reReel Life: Flick Pix
Maven's Nest
Reel Life: Flick Pix
ANNOTATED OVERVIEW OF WOMEN FILMMAKERS AT THE 2023 TRIBECA FILM FESTIVAL
By Nora Lee Mandel
The 22nd Tribeca Film Festival June 7 - 18, 2023 returned to its original role of revitalizing New York City after a crisis. After 9/11 the focus was on Downtown Manhattan, while now the post-pandemic scope extends city-wide, with indoor and outdoor screenings and events that encompass a myriad of categories and activities, some extending to “Tribeca At Home” streaming June 19 – July 2 (with geographic or other restrictions, and not accessible to press). This year, the Festival touted “109 feature films from 127 filmmakers across 36 countries, including 93 World Premieres, (45) of all feature films are directed by women and, for the first time, more than half of competition feature films are directed by women at 68% (19)”.
For those of us who follow women in film, the anticipated centerpiece of the Festival for nine years is the Nora Ephron Award “created to honor the spirit and vision of the legendary filmmaker and writer”. Thanks to FF2 Media for featuring my annual coverage of the Ephron Award, including 2022, and now 2023 (*winners).
In 2020, the Ephron Award guidelines were more explicit than before: “One narrative film directed by or written by a woman making its World or International Premiere” and the award-eligible films were identified in advance. In 2021, even films not shown in competition were evidently eligible. This year, one publicist informed me that “It is only for first time filmmakers.” If so, then my list of potential awardees is incorrect. I am usually the only film critic to follow previous Ephron Award winners.
The jurors for the 2023 Nora Ephron Award were: Nina Dobrev, actress, writer, director, producer and entrepreneur; Clea DuVall, actress, writer, director, and producer; Piper Perabo, actress, producer, and activist; A.V. Rockwell, director, writer, producer, cinematographer; and, Emma Seligman, writer, director, and producer.
I also spotlight people who identify as female on the creative team, what I call, only in writing, “Women Crew-Ed Films”, the work of women collaborators in the Festival’s feature and short films, television offerings, N.O.W. (New Online Work) shorts for online platforms and “immersive” virtual reality projects– writers, cinematographers, editors, and composers, and more. Some of these artists may be future directors, but all are in the pool for future work-to-watch.
Many of the films not already picked up for commercial theatrical or network/platform distribution continue on the festival circuit around the U.S. and world, particularly the shorts. So you will still have opportunities to see these women filmmakers’ work that I recommend.
All my recommended films in the Festival that I can access -- shorts and features, by those who identify as female and others -- are listed at: Mandel Maven's Nest Reel Life: Flick Pix.
Also reported with the Festival:
“Tribeca and CHANEL announced the winning recipient of the eighth annual Through Her Lens: The Tribeca Chanel Women's Filmmaker Program. Wendi Tang and Hongwei Wu were awarded this year’s grand prize for their film Fishtank and received full production funding for their original short film…A total of $100,000 in filmmaker grants was awarded amongst the five projects. In addition to the winning project, the other program participants each received a development grant to support continued work on their respective films to move them closer to production. They included Bitterroot; Homecoming And Going; The Last Rain Cloud Of Summer; The Queen, The Knight, and The Witch.” However, the press release did not include the names of the female filmmaker finalists who had participated in an intensive, three-day workshop with mentors.
Untold Stories
2023 women finalists - AT&T provides a $10,000 grant to these participants “to help achieve their film goals”:
Bat Mitzvah - Written and Directed by Selyna Warren and Marissa Read
Body Shop - Directed and Written by Maria Mealla
NORA EPHRON AWARD-ELIGIBLE?: FEATURE NARRATIVE FILMS BY WOMEN WRITER/DIRECTORS AT 2023 TRIBECA FILM FESTIVAL (*winners)
Boca Chica*
Cold Copy
Dead Girls Dancing
Downtown Owl
First Time Female Director
Fresh Kills
The Graduates
I.S.S.
Je’vida
The Lesson
Lost Soulz
Marinette
Mountains
Öte
The Perfect Find
Smoking Tigers*
Somewhere Quiet
You’ll Never Find Me
OTHER NARRATIVE FEATURES WRITTEN/DIRECTED BY WOMEN AT 2023 TRIBECA FILM FESTIVAL
Perpetrator
Silver Haze
SPECIAL SCREENINGS
Flower
Following Harry
DOCUMENTARY FEATURES DIRECTED BY WOMEN AT 2023 TRIBECA FILM FESTIVAL
Apolonia, Apolonia
Breaking the News
Break the Game
Common Ground
Every Body
Gloria Gaynor: I Will Survive
The Gullspång Miracle
Indigo Girls: It’s Only Life After All
Invisible Beauty
John Early: Now More Than Ever
Kim’s Video
Let The Canary Sing
The Lionheart
Maestra
Of Night and Light: The Story of Iboga And Ibogaine
Poisoned: The Dirty Truth About Your Food
Q
A Revolution On Canvas
Richland
The Space Race
Stylebender
Transition
Uncharted
We Dare To Dream
Your Fat Friend
SHORTS DIRECTED BY WOMEN AT 2023 TRIBECA FILM FESTIVAL
Narrative Shorts
Bellybutton
Blackwool
Blond Night (Nuit blonde)
Blood
Daddy Issues
Dead Cat (Chat Mort)
Ecstasy
Everybody Dies...Sometimes
Fairytales
Feliz Navidad
Ferns (Helechos)
Fish Out Of Water
Hafekasi
Heartbeat
In Passing
The K-Town Killer
Let Liv
Proof of Concept
Restless Is the Night
Sealed Off
The Sperm Bank
Spinning
Upsidedown
Documentary Shorts
Ayenda
Black Girls Play: The Story of Hand Games
Goodbye, Morganza
The Night Doctrine
Over the Wall
The Queen Collective Program
Savi the Cat
What Next?
TRIBECA TALKS
Beyond Boundaries: South Asian Women
The Birth of a Super-Heroine
”Who’s Scared Now?”
MUSIC VIDEOS
Anoana
To The Desert
EPISODICS: TRIBECA TV
Diarra From Detroit
The Horror of Dolores Roach
The Walking Dead: Dead City
EPISODICS: N.O.W. (NEW ONLINE WORK) SHOWCASE
Do It To Me If You Want
I Hate People, People Hate Me
Taking Root: Southeast Asian Stories of Resettlement in Philadelphia
IMMERSIVE: VIRTUAL REALITY
The Pirate Queen: A Forgotten Legend
WOMEN CREW-ED: FILMS BY WOMEN WRITERS, CINEMATOGRAPHERS, EDITORS AND COMPOSERS AT 2023 TRIBECA FILM FESTIVAL
SPECIAL SCREENING
Elemental
NARRATIVE FEATURES
Afire (Roter Himmel)
Asog
Bucky F*cking Dent
Hey Viktor!
Playland
Richelieu (Temporaries)
A Strange Path (Estranho Caminho)
DOCUMENTARY FEATURES
All Up in the Biz
Anthem
Bad Like Brooklyn Dancehall
Between The Rains
BS High
Chasing Chasing Amy
Comedy of War: Laughter in Ukraine
Exposing Parchman
For Khadija: For French Montana
The League
Rock Hudson: All That Heaven Allowed
Scream of My Blood: A Gogol Bordello Story
Stan Lee
Taylor Mac’s 24-Decade History of Popular Music
Waitress, the Musical - Live on Broadway!
SHORTS
Narrative Shorts
Schettinimous
Thaw
Witchfairy
Music Videos
I Guess I'm Changing
EPISODICS: N.O.W. (NEW ONLINE WORK) SHOWCASE
The Fourth Wall
NORA EPHRON AWARD-ELIGIBLE FILMS BY WOMEN DIRECTORS AT 2023 TRIBECA FILM FESTIVAL? (*winners)
Boca Chica*
Synopsis and Schedule
Director: Gabriella A. Moses; Writers: Marité Ugás and Mariana Rondón; Editor: Cecilia Delgado; Cinematographer: Micaela Cajahuaringa (Dominican Republic) World Premiere in International Narrative Competition
*Nora Ephron Award to: Gabriella A. Moses - “With strong visual language that drew us in, lived in performances and original magnetic storytelling, this movie fearlessly confronted family dynamics. The filmmaker expertly portrays the disparity between how the American dream is perceived outside of the US versus the experience of immigrants freshly arriving on American soil. Honoring the chaos of puberty while introducing its exploitation.”
Boca Chica is a beachfront community, near Dominican Republic’s capital Santo Domingo, and convenient for tourism. Feature film debut director Gabriella Moses brought her island heritage to the script by Peruvian Marité Ugás and Venezuelan Mariana Rondón to this very particular place for additional insights into the family and friends teasing sensitive 12-year-old “Desiree” (Scarlet Camilo, with expressive body language), who wants to be a singer. Day to night, Peruvian Micaela Cajahuaringa’s camera catches the uneasy intersection that can trap females, of an exuberant culture, curious tourists, and service businesses sustained through remittances of diaspora relatives. “Desi” is wise beyond her years in carefully navigating these obstacles, but her prodigal musician brother “Fran” (Jean Cruz) has the acuity of distance to see she may not be able to continue so through adolescence, as her friends succumb, and he knows family members also have in the past. Even as the household is in a frenzy preparing for an expatriate cousin’s wedding to a blonde Texan gringa, the siblings summon their performance skills to reveal avoided truths. This strong sympathy for a Caribbean girl is refreshing.
Cold Copy
Synopsis and Schedule
Director/Writer: Roxine Helberg (USA, Canada) World Premiere in Spotlight Narrative
Vertical Entertainment releases January 26, 2024.
”Gotcha journalism” is a nasty enough business without funneling it through the female competition between a bitchy network interviewer/broadcast journalism professor (Tracee Ellis playing against type in a straight black wig as “Diane Heger”) and her fawning, ambitious, yet naïve student (the usual wide-eyed Bel Powley as “Mia Scott”). While the film also condemns the superficiality of the headline-grabbing, scandal-seeking tabloids that pass for TV news, this world is Devil Wears Prada without humor and with serious consequences beyond fashion. I don’t remember any mention of the law, ethics, or privacy considerations, let alone real investigative journalism. With the two leads’ scary portrayals of not completely convincing characters, and a constant edit of stream-of-consciousness revealing the acolyte’s thoughts, Cold Copy looks more slick than deep thinking.
Dead Girls Dancing
Synopsis and Schedule
Director/Writer: Anna Roller; Editor: Mila Zhluktenko (Germany, France) World Premiere in International Narrative Competition
Downtown Owl
Synopsis and Schedule
Co-Director: Lily Rabe; Editor: Nena Erb (USA) World Premiere in Spotlight Narrative
First Time Female Director
Synopsis and Schedule
Director/Writer: Chelsea Peretti; Music Consultant: Este Haim (USA) World Premiere in Spotlight Narrative
Fresh Kills
Synopsis and Schedule
Director/Writer/Co-Star: Jennifer Esposito; Composer: Theodosia Roussos (USA) World Premiere in Spotlight Narrative
Quiver Distribution releases June 14, 2024.
