ReportWire

Tag: Documentaries to Watch

  • MetFilm Boards Sundance Awards Winner ‘To Hold a Mountain’ for International Sales (EXCLUSIVE)

    MetFilm Sales has acquired international sales rights to Biljana Tutorov and Petar Glomazić’s feature documentary “To Hold a Mountain,” which recently received its world premiere at the Sundance Film Festival, where it was awarded the World Cinema Grand Jury Prize.

    MFS will present the title to international buyers for the first time at the EFM in Berlin, and co-reps the title alongside Submarine Entertainment.

    Set in the remote highlands of Montenegro, the film tells the story of a shepherd mother and her daughter who proudly defend their ancestral mountain from the threat of becoming a NATO military training ground, stirring memories of past violence that once shattered their family.

    In his Variety review, Murtada Elfadl wrote, “Reveals itself as an emotionally shattering meditation on grief and perseverance. Gorgeously shot with a quiet, deliberate rhythm, it’s the kind of film that entrances its audience without them noticing. Only at the end does the audience fully grasp the magnitude of the story it chronicles and the natural beauty of the images they have been witnessing all along.”

    The director of photography is Eva Kraljević and the editor is George Cragg, with additional editing by Catherine Rascon. The original score is by Draško Adzić.

    The producers are Tutorov, Glomazić, Quentin Laurent and Rok Biček. It is executive produced by Megan Gelstein, Andrea Meditch, Bianca Oana, Jean Tsien and Petra Costa. The executive producers for Points North Institute are Sean Flynn, Ben Fowlie and Lucila Moctezuma, and Chandra Jessee and Rebecca Lichtenfeld for InMaat. The executive producers for Doc Society are Megha Agrawal Sood and Shanida Scotland. Meadow Fund also exec produces.

    “To Hold a Mountain” is a Wake Up Films Production in co-production with Les Films de l’Oeil Sauvage, Ardor Films and Cvinger Film.

    MFS’s current slate includes Ross McElwee’s “Remake,” which won the Golden Globe Impact Prize for Documentary at the Venice Film Festival, and Brydie O’Connor’s “Barbara Forever,” which recently premiered at the Sundance Film Festival, winning the Jonathan Oppenheim Editing Prize.

    Leo Barraclough

    Source link

  • Golden Globes Honors Documentary Prize Winners Eugene Jarecki and Ross McElwee

    Documentary filmmakers Eugene Jarecki and Ross McElwee, winners of the Golden Globes Prize for Documentary, were feted at a cocktail reception in Los Angeles on Wednesday evening.

    The prize, founded by the Golden Globes and Artemis Rising Foundation, honors a non-fiction filmmaker whose work “demonstrates both exceptional creative merit and keen potential to inspire positive social change.”

    Jarecki and McElwee each received a bespoke Golden Globes half-statuette with an inscription from Artemis Rising Foundation.

    Artemis Rising Foundation founder and CEO Regina K. Scully said, “There is an urgent need for non-fiction stories to be made, recognized and seen. This prize is an extension of the work Artemis Rising Foundation has engaged in for decades to champion powerful stories about some of the most challenging social justice issues of our time; I hope it helps to push these incredible creative works further into the spotlight.”

    Jarecki won the inaugural edition of the prize at Cannes Film Festival, where his documentary on Julian Assange, “The 6 Billion Dollar Man,” won the festival’s L’Œil d’or. At the Venice Film Festival, the prize was awarded to McElwee’s “Remake,” a deeply personal film exploring his journey as a filmmaker alongside the life of his son, Adrian, who was tragically lost to substance abuse.

    A further key collaborator is Think-Film Impact Production, which has been central to the prize’s beginnings and the spotlights at Cannes and Venice film festivals, within its overall mission to “ensure powerful independent films resonate widely to change society for the better.”

    Leo Barraclough

    Source link

  • In ‘Newville,’ Pisie Hochheim and Tony Oswald Take on a Family That ‘Covers the Entire American Political Spectrum’ and a House That ‘Resists’ Them

    In the upcoming doc “Newville,” Pisie Hochheim and Tony Oswald follow 10 siblings who “cover the entire American political spectrum.” 

    “They have many different spiritual beliefs and lifestyles. We’ve watched over the years as they’ve managed to ‘leave their swords at the door’ when they gather, as one aunt says,” says Hochheim, who is also a part of the family. 

    Now, they return to their childhood home in Newville, NY, for the first time in 35 years. They attempt to repair it, but tensions arise. 

    “Many people in the U.S. feel completely at odds with their families politically, and it’s understandable to choose to shut out or cut off and move on. But for Tony and me, living with difference and trying to find common ground is a belief we desperately try to hang onto.”

    “Newville” won the Ji.hlava New Visions Award for the most promising U.S. project in partnership with AmDocs and the Jacob Burns Film Center Award. 

    “Europe has an appetite for supporting daring, bold work,” notes Hochheim. The awards will be useful, as resources for U.S. filmmakers are dwindling and they’ve self-funded the project, working as a two-person team. 

    Oswald says: “In the U.S., specifically lately, government-backed funding bodies have been cut, existing grants have been slashed and some are closing completely. Private equity or streamers look to a familiar slate of celebrity profiles or true crime docs. Everyone else has to fight over the scraps.”

    Hochheim used to go to the house depicted in the doc for family events and holidays. She later married Oswald on the premises. 

    “We still visit at least once a year, but for most of the year it sits empty. It’s beautiful, but it’s also 250 years old, and my family doesn’t have the money or time to address all of its problems, although my mother tries.”

    “Some days, we feel so connected to it we can’t imagine a world where it doesn’t exist. My mum and I have nightmares about it catching on fire or a tree falling on it. But then we hear one of the siblings speaking about it without sentiment, and we remember we haven’t chosen to move back there either. As much as we love it, the house resists us, and we’ve begun to wonder what it wants as much as what we want from it.” 

    In “Newville,” the house becomes a “container” to showcase the vibrant siblings who grew up there. 

    “They’re hilarious, warm and unique, and have completely different worldviews. We’re very interested in how these worldviews shape their approach to the house, and why some have stayed involved while others think it’s time to let it go.”

    This isn’t the first time the filmmaking duo has talked about family. 

    “All of the films Tony and I have directed together so far are either about, or feature, our families. Even our narrative fiction work,” says Hochheim. “Our goal is to see how these small stories can be stretched through art and playful collaboration into more cinematic, universal narratives. We wouldn’t live long enough to make all the films that could spring from our family, but that doesn’t mean they’re biographical.”

    Oswald, whose sister Alicia was featured in their short doc “Cycles,” adds: “We think it’s part of the reason our body of work is so diverse. We try to discover the films through our relationships with them. This has created a mini cinematic universe in which the same faces and locations appear across our very different films.” 

    Though personal, “Newville” has already resonated with its Ji.hlava audience. 

    “We’ve been so heartened to hear how universal this story is. People have come up to us to share their experiences: the sadness of losing a childhood home in Sudan, a house being sold and the discord it caused in Bosnia, or one whose future is unsure in Finland. This very specific story about Newville resonates with people across cultures,” he says, also recalling his experience on “Cycles.” 

    “It’s a perfect example of how we work: Alicia [who used to anonymously donate eggs] wanted to document the experience and we wanted to tell a story about the wider context of egg donation in America by focusing solely on her,” observes Oswald. But working with family “isn’t without its challenges.” 

    “We can’t wait for the day when we can be at a reunion without considering how it will fit into our movie, or actually help them fix the house instead of just filming them do it!” 

    They’ve been filming for almost seven years and really got to know the siblings, notes Hochheim.  

    “Because they’ve spread out across the country and are mostly in their 70s and 80s, filming was honestly the first time I’d had an in-depth conversation with some of them as an adult. We are also interested in what they are finding out about each other. We’ve taken to asking them: ‘What’s the one thing you wish your siblings knew about you’?”

