Culture Representation: Taking place in 2073 in the fictional U.S. city called New San Francisco, the docudrama film “2073” features a racially diverse group of people (white, black, Latin, Asian and Indigenous) who portray apocalypse survivors (in the drama scenes) or who are real-life political activists.
Culture Clash: The politically liberal activists who make comments for the documentary predict that an apocalypse will happen in the 21st century due to environmental, socioeconomic and political issues.
Culture Audience: “2073” will appeal primarily to people who are fans of director Asif Kapadia and “end of the world” movies that place almost all the blame on politically conservative people.
A scene from “2073” of the Golden Gate Bridge in California affected by wildfires (Photo courtesy of Neon)
Pretentious and derivative, “2073” is a doomsday docudrama that combines dreary apocalypse scenes with left-wing political lecturing. There’s too much whining and not enough talk about practical solutions. The “end of the world” warnings in this movie just add up to a lot of annoying hot air. The so-called experts interviewed for this movie just want to blame the world’s problems on people who don’t share their liberal political beliefs.
Directed by Asif Kapadia, “2073” had its world premiere at the 2024 Venice International Film Festival. The movie made the rounds at several other film festivals in 2024, including the BFI London Film Festival and DOC NYC. Kapadia won an Oscar for the 2015 Amy Winehouse documentary “Amy.” Unfortunately, “2073” is a low point in his filmmography.
Although “2073” is undoubtedly a film that has noble intentions, it has a heavy-handed approach. The movie has an obvious political agenda, but that agenda’s credibility is lowered with the movie using fictional, scripted scenes as examples of the gloom and doom predicted in the movie. Kapadia and Tony Grisoni co-wrote the “2073” screenplay.
The concept of “2073” isn’t very original. According to the movie’s synopsis, “2073” is inspired by Chris Marker’s “iconic 1962 featurette ‘La Jetée,’ about a time traveler who risks his life to change the course of history and save the future of humanity.” As explained in the beginning of “2073,” the scripted portions of the movie take place in 2073—37 years after “the event,” which obviously means an apocalypse. In other words, this apocalypse happened in 2036, which is just 12 years after the release of this movie.
The scripted drama scenes in “2073” are in a fictional city called New San Francisco, which is described as the capital of the Americas. In this bombed-out city, there’s an electronic billboard showing news reports about Chairwoman Ivanka Trump. What entity has Ivanka Trump as a chairwoman? Don’t expect this ridiculous movie to answer that question. The “2073” filmmakers’ obvious intention is to provoke viewers who would get upset at the thought of Ivanka Trump being chairwoman of anything.
The movie’s drama scenes follows the depressing and solitary life of an apocalypse survivor (played by Samantha Morton), whose name is listed in the end credits as Ghost. Ghost, who is a voiceover narrator for these drama scenes, is seen living in a dark and destroyed building while avoiding being seen by other people as much as possible. According to Ghost, her memory was “slipping through [her] fingers, like sand.”
Ghost also says she’s in hiding because one day “they” came for her. “I ran. I’m still running. My life is turning into one of those sci-fi comics I used to read. There are others here—survivors, renegades.” Other scenes in the movie show that the Americas—or at least New San Francisco—is being run by an oppressive government that rounds up “renegades” and tortures them.
Ghost is trying to avoid detection from an artificial intelligence being called Jack. “He listens and watches everything,” Ghost says about Jack. “You can’t trust anyone anymore. People thought the world would end, but the world goes on. It’s us who’ll end.”
It’s all so tedious to watch this watered-down ripoff of Big Brother from George Orwell’s doomsday “1984” novel, which was published in 1949 and predicted a dystopian future. In “2073,” Naomi Ackie has a small and ultimately inconsequential role as a professor character. Morton’s acting as Ghost is adequate by can’t overcome the weak screenplay.
As for the “talking heads” interviews in the documentary sections of “2073,” these comments are presented as voiceovers, presumably not to distract from the movie’s dramatic images of Ghost suffering in a decrepit place where food and water are scarce. In the documentary parts of the movie, the people commenting are politically liberal activists from Europe, North America, and Asia. The documentary doesn’t explain why, in a movie about the “end of the world,” there is no commentator representation from other largely populated continents, such as Africa, and Australia.