The Graduates
Synopsis and Schedule
Director/Writer/Editor: Katherine Propper; Cinematographer: Caroline Costa (USA) World Premiere in U.S. Narrative Competition
Awarded Best Cinematography in a U.S. Narrative Feature: Caroline Costa - Jury comment: “From the very first frame, it was clear the cinematographer was someone in complete command of their craft. From their naturalistic approach to lighting to tight compositions, the cinematographer supported the emotional journey of the film at every turn.”
Not available streaming.
Too frequently nowadays, school shootings have brought the shock of grief to shiny happy suburban United States. Here filmed in Utah, at a fictional high school, the girlfriend, best friend, teachers, and parents a year on are learning to live with the empty hole and figuring out how to go on. Filmed in long shadows, some of the coping is seen visually – like the metal detectors at the entrance, a memorial wall, a teacher out on leave – and some are revealed through dialogue, like the best friend who dropped out to just take the GED (played by Alex Hibbert), and the blonde girlfriend (played by Mina Sundwall) who finally agrees to participate in group grief counselling. There is some careful multi-racial casting, led by executive producer John Cho as the father of a victim who would have graduated with these friends. Particularly poignant is when he listens to the messages on his son’s phone that the friends are still leaving, not knowing their emotional expressions are being received. Unlike some other survivors in real life, however, they do not turn their grief into any activism, as continuing forward becomes a victory itself.
I.S.S.
Synopsis and Schedule
Director: Gabriela Cowperthwaite; Composer: Annie Nikitin (USA) World Premiere in Spotlight Narrative
Bleecker Street releases January 19, 2024.
In a timely reflection of tensions on Earth, this very near future story on the International Space Station (I.S.S.) now seems more realistic than the peaceful political optimism of Star Trek. Even the necessary use of Russia’s Soyuz spacecraft to get to I.S.S. now feels more suspicious than before, as “Dr. Kira Foster” (played by Ariana Debose) adjusts to the shaking attachment. Beyond Nick Shafir’s debut script (that was a “Blacklist” best not-yet-produced selection), once on board, the recreation of weightless living is very realistic, with all its practical awkwardness.
Also very human, fraternization with jealousies is going on between Russians (charismatic Pilou Asbæk as “Alexey Pulov”, so notable in such Tobias Lindholm’s films as A Hijacking(Kapringen), and “Weronika Vetrov” played by Masha Mashkova), and American crew members (arousing Chris Messina as “Commander Gordon Barrett”). “Kira” quickly lets her colleagues know that the ex-fiancé she was glad to leave is female.
Cowperthwaite, maybe in a bow to iconic images in Star Wars, makes the I.S.S. grungy, as the rotating crews of high-powered scientists and engineers don’t want to take time from their crammed-in sleeping quarters and (easily sabotaged) experiments to deign to clean up. In a worrying change from the classic views of Apollos’ “Blue Marble” and “Earthrise”, what at first seems to be volcanic eruptions are exploding beyond natural causes to turn our home planet blood red. (“Don’t look!” orders the Commander is not really a solution.) Separate, limited computer communications from ground control in Russian and English are dire, and set off suspenseful suspicions and even fights (both petty masculine posturing and mission crucial) around who is following what instructions.
The ambiguity of the future of co-operation and ultimate destination is effectively unsettling.
Je’vida
Synopsis and Schedule
Director/Co-Writer: Katja Gauriloff; Composer: Laura Naukkarinen (Finland) World Premiere in International Narrative Competition
Gauriloff’s exquisite, poignant first fiction feature summons her Skolt Sámi’s experiences from Finland’s colonizing policies towards these indigenous people since World War II, a period signified by the black-and-white cinematography. While her earlier documentaries, not yet seen in the U.S., celebrated her culture, this is the first fiction feature all in the dialect of the 300 native speakers in Lapland, of the far north, spoken onscreen by her talented non-professional extended family. Much as indigenous people in Canada and the U.S. have exposed the heritage of trauma from boarding schools and patronizing attitudes, a septuagenarian woman’s (Sanna-Kaisa Palo) life story is recalled through layers of flashbacks to the impact of Finlandization. She remembers going from a beloved granddaughter (luminous young Agafia Niemenmaa) learning fishing and cooking traditions, to the bitterness of being cut off from her past. The sudden appearance of a niece (Seidi Haarla) haunted by her truncated roots sets off internal struggles visually portrayed in burning embers. Sure to be included in the next Smithsonian Mother Tongue Film Festival, this is a heart-filled consciousness-raiser to the world.
The Lesson
Synopsis and Schedule
Director: Alice Troughton; Cinematographer: Anna Patarakina; Composer: Isobel Waller-Bridge (UK, Germany) World Premiere in Spotlight Narrative.
Bleecker Street releases July 7.
This noir is mostly a delicious puncturing of the resistance of the British upper social and intellectual class to outsiders, even one with an elite education. Like erstwhile novelist “Liam” (Daryl McCormack) who is available to be hired by famous writer father “J.M. Sinclair” (Richard E. Grant) and curator mother “Hélène” (Julie Delpy, in what may be her first matriarchal performance) to tutor their son “Bertie” (Stephen McMillan) for his Oxford college application. Moving into the guest house (the estate that is actually outside Hamburg is lovely) to facilitate their daily study sessions, “Liam” becomes privy to family secrets, which are intriguing mysteries. But he is also subject to their manipulations, and he initiates ones himself, that finally make every character unsympathetic and distasteful.
Lost Soulz
Synopsis and Schedule
Director/Writer: Katherine Propper (USA) World Premiere in U.S. Narrative Competition
Not available streaming
Audience Award Narrative: Second Place
Kino Lorber releases in theaters May 3, 2024.
This hip hop road movie wanders across America’s physical landscape from Atlanta, through Texas, to Los Angeles, as littered with drugs and its consequences of ruined lives and disrupted families. Centered around “Sol Jackson” (Sauve Sidle, using elements from his own life as a rising rapper and earlier short films with Propper), he quickly moves from part-time drug dealing and posting his erstwhile R & B influenced music videos online with his best friend/manager, to jumping into a van with a primarily Latino band needing a replacement for their jailed African-American rapper. Though inspired by the hip hop bio 8 Mile (2002), the youthful music-making captures the ambitious feelings of rock ‘n’ roll movies, like The Commitments (1992) and Not Fade Away (2012). Just that in the film, as in life, the predictable scenes of getting high are interminable (so why is “Sol” shocked that the drugs in his “magic bag” are gone?), saved by the genuine emotions of found-families.
Marinette
Synopsis and Schedule
Director/Writer: Virginie Verrier (France) World Premiere in International Narrative Competition
Beyond the usual sports bio-pic, Verrier adapts the autobiography (not available in English) of ground-breaking French soccer player Marinette Pichon to stress her grit to even get to play and on the pitch from the 1980s in a small town in northeast France, through years of overcoming domestic violence and homophobia. With ferocious performances that are always center screen, as a child (portrayed by June Benard), to adolescence (Yamé Pertzing), to adulthood (Garance Marillier), the gifted and determined player also has to learn the benefits of teamwork, camaraderie, and leadership while handling mean girls. Always crucial is the support of her mother (Emilie Dequenne), and key coaches, locally (Fred Testot), and in a club (Sylvie Testut). These stages and achievements are clearly demarcated with the years, locations, and key matches, contexts useful for those not familiar with her career from league, to French national team, to U.S. competition in beautifully filmed Philadelphia, and World Cup play. A multi-records holder, she is still a fighter against the misogyny in France where women’s soccer remains stuck in amateur status.
Mountains
Synopsis and Schedule
Director/Co-Writer: Monica Sorelle (USA) World Premiere in U.S. Narrative Competition
U.S. Narrative Feature Special Jury Mention: Monica Sorelle - Jury comment: “For its authentic, specific portrayal of a culture we had not seen on screen. A deeply emotional and empathetic portrait of a family in a changing world with brilliant leading performances.”
Music Box Films releases August 16, 2024.
This quiet immigrant family drama is situated in a neighborhood not usually seen on screen - “Little Haiti” in Miami. The central personal tension is the familiar working-class immigrant father (Atibon Nazaire) vs. rebellious son (Serafin Falcon) like in The Jazz Singer, where now “Junior” wants to be a stand-up comic. Miami-based Haitian-American filmmaker/artist Sorelle’s debut feature presents the warmth of the Haitian ethnic enclave at a little cousin’s communion party and a Carnivale-like procession with music and dance. But she also visually shows the more powerful force at work – gentrification. The father’s long-time job in construction, working for a Cuban-American family business that only tries to hide their racism through Spanish, now makes him complicit as their primary work these days is demolition, even of a low-rise house that could be a Haitian family’s dream home. With the pressure of block-busting phone calls and flyers, few can withstand financial temptation as the affluent in Florida flee the climate-changed coast for higher grounds previously left to the poor. Sorelle places these individuals’ clear stories within a specific changing place reminiscent of how Louis Malle did in Atlantic City (1980).
Öte
Synopsis and Schedule
Co-Director/Co-Writer: Esra Saydam (Turkey) World Premiere in Viewpoints
The very self-sufficient New York tourist “Lela” (Iman Artwell-Freeman) is an unusual heroine for a picaresque story that goes from Istanbul through striking landscapes of mountains and valleys, imperial ruins, and isolated villages on her way to a friend in Yerevan, Armenia. One off-the-beaten-path ruin “Lela” documents turns out be her friend’s ancestral home, a subtle reference to the 1915 genocide. However, the beautiful Black woman comes very close to meeting Turkish men’s fantasy stereotypes of easy American females to hit on, albeit on her own terms, as she sets her own travel plan, by longitude and latitude, alone via cab, train, bus, and a lot of walking. While Saydam got her MFA at Columbia so knows the reality, she also shows female solidarity as Turkish women step up to protect “Lela” from unwanted attentions, even as they are struggling to assert their own independence.
The Perfect Find
Synopsis and Schedule
Director: Numa Perrier; Writer: Leigh Davenport, based on Tia Williams’ novel (USA) World Premiere in Spotlight Narrative
Netflix release on June 23
Audience Award Narrative: First Place
There are a few highlights in Perrier’s debut feature rom com. The lead couple (“Jenna” played by Gabrielle Union and “Eric” is Keith Powers) both love old movies, and his Masters in Film from USC is mentioned several times. There are lovely clips and photos of “The Black Garbo”, Nina Mae McKinney, star of the first all-Black musical Hallelujah (1929). But even as they share their favorite erotic moment from a Garbo film, nothing in their relationship comes close to that charge. Most dynamic in the film is Media Mogul “Darcy”, played by a dynamic Gina Torres, the publisher of “Darzine”, as a bitch with a huge Afro hair style and curses in Spanish. Her empire is based on fashion, and the photo shoots that the couple devise around movie and popular culture themes, and enacted by rap star Remy Ma are very clever, such as imitating Aretha Franklin. While the switch to a Black couple consisting of a 20something man and a 40something woman is a nice effort at originality, the whole story just feels forced with a colorful setting to jazz it up, with a range of R&B and hip hop tunes.