    Based in Nashville, Hochheim and Oswald are also co-producing and editing “Kinfolk” by Nicole Craine, executive produced by Jesse Plemons and Kirsten Dunst. 

    “It’s a great joy and privilege, and every dinner is a write-off because we live and breathe our movies,” says Hochheim of their creative partnership. Oswald adds: “Our production company is called Same Person Productions. Having someone who can fill in your gaps, someone you trust more than anything, is the greatest gift.”

    Marta Balaga

    Source link

  • ‘Time to the Target’ Director on How Bruegel Influenced His Portrait of Hometown Lviv Under Russian Fire

    In Vitaly Mansky’s arresting portrait of life during wartime, “Time to the Target,” he allows audiences to breathe, to absorb the smallest details and even, somehow, to laugh as his camera focuses on Lviv, in western Ukraine, a place once thought of as relatively safe.

    The advent of Russian cruise missiles and Shahed drones have ended that illusion at this point in the three-year war on Ukraine, of course. But Mansky still presents daily life much as it’s always been – a military band practicing for a memorial, a wedding, a theater performance hastily ended for an air raid, a new mother whose baby was born just as the sirens died down.

    “This film doesn’t aim to convince or change anyone’s mind,” Mansky says. “It offers the opportunity to experience the war as it has become part of the fabric of civilian life.”

    “Time to the Target”

    Courtesy of Hypermarket Film

    For that reason, he adds, he’s comfortable with a film that runs three hours and won’t be for everyone.

    “I’m counting on audiences in the cinema who have consciously come to see this film. And most importantly, on viewers 30-50 years of age who (hopefully) have never had such an experience in their lives.”

    Yet the daily rituals in “Time to the Target” are universal, while also being uniquely Ukrainian.

    Grieving families gather to honor a fallen father or son. But the gravediggers complain they have no more space at Lviv’s military cemetery, which contains the remains of soldiers from centuries of wars.

    “Time to the Target”

    Courtesy of Hypermarket Film

    One digger worries that, if bode are really laid to rest until the Second Coming, as priests proclaim during burial, then how is that to be squared with this business of exhuming so many to make space for new burials?

    “This field has always been a military cemetery,” says Mansky of his home city. “During World War I, Austrian soldiers were buried there, and during the Second World War, Soviet soldiers. Now they’re being exhumed and, as far as I know, reburied.”

    Lviv stands roughly 1,000 kilometers from the front line of the Russian invasion but that doesn’t allow much space for psychological relief from the war, as Mansky shows.

    Sure, children play, go to school – “Our front it here,” a teacher tells ninth graders – couples fall in love and lives begin. But there are also the daily moments of silence at 9 a.m., when all stand still to honor the heroes.

    And commemorations fill the churches and the streets with processions. A day at the park is broken up by paint gun target practice at a portrait of Putin. And everyone in the military band has a story about a son burned in combat or about returning to service despite being retired.

    “No one believes that we would hold out for so long,” says one musician. Someone else bemoans the speed of military aid: “They give us weapons one teaspoon at a time. So as not to lose and not to win.”

    The city has been irreversibly changed, somehow, even if daily life goes on as close to normally as possible.

    “I thought Lviv was an eternal city and that I knew it very well,” Mansky has said. “However, with the start of the first war in 2014, and later on, the full-scale war, when I was passing through Lviv, going somewhere else, I started to notice the gradual changes.”

    Mansky, whose films have chronicled life in today’s Ukraine and the former Soviet Union, has taken on everything from Russian gas pipelines to Putin’s grip on power in his past films before directing “Time to the Target,” this time teaming with Czech documentarians and producers Vit Klusak and Filip Remunda.

    “Many films about Ukraine today are created as manifestos,” says Mansky. “This is understandable and important. Yevhen Titarenko and I also made such a film, ‘Eastern Front,’ in 2023. But these manifestos don’t allow the viewer into this tragedy. The viewer remains a spectator, even if the film shows them military clashes captured on GoPro cameras.”

    What Mansky was after with “Time to the Target” is a different shade of understanding. “Our film creates a space in which the viewers can live their own lives, feeling part of this catastrophe.”

    Thus, the band practices, players share funny phone videos on the bus, the bass drum carrier feels the strain on his back, and there’s time to glimpse a little boy holding his dad’s military beret as the grave diggers shovel and shovel in the dirt.

    Mansky’s frame is often broad, with locked down camera, long takes and deep focus, allowing people to continuously enter and exit the shot on many planes.

    “For me, the inspiration for working on the film was Bruegel’s paintings, where there is a larger foreground, for example, with hunters, and with musicians, and a very detailed background with everyday life from birth to death.”

    And through it all runs the constant strains of music – as often a pop ballad in the background or a religious chorus as a somber brass band recital. This, in “Time to the Target,” seems as eternal and death-defying as all the rest of it.

    “I met with the musicians almost every day,” Mansky says. “It wasn’t just a shoot anymore, but a kind of shared life. At least they no longer treated me like a stranger. For that, I’m very grateful.”

    Leo Barraclough

    Source link

  • ‘Soap Bubbles’ Tracks Down a Long-Gone Bohemian Dynasty: ‘A Big Industrial Empire Can Burst Like a Bubble’

    Czech documentarian Tatana Markova says she became intrigued by her subject in “Kingdom of Soap Bubbles” – a once-great Bohemian dynasty that’s been nearly forgotten – after meeting one of its would-be heirs.

    “One of the protagonists of my last film, “Libussa Unbound,” was U.S.-based director and producer Constantin Werner. He told me some family stories and I found them so appealing I wanted to find out more about the Schicht family he came from.”

    The Schicht name was once known in every household in what is today the Czech Republic and Slovakia – and considerably beyond. It rose to prominence during the last days of the Habsburg Empire, built around the phenomenal success of entrepreneur Georg Schicht, who founded a soap factory in what is today the town of Rynoltice.

    With bold innovations such as the sidelines Elida cosmetics and Kalodont toothpaste, the sourcing of coconut and palm oil from Africa, brilliant branding and marketing with a wholesome billboard girl and slick silent film promos, the Schicht brand eventually became synonymous with “easy, cheap and clean” in households far and wide.

    And its signature product, the “soap with the stag,” known for its distinctive leaping deer symbol, was nearly as recognizable in the early 20th century as Apple or Starbucks is today.

    Nowadays, just a shell of the family’s industrial base and their nearby mansion remain in the Czech city of Usti nad Labem – known during the family’s heyday under the Habsburg Empire, as Aussig.

    And it’s into the darkened halls and corridors of these buildings, stripped nearly bare, that Markova’s camera rolls as her documentary, competing in the Czech Joy section of the Ji.hlava film fest, opens.

    She began writing in 2019, just in time for the challenges of COVID lockdowns, says Markova, but she soon faced another difficulty almost as great.

    She wanted to film the company heirs venturing into the former family home, she says, but “the descendants of the entrepreneurial Schicht family are spread all over the world and they are quite busy. It is not possible for them to travel to the Czech Republic often.”

    There was also much ground to cover: The founding of Czechoslovakia after World War I “wasn’t beneficial to the Schichts,” as the film recounts, dropping them into the middle of a linguistic power struggle in which the German language was no longer to be officially used and many felt resentful of all things not Slavic.

    The Schichts managed to survive and thrive, building the company, merging with Unilever, founding a cinema, building international networks and even taking to the skies in airplane races.

    But with World War II soon looming, and a company base squarely in the middle of what Nazi Germany would call the Sudetenland, the family was to find itself in an increasingly hazardous world – in fact, as the Third Reich rose, the Schicht company was under pressure to prove itself Aryan – and even to work on components of V1 rockets, says Markova.

