founded his commercial production services company HsuBox Productions Inc. with the mission to share and produce content that is as diverse as his crew and clients. Jon is an alumni of NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts. in his free time he makes large dinners, performs Magic, and mentors up-and-coming filmmakers. He recently Executive Produced the horror movie “A Wounded Fawn” for Tribeca 2022’s Midnight Program and also a short film “Closing Dynasty” for the inaugural Netflix x Gold House x Tribeca 2022 Future Gold Fellowship.
“Starring Jerry as Himself manages to pull off something of a magic trick. Not only is the film a compelling documentary that keeps audiences guessing, it also stands alone as a work of scripted fiction.” – Tina Kakadelis, Beyond the Cinerama Dome
“Surprising is the operative word here. A compelling, thoroughly engaging documentary with a huge payoff by the end that is satisfying, moving and ultimately, quite sad. One of the year’s most fascinating films with a memorable lead “character” in Jerry.” – Jim Laczkowski, Director’s Club
“So much of this is recreation, in fact, that it begs the question of whether this really qualifies as a documentary. Nevertheless, it’s engrossing.” – Christopher Llewellyn Reed, Film Festival Today
“Chen finds a way to lure the audience into understanding a horrible phenomenon that we all know about, but can only understand through Jerry’s eyes.” – Richard Whittaker, Austin Chronicle
Homegrown is an unflinching chronicle of Americans at war with each other. Three right-wing activists—a newly politicized father-to-be in New Jersey, an Air Force veteran organizing conservatives in New York City, and a charismatic activist from Texas—crisscross the country in the summer of 2020, campaigning for Donald Trump and building a movement they hope will outlast him. When they become convinced that the election is stolen, they take their fight to the streets. A fascinating portrait emerges in Michael Premo’s look at three impassioned right-wing activists. Having won their trust in the lead-up to the 2020 election, the Brooklyn filmmaker follows them through election night, the January 6 riot, and beyond. Contradictions abound— Texas native Thad attends Trump rallies with Black Lives Matter activist Jacarri; New Jersey resident Chris participates in a “Back the Blue” march yet charges the line of police defending the Capitol—but their commitment to a particular red, white, and blue vision of America can’t be denied. Each is a combustible mix of delusional cosplayer, stalwart patriot, and potential threat, with the line between blood and bluster further blurred by cameos from Enrique Tarrio and Roger Stone. Director / Producer / Cinematographer Michael Premo joins us for a conversation on his on-going exploration of White Nationalism, working class anger around immigrants and immigration, economic hardship, the normalization of political violence, as well as working with his producing partner Rachel Falcone.
About the filmmaker – Michael Premo is a journalist, filmmaker, and artist. He directed the award-winning short film and photo exhibition WATER WARRIORS (POV), a story about a community’s successful resistance to the oil and gas industry. It has since been rebroadcasted hundreds of times by PBS stations across the country, including annually in November. He also co-directed the participatory documentary SANDY STORYLINE (Jury Award winner at the Tribeca Film Festival), the site-specific performance SANCTUARY (The Working Theater), and the PBS series VETERANS COMING HOME. Michael has directed, produced, and co-written original film, radio, and theater with numerous companies including The Foundry Theater, The Civilians, and the Peabody Award-winning StoryCorps on NPR. Michael’s photography has appeared in publications like The Village Voice, The New York Times, and Het Parool. He has been an artist-in-residence with Camargo Foundation, The Laundromat Project, and the National Resource Defense Council. He is the recipient of an NBC News Studios Original Voices Fellowship, a Creative Capital Award, A Blade of Grass Artist Files Fellowship, and a New York State Council on the Arts Individual Artist Award.
About the filmmaker – In addition to being the Executive Director of Storyline Media Rachel Falcone is a documentary filmmaker and multimedia artist. She produced the short film and exhibition Water Warriors (POV), which won more than 10 awards and has screened at hundreds of festivals, schools and communities around the globe. Rachel co-directed the participatory web documentary and exhibition Sandy Storyline (winner of the Jury Award at the Tribeca Film Festival), the site-specific performance Sanctuary and the multi-platform project Housing is a Human Right. She has directed and produced dozens of short films for clients like the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts and Earth Island Institute. Previously, Rachel produced content with the award-winning national oral history project StoryCorps and EarSay, Inc., and was an associate producer on Incite Picture’s Young Lakota (Independent Lens). She has taught oral history and storytelling in collaboration with institutions like the Museum of the City of New York and Parsons The New School for Design. Rachel is also a sound recordist for film and radio, including most recently Knock Down The House (Netflix) and To the End (Hulu).
“Premo’s documentary (Homegrown) refuses to sensationalize its timely material, which only makes the picture that much more troubling. (T)he disturbing ordinariness of these men is chilling.” – Tim Grierson, Screen Daily
“Nuanced and profound” – Tommaso Koch, El Pais
“What Premo discovered was a movement that was far more multicultural than ofter depicted.” – Jada Yuan, Washington Post
“Illuminating and gripping” – The Guardian
“…among the most powerful and unforgettable of the 81st Venice FIlm Festival” – Di Carlo Pisani, NPC Magazine
“Premo’s commitment and grit are palpable — especially when one notes how close to the action he gets during the Capitol insurrection, so that the camera shows every jostle and bump.” –Leslie Felperin, Hollywood Reporter
Hannah Peterson’s quietly compelling, slow-burn feature debut, set in the final weeks of a high school academic year, explores the long-term psychological and emotional aftermath of a school shooting on its survivors, graduating students and faculty both, with standout performances coming from Mina Sundwall as a young woman still mourning the death of her boyfriend, Moonlight’s Alex Hibbert as a basketball team star who’s been MIA since the tragedy, and John Cho as the coach struggling to keep up a brave face through unendurable heartbreak. A somber and sobering portrait of a community searching for ways to heal, they turn to each other to find hope and a way forward. Director/ Writer / Editor Hannah Peterson joins us for a conversation on how for millions of school age young people in America the horrifying idea of a mass shooting in their classroom is not the stuff of fiction, what went into her approach to cast this exceptionally talented ensemble of young actors that also includes Yasmeen Fletcher, Ewan Manley, Maria Dizzia, and Kelly O’Sullivan, working with the award winning cinematographer, Carolina Costa, and her own trajectory as a filmmaker after working with Sean Baker and the film’s Co-Executive Producers John Cho and Academy Award winner Chloé Zhao.