Smoking Tigers*
Synopsis and Schedule
Director/Writer: Shelly So Young Yu; Cinematographer: Heyjin Jun; Editor: Mengyao Mia Zhang (USA) World Premiere in U.S. Narrative Competition
*Nora Ephron Award Special Jury Mention: “A film with an intimate power, captivating performances and striking cinematography. This film tenderly explores the complexity of adolescence, the immigrant experience, being a child of divorce and how familial trauma can impact romantic relationships."
Best Screenplay in a U.S. Narrative Feature: So Young Shelly Yo - Jury comment: “This screenplay pulled us into its leading characters, making us care deeply about their pasts and futures. It skillfully juggled multiple storylines and journeys with nuance, emotional honesty, deft sequencing until the final beautiful scene.”
Awarded Best Performance in a U.S. Narrative Feature: Ji-Young Yoo - Jury comment: “For this actor’s skill in holding the depth of their character’s experience with a quiet strength, vulnerability and a willingness to stay soft and open to their scene partners and camera alike.”
The recipient last year of the AT&T-sponsored ”Untold Stories” $1 million production grant that guaranteed inclusion in this year’s Festival and HBO Max first look, Young Yu takes us inside the daily experiences of Korean-American teen-agers who are pressured throughout high school to get into the best colleges by extra tutoring and practice test-taking through hagwons. Bringing together students from different schools and economic backgrounds around Los Angeles, ethnicity is not enough to overpower adolescent peer pressure to rebel and engage in behavior disapproved of by conservative parents. At the center of this story, 16-year-old “Hayoung” (Ji-young Yoo) is under additional emotional and financial stress as her parents separate after her father’s employment problems. As the embarrassed parents try to hide the seriousness of their marital and money issues, “Hayoung” and her younger sister are left confused and unsupported in adjusting to their life changes, let alone adapting to Americanization and English language use within the Korean-speaking, religious community. All this sadly plays out through the realistic situations seen on screen, without didactic hectoring and always consistent with the perspective of a teen girl.
Somewhere Quiet
Synopsis and Schedule
Director/Writer: Olivia West Lloyd; Editor: Sofi Marshall; Composer: Ariel Marx (USA) World Premiere in U.S. Narrative Competition
Not available for me to review.
You’ll Never Find Me
Synopsis and Schedule
Co-Director/Writer: Indianna Bell; (Australia) World Premiere in Midnight
OTHER NARRATIVE FEATURES DIRECTED BY WOMEN AT 2023 TRIBECA FILM FESTIVAL
Perpetrator
Synopsis and Schedule
Director/Writer: Jennifer Reeder; Cinematographer: Sevdije Kastrati (USA) North American Premiere in Midnight
Theatrical release first at Music Box in Chicago, then at IFC Center, NYC, and streams on Shudder September 1.
Silver Haze
Synopsis and Schedule
Director/Writer: Sacha Polak; Co-Composer: Ella van der Woude (Netherlands, UK) North American Premiere in International Narrative Competition
Channeling the spirit of Lynne Ramsey, Polak worked with Vicky Knight and members of her real family, portraying “Franky” and her siblings, to show a close extended family sharing a damaged past. While “Franky”s own time in a hospital makes her particularly sensitive to the patients she serves as a nurse, outside she has great difficulty maintaining serious relationships, frequently escaping into her homegrown marijuana haze. “Florence” (Esme Creed-Miles, who Polak worked with on the mainstream TV series Hanna, for all her psychological problems, gives her a head-long jump into very different romantic, familial, geographic, and leisure experiences that for all their emotional whirlwind, helps her finally overcome the rut she is stuck in. Angela Bruce, as “Alice”, parts the strife as an alternative maternal figure. However, like Ramsey’s work, the authentically thick working class British accents are very difficult for Americans to catch all the dialogue to figure out all the characters’ connections.
SPECIAL SCREENINGS
Flower
Synopsis and Schedule
Director: Lauren Finerman; Co-Editor: Jacqueline Donahue (USA) World Premiere of Short
Following the premiere: Live performances by co-star Babatunji Johnson and NYC hip hop dancers choreographed by the film’s choreographers Rich + Tone Talauega, and Q&A with star Misty Copeland and Finerman
Following Harry
”Sneak Peek” at The Harry Belafonte Voices For Social Justice Award presentation
Director/Editor: Susanne Rostock; Cinematographers: Martina Radwan
DOCUMENTARY FEATURES DIRECTED BY WOMEN AT 2023 TRIBECA FILM FESTIVAL
Apolonia, Apolonia
Synopsis and Schedule
Director/Writer/Cinematographer: Lea Glob (Denmark, France, Poland) North American Premiere in Viewpoints
Grasshopper Film release 2024
A short student film project on profiling one person turned into a 13-year collaboration between two women, the documentarian and the painter, to follow their professional and personal developments. Initially Glob was drawn from Copenhagen to Apolonia Sokol because she was born and raised amidst the motley theater collective/commune her parents created in Paris, and seemed destined to be an artist. But with her family’s past (from Eastern European expulsions through the intimacy of her filmed conception), to relationships (with complexities between her parents and the Ukrainian feminist activist refugee she shelters), to the threatened theater space itself, all get increasingly more complicated.
Apolonia’s gutsy path to become a professionally recognized painter becomes much less about her bohemian charisma and talent than about the realities of being a woman artist within the male-dominated academy, gallery, patron, and visa systems to New York City and Los Angeles, and across Europe. Even as Glob captures how Apolonia’s single-minded determination impacts her personal relationships and life choices (avoiding a #MeToo incident and babies while neglecting her friend who sank dangerously into depression), she also shows how insightful negative comments by a male art critic usefully inspired Apolonia’s direction to focus on female portraits.
Behind the camera, the director not only impacts the film as narrator, but sets up a compare and contrast between the two women’s lives. As they became friends, Glob was motivated to keep going even as she recovered from a near-death coma. This is a revealing portrait of a full experience of lived feminism.
Breaking the News
Synopsis and Schedule
Directors/Cinematographers: Heather Courtney, Princess A. Hairston, and Chelsea Hernandez; Writer: Jamie Boyle; Co-Editor: Kristina Motwani; Co-Composer: Meredith Ezinma Ramsay (USA) World Premiere in Documentary Competition
Showing at 2024 Athena Film Festival
To be broadcast on PBS Independent Lens
Comedy Central’s satirical The Daily Show used to promote the tag line “When news breaks, we fix it.” ”The 19th*” sets out to actually do that as a nonprofit news agency, online and sharing in legacy media. In a technical tour de force, this multi-year verité documentary follows the founding publishers and original staff from start-up fundraising with a changing mission of what needs fixing, on Zoom meetings, in Austin, Los Angeles, Miami, Philadelphia, and grassroots reportage, through tumultuous years for journalism -- the pandemic, #BLM, the 2020 election and January 6 riot against the results, the overturning of abortion rights, and the legal attacks on gay and trans people. Intensive interviews with the experienced reporters are supplemented by their clips from TV, radio, and other news outlets to measure their impact. With no discussion of other nonprofit news efforts, or any outside voice, the three directors are there as the staff expands, and the publisher is pushed from her original inspiration of the Womens March, to adding * in recognition that the 19th Amendment did not extend the franchise to Black women, among voter suppressions, and pulls back the emphasis on females when a trans journalist expresses discomfort. Their rhetorical beat expands to the “underrepresented in politics and policy journalism and in newsroom leadership, which influences what stories are told, how the news is covered and whose voices are elevated.” With only positive agreements shown, such as through the hiring statistics listed by the new “Chief People Officer”, will their extended purview lessen “The 19th*”s effectiveness?
Break the Game
Synopsis and Schedule
Director/Writer/Co-Cinematographer/Co-Editor: Jane M. Wagner; Co-Cinematographer: Narcissa Wright; Co-Editors: Nina Sacharow and Stephanie Andreou; Co-Animator: Emily Wolver (USA) World Premiere in Viewpoints
New Documentary Director Special Jury Mention: Jane M. Wagner - Jury comment: "We gave the special jury mention…for taking the innovative risks in its execution, that its protagonist took discovering her authentic self. Within the sterile confines of an electronic universe, the director revealed the critical core of human connection, kindness and growth, which we can shorthand as the real meaning of love.”
Director Wagner with her editing team show touching sensitivity and insight with speed running gamer Narcissa Wright’s life changes online and, whew, finally off monitor.
Common Ground
Synopsis and Schedule
Co- Director/Co-Writer: Rebecca Tickell; Narrator: Laura Dern (Mexico, USA) World Premiere in Spotlight Documentary
Human / Nature Award – Jury Comment: “Sobering yet hopeful,…exposes the interconnectedness of American farming policy, politics, and illness. Follow the solution-driven plight of Regenerative Farmers as they make a case for soil health across the continent and beyond.”
Every Body
Synopsis and Schedule
Director: Julie Cohen; Cinematographers: Kate Phelan and Leah Anova; Composer: Amanda Yamate (USA) World Premiere in Spotlight Documentary
Focus Features released in theaters on June 30, then On Demand.
The opening montage of elaborate “gender reveal” videos shows society’s over-emphasis on whether a child is male or female. This is not the first film about intersex people, who are born with a variety of both male and female physical/anatomical traits; for example, Argentine director Lucía Puenza’s 2007 XXY was a sensitive fictional story.
A co-production of NBC News Studios, a big chunk is given over to a 1999 Dateline episode that exposed the faked research of the leading medical expert for decades, psychologist John Money of Johns Hopkins University, featuring interviews with the experimental subject whose life he wrecked. Dr. Katharine Dalke at U Penn, who identified as intersex, provides current medical context on him and practice.
Illustrated by many personal photographs of growing-up, the documentary goes beyond an intimate portrait of such difficulties faced by three people until they “came out” as intersex adults and stresses their activism to stop binary surgeries and other medical and social interventions imposed on children. Their visibility comes amidst a storm of legislative restrictions on trans people which assume that babies are born explicitly male or female. Demonstrating that they personify the “I” in LGBTQI, they movingly challenge the snide and misinformed assumptions of right-wing media and rabblerousers to stress the importance of letting a person choose their gender.
Gloria Gaynor: I Will Survive
Synopsis and Schedule
Director: Betsy Schechter (USA) World Premiere in Spotlight+
After the Premiere: a performance by Gloria Gaynor
The Gullspång Miracle
Synopsis and Schedule
Director/Writer: Maria Fredriksson; Cinematographer: Pia Lehto (Sweden, Norway, Denmark) World Premiere in Documentary Competition
Best Editing in a Documentary Feature: Mark Bukdahl and Orvar Anklew - Jury comment: “For cleverly and adeptly taking us on an entertaining and emotionally-layered mystery that zigs, zags and surprises.”
Not available streaming
As if this is a Christopher Guest et al mockumentary, reality in Scandinavia comes close to a satire of all those stories of long-lost relatives discovering each other. Illustrated by an amusement park map of Norway and archival home movies, the branches of a family tree from “the other side of the fjord” cross with religion, war, class, art, and deceiving memories in surprising and emotional ways.