Almost all of the activist commentators are also journalists and/or writers, such as Maria Ressa, Carole Cadwalladr, Rana Ayyub Ben Rhodes, Rahima Mahmut, Silkie Carlo, Cori Crider, George Monbiot, Nina Schick, Douglas Rushkof, Carmody Grey, James O’Brien, Anne Applebaum and Antony Lowenstein. The other commentators are Amazon Labor Union founder Chris Smalls, computer scientist Tristan Harris and environmental activist Alessandra Korap.
The problem with “2073” is that the documentary parts of the movie are just soundbite compilations that recycle whatever rants these people have already said or written in other movies or media reports. Want to know about Ressa’s crusade for freedom of the press in her native Philippines? There was already an excellent documentary about it: 2020’s “A Thousand Cuts,” directed by Ramona S. Díaz. Labor union leader Smalls is the star of the 2024 documentary “Union,” (directed by Stephen Maing and Brett Story), which chronicles Amazon Labor Union becoming the first union at corporate giant Amazon.
The “2073” doomsday warnings about the environment are very “been there, done that” and were already well-presented by Al Gore in the Oscar-winning 2006 documentary “An Inconvenient Truth” (directed by Davis Guggenheim), as well as in many other documentaries and news reports about climate change. And that why it’s so boring and basic to hear political strategist/security expert Sherri Goodman say in “2073” commentary: “We are truly in a climate emergency.”
Other concerns brought forth in the documentary parts of “2073” have to do with government surveillance, civil rights and the erosion of democracy. The essential messaging of “2073” is that (1) anyone who’s involved in conservative politics is contributing to the end of the world; (2) only progressive political liberals are smart enough to tell you that; and (3) if you don’t believe the commentators in the movie, then you must be an idiot. It’s a very condescending tone that can be an absolute turn-off to people (even liberals) who are open-minded and intelligent enough to make up their own minds about how they feel about world issues.
It’s appalling that so many journalists are interviewed for “2073” but their comments in the movie are not really about investigative journalism but are just soundbite rants that say nothing new. By not presenting anything substantial to prove that opposing viewpoints are wrong, “2073” fails at being balanced and is actually quite didactic in its “political liberals are always right” messaging. For a more informative look at the world’s problems and effective ways to deal with these problems, progressive liberals can watch MSNBC or read Mother Jones and don’t need to watch “2073,” a misguided movie that is unrelenting in its paranoia and political divisiveness that don’t give any logical and hopeful solutions.
Neon released “2073” in select U.S. cinemas on December 27, 2024.
Culture Representation: The documentary film “Ernest Cole: Lost and Found” examines the life and work of South African photographer Ernest Cole, told mostly through archival footage and narration from American actor LaKeith Stanfield.
Culture Clash: Ernest Cole (who died of pancreatic cancer in 1990, when he was 49) became an exile in the United States because of his anti-apartheid work, and he fell on hard times while living in the U.S.
Culture Audience: “Ernest Cole: Lost and Found” will appeal primarily to people who are interested in documentaries about notable photographers and/or South African history.
A photo taken by Ernest Cole in 1960s South Africa in “Ernest Cole: Lost and Found” (Photo courtesy of Magnolia Pictures)
“Ernest Cole: Lost and Found” is a meaningful tribute to South African photographer Ernest Cole. However, it would’ve been a better documentary if it investigated how 60,000 negatives of Cole’s photos were secretly hidden in a Swiss bank for decades. This intriguing mystery is a big unanswered question that the documentary doesn’t bother to answer, even though many of these previously unpublished photos are the basis for much of the documentary.
Directed by Raoul Peck, “Ernest Cole: Lost and Found” had its world premiere at the 2024 Cannes Film Festival, where the movie won the L’Œil d’or prize for best documentary in a tie with “The Brink of Dreams,” directed by Nada Riyadh and Ayman El Amir. “Ernest Cole: Lost and Found” also made the rounds at other film festivals in 2024, including the Toronto International Film Festival and DOC NYC. It’s a documentary that wants viewers to feel immersed in Cole’s mind, even if many of Cole’s “thoughts” are speculation created for the movie.
“Ernest Cole: Lost and Found” is really a visual compilation of Cole’s work, with narration by American actor LaKeith Stanfield portraying Cole in words written by Cole and written by Peck. The documentary doesn’t have a clear distinction of which are Cole’s own words (mostly from his journals) and which were written by Peck for this documentary. However, there are moments when it’s obvious that the narration is not from Cole’s words because it talks about Cole’s death from pancreatic cancer in February 1990 (when he was 49) and things that happened after his death, such as the end of apartheid in South Africa in May 1990.