    Was she was not permitted to ask about any of these subjects? “No,” says Markova. “They were very open.”

    After the war, Czech citizens who were ethnic Germans were expelled from Czechoslovakia, and their land and assets were seized.

    “That collective guilt was applied to the whole family,” says Markova. “The Ústí nad Labem property of Georg Schicht was confiscated after World War II, despite the fact that he lived in London, had British citizenship and his sons fought in the British army.

    “I am using the memories from the diary of Eleonore Schicht and a written recommendation by Minister of Foreign Affairs Jan Masaryk in the film to demonstrate this fact.”

    With the country soon under Soviet control, successful capitalists such as the Schichts were considered public enemies – and the factory became the state-run enterprise Setuza. What’s more, after the Velvet Revolution of 1989, Czechs who had their property seized by the state were allowed to reclaim much of it through a restitution system – but not ethnic Germans who lost it under the post-war Benes decrees.

    “The Benes decrees, which legally expelled Germans from Czechoslovakia after World War II, were never repealed; there was no restitution process for the property of Czech Germans.”

    The Schicht family moved into other businesses and investments in London, Zurich and even Brazil after World War II, eventually doing well enough that they were able to buy back the former family home in Usti, which they plan to open to the public, they say.

    In this city, at least, they were never forgotten, says Markova, in part because the company was known for its socially conscious local investments, building homes for its workers, a community pool, and more.

    “In 2006 the so-called ‘Soap King’ Johann Schicht was the winner of a local survey,” Markova says, “for the most important citizen of Aussig in last 150 years, so many people know the name. Outside Ústí nad Labem not so many.”

    “Johann Schicht (the company director in the generation after founder Georg) was a visionary and a philanthropist. He had a relationship to the place where he had his business, his son Heinrich as well. This is not the case of many contemporary entrepreneurs.”

    “A once-famous name can fall into oblivion, a big industrial empire can burst like a bubble, but something from the non-material values, such as social responsibility and philanthropy, can be passed down through generations,” Markova says.

    “It is a nice act of respect for ancestors to buy their villa with the vision to open it to the public.”

    Leo Barraclough

    Source link

  • ‘The Last Dive’ Director Talks Manta Rays, Writing Documentaries and Camden International Film Festival

    In “The Last Dive,” director Cody Sheehy follows Terry Kennedy, an ex-Hell’s Angel-turned manta ray conservationist, on a personal journey to Mexico’s Sea of Cortez.

    After a stint in jail, Kennedy, a Navy veteran, uprooted his life and moved into a sailboat anchored in the Sea of Cortez in the 1980s. He lived on a boat named Erotica. Between boat parties, Kennedy found the peace he was seeking when he formed an unexpected bond with a giant, 22-foot oceanic manta ray that Kennedy named Willy. The fish would slap his wings against the hull of Kennedy’s sailboat, signalling that he wanted to swim with Kennedy. For 19 years, Kennedy held on to Willy’s back as they explored the ocean’s depths. Kennedy took numerous videos of his time with Willy and other manta rays, which allowed the scientific community to study the fish extensively.

    “The Last Dive” follows Kennedy, 83, as he returns to the Sea of Cortez after several decades in search of one last ride with Willy.

    Sheehy met Kennedy in Mexico eight years ago. The director was initially skeptical of Kennedy’s stories about riding a giant manta ray. That changed when Kennedy showed Sheehy his vast collection of home videos that documented most of his underwater excursions with Willy.

    “I suddenly realized Terry had the ability to inspire a whole new generation in the way that Jacques Cousteau had done so many years before,” Sheehy says. “Everyone should know by now that the ocean is in trouble. But for me, it’s personal. I live with my wife and 2-year-old son on a sailboat. Over the last 20-plus years, I have watched life in the ocean disappear. I wonder if my son will inherit an empty ocean or will it be full of life again soon?”

    Sheehy is currently working with John Sloss to find distribution for the doc.

    Variety spoke to Sheehy at Maine’s Camden IntI. Film Festival where “The Last Dive” screened on Sept. 13.

    At the beginning of the doc, it’s clear that Terry is hesitant about talking about his past, but you managed to get him to open up. How did you do it?

    Sheehy: I think having somebody who was willing to ask tough questions and sit with him and some of the tougher parts of his life, and help him rethink and process it, was hard for Terry. He had buried a lot. But I believe that making this film was ultimately a form of therapy for him.

    In the doc’s production notes, it states: “This film contains imagery of animal harm and features human interactions with manta rays that are no longer permitted or recommended.” So, no one, including Harry can ride manta rays?

    Terry did a lot of behaviors that the dive community does not allow anymore and for a good reason. Manta’s are very friendly, so it would be easy to touch them and do things like what Terry did, and the mantas love it. But there are so many divers now that the dive community has adopted a good practice of trying not to touch everything in the ocean all the time because it could destroy the ocean. So, the days of riding manta rays are gone.

    You worked with documentary whisperer Mark Monroe to help you structure the film. How did he influence the film?

    Mark has an amazing ability to understand a story and say, ‘If you do this this way,’ and suddenly that suggestion transforms everything. He didn’t come in at the end of the film when we were editing. We actually started working together before we shot anything. I wrote (the doc) and structured it, and then would run it by Mark. We tried to figure out what might be possible or not possible, and then eventually went and shot it.

    So you wrote out the doc before you started filming?

    Yeah. I tried to imagine how the story could be structured as much as possible before the shoot. Obviously, once shooting begins, things change, and you shoot things that you weren’t expecting. I suppose writing it all out is probably a form of self-soothing.

    “The Last Dive” debuted at the Tribeca Film Festival earlier this year. CIFF is your fourth fest with the film. What appealed to you about Camden?

    You tend to meet a lot of people from the industry at this festival. They also only choose just a few films, which is nice, and everyone knows it will be a fun time.

    Addie Morfoot

    Source link

  • Sofia Coppola and Marc Jacobs on Venice Festival Doc ‘Marc by Sofia’: ‘I Felt Very Comfortable Exposing Everything to Sofia‘

    Two longtime friends will make for among Venice’s most-discussed red-carpet pairings.

    Sofia Coppola is the director of “Marc by Sofia,” a new A24 documentary premiering at Venice Sept. 2. Coppola was approached by producers R.J. Cutler and Jane Cha Cutler to make the film, which is a kaleidoscopic exploration of Jacobs, tracing both his production of a single collection and his influences over time.

    Coppola and Jacobs spoke to Variety the day before one important milestone. “I’m excited for my dress fitting tomorrow, with Marc,” Coppola said. “That’s always exciting and scary.” Jacobs was anxious about how the film will go over, but told Variety, “I know I’m in good hands with Sofia.”

    Marc, you’ve lived in the public eye, but was there a new vulnerability in allowing Sofia to tell your story?

    Marc Jacobs: I always feel pretty vulnerable when I show work or when I share work, but I felt very comfortable exposing everything to Sofia. It felt very natural, once I was over the initial anxiety of actually participating.

    Knowing Marc as well as you do, what about him jumped out — not merely as a friend, but someone you could actually make a film about?

    Sofia Coppola: I wasn’t thinking of doing a documentary, but I always love talking to Marc. He’s interesting and inspiring. And so when the Cutlers approached me — they had talked to Marc about this documentary, and would I do it? — I thought “I can’t do that. Because that’s my friend, I’d have to do a good job.”

    But I kept thinking about how much fun it would be to follow this collection, popping in throughout the process, and then also wanting to share all his references and inspirations with the younger generation.

    There’s a real mood-board quality to how the film draws together clips of all of Marc’s inspirations.

    Coppola: I wanted it to feel like an impressionistic portrait of him, and to be able to go on these tangents about his inspirations. To try to meander, and discover as we go. It was new for me, and really fun to work this way — we got to almost collage.