Indigo Girls: It’s Only Life After All
Synopsis and Schedule
Director/Co-Cinematographer/Editor: Alexandria Bombach; Bethann Hardison; (USA) NY Premiere in Spotlight+
After the Premiere: "Behind the Songwriting" conversation with Indigo Girls and music journalist Abigail Covington
Showing October 15 at 2023 New York LGBTQ Film Festival of NewFest
Oscilloscope will release in theaters Spring 2024.
Crowd-funded by fans of the Indigo Girls, this bio-doc is mostly for long-time fans of the duo they acknowledge being known as “the lesbian acoustic” singer/songwriters. Current interviews with Amy Ray (the brunette) and Emily Saliers (the strawberry blonde) are edited between their patient answers to many of the same questions in what they now call homophobic and misogynist TV interviews (and reviews) from the past when they were grappling with coming out, as well as an amazing collection of archival footage they saved over their 40 some years of performing together. (Not included is the TV performance taping I attended in NYC about 1990 where Amy wore a T-shirt for “The Ellen James Society” that I thought was a squirmy reference to the satirically extreme feminists in John Irving’s The World According to Garp, but only indirectly, as it was a band she was involved with.) Known for their activism, they explain how they have evolved and how they now consolidate their progressive agenda primarily through ”Honor The Earth”. Even as they express resentment over fans’ demands to know about their personal lives, they do reveal emotional crises they have resolved, Ray over her gender identity in comparison to younger people’s definitions, Saliers on her alcoholism and parenthood with her wife. The songs seen being performed on many stages are mostly the old hits, with just a couple of newer recordings.
Invisible Beauty
Synopsis and Schedule
Co-Director/Co-Writer/Subject: Bethann Hardison; Co-Cinematographer: Mia Cioffi Henry (USA) World Premiere in Spotlight Documentary
Magnolia Pictures release in NY theaters September 15, in L.A. September 22, expands September 29.
Hardison is of much more human interest as a bio-doc focus and charismatic participant in steering the film than the fashion elite of those Co-Director Frédéric Tcheng previously worked on about Valentino, Vreeland, Dior, and Halston. Her professional arc is almost the subtitle: “Pioneering Model, Agent, Entrepreneur, Activist”.
Seen writing her memoir, Hardison’s emphasis is on fashion as a business and how hard she worked to succeed. (Black women she later mentored seem to have entered as exotic flowers plucked by chance.) Hers is a New York story of a Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn (summers in segregated North Carolina) girl fascinated by Manhattan, who entered through the Garment District in the 1960s (seen in marvelous archival footage and photographs). She credits two Jewish women, ground-breaking designer Ruth (Polsky) Manchester, who founded one of the first female-owned and operated garment-manufacturing companies in NY, with her sister Sylvia Courtney -- “They were mothers to me” -- for guiding her to “sell the line” in the showroom, at a time when “No one who looked like me” was there. No one who looked like her was modeling either – dark-skinned, close-cropped hair (now un-dyed gray to white) and thin – when she crossed sales paths with Willi Smith, one of the most successful African-American fashion designers in the U.S. He suggested she model, and sent her to his friend, Jewish fashion photographer Bruce Weber.
She is frank about her integrationist motivations since childhood, even as she rode the “Black Is Beautiful” wave. Dancing down the runway in the U.S. and Europe, she always thought of herself as a samurai, taking on Toshirô Mifune’s defiant stance and walk in challenging expectations. She is also frank about trying to balance that 1970’s life with her responsibilities as a single mother, and the documentary includes frequent commentary by her actor son Kadeem. When she started her own modeling agency in 1984, she also took the integrationist approach with color and gender to achieve more “firsts”.
Stressing the importance of representation for all media “in a visual business”, documentation of her activism is intense. The Black Girls Coalition she co-founded in 1988 was originally a philanthropic outlet for African-American women in the business. But it became an organizing tool when the Coalition expanded in 1991 into identifying whose images were being put forth and how by the advertising industry in magazines. Just when she thought she could retire to Mexico and an upstate country home as a success, the fashion industry shifted looks and, in an explicit way that few other businesses would voice in the 2000s, restricted the presence of Black women on runways and in fashion outlets. She launched The Diversity Coalition, drawing in the younger generation of models, casting agents, designers, and more across the industry. (A fraught meeting she chaired was caught on film.) Under her lead, they worked out how to challenge fashion internationally with first-person collection of data and facts, then boldly named designers lacking diversity. (Just last week, I was surprised to see national clothing stores in a Long Island mall adjacent to a large African-American community not include Black mannequins or photos of Black models in their window displays.) Using the larger megaphone around #BlackLivesMatter to call out continued racism in fashion, she mentors models and designers who want to take their demands further into the business structure, bringing full circle her involvement, and the audience’s understanding of what goes on behind the scenes in the beauty business. (She is now an inclusion advisor to Gucci.) Through it all, she still looks beautiful being photographed, and walks New York with style, panache, and grace. She just seems a bit more tired.
John Early: Now More Than Ever
Synopsis and Schedule
Directors Emily Allan and Leah Hennessey (USA) World Premiere in Spotlight Narrative;
HBO comedy special releases June 17.
In Early’s first stand-up show, this reinforced just about all the clichés of the genre, including filmed in hip venue Roulette Intermedium in Brooklyn. (Presumably those were the two actual directors he pushes aside at one point to take over their camera.) Besides that few of his bits directed to gay Gen Z are particularly amusing (I’m hoping those weren’t his real parents in the balcony to which he directed nasty profanity), backstage and rehearsal scenes are edited in throughout for no discernible reason. The jokes stop for him to pleasantly perform falsetto covers of an odd variety of pop and rock songs, known from Donna Summer, Missy Elliot, Britney Spears and Neil Young, with full band The Lemon Squares and back-up singers.
Kim’s Video
Synopsis and Schedule
Co-Director/Co-Writer/Co-Editor: Ashley Sabin (USA, UK) NY Premiere in Viewpoints
Drafthouse Films release in NYC and L.A. April 5, 2024, expanding nation-wide April 12
Let the Canary Sing
Synopsis and Schedule
Director: Alison Ellwood; Cinematographer: Michelle McCabe; Editor: Juli Vizza; Composer: Wendy Blackstone (USA, UK) World Premiere in Gala
After the Premiere: Performance by Cyndi Lauper at the Beacon Theatre
Director Ellwood and Editor Vizza bring together a dazzling array of Cyndi Lauper’s, family and friends’ interviews with rare photos and footage from her goal-driven life and L-O-N-G singing career.
The Lionheart
Synopsis and Schedule
Director: Laura Brownson (USA) World Premiere in Documentary Competition
HBO Sports Documentary release March 12, 2024
The multi-layered story is more than a conventional sports and racing documentary. Past and present sometimes confusingly intersect through Susie Wheldon. She recalls becoming the wife of Indianapolis 500 two-time champion Dan Wheldon, then mother of their sons Sebastian and Oliver, then his widow.
The very blond Florida family is filmed as the boys insist on embarking on their own racing careers before their adolescence, as the mother gives up her house and time to go on the circuit with them. (She does try to enforce some distance schooling.) While there are brief nods to the safety issues for children going 100 mph (they look like they have less protective gear than skateboarders), her father-in-law recalls his own childhood in England racing karts. Dan followed him and went beyond his career, using the titular nickname.
Amidst much archival and home movie footage, Brownson captured the emotional 10th anniversary of Dan’s death in a horrific multi-car crash at the Las Vegas Speedway in 2011 -- and then the sons racing there too. Dan’s close friends and competitors, who occasionally try to provide a father figure for the boys, are charismatic interviewees, but no one outside of the sport is interviewed for a reality check.
There is little explanation of the structure of the racing world in which the boys participate. So even after watching the film I have little understanding of the context for this update on now 15-year-old Sebastian’s career “as he moved from karts to formula cars”: “2023 was a transformational year as his first season of junior open-wheel racing delivered six victories, 13 podiums, and the drivers’ title in the Skip Barber Formula Racing Series.”
Maestra
Synopsis and Schedule
Director/Co-Writer: Maggie Contreras; Co-Editors: Elisa Bonora and Finola Couling (USA) World Premiere in Documentary Competition
Audience Award Documentary: Second Place
Of Night and Light: The Story of Iboga and Ibogaine
Synopsis and Schedule
Director: Lucy Walker (USA) World Premiere in Spotlight Documentary
Streaming not available
Poisoned: The Dirty Truth About Your Food
Synopsis and Schedule
Director: Stephanie Soechtig (USA) World Premiere in Spotlight Documentary
Based on Poisoned: The True Story of the Deadly E. Coli Outbreak That Changed the Way Americans Eat by Jeff Benedict (2011)
Netflix releases on August 2.
To make its powerful point, this advocacy documentary is well-edited with a variety of constantly changing images and illustrative footage, and a broad choice of “talking heads” experts, including the tearful families of victims of preventable food poisoning; attorney Bill Marler who represents them in litigation in a strategy of forcing companies to improve their safety procedures, academic and public health scientists; former and current federal government regulators; investigative journalists; the renowned, award-winning public health nutritionist Marion Nestle, and those few corporate representatives willing to appear before the cameras, particularly an executive of Perdue Chicken.
My great-uncle Leo Steckel was one of the first veterinary inspectors for the FDA in the Chicago Stockyards in 1908, consequently turned vegetarian, and worked tirelessly to advise dairy farms on cleanliness and safe feed storage, so he would be horrified to find out that the greatest risk is now in commercially produced romaine lettuce. (I buy my produce instead directly at my local farmers’ market.)
Though heavy on montages of breathless local news clips of outbreaks around the country of E. coli and salmonella outbreaks, that onslaught works to mock business and government representatives who keep repeating that the U.S. has the safest food supply. In addition to footage that follows how contamination can occur, the film is particularly effective when it follows up on the claim with large and then larger laboratory-tested sampling. Not just fearmongering, Congresswoman Rosa DeLauro urges the audience to lobby her colleagues to pass regulatory legislation and Marler post-premiere blogged his wish list of food safety priorities.
Q
Synopsis and Schedule
Director/Writer/Cinematographer: Jude Chehab (Lebanon, USA) World Premiere in Documentary Competition
Albert Maysles Award for Best New Documentary Director to Jude Chehab - Jury comment: “At the end of the day the Jury chose to recognize the rising luminance of a young director who epitomizes the essence of the New Director award. ‘She did it all.’ She wrote, produced, directed and shot this oblique and complicated family story in the closed world of a mysterious Syrian spiritual order. Her photography is gorgeous, and she speaks with the indomitable drive of a voice demanding to be heard. We are united in our curiosity to follow her development as an artist and observe what she does next.”
Showing at 2024 Athena Film Festival
Filmmaker Chehab’s intimate interviews with her enscarfed mother Hiba reveals how female religious Muslim Qubaysiat “Group” in Lebanon led by unseen charismatic Anisa dominated her life and relationships.
A Revolution On Canvas
Synopsis and Schedule
Co-Director: Sara Nodjoumi; Co-Editor: Gretchen Hildebran; Composer: Sussan Deyhim (USA) World Premiere in Spotlight Documentary
Theatrical release December 1 in NYC, December 8 in Los Angeles and San Francisco
Premieres on HBO Max March 2024.