“Ernest Cole: Lost and Found” begins with this caption: “In 1967, the South African photographer Ernest Cole published his iconic book ‘House of Bondage.’ It revealed to the world the horror of apartheid. Fifty years later, in 2017, 60,000 unknown negatives were found in a Swedish bank vault. This is the story of what happened between those dates, as told by Ernest Cole himself.”
Cole was born on March 21, 1940, in Eersterust, Pretoria, South Africa. “Ernest Cole: Lost and Found” does not discuss his childhood or his personal life when he was an adult. There’s also no information in the documentary about what sparked his interest in photography and when he started taking photos. And don’t expect “Ernest Cole: Lost and Found” to give details about what Cole (a bachelor who didn’t have children) liked to do in his free time and who were his greatest loves. Those details aren’t in the documentary either.
“Ernest Cole: Lost and Found” is mostly a compilation of Cole’s still photos with Stanfield’s emotionally stirring narration telling Cole’s real or imagined thoughts during his time period. There is some archival film footage too, including clips of an interview that Cole did for the 1969 documentary “Bilder för Miljoner,” directed by Rune Hassner. Cole’s specialty was photographing everyday people, mostly outdoors.
“House of Bondage,” a photo book that is mentioned frequently in the documentary, was groundbreaking for how it documented and showed the vile racism of apartheid. Cole was inspired to do this photo book after seeing Henri Cartier-Bresson’s photo book “The People of Moscow.” The “House of Bondage” photos included the destruction caused by the South African apartheid government destroying homes in what the government called a “black spot”: an African township where black people lived and was “marked for obliteration if it occupies an area into which whites want to expand, ” says the documentary’s narration.
“House of Bondage” resulted in critical acclaim for Cole, but he became an enemy of the apartheid-controlled South African government. “House of Bondage” was banned in South Africa, and Cole went into exile in the United States, where he lived mostly in New York City. In the U.S., Cole also chronicled racism and racial inequality in his photos. But he also didn’t want to pigeonholed as a photographer who only documented “people’s misery.”
Cole traveled outside of New York, such as Mississippi, Alabama, Illinois, and Washington, D.C., to take many of the photos seen in the documentary. The narration says: “In the [U.S.] South, I was more scared than I was in South Africa.” The narration further explains that in South Africa, he was afraid of being arrested. In the U.S. South, he was afraid of being shot. It’s unclear in the documentary if Cole really wrote those narration words, or if those words were fabricated for the documentary.
Stanfield (as Cole) says in the narration about how “House of Bondage” affected Cole: “It made me famous … But why do I feel a sense of betrayal? The world didn’t want a book about just humans, about the human condition. It was more than a political pamphlet. It was not conceived as an anti-apartheid political crusade. It was about my life in South Africa and the lives of millions of others.”
The documentary also makes a point of blaming Cole’s career decline in the U.S. on racist gatekeepers being offended that Cole made comparisons to racism in the U.S. and apartheid in South Africa. By the time Cole became a celebrated photographer in the late 1960s, racial segregation was illegal in the U.S., due to the 1964 Civil Rights Act. But from Cole’s perspective, unofficial racial segregation still remained in many parts of the U.S., while racial inequalities and racial injustices were still rampant everywhere in the U.S.
“Ernest Cole: Lost and Found” also mentions Cole’s immigration problems and includes a 1968 letter that he wrote to the alien commissioner of the Norwegian government explaining his plight of not being able to get his passport renewed at the time but he might be able to get an emergency travel certificate. Cole had a few mentors early in his career—such as German-born South African photographer Jürgen Schadeberg and Joseph Lelyveld of The New York Times—but his career opportunities dried up, and he eventually faded into obscurity.
It’s mentioned that there was a period in Cole’s life when he became so disillusioned with being a photographer, he didn’t take any photos for eight years. During much of his later years, Cole was homeless. The narration says that Cole’s relocation to New York City was a “descent into hell,” and he went from being a “world-famous photographer” to “being homeless at the 34th Street train station.” The documentary briefly mentions that Cole spent some time in Sweden before he returned to New York City, where he lived until his death.
