Film

After directing and producing documentaries for the German TV channel ZDF on the refugee casualties of Middle Eastern wars that were dismissed as simply statistics, or producing images in news bulletins, Egyptian journalist Ali El Arabi decided to quit his job and live with the Syrian refugees in the Za’atari camp in order to get to know them closely and understand their needs. "I felt guilty, so I wanted to shed light on their plight from their point of view and not from an external point of view,” El Arabi said at the last El Gouna Film Festival.

Spin Time, Sabina Guzzanti's new documentary about the have-nots in our society and their ongoing struggle for a roof over their head, is just the latest example of how the international film community is starting to deal with these issues, both in fiction and in non-fiction. It is not insignificant that the most talked about TV series of the moment is the Korean Squid Game, an unsettling depiction of what desperation and poverty can force a person to do in a capitalistic and unequal society; and the fact that the Oscar winners for Best Film of the last two years have been 2019s Parasite, a tragicomedy hinging on the disparity of income and the quality of life in a big city, and last year’s Nomadland, the story of a woman abandoning the remains of a life lived in the hamster's wheel of conventional prosperity and embracing a nomadic existence off the grid.

Kenneth Branagh’s wistful homage to his childhood in Northern Ireland arrives on the big screen in the form of the semi-autobiographical movie, Belfast. Written and directed by Branagh, the story chronicles the life of a working-class family in the late 1960s in a narrative set against the backdrop of social tumult during the Northern Ireland Conflict.

Women made up 39% of directors in 2020. While that number reflects gender gains in the field when placed in the perspective of the fact that women make up 51% of the general population – not so much.

Not even hurricane Ida could stop this festival, which started on Nov 5. New Orleanians do not like when we call them resilient, so let’s just say they are masters at success against all odds.

14 months ago, during the unprecedentedly difficult, pandemic-ravaged Venice Film Festival, a movie had its world premiere without the usual fanfare, with no receptions and a sad and empty red carpet where no fans cheered from the bleachers. The film was called The Duke and it deserved better.

One of the more difficult aspects of adolescence to capture on film is the overwhelming ambivalence that is often a staple of teenage life — the grappling with general uncertainty as well as contradictory feelings, frequently quite intense, as one prepares to leave whatever nest their family of origin provides, and more proactively chart their own path forward. Both through its subject matter and framing, the documentary At the Ready, a world premiere at the 2021 Sundance Film Festival now enjoying a theatrical and VOD release, captures this mood with considerable sensitivity and insight, providing a fascinating look at the nexus of education, law enforcement, politics, and young adulthood.

The HFPA met Oliver Stone in Nursultan, Kazakhstan, and later at the Rome Film Fest in October to talk about his involvement in the new documentary Qazaq: History of the Golden Man, which is now showing at the Asian World Film Festival in Los Angeles. The film, available both as a feature-length version and as a six-hour series, is written, directed and produced by Igor Lopatonok, and Stone figures as the interviewer of Kazakhstan's former President, considered the founder of the country, Nursultan Nazarbayev, the larger-than-life and controversial subject of this intriguing project with the music score composed by Golden Globe nominee Carlo Siliotto.

Found is an involving documentary that taps into a thick vein of universal feeling while also never running or trying to squirm free from the potential ambiguity inherent in its story. After DNA tests reveal that they are blood-related cousins, three American teenage girls, all adopted as babies from China, develop an online friendship built around the understandably complicated feelings they each have about their respective lost personal histories.

Attica! is a riveting documentary that revisits an American tragedy exactly 50 years after the prisoners’ rebellion at the Attica correctional facility in upstate New York which would become infamous in American prison history. On this anniversary the revolt has spawned several retrospectives, such as HBO Max’s Betrayal at Attica.