Directors Sara Nodjoumi and her husband Till Schauder tell the complex biography of her Iranian-born father Nikzad (Nicky) Nodjoumi through a mystery: what happened to over 100 paintings of his that were to be exhibited at the Tehran Museum of Contemporary Art in 1979? A tortured protestor against the Shah, he had the opportunity to exhibit his explicitly political art works in the brief interregnum between the fall of the Shah and the implementation of the Islamic Republic, which was not the future he had preferred, even as a Muslim. He not only lost the pieces that raised the ire of their religious newspaper, but just barely escaped with his life as the mullahs cemented power by declaring war on Iraq, with lots of archival TV news for context.
In between, he shared politics and love with fellow art student Jewish-Iranian Nahid Haghighat. He followed her from Tehran to graduate art school in the NYC of the late 1960’s/early ‘70s, married over her parents’ objections, and started a family, even as he decries that lifestyle as bourgeois. Interviews (her parents are now in their 80s), family photographs, and portraits well document the stressed lives of exiled artists driven to express their feelings about the rapid changes in their homeland while struggling to get established in an unsympathetic country. While the film is filled with montages of the vivid paintings he made and is still producing daily, only at the end do the directors push Nicky to talk about his parents and siblings.
The documentary stresses that Nahid, through her etchings and prints, was one of the first Iranian artists to visually focus on the impact of the authoritarian theocracy on women, prefiguring the rebellion against enscarfed bodies that decades later became a symbol for national protests. But she was not, she frankly notes, as obsessed as her husband, and was realistic about the need to pay the rent and raise their daughter. She and Sara incisively poke at how this revolutionary is yet another upholder of the patriarchy. Nahid supported them through graphic designs for a relative’s textile business. Iranian musician Sussan Deyhim’s vocalizations and resonant score are a haunting female presence.
Threaded throughout, Sara pursues every connection and (redacted) leads she can find to penetrate the censorious controls in today’s Iran to find her father’s unique oeuvre. While old contacts remember the museum’s situation differently than he does, they get thisclose, though the denouement is a bit confusing. (Clarifications were revealed in post-screening Q&As).
Richland
Synopsis and Schedule
Director/Editor: Irene Lusztig; Poems Written by: Kathleen Flenniken; Cinematographer: Helki Frantzen (USA) World Premiere in Documentary Competition
Not available streaming
At the 75th anniversary marking The Manhattan Project, the nostalgic memories of Baby Boomers take on freighted ironies when their titular hometown is adjacent to the Hanford Nuclear Site in south central Washington, where the plutonium was developed that fueled the end of World War II and the start of the Cold War. The high school teams are still “The Bombers”, their symbol is a mushroom cloud, and the town has a “Leslie Groves Park”. Archival finds contrast with extensive interviews telling of environmental and physical degradation intruding on “make America great again” idylls, particularly contrasting with the impacts on Native Americans’ lives and a Japanese artist from Hiroshima. Lusztig’s approach is fair, educational, and seems thorough.
The Space Race
Synopsis and Schedule
Co-Director/Editor: Lisa Cortés; Co-Composer Anna Drubich (USA) World Premiere in Spotlight Documentary
National Geographic Documentary Films release on National Geographic Channel/Disney+ February 12, 2024
This unusually informative made-for-TV documentary (premiering during Black History Month) goes way beyond the usual footage of the history of NASA and friendly media from the years of the white male guys with “the right stuff”, with funky and jazzy music. Put into the context of how Black history in general has been forgotten, this brings out the story of Black astronauts, through interviewees I hadn’t heard of or from before: Ed Dwight (the pioneer denied promotion who is surprised and grateful to be remembered, even as he now specializes in sculpting African-American memorials), Guion Bluford (the first African-American to pilot the shuttle who seems like the basis for a Star Wars character), Charles Bolden (before becoming NASA administrator under Obama was mentored by Ron McNair known for perishing in the Challenger disaster), Victor Glover (who for the first time convened the Black astronaut alumni corps for a tele-conference when he was on the space station during the George Floyd crisis), and Leland Melvin (who headed NASA education after flying).
But beyond their impressive achievements and accomplishments, the interviews, illustrated by an astonishing array of newspaper clips, training footage, and photographs, reveal the struggles and issues behind their success, and call out the PR lies that were created around them. The documentary also extends to the USSR’s successful propaganda efforts to include people of color in their space program considerably before NASA, including the Cuban cosmonaut Arnaldo Tamayo Méndez, who is also interviewed. Small anecdotes are telling and expose as much about NASA and American society as the personalities of each man. Inspired by Nichelle Nichols’ recruitment efforts using her visibility from the fiction of Star Trek: TOS, they all stress the important reality of representation, like theirs, in public institutions.
Stylebender
Synopsis and Schedule
Director/Co-Writer: Zoe McIntosh; (New Zealand) World Premiere in Documentary Competition
Transition
Synopsis and Schedule
Co-Director: Monica Villamizar; Co-Editor: Maria Alejandra Briganti (USA) World Premiere in Documentary Competition
While Afghanistan was falling again to the Taliban in August 2021, Australian filmmaker Jordan Bryon had a unique reason to be afraid. Would his in-process physical transition from female to male be discovered by Taliban fighters while embedded with them? Beyond a “Yentl”, Bryon fears his transition could be perceived as a deception worthy of the death penalty. Bryon revels in the Talibs’ hyper-masculinized camaraderie, providing borderline propaganda images of them coddling toddlers along with rifles and scrambling uphill with little boys to watch a soccer game. When The New York Times posts Bryon’s footage, it is contextualized with what is happening to their invisible females, though Bryon does wonder that these Talibs who have fought together for over a decade don’t know each other’s wives’ names. Perhaps Bryon is hinting at their lack of real Islamic education when they have difficulty answering questions about Islamic marriage requirements. In this confusingly edited presentation, chronology, geography, and important impressions and other information are not revealed until the last few minutes, including brief images of Bryon in Kabul in 2016 presenting as female while shopping for a burqa. Bryon’s close Iranian friend, who even helps find a doctor in Tehran to perform chest surgery, is only clearly identified at the end as noted photojournalist Kiana Hayeri.
Uncharted
Synopsis and Schedule
Director: Beth Aala; Cinematographer: Ayana Baraka; Editor: Miki Watanabe Milmore (USA) World Premiere in Spotlight+
After the Movie: Performance from “She Is The Music” artists, curated by Alicia Keys
Showing at 2024 Athena Film Festival
Director Aala, Cinematographer Baraka and Editor Watanabe Milmore follow three participants in the SHE IS THE MUSIC program to develop songs together with success defined as “placement” – Spoiler Alert: they are all so Proud of the rap “Stank Ass Walk” as feminist.
We Dare To Dream
Synopsis and Schedule
Director: Waad Al-Kateab (UK) World Premiere in Spotlight Documentary
Theatrical release October 20
Al-Kateab compellingly shows how five world athletes overcame incredible odds and stress, family separations, persecution, more to make it to Tokyo with the Refugee Olympic Team, through Violet Films
Your Fat Friend
Synopsis and Schedule
Director/Writer/Co-Cinematographer: Jeanie Finlay; Co-Cinematographers: Aubrey Gordon and Lindsay Trapnell; Editor: Alice Powell; Composer: Tara Creme (UK, USA) World Premiere in Spotlight Documentary
Showing at 2024 Athena Film Festival
This personal years-long portrait of Portland, OR-based activist Aubrey Gordon is very effective in demonstrating how she went from lobbying publicly for LGBTQ people to anonymously blogging her own anxiety and body issues in the titular column, to successful publishing, with book tours, and podcasting about the damaging, negative treatment of fat people. During the pandemic shut-down she recorded her own video commentaries, while otherwise Finlay shows her in vigorous activities like hiking and swimming. Family interviews and a lot of home movies provide some psychological context, as well as the horrible trolls her advocacy attracts. Her caustic messaging about all the discrimination fat people face is entertainingly distinctive; however, the research she claims to have done to counter health claims about such as propensity to high blood pressure, diabetes, etc. is not presented on-screen.
SHORTS
Narrative Shorts
Bellybutton
Synopsis and Schedule
Director/Writer: Hilary Eden (USA) New York Premiere
Blackwool
Synopsis and Schedule
Director/Writer: Eubha Akilada; Composer: Taneka Miles (Scotland) World Premiere
Blond Night (Nuit blonde)
Synopsis and Schedule
Director/Writer: Gabrielle Demers; Cinematographer: Chloé Ellegé (Quebec, Canada) U.S. Premiere in “Inner Peace” program
Narrative Short Special Jury Mention: Jury comment: - “Takes you on a most unexpected journey. It challenges our understanding of sexuality as told through the unique lens of disability. The protagonist gives a performance that’s steeped in authenticity and leaves an indelible mark long after the credits roll.”
Blood
Synopsis and Schedule
Director/Writer: Vathana Suganya Suppiah; Cinematographer: Ailsa Aikoa; Editor: Elise Butt (Australia) World Premiere
Daddy Issues
Synopsis and Schedule
Co-Director: Stephanie Chloé Hepner; Editor: Katie Rose Cornblath (USA) World Premiere
Dead Cat (Chat Mort)
Synopsis and Schedule
Co-Director/Co-Writer: Annie-Claude Caron; Editor: Amélie Labrèche (Canada) World Premiere in Competition
Best Narrative Short: Jury comment- “Out of the impressive list of narrative shorts, this one stood out as a complete work that surprised, entertained, and resonated on a universal level. This film tells the story of parents trying to shield their daughter from the reality of death, but it does so with equal amounts of grounded humor and depth.”
Ecstasy
Synopsis and Schedule
Director/Writer/Cinematographer: Carolina Costa; Editor: Monica Salazar (Mexico, USA) World Premiere (followed by screening in “Future of Film is Female, Part 4” at MoMA)
Being more familiar with the possible Hedy LaMarr film-starrer reference than inspiration by the mystical writings of St. Teresa of Ávila, the images of two Mexican women in monastic garb and five other women in white robes walking around a stone, candle-lit altar and halls into a formal garden (location not identified in the credits) are more striking than the orgiastic dream writhings.
Everybody Dies...Sometimes
Synopsis and Schedule
Director/Writer: Charlotte Hamblin; Editor: Caitlin Spiller; Composer: Carla Patullo (UK) International Premiere
Fairytales
Synopsis and Schedule
Director/Co-Writer: Daniela Soria Gutiérrez; Co-Writer/Composer: Mar Flores (Mexico) World Premiere
Student Visionary Award: Jury comment - “This director brought a naturalistic style to a child’s imagination with uncanny and nuanced hints of revulsion woven into a greater story of friendship.”
Feliz Navidad
Synopsis and Schedule
Director/Writer: Greta Scarano (Italy) International Premiere
Ferns (Helechos)
Synopsis and Schedule
Director/Writer: Paz Ramírez; Editor: Adela Altamirano (Chile) World Premiere
Fish Out Of Water
Synopsis and Schedule
Director/Co-Writer: Francesca Scorsese; Co-Writers: Megan LuLu Taylor and Savannah Braswell; Cinematographer: Idil Eryurekli (USA) World Premiere in “Misdirection” section
Scorsese’s sensitive female gaze is on Jade Pettyjohn’s struggling single mom “Alexis” facing emotional compromises with her family’s past and present condition.