The only person interviewed for “Ernest Cole: Lost and Found” is Leslie Matlaisane, who is Ernest Cole’s nephew and the head of the Ernest Cole Family Trust. There is 2017 footage of Matlaisane going through Cole’s photography files that were secretly hidden and locked away at SEB Bank in Switzerland. It’s mentioned in the documentary that it’s still a mystery how this secret stash got to the bank and who paid for this stash to be kept at the bank for more than 40 years.
The bank refuses to give that information or say why it chose to reveal this secret stash many decades after it was put in a bank vault and chose to return this stash to the Ernest Cole Family Trust. It’s a mystery that’s worth investigating, but the documentary doesn’t do that type of research and investigation. In the production notes for “Ernest Cole: Lost and Found,” Peck explains, “I was more curious to see those pictures than to learn how they were discovered.”
Peck also says of the 504 vintage prints of Cole photos that have a dispute over ownership: “Just recently (on May 7, 2024), the Hasselblad Foundation published a press release that says they will give back all the pictures, including the 504 vintage prints I mention at the film’s end in title cards. Those vintage prints are the other big scandal. I did not give too much detail about them in the film on purpose and I hope that the journalists will work on that. Ernest himself printed those pictures.” It’s another missed opportunity for the documentary to have more substance beyond being a retrospective tribute.
As for not interviewing anyone except Matlaisane for the documentary, Peck comments in the production notes: “I wasn’t going to tell this story through talking heads—that would have been a totally different story, like a biography. And I don’t do biography, I tell stories.”
Unfortunately, the interview with Matlaisane is fairly generic and doesn’t offer any fascinating information about Cole—unless you think it’s fascinating that Matlaisane says that Cole invited a young Matlaisane to visit Cole in the U.S., but Matlaisane declined the invitation because Matlaisane’s mother disapproved of Matlaisane taking this type of trip. “Ernest Cole: Lost and Found” is very watchable, despite some uneven film editing and pacing that occasionally drags. As it stands, “Ernest Cole: Lost and Found” serves as a interesting but incomplete overview of Cole’s life and his talented work, with his real and imagined thoughts as the narration.
Magnolia Pictures released “Ernest Cole: Lost and Found” in New York City on November 22, 2024, and in Los Angeles on November 29, 2024, with an expansion to more U.S. cities in subsequent weeks.
Culture Representation: The documentary film “Gallagher” takes place in the United States and features an all-white group of people discussing the life and career of comedian Leo Gallagher Jr., who was known by his stage name Gallagher.
Culture Clash: Gallagher had a happy-go-lucky image in public but was very troubled in private.
Culture Audience: “Gallagher” will appeal primarily to Gallagher fans and people who are interested in documentaries about famous comedians.
A 1980s photo of Gallagher in “Gallagher” (Photo courtesy of September Club)
The insightful documentary “Gallagher” is a lesson on the fickleness of showbiz fame and is another example of how comedians are often self-destructive and deeply unhappy in their personal lives. This definitive documentary about comedian Gallagher gives a comprehensive look at the highs, lows and everything in between during his troubled life. The film benefits from his participation before his 2022 death.
Directed by Josh Forbes, “Gallagher” had its world premiere at the 2024 edition of DOC NYC. Forbes, who is the occasional narrator of the documentary, begins by saying up front that he made the movie as a big fan of Gallagher, whom he says “changed [Forbes’] life forever.” It’s a movie made from a fan’s perspective, but it’s also not afraid to show who Gallagher really was, flaws and all.
Forbes says in the documentary’s introduction about Gallagher: “He really was a wordsmith, a poet, a visual absurdist. What happened to Gallagher? What happened to that surreal hippie I knew as a kid?” The answer (which many viewers might not know until seeing this documentary) is not a safe and pretty story, since the end of Gallagher’s career was a downward spiral of family feuds and controversies over racist and transphobic jokes in his stand-up comedy act.
Gallagher (his one-word stage name) was born Leo Gallagher Jr. in Fort Bragg, North Carolina, in July 24, 1946. He died at age 76 of organ failure in a hospice in Palm Desert, California, on November 11, 2022. The documentary “Gallagher” includes a great deal of archival footage of his performances and interviews, as well as footage filmed exclusively for the documentary of Gallagher in the final years before his death.
The documentary tells Gallagher’s life story in mostly chronological order, but focuses mainly on his years as a professional entertainer. There’s not much discussion about his childhood and teenage years, except to say that he didn’t like to talk too much about his past and he had a rocky relationship with his father. His relationships with his relatives are given more detail later in the documentary when Gallagher was embroiled with lawsuits about his younger look-alike brother Ron Gallagher performing as Gallagher Two or Gallagher Too.
