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 …
This documentary is so bleak that it’s going to be very hard for it to find its audience. This is a shame because it shows what countless movies have shown, only for real: how exposure to the battlefield, whether as an observer or a participant, inalterably changes a person. A …
North South Man Woman is a documentary focused on a North Korean woman, Yujin, who has made her way to safety in South Korea and who now runs a matchmaking bureau for South Korean men who wish to marry North Korean women. The cameras follow Yujin’s personal life and that …
This documentary about the continuing phenomenon of Rocky Horror is directed by the son of the man who created the phenomenon. Normally this would lead to calls of nepotism, but somehow here the closeness to the material is appropriate. The stories within Strange Journey have clearly been told and revisited …
This movie is horrifying and shaming and unspeakable but it deserves our attention, because all the horrifying, shaming, unspeakable things within it are happening to human beings. This is often forgotten in prison discourse, that every prisoner is a person too. Regardless of the worst things we have ever done, …
I love it when a film challenges a belief that I feel settled on. The issue of the right to die is one that I have felt pretty secure about for decades. But in his new documentary, Life After, director Reid Davenport has forced me to add some pretty significant …
This documentary, about the director’s mother’s alcoholism and its impact, makes vividly apparent the problem with most documentaries. If it has been anyone other than her daughter Myrid Carten making the film, it’s clear Nuala Carten would not have participated. But director Myrid Carten made the choice to be a …
The fundraising headline of The Gas Station Attendant was clearly that director Karla Murthy’s father, H. N. Shantha Murthy, worked in a gas station while Ms. Murthy was in college. But his life was considerably more complex than the stereotype mainstreamed into American society by The Simpsons. What clearly started …
Nearly a decade ago, American alternative artist and provocateur Joe Coleman painted a door-sized, hyper-detailed self-portrait titled “Doorway to Joe,” which reflects his personal lore, uninhibited fantasies and fetishes, and penchant for the divine and the profane. Later, he figured that the project called for a seven-foot companion portrait of …
Whenever we listen to a hit song on a streaming service, vinyl, or radio, we do not often think about its backstory. Behind a catchy tune are hours of recording, writing, and performing in the booth to deliver a final song that follows us long after its production. Besides the …
In the first minutes of Copan, by Brazilian director Carine Wallauer, we watch her observe her prior empty apartment. Letters on the screen explain where she is. The Copan building in downtown São Paulo is a monument of Brazilian modern architecture. Designed by the legendary Oscar Niemeyer, it is a …
In Deaf President Now!, Nyle DiMarco and Academy Award-winning director Davis Guggenheim join forces to tell a milestone in the education of the deaf community. In 1988, at Gallaudet University in Washington, D.C, the first and only deaf people’s university in the world, students gathered to protest. The board of …
Nearly six minutes into We Are Pat, a hybrid documentary from Tribeca alum Rowan Haber, our gaze fixates on a graphic in pink and blue gradient featuring a photograph of the director’s toddler self—naked, sporting a cute red eyewear, and waving their hand—juxtaposed with a larger photograph of Pat, the …
In Yanuni, the Tribeca closer from Austrian director Richard Ladkani, ecocide and genocide are one and the same. From the vantage point of the occupied, the Ecocidal project is decidedly one of ethnic cleansing—it is only through the forceful killing and erasure of Indigenous peoples defending their homeland that the …