Hafekasi
Synopsis and Schedule
Director/Co-Writer: Annelise Hickey; Editor: Grace Eyre (Australia) World Premiere
Narrative Short Special Jury Mention: Jury comment - “The film threads the needle through the nuanced and complex relationship between a mother and daughter but pulls a specific focus on the divide that occurs between them when differing cultures are ignored.”
Heartbeat
Synopsis and Schedule
Director/Co-Writer: Michèle Flury; Co-Writer: Martha Benedict; Editor: Vicky Ramsay (Switzerland) North American Premiere
In Passing
Synopsis and Schedule
Director/Writer/Editor: Hillia Aho; Cinematographer: Kaitlyn Busbee; Composer: Riley Burke (USA) World Premiere
The K-Town Killer
Synopsis and Schedule
Co-Director/Co-Writer: Healin Kweon (USA) World Premiere
Let Liv
Synopsis and Schedule
Director: Erica Rose; Writer/Star: Olivia Levine; Cinematographer: Alexa Carroll; Editor: Chelsea Taylor (USA) World Premiere
In just 15 minutes Rose and Levine create intense relationships of partners/mother/daughter in AA. I look forward to their development into a feature!
Proof of Concept
Synopsis and Schedule
Co-Director/Co-Writer/Star: Ellie Sachs; Editor: Kate Pedatella; Composer: Caroline Ho (USA) World Premiere
The six minutes work on several levels – as an earnest explanation of the financing and strategic planning needed to make a short film, an amusing satire of what it takes to make a short film, an atmospheric tour of the Upper West Side of Manhattan’s commercial landmarks (including Barney Greengrass Restaurant), and a showcase for the dialogue talents of Ellie Sachs both in front of and behind the camera, matching screen presence with co-stars Richard Kind and Will Janowitz.
Restless Is the Night
Synopsis and Schedule
Directors/Writers/Cinematographers/Editors: Yuehan Tan and Xiaoxue Meng (USA) New York Premiere
Sealed Off
Synopsis and Schedule
Director/Writer/Co-Cinematographer/Editor: Tianyu Jiang (China, Macau, USA) World Premiere
The Sperm Bank
Synopsis and Schedule
Director: Margaux Susi (USA) World Premiere
Spinning
Synopsis and Schedule
Co-Director: Isabel Vaca; Writer: Mara Vaca (Mexico) World Premiere
Labelled “based on a true events”, in an apt setting of an expensive high rise modern apartment building, upper floor resident “Regina” (Mara Andress) tries to manipulate the maid in the ground-floor residence “Juli” (Alejandra Herrera) into letting her cover up a serious accident. The maid is no one’s fool and is a sharp negotiator, for what ends up as well-cast female solidarity.
Starling
Synopsis and Schedule
Director/Writer: Mitra Shahidi; Editor: Ayse Arkali (USA) World Premiere
Best Animated Short: Jury comment - “On its surface, mourning the death of a child is a challenging subject matter, but this film explores it with charm, mischievousness, and a dash of hope. The animation is immersive and stylized in the best ways. To select this as the winner was unanimous.”
Upsidedown
Synopsis and Schedule
Director/Writer: Razan Ghalayini; Editor: Daphne Gomez-Mena (USA) World Premiere
Documentary Shorts
Ayenda
Synopsis and Schedule
Director: Marie Margolius; Editors: Mitra Bonshahi and Kristina Motwani (USA) World Premiere
Black Girls Play: The Story of Hand Games
Synopsis and Schedule
Co-Director: Michele Stephenson (USA) World Premiere
Best Documentary Short: Jury comment - “A story that has yet to be told about a vital driving force in music, culture, and society spanning multiple generations.”
Goodbye, Morganza
Synopsis and Schedule
Director: Devon Blackwell; Co-Composer: Meredith Ezinma Ramsay (USA) World Premiere
Documentary Short Special Jury Mention: Jury Comment - “This film is a beautiful, humanity filled portrait of a family that tells the larger American story of race, economic inequity, and home.”
Miss Brown
Synopsis and Schedule
Director/Writer: Christina Burchard (USA) World Premiere
The Night Doctrine
Synopsis and Schedule
Co-Director: Almudena Toral (Afghanistan, USA) World Premiere
Over the Wall
Synopsis and Schedule
Director/Writer: Krystal Tingle; Editors: Stefani Saintonge and Vashni Korin; Co-Composer: Qur'an Shaheed (USA) World Premiere
The Queen Collective Program
Synopsis and Schedule
Black Birth - Director: Haimy Assefa; Co-Cinematographers: Nora Ballard and Chris Wairegi; Editor: Yaara Sumeruk
As beautiful as it is serious look at the important role of Black Midwives in maternal and infant health, despite anti-regulation.
Change The Name - Director/Co-Cinematographer: Cai Thomas; Editor: Paloma Martinez
Game Changer - Director: Tina Charles;
A Song of Grace - Director: Arielle Knight
Savi the Cat
Synopsis and Schedule
Co-Director/Writer: Netsanet Tjirongo; Illustrator and Animator: Freyja Whitney (USA) New York Premiere
What Next?
Synopsis and Schedule
Director/Co-Writer: Cécile Rogue; Cinematographer: Virginie Pichot; Editor: Sandrine Cheyrol (France) World Premiere
EPISODICS: TRIBECA TV
Diarra From Detroit
Synopsis and Schedule
Creator: Diarra Kilpatrick; Producer: Erynn Sampson (USA) World Premiere
BET+ 2023
The Horror of Dolores Roach
Synopsis and Schedule
Co-Showrunner/Co-Writer Episodes 3, 6 & 7: Dara Resnik; Co-Executive Producer/Director, Episode 1: Roxann Dawson; Directors: Episodes 3 & 4 - America Young; Episodes 5 & 6 - Hiromi Kamata; Co-Writers: Episode 2 - Daphne Rubin-Vega; Episode 5 - Mariah Wilson; Episode 6 - Michelle Badillo, Supervising Producer;
Based on Aaron Mark’s 2013 monologue play "Empanada Loca", starring Daphne Rubin-Vega, and their Spotify Studios 2-season podcast series
(USA) World Premiere; Prime Video premieres July 7.
While there is just enough gore to appeal to producer Blumhouse’s horror loyalists (unusually, the Head of the Prosthetics Department is a female, Brandi Boulet), through more violent deaths than the cast members could accurately recall, the style, humor and humanity are very appealing beyond those genres, as well as, incongruously, to theater fans. Inspired by the 19th century much-interpreted, besides by Sondheim, story of “Sweeney Todd – The Demon Barber of Fleet Street”, Sterling Holloway’s 1956 recording of a music hall song about the killer concludes the first couple of episodes. Uniquely, this adaptation changes into a Latina serial killer in a gentrifying Washington Heights, in 2019 Upper Manhattan (where Marks lived), with a primarily LatinX cast, other series I like touch on similarities, Blindspotting and Vida, that also premiered at Tribeca TV, and Mayans M.C.. Through the first season’s eight episodes, Justina Machado as “Dolores Roach”, through her intense actions and contradictory voice-over thoughts, whipsaws between serious post-unfair-incarceration aspirations, all-consuming very physical vengeance and anger, exaggerated comic coincidences, and lustful romance with stoned “cannibal” empanada-baker “Luis Batista” (sympathetically embodied by Alejandro Hernandez), while she retains disgust at what they are both doing with bodies. She gets to play off entertaining guest stars: Judy Reyes seen against her usual types as a suspicious drug dealer; podcaster Marc Maron as sleazy landlord “Gideon Pearlman”; and a charming Cyndi Lauper (of Tribeca’s Let The Canary Sing) playing a Broadway usher who moonlights as an underworld P.I. (Her song about “Dolores” is heard over the finale credits). Altogether, the mix of satire and realism enjoys poking fun at how the media capitalizes on “true crime”.
The Walking Dead: Dead City
Synopsis and Schedule
Directors, 2 episodes each: Loren Yaconelli and Gandja Monteiro; Cinematographer, 2 episodes: Vanessa Joy Smith; Editor, 1 episode: Elizabeth Merrick; Writer, 1 episode: Brenna Kouf (USA) World Premiere
AMC Network premiere June 18 through July 23
To contextualize this six-episode (so far) series, I have watched all the episodes of The Walking Dead, and its off-shoots. The two stars were among the most charismatic fan favorites of the original Southern-set series: Lauren Cohan’s “Maggie” went from Farmer’s Daughter to bad-ass fighter and child-protector, especially after evil “Negan”, played by Jeffrey Dean Morgan, brutally killed her husband/father of her now-kidnapped son. Here, he is being followed by a sheriff for other of his past crimes, but he continues to seek redemption by helping retrieve her son from an even worse baddie of his past acquaintance, known as “The Croat” (played by never-the-same-twice Zeljko Ivanek), who dominates what NYC has turned into since the military attacked at the start of the zombie apocalypse (filmed mostly in NJ). These complicated characters are key, because post-apocalypse NYC has been done a lot, with bigger budgets than TV, particularly John Carpenter’s classic Escape From New York (1981). So falling or being pushed off skyscrapers or ziplines is scary, but not as original as other deaths in this watch-through-my-fingers series. What usually makes these extended adaptations of/inspired by the graphic novels of Robert Kirkman continually watchable are the many permutations of authoritarian governments that are imagined to follow catastrophes. Unfortunately, NYC’s seems to just be led by a sociopathic madman, which is more villainous than creative. Of my concern, The Walking Dead Universe has elevated many women into leadership on the creative team, but this has fewer than the originals or other spin-offs. Maybe they’ve been stretched thin with simultaneously developing two other associated series.
EPISODICS: N.O.W. (New Online Work)/ ONLINE SHOWCASE 2023
Do It To Me If You Want
Synopsis and Schedule
Creator/Writer/Co-Director: Elise Kibler; Editor: Kristan Sprague (USA) World Premiere in “Indie - Narrative”
I Hate People, People Hate Me
Synopsis and Schedule
Creator/Writer: Bobbi Summers; Co-Editor: Maureen Grant (Canada) World Premiere in “Indie - Narrative”
Taking Root: Southeast Asian Stories of Resettlement in Philadelphia
Synopsis and Schedule
Director/Co-Creator: Oanh-Nhi; Co-Creator: Lan Dinh; Cinematographer: Eurica Yu; Co-Editor: Maria Cantu (USA) World Premiere in “Indie - Documentaries”
Music Videos
Anoana
Synopsis and Schedule
Director/Writer: Line Klungseth Johansen (Norway) World Premiere
To The Desert
Synopsis and Schedule
Director/Writer/Composer/Star: Dana Ivgy; Animator: Hila Mutayn (Israel) New York Premiere
IMMERSIVE: VIRTUAL REALITY CREATED BY WOMEN
The Pirate Queen: A Forgotten
Legend
Synopsis and Schedule
Director: Eloise Singer; Writer: Maja Bodenstein (UK) World Premiere in Main Competition
Main Competition - Storyscapes Award: Jury comment - “For its outstanding technical execution, immersive user experience, and unique and untold story of a nearly forgotten woman in history.”