Gallagher’s on-stage persona was being a goofy and playful comedian who used a lot of props during his stand-up comedy act. He became famous for taking a sledgehammer (called the Sledge-O-Matic) and smashing items (most notably watermelons) on stage during his performance. He was also considered a pioneer in doing stand-up comedy specials on cable TV. Gallagher starred in several stand-up comedy specials for Showtime, beginning with 1980’s “An Uncensored Evening.”
Before he found fame on television, Gallagher honed his act from the late 1960s to the mid-1970s at various comedy clubs in the Los Angeles, including the Comedy Store, where he first did his Sledge-O-Matic performance. This exposure led to Gallagher having guest appearances on “The Mike Douglas Show” and “The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson.” Gallagher’s “Tonight Show” debut was delayed in 1975 because the show’s bookers decided to have Steve Martin on the show in a spot that was originally booked for Gallagher.
People who knew Gallagher back then, such as comedian/musician Jim Stafford and comedian Tom Dreesen, say in the documentary that Gallagher’s public image of being a freewheeling, happy-go-lucky guy was mostly an act. In real life behind the scenes, Gallagher could be a cranky and very competitive workaholic. For example, when Gallagher found out that Martin replaced Gallagher for a guest spot on “The Tonight Show,” Gallagher reportedly watched the episode with envy and insults directed at Martin, even though Gallagher begrudgingly admitted that Martin was very talented.
When Gallagher finally got to be on “The Tonight Show,” he felt slighted when “Tonight Show” host Johnny Carson didn’t invite Gallagher to be interviewed on the couch after Gallagher’s performance. This was a sign that Carson wasn’t very enthusiastic about Gallagher, reportedly because Carson wasn’t a fan of comedians who use props. But Gallagher was apparently the type of person who held grudges and saw this snub as a reason to dislike Carson.
Robin Riker, a comedian/actress who was Gallagher’s live-in girlfriend in the late 1970s, remembers their relationship as being unstable because of Gallagher’s unpredictable mood swings and workaholic ways. He could be volatile or emotionally distant. When Gallagher called her while he was on tour, “There was an aloofness to him,” Riker says.
When she asked him once, “Do you love me?,” his reply was, “Do you have to know?” Riker says in the documentary that she ended the relationship shortly after he had an explosive outburst and embarrassed her a wrap party for the 1980 film “Alligator,” which was her feature-film debut. Gallagher’s career then took off in the 1980s, when he became famous enough to sell out arenas, but there were limitations to the career opportunities that he got.
According to Gallagher’s former manager Craig Marquardo: “Gallagher has a particular look that perhaps wasn’t so friendly for sitcoms or late-night TV hosts or movies or TV shows. So while [Jerry Seinfeld] and [Jay] Leno and [David] Letterman went to other careers, Gallagher got left behind.” Instead of starring in big TV series or movies, Gallagher earned his fortune by touring. It was a fortune that he says Gallagher lost from bad investments and legal problems.
Gallagher was married and divorced twice and had one child with each ex-wife. His first ex-wife Deedra Higgins (who is interviewed by audio only) and their daughter Aimee Gallagher Correia (also known as Aimee Correia) are interviewed separately in the documentary. Ex-wife Higgins says that their marriage fell apart because he was too preoccupied with work. Even at home, he wanted people to call him Gallagher, not by his first name Leo. Aimee remembers being aware from an early age that her father was famous because of how people would react to him every time she would go out with him in public.
She also remembers quirky things about their home life, such as the family’s swimming pool being in their front yard and how her father would practice smashing watermelon with a sledgehammer in the front of the house. When Gallagher was alive, Correia commented in the documentary: “He loves to create. That’s what keeps him alive.”
Bruce Baum, a comedian who was Gallagher’s friend, shares a very different memory of what type of father Gallagher was to Aimee. Baum tells a story in the documentary about his daughter (who was 4 years old at the time) and 2-year-old Aimee having playtime together that Gallagher was videotaping. When Gallagher played the video back for the kids to watch, all he could do is give criticism to Aimee about what she was doing wrong in the video.