    Working together, did both of you realize that making a film and staging a fashion show have surprising similarities?

    Coppola: I always felt a connection, because all creative people have some similar language, even though we work differently.

    Jacobs: I think back to when I first met Sofia, it was very clear that we shared certain loves — artists, musicians, moments in fashion and photography. One of the reasons why we bonded was that we did have these loves in common.

    I remember seeing a Fiorucci poster in her house — we’ve always shared that. We’ve always shared Sonic Youth. This felt like a continuation: Rediscovering these things that have always been catalysts for me, for her, or for both of us.

    Coppola: Whenever I see a leopard-print coat in his collection, I think of Mrs. Robinson [from “The Graduate”]. We both think of Mrs. Robinson. It’s great to have that shorthand: I was trying to make the film feel personal, but I always want to include the audience. I never want you to not feel like part of it.

    Sofia, you’re well-known for films probing the inner lives of young women. Did chronicling Marc’s life feel unusual for this reason?

    Coppola: I didn’t think about that. It’s always scary to make something — you’re figuring it out as you go. I just wanted to show a sincere depiction of Marc — I wanted it to feel personal, never intrusive or prying, but to share things that I know about Marc.

    Carolehorst

    Source link

  • ‘Izzy’ Documentary About Late Fashion Designer Isabel Toledo Begins Production (EXCLUSIVE)

    ‘Izzy’ Documentary About Late Fashion Designer Isabel Toledo Begins Production (EXCLUSIVE)

    Production has begun on “Izzy,” a feature documentary about late fashion designer Isabel Toledo.

    Directed by Chiara Clemente, the film will chronicle Toledo’s life with her husband and creative partner Ruben Toledo.

    “I trust Chiara to tell our story,” Ruben said in a statement on Monday. “She sees our love; how unique and rare it is. And, as an artist herself, she has such insight into the creative process. I am honored that she is making this documentary about the love of my life.”

    Both Cuban immigrants, Isabel and Ruben rose to prominence in the fashion and art worlds of New York City in the 1980s. Isabel died in 2019 from breast cancer. She was 59.

    In 2009, Isabel famously designed the dress that Michele Obama wore to Barack Obama’s inauguration. “I knew that what I wore to my husband’s first inauguration would go down in history,” the former first lady wrote in an email to the New York Times at the time of Isabel’s death, “so I wanted something that would not only live up to the moment, but would also stand up to the freezing cold of that January day.

    “With her incredible creativity and masterful talent, Isabel designed a beautiful lemongrass outfit that I just loved,” she continued. “She more than met the moment — for that day and for all of history.”

    Isabel’s memoir “Roots of Style: Weaving Together Life, Love, and Fashion,” which included illustrations by Ruben, was published in 2012.

    “I am honored and humbled to tell the story of Isabel and Ruben, two people so joined together that you never saw one without the other…until she passed,” said Clemente, whose credits include directing “Our City Dreams,” a 2009 documentary about five women artists in New York City, as well as several shorts and works for museums, galleries and brands. “I am excited to share the inspiration they have given me with a broader audience who will, no doubt, find joy and optimism in their rare love story.” 

    Ruben is set to announce that “Izzy” is in production at Monday’s Council of Fashion Designers of America Awards ceremony in New York City, where he will receive the CFDA’s newly-named Isabel Toledo Board of Directors Tribute award.

    Executive producers of “Izzy” are David Dinerstein and Robert Fyvolent of Mass Distraction Media, the same team behind the Oscar-winning documentary “Summer Of Soul.” Additional executive producers include New York City publishers and culture chroniclers Kim Hastreiter, Paige Powell and Visionaire co-founders Cecilia Dean and James Kaliardos, all of whom have known the Toledos since their early days in New York City.

    Composer Thomas Lauderdale of the band Pink Martini will produce the film’s musical score, which will include collaborations with established and emerging Cuban artists.

    Clemente’s credits include directing “Our City Dreams,’ a 2009 documentary about five women artists in New York City, as well as several shorts and works for museums, galleries and brands.

    Marcmalkin

    Source link

  • Ji.hlava’s Emerging Producers Reveal Pitches for Upcoming Projects (EXCLUSIVE)

    Ji.hlava’s Emerging Producers Reveal Pitches for Upcoming Projects (EXCLUSIVE)

    Ji.hlava Documentary Film Festival has revealed to Variety the projects that the participants of its 2024 Emerging Producers program are working on. The producers were asked to deliver an elevator pitch for their projects.

    Every year since 2010, the festival has selected 18 up-and-coming producers of documentary films (17 European and one representing a non-European guest country), who are then provided with educational, networking and promotional support.

    The Emerging Producers portal features a map with more than 200 profiles of the program’s alumni.

    The next cohort of Emerging Producers will be revealed at the Sarajevo Film Festival on Sunday.

    Here are the pitches from the 2024 contingent:

    “Green Is the Fire’s Tint” (working title)
    Producers: Cristina Haneș, Isabella Rinaldi, Arya Rothe for NoCut Film Collective (India, Romania, Italy)
    Directors: Cristina Haneș, Isabella Rinaldi, Arya Rothe

    Genre: Creative documentary

    Synopsis: Somi (37), an indigenous woman, faces eviction from her land due to the opening of an iron mine. A few years ago, Somi was an armed Naxalite rebel; now, she’s determined to lead her community in resisting the violation and fighting against displacement and deforestation—this time without her rifle.

    Pitch: In a marginalized and precarious place of resistance, Somi, an indigenous woman and former revolutionary, defends her ideals of equality and dignity while confronting disillusionment and social injustice. The film is a sequel to “A Rifle and a Bag” (IFFR 2020, Special Mention of the Jury).

    “The Story of the Wild Rose”
    Producers: Liis Nimik, Klara Films (Estonia) and Mónica Hernández Rejón, Pråmfilm (Sweden)
    Directors: Kristen Aigro, Miguel Llansó

    Genre: Creative documentary

    Synopsis: Accidentally purchased Mexican telenovela takes Estonia by storm in early post-Soviet years and reaches viewership records that remain unchallenged to this day. How did this simple and wild fairytale from a faraway land capture the hearts of reserved Estonians and accompanied the tumultuous transition from collectivism to individualism?

    Pitch: Doesn’t life nowadays look like a soap opera? Reality show characters are running the world. This film starts as a documentary but slowly takes the form of a telenovela. We have collected 300 stories from ordinary people who remember the absurdity of life in early 90s Estonia while “Rosa” was on air.

    “The Last Misfits by the Golden River”
    Producer: Isabella Karhu, Danish Bear Productions Oy (Finland)
    Director: Juho-Pekka Tanskanen

    Genre: Documentary

    Synopsis: In Northern Lapland, far away from roads and telephone networks, lives the last community of gold miners in Finland. Their peaceful lives are filled with the rumble of machines and the quietness of nature, but everything changes when a new mining law forces them to abandon their way of life.

    Pitch: Gold mining in Lapland started decades before the Klondike Gold Rush, and still, after 160 years, the tradition has been ongoing – until now. Yet while facing the end of their era, the miners still maintain their philosophy of life being both funny and sad – and worth living as you like.

    “Adam’s Tooth”
    Producer: Mariam Chachia, OpyoDoc (Georgia)
    Director: Mariam Chachia, Nik Voigt

    Genre: Documentary

    Synopsis: In 2022, Georgian archaeologist Giorgi Bidzinashvili discovered a 1.8-million-year-old tooth in Orozmani, Georgia. Despite international interest, the tooth remains “arrested” after two years of bureaucratic delays. Armed with two chairs, placards, and tea, Bidzinashvili and his colleague wait in a Kafkaesque vigil, uncertain of the future of their groundbreaking find.

