Described as “performative research into the court archive of the 'Kunarac et al.' case known as the ‘Foca Rape Camp Trial’” before the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY), Kumjana Novakova’s 'Silence of Reason' took this critic’s prize for the most powerful nonfiction film at the 29th Sarajevo Film Festival (August 11–18).
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The two-night event, “ Documentary Presents Claire Simon in Conversation,” relaunches IDA’s longstanding Conversation Series with the most acclaimed
In Hello Dankness, the opening scenes of Joe Dante’s 1989 film The ’Burbs play out as usual—except Tom Hanks’s character has a “Bernie 2016” sign in his yard, while his neighbor has GOP elephant stickers on his windows. Annette Bening’s character from American Beauty (1999) drives by, an “I’m With Her” bumper sticker on her van. Wayne and Garth from Wayne’s World (1992) are now Donald Trump supporters rather than harmless, rock-loving goofballs. Trump’s election hits this world as a literal cataclysm, rendered via apocalyptic scenes from the apocalypse comedy This Is the End. These characters and many more from myriad film and television sources—ranging from Napoleon Dynamite to Jesse Eisenberg’s portrayal of Mark Zuckerberg in The Social Network (2010) sometimes crossing over with his character from Zombieland (2009)—collectively experience the 2016 election, Trump’s presidency, the COVID-19 pandemic, and the chaotic 2020 election.
Over the past week, IDA collected tributes to Nancy Buirski from those who knew her and were supported, inspired, and encouraged by her artistry
Though staying in her home region of Appalachia, documentarian Elaine McMillion Sheldon departs from her vérité beginnings in her latest feature, King
Film at Lincoln Center’s recent retrospective, “The Dirty Stories of Jean Eustache,” brought more attention to The Mother and the Whore (1973)—the
Many media depictions of Chicago don’t resonate with me. As someone raised in its northern suburbs, I’m happy to watch works such as "The Dark Knight" (2008), "Widows" (2018), or one of the Kartemquin documentaries shot in the city. However, most of them focus on the city’s corrupt politics or have a strong crime element in the story. In a saturated media market where (true) crime sells, a story’s criminal and political attention-grabbing subject can overshadow the aspirations of real-life residents.
In films like 'Hoop Dreams' (1994), 'Stevie' (2002), and 'The Interrupters' (2011) and television series like 'America to Me' (2018) and 'City So Real' (2020), Steve James has established himself as one of the preeminent observational documentarians in the US. Over nearly 30 years, he’s chronicled social change in Chicago via various ordinary citizens, from aspiring basketball players to antiviolence activists. In a departure for James, his latest film, 'A Compassionate Spy,' is a real-life espionage thriller about Theodore Hall, a young physicist on the Manhattan Project.
Like other languages, filmmaking is one that is learned but also raised in historical, societal, and cultural patterns. As Augusto Boal posits in his book 'Theatre of the Oppressed,' "By learning a language, a person acquires a new way of knowing reality and passing that knowledge on to others." In May 2023, Kundura DocLab brought together documentary theater- and filmmakers from Turkey and surrounding countries to explore the intersections of the two practices and encourage new languages.
When we think about the traces we usually identify as “surrealist” in cinema, the main reference tends to be the work of French surrealist artists and