In the non-fiction medium, there is a fascinating sub-genre. In recent years, filmmakers have been documenting unconventional competitions. In both Girls State & Boys State, we follow a mock representative election by high school students who are aficionados of politics. In Pianoforte, the filmmakers narrate the International Chopin Piano Competition, …
If you know anything at all about classic movies, you know about Kim Novak. She was one of the last actors to be molded for stardom under the old studio system, and she had such an unhappy time being set up as a rival to Marilyn Monroe and Rita Hayworth …
A week before its original Sundance premiere, BLKNWS: Terms & Conditions by Kahlil Joseph had its participation withdrawn from the festival by its investor, Participant Media. The financer alleged the director showed a secret cut of the project to critics at the CAA screening room, justifying their intervention in the …
Giuseppe Verdi may have been dead for the past 124 years, but his legacy as Italy’s greatest 19th century opera composer is as alive as ever on stages around the world. Viva Verdi!, however, the documentary by director Yvonne Russo, shows another side of his legacy in music education and …
The Iraqi-French director Abbas Fahdel is known for studying war and conflicts in the Middle East. His debut feature, Back to Babylon, is a return home after an immense exile, and analyzes the aftermath of the Iran-Iraq and Gulf wars in the country. His most celebrated film, Homeland: Iraq Year …
The Russian-American director Julia Loktev is a well-known director despite her small filmography. In 1998, she made her debut with Moment of Impact. Then, eight years later, she released her sophomore film with Day Night Day Night. She premiered her most prominent work to date, the 2011 film The Loneliest …
Min Sook Lee is a veteran of the Canadian documentary filmmaking. With a history of producing documentaries since 2003, the South Korean-born and Toronto-raised director has a strong background in non-fiction. Since her debut, Sook Lee has released other films, such as Hogtown: The Politics of Policing, Tiger Spirit, and …
The Swiss-Canadian director, Peter Mettler, is a respected documentary filmmaker. Focusing on exploring the miracles of existence, his films observe the environment surrounding human beings. In this sense, he tends to release long films that meditate on the humane reality. His career spans four decades, featuring celebrated films like Picture …
Few national authors have the same clout and immediate recognisability as Scottish author Irvine Welsh. Paul Sng’s documentary Irvine Welsh: Reality Is Not Enough – co-written by Sng and Welsh – opens with a laundry list of ways Welsh and his work, definitions of national treasures, has reached adoring audiences …
Playing out of competition at the 2025 Locarno Film Festival, Nova ‘78, from the directing duo of Aaron Brookner and Rodrigo Areias, functions both as a moving paean to the enduring greatness of eminent writer and iconoclast William S. Burroughs (1914-1997) and an electrifying snapshot of a bygone period of …
There are other directors who are better, there are others who are more stylish, but there is no director anywhere in the world who is more interesting than Werner Herzog. He was once shot on camera during an interview for British television and actually called the wound “insignificant” as the …
The French director Maureen Fazendeiro is known for her short documentary Sol Negro (Black Sun), a recitation of Henri Michaux‘s poem. After that, she joined the Portuguese director Miguel Gomes, co-writing his Cannes award-winning Grand Tour, and co-directing the 2021 film, Diários de Otsoga (The Tsugua Diaries). Now, she directs …
The Palestinian experimental director Kamal Alijafari is one of the voices that portray the Palestinian diaspora during times of genocide. Last year, the director released A Fidai Film, an experiment on footage from the Israeli Army invasion in Beirut in 1982. Therefore, the film is a poignant documentation of the …
The Ukrainian journalist Mstyslav Chernov gained fame for his debut documentary, 20 Days in Mariupol, a PBS and The Associated Press production. He returns to portray the ongoing conflict between Russia and Ukraine with 2000 Meters to Andriivka. His first film had an outstanding world premiere at the 2023 Sundance …
Academy Award-winning director Kevin MacDonald has returned to documentary filmmaking after a series of fiction works, including The Mauritanian and How I Live Now, among others. His last three works were documentaries: High and Low – John Galliano, Last Song From Kabul, and One to One: John & Yoko. In …
Physical media shaped different generations of filmmakers. One of them, Alex Ross Perry, studies the golden age and the downfall of the video stores in Videoheaven. Consequently, the film explores the home video as the main distribution format after the original theatrical window. Known for his independent films, such as …
Five minutes into Food Delivery: Fresh from the West Philippine Sea, the latest documentary from Filipino filmmaker Baby Ruth Villarama, we are presented with a patchwork of news headlines, archived footage depicting Filipino and Chinese maritime vessels ramming into each other, and graphics mapping the Philippines’ nautical borders. A propulsive …
The Slovak director Miro Remo presents an alternative way of living in his film Better Go Mad in the Wild. In his fifth feature-length film, the director closely observes the twin brothers František and Ondřej Klišík. They live in the inner countryside of the Czech Republic, in the Sumava. The …
Following the 2019 Academy Award nominee for Best Documentary Feature, Edge of Democracy, Brazilian filmmaker Petra Costa presents her spiritual sequel to it, Apocalypse in the Tropics. Five years after, the film narrates the downfall of the Partido dos Trabalhadores (Workers’ Party), the impeachment of Dilma Rousseff from the presidency, …
It is perhaps unfair to review a film based on the comments its director made at a festival Q&A, but what Kim A. Snyder said at the Sheffield DocFest summed up the flawed worldview of this film better than the documentary itself did. Filmed largely during the Biden years as …