    Pitch: This film depicts a David vs. Goliath struggle at an archaeological site where one man’s Kafkaesque quest to uncover human origins faces bureaucratic sabotage. Investing in this project will not only help tell a human origin story but also draw international attention, pressuring decision-makers to unlock the site’s potential.

    “Reflexion”
    Producer: Mónica Hernández Rejón, Pråmfilm AB (Sweden)
    Director: Farah Yusuf & MyNa Do

    Genre: Creative documentary

    Synopsis: Childhood friends MyNa and Farah form the artistic duo Mahoyo. With art as a limitless force, they explore questions of identity and belonging within the highly segregated Swedish society. As we follow their journey, we get closer into the growth of far-right movements in Sweden, but also into the uprising of a generation of young Swedes creating political change.

    Pitch: Reflexion explores the dynamics of segregation and social belonging in Sweden, which is an urgent topic today as conservative movements and far-right extremism are growing and sweeping across Europe. This film tells the story of the people facing this issue from an intimate perspective and through a playful artistic language.

    “H for Hoax: The Phantasmagorically True Story of the Stone Age Tasadays”
    Producers: Kristine Kintana, Kamias Overground (Philippines), Achinette Villamor, Khavn Company, Stephan Holl, Rapid Eye Movies (Germany)
    Director: Khavn

    Genre: Documentary

    Synopsis: In 1971, the Philippines shocked the world when a primitive stone-age tribe — the Tasaday — was found in the rainforests of Mindanao. National Geographic and other international media feasted on the discovery. While considered by some as the biggest anthropological hoax ever, the Tasaday continue to spark debate about reality and authenticity.

    Pitch: This is a timely story. In this age of massive social media use, the Tasadays can be considered precursors to present realities, where facts have easily become interchangeable with propaganda. This makes the Tasaday story a sobering look at the power of the media to transform perceptions, and a reminder that the truth is seldom simple.

    “KnAM, a Theatre in Exile”
    Producers: Orlane Dumas, Les Films de l’AubeSauvage (France), La Casquette Productions (France)
    Director: Lionel Retornaz

    Genre: Documentary

    Synopsis: Following the invasion of Ukraine, the KnAM Theatre, after 37 years of activity, left Russia for good and settled in Lyon, France. Tania, Dima and German, each from a different generation, try reinventing themselves both humanly and artistically while dealing with the raw reality of exile.

    Pitch: Knam highlights the work of artists in a globalized world where some leaders want to re-establish borders. In the East, Putin is re-elected. In the West, Trump is preparing for November. In France, the ultra-right is doubling its number of deputies. Let’s remember that art is what resists.

    “Chess Behind Bars”
    Producers: Kaleo La Belle, La Belle Film (Switzerland), Anita Norfolk, Folk Film (Norway), Eline Van Wees, Basalt Film (Netherlands), Dirk Manthey, Dirk Manthey Film (Germany)
    Director: Ivo Zen

    Genre: Documentary

    Synopsis: Through the game of chess, we are introduced to various inmates and prisons around the globe who compete nationally and internationally. With each move, they search for strategies to move beyond their past and recapture their future.

    Pitch: In prisons around the globe, inmates train for a chess world championship for the incarcerated. While the prisoners hone their skills, we are confronted with disparate approaches to rehabilitation and witness how the life skills that chess teaches can offer inmates a chance towards a new path or even freedom.

    “Panic Button” (working title)
    Producers: Veronika Janatková, Pandistan (Czech Republic), Samara Sagynbaeva, Media Hub (Kyrgyzstan)
    Director: Samara Sagynbaeva

    Genre: Documentary film, investigation, personal view

    Synopsis: In “Panic Button,” the director follows her husband Ali Toktakunov and his fight for independent media in Kyrgyzstan in a post-Soviet context. He challenged the ruling class by exposing an unprecedented case of corruption within the government. What risks must one journalist take to fight for freedom and democracy in the country?

    Pitch: “Panic Button” discusses freedom, the value of public good, and free speech in the face of sacrifice of the private life of one family. And corruption with a lack of accountability – is something common to nearly every form of government – not just Kyrgyzstan or the post-Soviet space.

    “Kind of Adults”
    Producers: Rita Balogh, Other Films (Hungary), Gül Togay, Filmsquad (Hungary)
    Directors: Rita Balogh, Peter Akar

    Genre: Coming-of-age documentary

    Synopsis:
    What is our responsibility in irresponsibility? A testimonial documentary about the emotional roller coaster called “growing up,” that for five years follows the life of a group of adolescents who graduate together from the same high-school class.

    Pitch: For five years, as the world is changing rapidly, we have been constantly surprised by how much we can learn from our characters. This project can really break the boundaries between generations and shed a new light on our lives as well, by creating a sense of anxiety as the film unfolds, reflecting the uncertain and often turbulent journey of growing up.

    “Termites Have Wings of Approximately the Same Length”
    Producers: Svetislav Dragomirović, Gray Tree Film (Serbia), Nevena Savić, Cinnamon Films (Serbia)
    Director: Svetislav Dragomirović

    Genre: Feature fiction/drama

    Synopsis: While fighting a termite infestation that’s destroying their home, Petar and Hana must come to terms with the decision to terminate an unplanned pregnancy.

    Pitch: In a house plagued by voracious termites, Petar and Hana confront the shattering reality of an unplanned pregnancy. As the relentless insects devour their home, the couple must navigate a labyrinth of emotions and decisions, intertwining their struggle with nature’s destruction and the weight of impending life choices. The film blends personal and emotional drama with the tension of a home crisis.

    “Fixing the War”
    Producers: Oleksandra Kravchenko, Moon Man (Ukraine), Gary Lennon, Plainsong Films (Ireland), Pauline Tran Van Lieu, Hutong Productions (France)
    Directors: Vadym Ilkov, Clare Stronge

    Genre: Drama

    Synopsis: “Fixing the War” follows the ordinary Ukrainians who – through economic necessity, idealism or chance – find themselves working as “fixers” for hard news journalism and war correspondents as their home is transformed into a living war zone and their war leaves the front pages.

    Pitch: With this film, we wish to explore war reporting, but from the unique point of view of the fixers – local people who are indispensable yet invisible in the process. In the era of fake news and the undermining of the very concept of truth, we are offering a reflection on testifying from the war zone.

    “World of Walls”
    Producers: Matej Sotník, Guča Films (Slovakia), Klára Mamojková and Wanda Kaprálová, Claw (Czech Republic), Kristian Van der Heyden, Harald House (Belgium)
    Director: Lucia Kašová

    Genre: Creative documentary

    Synopsis: To evoke and imagine the near future, “World of Walls” is set in an environment of extreme social divisions and escalating climate crisis. People knew these catastrophes were coming but ignored the fact. The dystopian reality is revealed through the eyes of two girls living on opposite sides of the wall.

    Pitch: Our sci-fi documentary takes place in an unspecified country that is being destroyed by on-going environmental disasters, located in today’s South Africa. The rich are living inside strictly protected luxury estates with secure infrastructure, while the rest of the world survives on scarce resources.

    “The Slugs”
    Producers: Adrianna Rędzia, Lumisenta Film Foundation (Poland), Kristian Van der Heyden, Harald House (Belgium)
    Director: Katarzyna Gondek

    Genre: Fiction

    Synopsis: Marry went through war, Zofia went through communism, and Zuza is starting her grown-up life in the brand new capitalism. Marry and Zofia – her mother and grandmother – are both dead, and are now ghosts. It does not help that they are both naked, like all ghosts in this world.

    Pitch: Our film will tell the story of three generations of women who see themselves as good and kind, but by discovering the darker parts of their beings, they can connect deeper to themselves and to each other. It’s an intimate, feminine and unique ghost story told by women themselves.