WOMEN CREW-ED: FILMS BY WOMEN WRITERS, CINEMATOGRAPHERS, EDITORS AND COMPOSERS AT 2023 TRIBECA FILM FESTIVAL
SPECIAL SCREENING
Elemental
Synopsis and Schedule
Co-Writers: Kat Likkel and Brenda Hsueh (USA) NY Premiere as Centerpiece
Walt Disney Studio/Pixar releases June 16, debuts on all major digital platforms on August 15, and in 4K Ultra HD, Blu-ray and DVD on September 26; begins streaming on Disney+ September 13.
Water, Fire, Earth, and Air are like ethnic inhabitants of distinctive neighborhoods in this imaginatively designed Element City. The Periodic Table-like skyline is then combined with an immigrant story reminiscent of the American Tail animated films of the ‘80s/’90s. Director Peter Sohn was inspired by his own background with self-sacrificing Korean immigrant parents, into a fusion with other Asian-related references (the Fire shopkeeper father “Bernie” is voiced by accented Filipino-born Ronnie Del Carmen; mother “Cinder” is voiced by accented Iranian Shila Ommi; Thomas Newman’s full orchestral and choral score vaguely resonates of India). The story line, however, gets really heavy-handed, first about loyal daughter “Ember Lumen” (voiced by Leah Lewis) controlling her fire-y emotions, like the characters in Inside Out (2015), then about accepting different folks outside your comfort zone, as she befriends, then is romanced by building inspector “Wade Ripple” (voiced by Mamoudou Athie). On the plus, neither of their mothers is Disney-dead, and the feisty young woman’s goal is not happy ever after marriage, but to explore her sand-forged-into-glass design talent, as encouraged by his weepy mother “Brook” (voiced by Catherine O’Hara, the biggest name in the cast).
The Press Notes spotlighted several other key females in the production: two women directing animators about developing “Ember”, Allison Rutland and Gwendelyn Enderoğlu; character & look development art director Maria Yi about developing “Wade”, Earth, and Fire characters; crowds animation supervisor Lindsay Andrus on her team imagining how Air and Fire elements would congregate; color and shading art director Jennifer Chang about developing color palettes for Firetown in contrast to the Water District; shading lead Tracy Church on developing Firetown; and graphics art director Laura Meyer was responsible for the lettering, including the punny signs.
NARRATIVE FEATURES
Afire (Roter Himmel)
Synopsis and Schedule
Editor: Bettina Böhler (Germany) NY Premiere in Spotlight Narrative
Sideshow/Janus releases in theaters July 14.
My review of Afire (Roter Himmel)
Asog
Synopsis and Schedule
Cinematographer: Anna MacDonald (Canada, Philippines) World Premiere in Viewpoints
Following the Premiere, a protest was held against the wrongful arrest, while the film was in the midst of production, of ASOG producer Marissa Cabaljao, the spokesperson for the People Surge, the Philippines largest alliance of climate disaster survivors. Filipino-Canadian director Seán Devlin and producer Amanda Ernst taped their mouths shut with red tape and held up signs calling on the new Filipino government under Marcos Jr to drop the false charges against Cabaljao, who has had to go into hiding away from her family.
Bucky F*cking Dent
Synopsis and Schedule
Editor: Jamie Nelsen (USA) World Premiere in Spotlight Narrative
Hey Viktor!
Synopsis and Schedule
Editor: Sarah Taylor (Canada) World Premiere in Viewpoints
Director/Writer/Star Cody Lightning’s Xtreme satire of post-Smoke Signals Native North American film representation with cast winking at the jokes and profanities.
Playland
Synopsis and Schedule
Cinematographer: Jo Jo Lam (USA) North American Premiere in Viewpoints
Archival audio recalls Boston’s Combat Zone denizens over decades as Lam’s cinematography creates noir dreamscape of neon lights, ghostly gay bars, dances, assignations, with drag MC Lady.
Richelieu (Temporaries)
Synopsis and Schedule
Editor: Amélie Labrèche (Canada, France) World Premiere in International Narrative Competition
Streaming in Focus on France Cinema 2024
A Strange Path (Estranho Caminho)
Synopsis and Schedule
Co-Composer: Fafa Nascimento (Brazil) World Premiere in International Narrative Competition
Awarded Best International Narrative Feature to Director Guto Parente – Jury comment: “[O]ne film rose to the top with its surprising warmth and deeply compelling storytelling.”
Awarded Best Screenplay in an International Narrative Feature to Writer Guto Parente
Jury comment: “A great screenplay is a combination of structure and poetry. Our award is going to a screenplay that gave us not only the grief of reconciliation but a joyful expression of absurdity.”
Awarded Best Cinematography in an International Narrative Feature: Linga Acácio - Jury comment: “The Winner in this category blew us away with the strength of their visual force. Cinematography that illuminates the narrative with not only the natural beauty of the location, but the psychological landscape of the lead.”
Awarded Best Performance in an International Narrative Feature: Carlos Francisco - Jury comment: “In a slate full of compelling performances, one radiated a magnetic realism. In a brief but essential turn, this actor balanced the nuances of humanity and demanded to be watched. We happily honor [him].”
Despite the An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge-like ending and the Hong Sang-soo-like protagonist of a young director (played by Lucas Limerira) screening at a film festival, A Strange Path well captures the eerie-ness of urban life during the pandemic. While filmed in Portaleza, Brazil, between June and July 2021, isolation all over the world led to longing for family connection, through time, space, and the internet. Without sentimental nostalgia, this imagines an unpredictable reunion based in reality and experience with an irascible father (Carlos Francisco) not usually seen in movies. The score sounded more European electronica than Brazilian, perhaps to symbolize the protagonist’s connections to Portugal.
DOCUMENTARY FEATURES
All Up In The Biz
Synopsis and Schedule
Co-Editor: Alma Herrera-Pazmino (USA) World Premiere in Spotlight Documentary
Showtime/Paramount+ release on August 3.
The quick, but smooth editing helps tie together director Sacha Jenkins’ informative, time-shifting biography of humorous rapper/beatboxer/DJ “Biz Markie”. It uses animation, puppet re-enactment, archival audio, footage, and photographs, and interviews with his wife Tara Hall, old friends, and hip hop stars who came up with him in the 1990’s in “The Juice Crew”, circling back to the last year of his life in a COVID-stressed hospital trying to recover from diabetic strokes. Particularly revealing is the emphasis on his key role in the emerging Long Island hip hop scene of Brentwood, NY, where he rose from foster care. Maps, friends, and producers situate how he made a learning and promotional circuit of different Suffolk County high schools with large numbers of African-American students, until he felt confident to take on New York City, leading to his pop breakthrough “Just A Friend” in 1989. Hall also illustrates the phases of his interests and career with items from his enormous pop culture collection, some items contextualized by Pete Nice, Curator at the Universal Hip-Hop Museum, and jewelry made to design by “Benny The Jeweler” (the inspiration for Adam Sandler’s character in Uncut Gems). Watch through the credits for performance of a tribute number, and then a heartfelt message from his widow.
Anthem
Synopsis and Schedule
Co-Editor: Rebecca Adorno Dávila (USA) World Premiere in Spotlight Documentary
Produced through Onyx Collective
Premiere on Hulu June 28
From California, piano man Kris Bowers and producer DJ Dahi road trip six cities looking for universal American music themes (from New Orleans’ “second line” to a Muscogee (Creek) Native American “circle” with Poet Laureate emeritus Joy Harjo) and then bring their representatives together to crowdsource a replacement national anthem. It's not easy, and editing in of historians’ background (including The 2019 Project’s Nikole Hannah-Jones), archival and contemporary images and footage, provide terrific backdrop to the deftly summarized discussions.
Bad Like Brooklyn Dancehall
Synopsis and Schedule
Writer: Amy DiGiacomo (USA) World Premiere in Spotlight+
After the Premiere: Performance by Dancehall legends
Between the Rains
Synopsis and Schedule
Co-Editor: Charity Kuria (Kenya) World Premiere in Documentary Competition
Awarded Best Documentary Feature: Directors Andrew H. Brown and Moses Thuranira - Jury comment: “For craft, storytelling, impact — and above all a raw, elegant coming-of-age portrait of resilience that unanimously blew us away.”
Awarded Best Cinematography in a Documentary Feature: Andrew H. Brown - Jury comment: “Combining the patience and elegance of portraiture — with the immediacy of observational cinema verité — this cinematographer truly transported us into a rarely seen world.”
Co-Editor Charity Kuria takes directors Andrew H. Brown and Moses Thuranira’s footage to beautifully immerses us in daily/season/annual impact of climate change on pastoralists competing in Kenya for resources that makes violence a new tradition.
BS High
Synopsis and Schedule
Co-Editors: Lauren Brown and Cynthia Zhong (USA) World Premiere in Spotlight Documentary
HBO Sports Documentary release on MAX August 23 (with accompanying official four-part podcast, hosted by Mary Pilon, available on You Tube)
Directors for-hire Martin Desmond Roe and Travon Free (seen on screen conducting interviews) utilize at least five editors to parse the complicated story of how African-American con man Roy Johnson created a fake, apparently religious-affiliated, Bishop Sycamore (BS) High school in Columbus, OH. Johnson presented as a coach to painfully deluded African-American young men with no options to reach their college/NFL dreams into playing on a woeful football team that scored an ESPN showcase in 2021, despite financial skulduggery and a damning investigation by the Ohio High School Athletic Association (OSHAA). While producer/former Super Bowl winning NFL player Spencer Paysinger made the initial contacts with participants and producer Meech Golden found the former players, the documentary centers on tightly edited, retroactive interviews with the slippery (Trump-like) Liar-in-Chief, sadly with the players and their mothers, a local journalist, the investigator, and, for very useful larger societal context, sports journalist Bomani Jones. The filmmakers had available revealing footage of the team prepared by videographers hired (and stiffed) to document the pretend school that would provide the players “game tape” they could use to further their careers. But, confusingly to me as not a football fan, there’s continual in-fill footage of what seems to be random professional games, perhaps to show the kids’ fantasies.
Chasing Chasing Amy
Synopsis and Schedule
Editor: Sharika Ajaikumar (USA) World Premiere in Viewpoints
Comedy of War: Laughter in Ukraine
Synopsis and Schedule
Co-Editor: Casandra Andreica (USA) World Premiere in Spotlight Documentary
Good Morning Kyiv! Kharkiv! Chernihiv! “underground comedy clubs” aka bomb shelters - whirlwind tour footage (including comedienne Hanna Kochehura) is edited into film portrait of resilience.
