2011-2020

The story of Richard and Mildred Loving, an interracial couple, whose challenge of their anti-miscegenation arrest for their marriage in Virginia led to a legal battle that would end at the US Supreme Court.
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Loving is a 2016 American historical drama film which tells the story of Richard and Mildred Loving, the plaintiffs in the 1967 U.S. Supreme Court decision Loving v. Virginia, which invalidated state laws prohibiting interracial marriage. The film was produced by Big Beach and Raindog Films, and distributed by Focus Features. The film takes inspiration from The Loving Story (2011) by Nancy Buirski, a documentary which follows the Lovings and their landmark case.Read More »

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The true story of Olli Mäki, the famous Finnish boxer who had a shot at the 1962 World Featherweight title. Immensely talented and equally modest, Olli’s small town life is transformed when he is swept into national stardom and suddenly regarded as a symbol of his country. There’s only one problem: Olli has just fallen in love. Inside of the ring, it’s Finland vs. the USA, but outside, boxing and romance become unlikely adversaries vying for Olli’s attention. This charming feature debut from Juho Kuosmanen was awarded the Un Certain Regard Prize at the Cannes Film Festival.Read More »

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Love doesn’t unfold like a story. Only the first and the last chapter are known. Love starts from Love and ends in letting go. In between there is tenderness and cruelty, waiting and fulfilment, ecstasy and disappointment. If love is a discourse, these are her figures of speech. An adolescent love between two girls. Childish cruelty is mixed with full blown sensuality. Dreams and life reflect and complete each other. The end is known, the story will be told after the love is gone.Read More »

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In an invisible territory at the margins of society, at the border between anarchy and illegality, lives a wounded community that is trying to respond to a threat: of being forgotten by society’s institutions and having their rights as citizens trampled. Disarmed veterans, taciturn adolescents, drug addicts trying to escape addiction through love, ex-special forces soldiers still at war with the world, floundering young women and future mothers, and old men and women who have not lost their desire to live. In this hidden pocket of humanity opens the abyss of today’s America.

This follows Minervini’s Texas Trilogy, comprised of The Passage, Low Tide and Stop the Pounding Heart.Read More »

History, Theory, Criticism
Edited by Jonathan Kahana and Foreword by Charles Musser

Provides the most comprehensive overview of documentary film assembled to date, with over 100 articles on myriad topics
Features a substantial main introduction and section introductions throughout to establish key contexts and important critical issues
Ranges widely across continents, filmmakers, and subgenres, addressing early documentary, avant-garde, propaganda, the essay film, and more
Proposes a fresh canon of films and texts as a starting point for further exploration into the world of nonfiction cinema
Includes foreword from the renowned film historian and filmmaker Charles MusserRead More »

Lotte is impulsive, rough around the edges and leads a colourful life on the streets of Berlin, stumbling from man to man and flat to flat. One night in her local bar she bumps into Marcel, an almost forgotten acquaintance. Just after he recognises her Lotte takes flight, finding refuge in the flat of her friend Sabine. The following day, the events of the previous evening still grate on Lotte and she cannot seem to shake them off, even during her work at the hospital. A young girl, Greta, is brought in, Lotte takes care of her and a gentle affection develops between them. But this happiness is short-lived because, a little later, Lotte witnesses an encounter between Greta and Marcel. The three catch sight of each other and Lotte realises she will not be able to run away this time.Read More »

Tunis, summer 2010, a few months before the Revolution: Farah, 18 years-old, has just graduated and her family already sees her as a future doctor. But she doesn’t think the same way. She sings in a political rock band. She has a passion for life, gets drunk, discovers love and her city by night against the will of her mother Hayet, who knows Tunisia and its dangers too well. Read More »

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What would you do if the world’s most fearsome military presence threatened to invade where you live? How does one even begin to prepare for that kind of assault? In “Homeland (Iraq Year Zero),” Baghdad-situated filmmaker Abbas Fahdel offers world audiences an extraordinary opportunity to identify with the “enemy” in the Iraq War — conveniently faceless in most Western coverage, but humanized here by members of Fahdel’s own family. Clocking in at nearly six hours and presented in what may feel like raw homevideo form, this transformative verite glimpse into the lives of everyday Iraqis demands both patience and empathy to sit through, but the reward is worth every second, as an extremely limited number of courageous programmers and curious audiences can attest.Read More »

A street teenager from a dysfunctional family from a banlieue (HLMs) in Paris comes across a young dancer who turns her life upside down.

Isabel Stevens (Sight & Sound) wrote:
From the opening credits – a grainy breakneck tour of the lives of two teenage girls who lark about, posing and dancing via vertical-aspect cameraphone footage, I had a suspicion we were onto something special. Then comes the unusual opener: a hazy, abstract shot. Gradually, the interior of a mosque comes into focus. The smaller of the two girls, who only seconds ago stared us down and asked “You looking at me?” with full Taxi Driver-esque bravado, is outside trying to get her praying friend’s attention through a grate in the wall.Read More »