    “House of Shadows”
    Producers: Thomas Kaske, Kaske Film (Germany), Boualem Ziani, Libre Image (Algeria), Emilie Dudognon, IDA.IDA (France), Svetislav Dragomirović, Gray Tree Film (Serbia)
    Director: Amine Hattou

    Genre: Creative documentary, ghostly horror, history, character-driven

    Synopsis: “House of Shadows” follows two fathers and their children in Laghouat, Algeria, exploring how colonial history shapes their lives. Through a cinematic lens inspired by horror, the film delves into enduring trauma of colonialism, highlighting the resilience and unyielding spirit of the town’s inhabitants.

    Pitch: “House of Shadows” blends horror and documentary genres to explore Algeria’s colonial trauma. Its innovative approach offers a fresh perspective on historical scars and resilience. Our strong co-production structure invites partners to help bring this powerful, thought-provoking story to the world.

    Leo Barraclough

    Source link

  • Filmotor Nabs World Sales for Berlinale Title ‘Shahid’ Ahead of Visions du Réel Premiere (EXCLUSIVE)

    Filmotor Nabs World Sales for Berlinale Title ‘Shahid’ Ahead of Visions du Réel Premiere (EXCLUSIVE)

    Berlinale Forum entry “Shahid,” the debut feature of Iranian-German filmmaker Narges Kalhor, has been picked up by Prague-based doc specialist Filmotor ahead of its premiere at Swiss documentary festival Visions du Réel, where it is competing in the more experimental Burning Lights section.

    Described by Kalhor as a collective work between herself and other artists, including a costume artist and a painter from Iran, a German music composer and a choreographer from Berlin, “Shahid” shifts playfully between genres, challenging conventional filmmaking rules.

    Set in present-day Germany, where Kalhor emigrated as a political refugee in 2009, the film focuses on her desire to officially remove the first part of her surname, “Shahid,” which means “martyr” in Farsi and was inherited from her great-grandfather, in an act of feminist resistance to patriarchal structures.

    During this process, the actor who plays Kalhor travels back in time and meets her great-grandfather, but she also uncovers the true origins behind the name, which, it turns out, was chosen by her great-grandmother when her husband was killed.

    As Kalhor realizes – on screen, during one of several scenes where she deliberately breaks down the third wall between filmmaker and viewer – that she is making the wrong film, she also comes to the conclusion that she knows nothing about this great-grandmother.

    “That’s the end of the dramaturgy,” Kalhor tells Variety. “In this movie, we have no space for the great-grandmother – she tells me this through AI animation. She says: ‘All you talk about in this movie are the men and your great-grandfather, but let me just explain my story,’” says Kalhor, referring to a scene where the animated figure of her great-grandmother addresses her directly.

    “But we don’t know anything about her – just that she was Kurdish and changed her last name: I can’t make a movie about her because history is written by men about men,” adds Kalhor.

    While never taking itself too seriously, the film successfully addresses a myriad of questions on patriarchy, diversity and narratives shaped by male perspectives. Asked whether her intention was to make a feminist movie, she replies: “I hope so. I really believe that the kind of cinema we learn is from men.

    “I was a student of Abbas Kiarostami; here [in Germany] I learnt from Michael Haneke, I have learnt from perfect filmmakers, all of them men. With ‘Shahid,’ I want to write a new kind of feminist movie that breaks the rules. It’s not just about her [my great-grandmother] but about all of us. We all have a surname, and it has a history. But I, as a woman, want to change it, to rewrite it.”

    Kalhor says she has never returned to Iran since leaving in 2009, when she applied for asylum while visiting the Nuremberg International Human Rights Film Festival with her film school short “Die Egge.”

    The daughter of a senior cultural advisor of the then Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, her case attracted international media attention as she was granted asylum after just a few months, whereas other refugees, including the actors who play herself and her great-grandfather in the film, had to wait several years.

    Kalhor addresses what she describes as Germany’s “refugee hierarchy” in the film, in another scene where the actors are supposedly recorded criticizing her behind her back between scenes, calling her a Tehran “rich kid.”

    “I was granted asylum in just three months because of my last name. The other Iranian guys – the real victims of the Iranian regime – stayed for years without papers, that’s the difference between us,” she tells Variety.

    “And for me, it was important to reflect this in my movie, because if I don’t criticize myself, it is not fair: There are VIPs like me, others have to wait for years, and others still are sent back to their countries.”

    While “Shahid” is her debut feature, it does not mark Kalhor’s first visit to Visions du Réel, where she already presented her shorts “In the Name of Scheherazade” in 2019 and “Sensitive Content” last year.

    The film has its international premiere in Nyon on April 14.

    The festival runs until April 21.

    Leo Barraclough

    Source link

  • ‘Long Live the Tyrant,’ About Publisher Giancarlo DiTrapano, the ‘Basquiat of the New York Literary Scene,’ Eyes Spring Shoot (EXCLUSIVE)

    ‘Long Live the Tyrant,’ About Publisher Giancarlo DiTrapano, the ‘Basquiat of the New York Literary Scene,’ Eyes Spring Shoot (EXCLUSIVE)

    “Long Live the Tyrant: Life and Times of Giancarlo DiTrapano,” a feature documentary about the independent book publisher, is being developed as an Italy-U.S. coproduction. DiTrapano is described by Ian Thornton, one of the film’s producers, as the “Basquiat of the New York literary scene.”

    The film is written by Guia Cortassa and directed by Cortassa and Vittorio Antonacci. It is produced by Jennifer Buzzelli, Giulio D’Antona and Thornton, with the support of the Giancarlo DiTrapano Foundation. Production coordination on the project is by Susanna Verni. The line producer is Teo Segale.

    Forty per cent of the budget is in place, with shooting about to start in Italy. The producers are now looking to complete financing and enlist a narrator, with a wish list headed by Paul Giamatti.

    DiTrapano, who died at 47 in 2021, ran literary magazine New York Tyrant and boutique publishing house Tyrant Books. According to his obituary in the New York Times, he “championed avant-garde work and relished taking chances on young, untested writers.”

    Tyrant published such works as Atticus Lish’s “Preparation for the Next Life,” which won the 2015 PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction; “The Complete Gary Lutz” by Garielle Lutz; and “The Sarah Book” by Scott McClanahan, which the New York Times called, in its review, “not a book you savor,” but “one you inhale.”

    DiTrapano once said: “My stuff isn’t for everyone, but nothing should be for everyone. Or at least nothing that’s worth anything. You know what’s for everyone? Water. Water is for everyone. And if you’re publishing something for everyone, well, you’re publishing water.”

    “Long Live the Tyrant” will tell DiTrapano’s story “through the voices of his friends, the authors he loved and published, his beloved family, and the people who knew and valued him,” according to the producers. “Personal archive footage and photographs will enrich the tale, that will embody a true exploration of Gian’s world; while telling of his extraordinarily poetic existence, it will show the places that he loved and lived in.”

    The project was initiated by Cortassa, a Milan-based writer for international magazines focusing on art, music and literature. She is also a radio host and author, and an editor and translator for several international publishers.

    In 2013, Cortassa exchanged emails with DiTrapano when she was working for an American literary magazine and DiTrapano wanted to get one of his authors’ novels published in Italy. “I always admired what he published, the way he approached the industry, the way he worked with authors, and I always wished we could do something together,” she tells Variety.

    However, the publisher moved to Italy and Cortassa moved into different fields of art, so this was not to be. “When I heard that he had died in 2021 I thought that I needed to tell his story. It was like one of those misconnections, and I needed to make that connection happen in some way and the best thing I could do at that point was to make his story known to as many people as possible.”

