Documentaries

  • Film

Documentaries “Anonymous Sister” and “Sam Now” Each Showcase Power of Home Video Footage

Two newly released documentaries, each rooted in home video footage from the early 2000s, illustrate the manner in which personally documented memories can be used in a foundational way to craft nonfiction films that plumb universally relatable themes. While their specific narratives diverge, Anonymous Sister and Sam Now each unpack incredibly engaging and affecting stories of family trauma — and the scars that can develop from secrets closely held, and conversations not had.
  • Festivals

Docs: Angus McDonald on “Freedom is Beautiful” at Sydney Film Festival

The documentary feature, Freedom is Beautiful, focuses on two remarkable Kurdish Iranian asylum seekers who are musicians, artists, poets and close friends. Farhad Bandesh and Mostafa ‘Moz’ Azimitibar were also freed within a month of each other, in 2020, after each having spent eight years locked up in brutal refugee camps on Papua New Guinea’s Manus Island and a Melbourne detention center run by the Australian Government.