About the filmmaker – Director, Writer, Editor Hannah Peterson is a writer and director. Filmmaker Magazine named her one of the “25 New Faces of Independent Film.” Her work has screened at Sundance Film Festival, MoMA, REDCAT, Tribeca Film Festival, and Slamdance Film Festival where she was awarded the AGBO fellowship for her short film, East of the River. She holds an MFA in Film Directing from California Institute of the Arts (CalArts) and a BA in Screen Studies from the New School. Prior to her work as a director, Hannah mentored under filmmakers Sean Baker and Chloé Zhao. For more go to: hannahloganpeterson.com
“a moving slice of life, capped off with a stirring performance from Mina Sundwall.” – Kate Erbland, Indiewire
“If there was ever a film to watch about mourning and learning to adjust to a new normal, it’s Peterson’s poignant masterpiece.”- Mae Abdulbaki, Screenrant
“Void of emotional exploitation, Peterson’s film is a quiet drama that is searingly powerful.” – Emily Maskell, WeLoveCinema
“A quiet but wrenching drama.” – Matt Zoller Seitz, RogerEbert.com
“A story that needs to be told, made by a filmmaker who we can only hope has many more tales to share.” “a moving slice of life, capped off with a stirring performance from Mina Sundwall.” – Kate Erbland, IndieWire
“Features a star-making performance from its lead, Mina Sundwall… A compelling drama with incredible performances across the board and confident direction.” – Taylor Gates, Collider
DUSTY AND STONES intimately chronicles the remarkable ride of cousins Gazi “Dusty” Simelane and Linda “Stones” Msibi, a determined duo of struggling country singers from the tiny African Kingdom of Swaziland* who long for their big break. When they are unexpectedly invited to record their songs in Nashville and compete in a Texas battle of the bands, Dusty and Stones embark on their long-awaited first pilgrimage to the ancestral heart of country music. Over a momentous ten-day road trip through the American South, Dusty and Stones bring their music to life in a top Nashville recording studio, explore the storied locales of their favorite country songs, and excitedly engage with the culture they’ve long felt part of from afar. But this sense of kinship is abruptly thrown into question when they arrive in the small town of Jefferson, Texas to compete in the battle of the bands. There, the hostile leader of the local backing band threatens to derail the cousins’ debut American performance. As their family and friends back home wait for good news, a shell-shocked Dusty and Stones must take the stage and fight to bring home an award for Swaziland, now known as Kingdom of Eswatini. Director Jesse Rudoy stops by to talk about how he discovered Dusty and Stones on Facebook, when he decided to embark on this remarkable journey that has lasted over four years, getting to know these two cousins, and seeing how their talent, following and legacy continues to grow in the Kingdom of Eswatini and around the world.
Jury Award for Best Documentary Feature – Atlanta Film Festival
Jury Award for Best Director – RiverRun International Film Festival
Jury Award for Best Debut Feature – Florida Film Festival
Audience Award for Best Documentary – San Luis Obispo International Film
Festival Jury Award for Best Feature – Thin Line Festival
About the filmmaker – Jesse Rudoy is a filmmaker, musician, and born-again country fan based in New York City. He was most recently an editor on Season 2 of HBO’s The Jinx. Jesse has composed original music for brands like Adidas and National Geographic and released music on the record label Let’s Play House. His work has been supported by HBO, the Gotham Film & Media Institute, Film Independent, and Durban FilmMart. Dusty & Stones is his first film.
About the filmmaker – Melissa O. Adeyemo is a Nigerian-American producer and the founder of Ominira Studios, a New York-based production company. Her first feature, Eyimofe, premiered at the 2020 Berlinale, has shown at over 20+ festivals, and was acquired by Janus Films. It is currently a part of the Criterion Collection, where Melissa is the first-ever African female producer to be featured in her own standalone spotlight interview. Eyimofe was nominated for an NAACP Award and won five African Movie Academy Awards. Dusty & Stones is her first documentary feature film. Melissa started her filmmaking career with Spike Lee’s Inside Man and Steven Spielberg’s Munich.
“An often captivating crowd-pleaser that weaves contemporary politics in its backdrop…a character study rife with terrific music and presence.” – The Film Stage
“A wondrous ten-day road trip through the American south.” – DOC NYC
“One of the most compelling and joyful music documentaries of the year.” – Living Life Fearless
“A triumph of musical storytelling.” – Sonic Cinema
Documentary THE TASTE OF MANGO, the debut 
feature from filmmaker and video artist Chloe Abrahams (Trust Me), is an enveloping, hypnotic, urgently personal meditation on family, memory, identity, violence, and love. At its 
center are three extraordinary women: the director’s mother, Rozana; her grandmother, Jean; and the director herself. Their stories, by turns difficult and jubilant, testify to the entangled and ever-changing nature of inheritance, and the ways in which we both hurt and 
protect the ones we love. Director Chloe Abrahams joins us for a insightful conversation on her intimate and beautifully rendered ode to friendship, beauty, memories lost, generational relationships and how to hold on to the things that matter most. 