    After speaking with D’Antona, Cortassa decided that a documentary would be the best means of telling such a story. D’Antona was later joined by Buzzelli, who is a family friend of the DiTrapanos, and Thornton as producers.

    Cortassa has been engaged in archival research and has been in touch with all the Tyrant authors, and other people who were in contact with DiTrapano in his work and personal life. “We are recreating all the steps and all the key points [in his story],” she says.

    The film will focus on DiTrapano’s editorial activity between 2009 and his death. “He was adjacent to a specific literary group, called Alt-Lit, who were trying to establish a new canon in literature,” Cortassa says. He published “all the underdogs of literature, giving voices to writers and artists who would never have the chance to have their voices heard otherwise. He had this passionate and visceral approach to writing. He didn’t actually care who the author was, but if he felt something in the manuscript he was reading he tried all he could to get that writing published. This was what made Giancarlo’s work unique. We will try to convey how he got there.”

    The film will track the publisher’s life from his childhood in West Virginia, to New York City, where he set up Tyrant, to Naples, where he moved with his husband just before his death, and Sezze Romano – the Italian village where his family was from, and where his writers’ residence still runs.

    Cortassa says she wants “the sense of [DiTrapano’s] continuous discovery and scouting and love for the unknown and never heard before” to be conveyed by the film.

    Thornton, who is also a novelist, adds: “That all resonates so much because being on the other end of the literary business and having to try to shovel everything through agents… Giancarlo and I have a mutual disdain for agents – these gatekeepers – and that is the barometer of someone who loves the art: he wanted to be directly in touch with the author and have that immediacy and get away from the agents, who are a special breed, and I don’t say that as a compliment. But that underlines his genuine approach and that is rare.”

    D’Antona is an Italian writer, journalist and producer. For several years, he was a foreign correspondent based in New York, covering American literature and culture for multiple Italian magazines. He now writes for La Stampa. He was associate producer on several documentaries, such as “Vitti d’arte, Vitti d’amore,” a docu-film on the life of Monica Vitti, co-produced by Indigo Film and RAI, “Ants,” a documentary on migrations across Europe, and “Il sequestro Dozier,” a Sky docu-series on the kidnapping of American general James L. Dozier. He has produced four comedy specials for Netflix.

    Thornton was a co-producer on documentary “The Face of Anonymous,” about hacker Commander X, which was nominated at the Canadian Screen Awards. He is developing two doc series with Terry Shand’s Emmy-winning Castle Entertainment, based on research from his novels on occultist Aleister Crowley and Count Dracula, as well as a scripted drama on soccer club Leeds United with Ralph Ineson, and several shows with legendary dance and house music brand DMC.

    Buzzelli is a New York-based producer with 25 years’ experience in international co-production, distribution and programming for the likes of National Geographic, truTV and Konami.

    Antonacci directed “Leap of Faith,” a documentary on itinerant workers during religious holidays, in 2018. It was selected at the 36th Turin Film Festival and distributed on Amazon Prime. He also directed and wrote 2018 short “Meat Soup,” winner of the Premiere Film Award in the Alice nella città section of the Rome Film Festival. He directed several documentaries including “Vitti d’arte, Vitti d’amore,” produced by Dazzle Communications and Indigo Film, and “L’intuizione di Duchamp,” part of Rai5’s ArtNight series. In 2022, he directed Michela Giraud’s comedy special “The Truth, I Swear!” for Netflix.

    Leo Barraclough

    Source link

  • ‘Kelly,’ Norwegian Democrazy,’ ‘Women of God’ Among European Section at Hot Docs

    ‘Kelly,’ Norwegian Democrazy,’ ‘Women of God’ Among European Section at Hot Docs

    European Film Promotion has unveiled the seventh edition of the Changing Face of Europe, a section that runs as part of Toronto documentary festival Hot Docs, which runs April 25 – May 5.

    The section features nine European documentaries, selected by the Hot Docs programming team, that “illustrate and examine a new and contemporary Europe from a cultural, social, geo-political and economic perspective.”

    In addition to attending the screenings and the festival’s industry program, the directors and producers of the films will be part of on-site and online events organized by EFP, including networking sessions and one-on-one meetings with distributors, buyers and festival programmers from North America.

    “Kelly – Someone Else’s Dream” follows Estonian freestyle skier Kelly Sildaru. She was just 13 years old when she won a gold medal at the 2016 Winter X Games in Aspen. After breaking numerous other records, she broke her silence and accused her father and coach of abuse. Helen Löhmus’ and Leana Jalukse’s film has its world premiere at Hot Docs.

    In “Norwegian Democrazy,” directors Fabien Greenberg and Bård Kjøge Rønning approach the leader of the Islamophobic hate group Stop the Islamization of Norway, Lars Thorsens, and provide an eye-opening glimpse of provocation for provocation’s sake, which is laid bare in a battle for democracy on the streets. This is an international premiere.

    “Women of God” by Maja Prettner follows the evangelical pastor Jana. Torn between her family, her faith and her own traumas, she searches for a path to freedom. The Slovenian film makes its international premieres.

    North American premieres in this year’s program include “Limits of Europe” by Apolena Rychlíková, about Czech journalist Saša Uhlová who goes undercover for two years as an travelling worker. She reveals what life is really like for economic migrants who are forced to leave their children and families.

    Laszló Csaki’s “Pelikan Blue,” a droll animated film, reveals the little-known story of how three young Hungarians forged train tickets in the late 1980s so that an entire generation was able to discover the Western world.

    Edoardo Morabito’s second feature film “The Outpost” is a portrait of Christopher Clark, a Scottish eco-warrior who has dedicated his life to saving the Amazon rainforest. To achieve his ambitions and force the government to act, Chris always comes up with unconventional ideas, such as organizing a Pink Floyd concert in the heart of the forest.

    In “Stray Bodies,” director Elina Psykou asks questions about life and death. It follows people who travel to other European countries to escape their national laws in order to keep control of their own bodies, whether in terms of euthanasia, abortion or artificial insemination.

    Having its Canadian premiere is “Echo of You.” In her sensuous and life-affirming film, director Zara Zerny tenderly portrays nine elderly Danish people who talk about what it is like to carry on living without their loved ones by their sides. They share their heartaches and express their loneliness and describe with great sensitivity and beauty what it means to live with memories.

    In “Such a Resounding Silence,” which celebrates its Ontario premiere, French actor Emmanuelle Béart reveals her own abuse. Joined by three other survivors, Béart co-directs this skilful critique of how France’s laws and social ethics enable a national child abuse crisis.

    Leo Barraclough

    Source link

  • ‘Her Smell’ Director Alex Ross Perry Talks Nonfiction Projects About Video Stores, Indie Rock Band Pavement: ‘They Are Examinations of the Unexamined Era’

    ‘Her Smell’ Director Alex Ross Perry Talks Nonfiction Projects About Video Stores, Indie Rock Band Pavement: ‘They Are Examinations of the Unexamined Era’

    “Her Smell” director Alex Ross Perry is developing two nonfiction projects, including the as-yet-untitled doc about video stores.

    “I can’t speak for everybody but yeah, I miss them,” he tells Variety at Poland’s American Film Festival, where he also picked the Indie Star Award and treated the audience to work-in-progress footage.

    “I’m trying to tell this story while it’s still within our grasp. You only have so much time when something is both a present tense memory for one half of your audience and a completely new experience for another. In another decade, everything I’m talking about will be ancient history.”

    Perry, who has been working on the project for 10 years, is also putting finishing touches on “Slanted! Enchanted!: A Pavement Musical” about an indie rock band.

    “I think both this video store movie and the Pavement movie are examinations of the unexamined era,” he says.

    “It was something I was thinking about when I made ‘Her Smell.’ We haven’t started narrativizing the 90s yet. We haven’t really delved into that era and asked what it was and what it meant, but it’s my time. No one who is older can tell that story and no one who is younger can tell that story.”

