Documentaries

In the new film documentary Americonned, filmmaker Sean Claffey explores the tragic, destabilizing effects of income inequality on every level of society as his cameras follow five subjects over four years, recording their struggle to find the American dream. But the film also offers hope, talking to experts who look back through history at similar critical moments of instability, remembering significant labor movements that were born in such times.

Last week, 30-year-old Edward Buckles Jr. received the Rising Star Award from his hometown at the New Orleans Film Society.

Justin Johnson, aka Justinsuperstar, is an Emmy award-winning filmmaker (Double Digits: The Story of a Neighborhood Movie Star) and entrepreneur known as ‘the internet’s first video blogger. ’ His interest in documentaries evolved during his position at YouTube, where he was hired to shoot documentaries around Europe and created content for Conde Nast, Google, Star Wars, LEGO, and General Mills.

A delicate, well sketched, and emotionally substantive unpacking of the many complicated feelings attached to tending to a family member either in distress or facing an incurable disease, the documentary Unconditional lends rich if melancholic dimension to the saying that life can only be understood backwards, though it must be lived forwards. Directed by MSNBC reporter and anchor Richard Lui, and executive produced by Maria Shriver, Montel Williams, Lauren Miller Rogen and Laurie Hernandez, the film charts the journey of three families through turbulent waters of forced self-discovery.

Award-winning producer and creative director James Honeyborne has led his team with a focus produced by lifelong professional dedication in order to delight viewers with his vision of the world’s endangered lands, fauna and flora, and oceanic havens. From the beginning of the film, the viewer’s eye gets to absorb some of the world’s most spectacular and mind-blowing scenery, educating the audience on the importance of nature and the beauty and function of wildlife.

Kent Donguines, a Filipino Canadian filmmaker, has always been fascinated by tattoos. He proudly shows us, during a Zoom interview, the many tattoos he got, including the ones he received from 106-year-old famed tattoo guru or mambabatok, Apo Whang-Od – who lives in the remote village of Buscalan, in the municipality of Tinglayan, Kalinga, Philippines.

The insightful and cinematic documentary, Who’s Afraid of Nathan Law? will make its World Premiere at the upcoming HOT DOCS 2023 festival in Canada, running through May 7. The launch concludes a long journey for the filmmakers who were first introduced to the young Hong Kong protestor Nathan Law while making the 2017 documentary about his friend, Joshua Wong in Joshua: Teenager Vs Superpower.

Virunga, the Oscar-nominated documentary tells the incredible true story of four rangers who, during political and social unrest risk their lives to protect one of Africa’s most precious wildlife national parks and its endangered gorillas, some of the world’s last mountain gorillas. Directed by Orlando von Einsiedel and produced by Leonardo DiCaprio, the powerful Netflix documentary showcases incidents that occurred in Congo’s Virunga National Park during the rise of the violent M23 Rebellion in 2012.

The emotionally touching documentary Eyes of the Orangutan, available on-line, throws a harsh light on one of the most troubling topics: the wild-tourism industry and its enormous effect on wildlife, especially on one of our closest defenseless living relatives: the orangutan.   The captivating doc Eyes of the Orangutan is the debut feature from internationally acclaimed British wildlife filmmaker and environmental photojournalist Aaron Gekoski.

Last year, Sara Dosa’s gorgeous and affecting Fire of Love filtered some of the beauty and danger of the natural world through the real-life romance of two pioneering volcanologists, Maurice and Katia Krafft. Wild Life, the latest nonfiction effort from award-winning married filmmakers Jimmy Chin and Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi, exists at a somewhat similar nexus, while also heartily surveying the realm of eco-sensitive capitalism and natural preservation more broadly.