Exposing Parchman
Synopsis and Schedule
Producer/Writer: Jeanmarie Condon; Co-Editor: Jamie Hogan Collignon (USA) World Premiere in Tribeca TV: Episodics
Co-Executive Producers: Jordana Hochman, EVP/Head of Programming, ITV America; Desiree Perez, CEO, Roc Nation, on screen participant; Lori York, EVP, TV and Film, Roc Nation; Jana Fleishman, EVP Strategic Marketing and Business Development, Roc Nation; Alison Dammann, Vice President, Development, ITV Studios
A&E premiere June 17
With the planned docu-series turned into a revealing 2+ hour documentary, Roc Nation entertainment empire founder Jay Z, label rapper “Yo Gotti”, and CEO (Trump-pardoned) Perez appear throughout to explain why they contributed an unspecified amount of funds over several years for lawyers, investigators, photographer, and other experts to pursue class-action and individual lawsuits on behalf of family members of incarcerated victims against the horrific conditions at the Mississippi State Penitentiary in Parchman. They also provided publicity and behind-the-scenes lobbying with government agencies to press investigations, and helped negotiate settlements with the medical and food contractors who got millions from the State Corrections Department. (Animated time lines illustrate the months passing on each case.) But the celebrities take back seats to the tearful testimony of relatives and the damning footage that prisoners themselves caught on illegal mobile phone cameras from cells where setting mattress fires was the only way to bring attention for medical emergencies. While drone views show the flat Delta landscape that prevents hopeless escapes from what was once a profitable prison plantation, community and legal activists advocate for the demolition of Parchman as the only permanent solution. This is both a powerful indictment of the Mississippi government and a testament to how powerful popular culture figures can accomplish substantive change.
For Khadija: French Montana
Synopsis and Schedule
Editors: Sofia Kerpan and Eva Dubovoy (USA, Morocco) World Premiere as Gala
After the Premiere: Performance by French Montana, Triplets Ghetto Kids, and Guests
The League
Synopsis and Schedule
Composer: Kathryn Bostic (USA) World Premiere in Spotlight Documentary
Magnolia Pictures releases in AMC Theaters starting July 7, and available on digital July 14.
Based on the memoir The Negro Baseball Leagues: True Tales of Umpiring Baseball Legends, Breaking Barriers, and American Legacy (2020), director Sam Pollard voices Bob Motley as narrator, and the documentary is dedicated to the former Marine and umpire. Co-author Byron Motley is his son, the source of many of the interviews with former Negro League and Major League players that he personally conducted over the past two decades, and is one of the executive producers. Also telling the 60-year history of “Black Ball” from at least 1884, when catcher Moses Fleetwood Walker integrated the Toledo Blue Stockings, are specialized historians including Leslie Heaphy and Shakeia Taylor who provide context, journalists including Andrea Williams, archival footage, photographs, and music. In addition to songs by Duke Ellington, Dan Bern on Josh Gibson, and the well-known classic on Jackie Robinson, composer/keyboardist Bostic adds jazzy, period-feeling instrumental background for each era.
The striking visuals also include Negro League player portraits from the book Black Baseball in Living Color: The Artwork of Graig Kreindler by Jay Caldwell (2022), with additional ones by Kreindler, all presented like the baseball cards never produced about these players. Baseball history that I don’t remember being covered in Ken Burns’s innings on baseball were Black Latino players, winter seasons fêted in the Caribbean, the stylistic differences in play to the MLB that have since been adopted, and the story of shrewd Effa Manley, the out-spoken owner of the Newark Eagles and the only woman admitted to the National Baseball Hall of Fame. While The League may exaggerate the economic impact of the loss of the teams by 1960, their social importance to their African-American communities comes through vividly.
Rock Hudson: All That Heaven Allowed
Synopsis and Schedule
Editor: Claire Didier; Composer: Laura Karpman (UK) World Premiere in Documentary Competition
HBO Documentary Films releases on June 28.
In combination with the voice-over interviews, personal reminiscences, archival footage, photographs, and Hollywood ephemera, the fluid sound and visual editing is key to understanding how a gay Midwestern veteran acted straight to become famous leading man Rock Hudson, while maintaining an active, yet hidden personal life, until accidentally becoming the public face of AIDS. Every black-and-white and color film Hudson ever appeared in seems to have been pored through frame-by-frame to smoothly capture any line, expression, and movement for the double entendre revelations in the context of him off-screen. I hadn’t thought before of the impact of seeing real Americans in the military changed the expected look for male movie stars to be macho. In an admirable effort to include female voices other than co-stars, documentarian Stephen Kijak adds comments by director Allison Anders and actress Illeanna Douglas on Hudson’s films, though I was never the fan they are. Also edited in are interviews with his younger friends who besides decorating his pool parties (seen in home movies and personal photos) tried to introduce him to the burgeoning gay pride movement of the 1970s, then helped adjust his image as the AIDS epidemic raged with his death in 1985 at age 59. Karpman’s score richly imitates his silver screen environs, as created by his directors like Douglas Sirk and George Stevens and producer Ross Hunter.
Scream of My Blood: A Gogol Bordello Story
Synopsis and Schedule
Co-Editor: Paula Salhany (USA) World Premiere in Spotlight Documentary; Vice Films release
After the Premiere: Performance by Gogol Bordello
Best New Documentary Director Award Special Jury Mention - Co-Director Nate Pommer: Jury comment: “For the enduring use of art as a weapon against cant and authoritarianism, [w]e are grateful to the director for translating Gogol Bordello’s rebellious joy and rage at remaining human and vibrant in the face of everything time has thrown in its path.”
Stan Lee
Synopsis and Schedule
Co-Editor Jamie Garland (?); Co-Assistant Editors: Emily Fuller and Sonja Gallaher (USA) World Premiere in Spotlight Documentary
Disney+ release on June 16
Decades of narration and story-telling are smoothly edited around archival footage, including Lee’s personal family photographs and home movies, linked in camera movements through wonderfully detailed miniatures by Fonco Studios. While he mentions his last name was originally “Lieber”, says his parents were from “Eastern Europe” and his father failed at working in the garment district, his Jewish identity doesn’t even come up when discussing his teenage-written comics battling Hitler. As his story moves on towards the movies (and his move from Long Island suburbs to Hollywood), there’s less and less insight into his personal life. Given how close he says he was with his wife Joan as his best friend, maybe I missed any mention of her passing in 2017, just a year before he died? Or of his daughter after childhood? The best parts are his descriptions of turning out the comic “books” and working with (and then falling out with) his collaborators Joe Simon, Jack Kirby, and Steve Ditko. Also heard is an archival interview (evidently from an A & E documentary) with “Our Fabulous Girl Friday” Flo Steinberg, who came on in 1963 and ran the “Merry Marvel Marching Society” fan club and answered fan mail, though the length of her tenure is not mentioned.
Taylor Mac’s 24 Decade History of Popular Music
Synopsis and Schedule
Co-Cinematographer: Ellen Kuras (USA) World Premiere in Spotlight Documentary
HBO Documentary Films release June 27
More than an edited concert film of the 24-hour version of the titular performance art production (hence the need for multiple cinematographers), Taylor Mac is also interviewed off-stage out of and getting into drag about his background in developing his act, the communal evocations and music order, and during photo shoots. He features a song from each decade of American history that reflects popular attitudes, and the co-starring costumes, designed by Machine Dazzle, represent that period. For example, in “Hour 3: 1796 – 1806”, Taylor explains that clean water wasn’t available and Americans were big drinkers, with social life based around taverns. So Dazzle creates a huge headdress with popping corks. Says Taylor: “He’s an artist. Whatever he gives me, I wear.” Amidst his sweat, make-up designer Anastasia Durasova gets less opportunity for much more than putting on him various extensive eyelashes, exaggerated mascara tears, and different colors of glitter. While he notes the irony “We teach kids these songs!”, other tunes given historical and visual re-interpretation include “Yankee Doodle Dandy” as resulting from mockery of British POWs, and “Coal Black Rose” (1829) as a sea chanty anticipating a gang rape of a slave. Music Director/Arranger Matt Ray developed the list of historic songs (getting emotional describing the themes), and sets up the musical accompaniment for the changing format as a musician leaves each “decade”, symbolizing lives lost of exposing gays and other marginalized Americans, going from large big band, and several guest singers including blues belter Thornetta Davis, until only a piano is left with Taylor as a chanteuse covering a Ted Nugent gay-bashing song. Many “decades” are supplemented with amusing audience participation, either in their seats or on stage, sometimes by gender identity categories, with various accoutrements like ping pong balls, blindfolds, and pantomime motions. Altogether, a woke entertainment!
Waitress, the Musical - Live on Broadway!
Synopsis and Schedule
Directed for the Stage by Diane Paulus; Music and Lyrics by Star Sara Bareilles, Book by Film Creative Advisor Jessie Nelson, Based on the Motion Picture Written by Adrienne Shelly (USA) World Premiere in Spotlight+
Premiere simultaneously broadcast onto TSX Entertainment’s 18,000-square-foot digital screen overlooking Times Square. After the Premiere: Performance by Sara Bareilles
SHORTS
Narrative Shorts
Schettinimous
Synopsis and Schedule
Co-Writer: Macarena Rubio (Argentina) International Premiere
Thaw
Synopsis and Schedule
Cinematographer: Alli Gooch (USA) World Premiere
Director Alex P. Bush (they/them) sets “Smith” (Caitlin Cobb-Vialet) and “Huck” (Jack Peterson) in snowy isolation amidst Gooch’s candle-lit atmosphere that breeds freedom from gender roles, then from any gender identification at all. But reminds of sci fi with oppressive political systems.
Witchfairy
Synopsis and Schedule
Writer: Brigitte Minne (Belgium, Bulgaria) New York Premiere
EPISODICS: N.O.W. (NEW ONLINE WORK) SHOWCASE
The Fourth Wall
Synopsis and Schedule
Co-Editor: Leah Boatright (USA) World Premiere in “Indie - Documentary”
Music Video
I Guess I'm Changing
Synopsis and Schedule
Co-Writer/Co-Editor/Co-Composer: Tessa Rose Jackson (UK) New York Premiere.
TRIBECA TALKS
”Beyond Boundaries: South Asian Women Shattering Barriers and Investing in Our Stories"
Synopsis and Schedule
Panel moderated by South Asian House Co-Founder Rohi Mirza Pandya
“The Birth of a Super-Heroine: How Women Shape Stories for the Future Generation”
Synopsis and Schedule
Directors and producers behind Tribeca Immersive selections “who have pushed the boundaries of storytelling and brought female voices to Immersive and Games” - Panelists Katayoun Dibamehr, Ana Ribeiro, Michaela Ternasky-Holland, Eloise Singer, and Paisley Smith
”Who’s Scared Now? – Feeling the Power of Gender and Fear”
Synopsis and Schedule
Filmmakers Kate Siegel, Jennifer Reeder, and Stewart Thorndike in conversation with Caryn Coleman “share how they’ve explored their frightening visions and brought them into the world”.
My Tribeca Film Festival 2020 coverage of features by female filmmakers.
Let me know what female filmmaker’s work I missed at the Festival. I will be continually updating this guide. Contact Nora Lee Mandel at mandelshultz@yahoo.com or @NLM_MavensNest
updated 12/17/2024
Nora Lee Mandel is a member of New York Film Critics Online. Her reviews are counted in the Rotten Tomatoes TomatoMeter:
Complete Index to Nora Lee Mandel's Movie Reviews
My reviews have appeared on: Film-Forward; FF2 Media; Lilith, FilmFestivalTraveler; and, Alliance of Women Film Journalists and for Jewish film festivals. Shorter versions of my older reviews are at IMDb's comments, where non-English-language films are listed by their native titles.
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