    In both projects, he will explore “the purity of that period.”

    “These projects attempt to go back to a time when things really mattered. Album sales don’t matter to musicians the way that they used to. Movies don’t matter to people the way they used to. Right now, it’s just ‘content’,” he notes.

    “Putting your hard-earned money on the counter to buy a CD created a relationship between you and that music that doesn’t exist at all anymore, unless you are a record collector.”

    Still, in “Slanted!” he will go one step further.

    “We get 1,000 music docs a year and sometimes, that’s what bands want. They want to protect and polish their legacy as they make a companion piece to their body of work. That’s the opposite of what Pavement wanted,” he notes.

    “I’m a junkie for music documentaries and I watch them too, but my whole question was: ‘Why not do something else?’ My current lack of interest in linear thinking led me to ‘maximalist’ storytelling.”

    In the film, set to be finished “at some point” next year, he will combine reality and fiction.

    “Stephen [Malkmus, vocals and guitar] has allowed me to make a documentary about things that only happened because I created them. It’s a doc about scripted events I fabricated, playing out whether the participants in the room know that or not. We had cameras around the room, rolling, and all the actors were in character the entire time – not as band members but as actors playing band members,” he enthuses.

    “To me, it feels like a new kind of movie. I have never seen anything like this, ever.”

    Despite his acclaimed collabs with Elisabeth Moss, also on “Listen up Philip” and “Queen of Earth,” Perry is not planning to go back to fiction anytime soon.

    “I just don’t get why people who supposedly like making movies only care about one mode of production. Scorsese has almost made more documentaries than narratives at this point. This kind of unbridled creativity it’s not common enough and I don’t understand why people want to rip off his aesthetic and not his work ethos,” he says.

    “When you get to work in nonfiction, the longer you go on, the more the world writes your story. You can edit a documentary one day a week and it’s always simmering just a little, or you can say: ‘I haven’t produced one minute of filmed content in years because I can’t get money.’ That makes no sense to me.”

    He would like other filmmakers to “stretch their legs and participate in parallel forms of creation,” he observes. Just like writers.

    “When you look at authors like David Foster Wallace, he wrote novels, short fiction stories or nonfiction. That’s how filmmaking should be as well,” he insists.

    “There’s nothing riding on [these two films]. There’s no urgency, which to me is the rarest thing in any form of filmmaking and possibly the greatest one too. In that sense, it becomes like writing a book.”

    “On the one hand, I want to be positive because it’s really nourishing for my brain. On the other, I have only arrived at this conclusion because of the dire state of narrative film in the U.S.”

    Leo Barraclough

    Source link

  • Reservoir Docs Boards Mark Cousins Doc ‘A Sudden Glimpse to Deeper Things,’ Featuring Tilda Swinton (EXCLUSIVE)

    Reservoir Docs Boards Mark Cousins Doc ‘A Sudden Glimpse to Deeper Things,’ Featuring Tilda Swinton (EXCLUSIVE)

    Paris-based Reservoir Docs has acquired worldwide sales rights excluding Italy to “A Sudden Glimpse to Deeper Things,” a theatrical documentary by Scottish-Irish director Mark Cousins, featuring the voice of Tilda Swinton.

    The film, described by the producers as “visually ravishing,” explores the art of the 20th century Scottish painter Wilhelmina Barns-Graham.

    Swinton will voice the artist’s innermost thoughts, reading from her private diaries and notebooks, which have never before been made public.

    The film is in late post-production for release in 2024. It is produced by Mary Bell and Adam Dawtrey for BofA Productions, and co-funded by the National Lottery via Screen Scotland, with the support of the Wilhelmina Barns-Graham Trust. I Wonder Pictures has acquired Italian rights from the producers.

    “A Sudden Glimpse to Deeper Things” is the story of an unusual creative brain, and a magnificent lifelong obsession. One day in May 1949, Barns-Graham, then 36 years old and an emerging figure in the modernist St. Ives group of artists, climbed the Grindelwald glacier in Switzerland. She experienced an aesthetic and spiritual epiphany which rewired her brain and transformed her art. She spent the rest of her life painting the glacier. Through a cinematic immersion into her art and life, the film explores themes of gender, neurodiversity, climate change, and the nature of creativity from youth to old age.

    Born in 1912, Barns-Graham died in 2004, creating vivid and dynamic new artworks right to the very end of her life.

    Wilhelmina Barns-Graham

    Cousins said: “At school I was passionate about both art and maths. My heroes were visual people who seemed to see geometry and engineering in their work – Orson Welles, Paul Cezanne, etc. In the early 90s I discovered another one of that tribe, Wilhelmina Barns-Graham, whose paintings analyzed glaciers like Cezanne’s analyzed mountains. Decades later, at the Barns-Graham Trust, I discovered how prolific she was, how unstoppable, and fell in love with her work in a new way. Her visual thinking, her wanderlust and her dynamism excited me. Add in her synaesthesia and the near disappearance of the Alpine glaciers and you’ve got a subject that’s perfect for cinema. I had to make this film. Barns-Graham’s work feels very contemporary to me.”

    Dawtrey said: “Mark is a phenomenon, without doubt the most prolifically successful U.K.-based filmmaker of the past decade, whose work has been lauded at more major festivals than any other, and sold extensively worldwide. All of this by staying true to his own unique artistic vision – just as Willie did with her paintings. That’s why they are an ideal match. We are delighted to work with Reservoir Docs to bring this perfect marriage to audiences around the world.”

    This is the fifth collaboration between Cousins and BofA, following “A Story of Children and Film” (2013), “Stockholm My Love” (2016), “The Eyes of Orson Welles” (2018) and “The Story of Looking” (2021).

    Mark Cousins

    Anaïs Clanet of Reservoir Docs negotiated the worldwide sales deal with BofA. Clanet will launch pre-sales at IDFA, after meeting the producers in Amsterdam two years ago, and pursuing the project ever since.

    She said: “Creation, cinema and quality, this is really what attracted us to the project almost two years ago now and I couldn’t be happier to share the film around the world. Mark is a wonderful filmmaker who has a beautiful insight into Wilhelmina’s creativity. It’s a film about the inventive and unusual creative process from an extraordinary artist who deserves to be more widely recognized. Mark has created a one-of-a-kind project that we can’t wait to sell worldwide.”

    The film is edited by Timo Langer, with an original score by Glasgow-based composer Linda Buckley, and animations by Danny Carr. Executive producer is Mark Thomas on behalf of Screen Scotland. Rob Airey of the Wilhelmina Barns-Graham Trust, based in Edinburgh, acted as consultant.

    In November 2022, Cousins staged a four-screen installation at Fruitmarket Gallery in Edinburgh about Barns-Graham’s encounter with the Grindelwald glacier, titled “Like a Huge Scotland.” Extracts from this installation also feature in “A Sudden Glimpse to Deeper Things.” The intention is that the two works could tour globally together in suitable multi-arts venues, alongside exhibitions of Barns-Graham’s work.

    Other recent films by Cousins include “My Name Is Alfred Hitchcock,” “The March on Rome,” “The Story of Film: A New Generation” and “Women Make Film.” In 2020 he received the European Film Academy’s inaugural Innovation Award, and in 2022 he was given the Outstanding Contribution to Cinema Medal at the Telluride Film Festival.

    In 2023, he received the Persistence of Vision Award from the San Francisco Film Festival; the Maverick Award at the Dublin Intl Film Festival; the Outstanding Contribution to Film and Culture Award from the Ismailia Film Festival in Egypt; and the Honorary Heart of Sarajevo Award from the Sarajevo Film Festival in recognition of his outstanding contribution to the art of film.

    Leo Barraclough

    Source link