Gallagher’s son Barnaby, from Gallagher’s second marriage to Geralyn Hines, doesn’t have much to add about his father and will only say that he’s proud to be his father’s son. The documentary also has mostly quick and not-very-interesting soundbites from comedians who knew Gallagher or consider themselves to be fans of Gallagher. These comedians include Jimmy Kimmel, Bill Burr, Dax Jordan, Howie Mandel, Pauly Shore (who’s mother Mitzi Shore owned the Comedy Store), Mike Binder, Jon Schnitzer. Also interviewed are musician Jimmy Zappas and music producer Lee Miles, who both worked with Gallagher.
Carrot Top talks about how when Gallagher seemed to be jealous and suspicious of Carrot Top early in Carrot Top’s career because Carrot Top uses a lot of props in his stand-up comedy act. Over the years, Gallagher’s hostility toward Carrot Top cooled down, and they became cordial colleagues. Comedian/actor Bobcat Goldthwait says Gallagher had a hard time functioning off stage.
The documentary chronicles how things started to go downhill for Gallagher in the 1990s, when Gallagher began to be sued by audience members for injuries sustained during his Sledge-O-Matic performances. He also started including racist comments in his stand-up comedy act and was no longer welcome on certain TV shows as a result. According to the documentary, a Gallagher family feud was the biggest reason why Gallagher he went into a decline.
During the 1990s, younger brother Ron was given permission to perform as Gallagher Two, under the condition that it was made clear Ron was not his older brother Leo, the original Gallagher comedian. But somewhere along the way, lines began to be blurred between the two brothers’ images and stage acts, and Gallagher ended up suing Ron to stop performing under the Gallagher Two name. Their father Leo Gallagher Sr. also got involved in these legal disputes by claiming he invented the Sledge-O-Matic idea. Leo Gallagher Sr. and Gallagher’s mother took Ron’s side in these legal battles.
This family feud broke Gallagher’s spirit, according to his daughter Aimee. “He felt extremely betrayed,” she says. “It did something to his brain.” In the 2000s, Gallagher started having more health problems, including heart attacks, but had to earn most of his income the only way he knew how: touring. His stand-up comedy changed from being whimsical anecdotes and playful antics to becoming increasingly angry and bitter ranting about the types of people who experience bigotry for not being white, heterosexual or cisgender.
As for the footage of Gallagher in his elderly years, some of it shows him unapolgetically making racist, homophobic and transphobic jokes. When asked about controversies over his offensive comments during his stand-up comedy act, Gallagher dismisses any concerns by saying the world has gotten too politically correct.
That’s not to say that if Gallagher suddenly became a politically correct comedian, he would’ve had a bigger audience in his elder years. The documentary shows that the slow and pathetic decline of his career and his health had more to do with his overall negativity and bitterness. At times, Gallagher also gets temperamental and tells director Forbes he doesn’t want to be filmed anymore.
By the end of his life, Gallagher seems to still enjoy performing but there’s a forced obligation that comes across when he interacts with his fans, who are there mainly because of the way Gallagher used to be at the peak of his fame. You can practically see Gallagher suppress a wince when a female in her mid-20s tells him that she wasn’t even born when he was famous. It’s obvious from Gallagher’s mercurial personality, this was a documentary made in starts and stops, because he seems like the type of celebrity who frequently changed his mind on how much he wanted to participate in a documentary about his life.
“Gallagher” is not a fully comprehensive documentary. There are many aspects of Gallagher’s pre-fame life that aren’t detailed in the movie. For example, it’s never really explained how Gallagher went from graduating from the University of South Florida in 1970 with a bachelor’s degree (he majored in chemical engineering and minored in English literature) to becoming a stand-up comedian. However, the strength of this documentary is that it avoids the pitfalls of overly flattering celebrity documentaries by presents a frank examination of how Gallagher’s life was very different on stage and off stage.
Wedding photos of Linda Szypula and Jim Szypula (pictured at left) and Carla Preyer and Patrick Preyer (pictured at right) in “Facing the Wind” (Photo courtesy of Mind’s Eye Productions)
Culture Representation: The documentary film “Facing the Wind” takes place in the United States and features a predominantly white group of people (with a few African Americans and Asians) who are personally affected by Lewy body dementia.
Culture Clash: People with Lewy body dementia and their caregivers experience emotionally and physically painful stresses in their relationships.
Culture Audience: “Facing the Wind” will appeal primarily to people who are interested in documentaries that show the realities of caregivers of people who have terminal illnesses.
Patrick Preyer and Carla Preyer (pictured at right) in “Facing the Wind” (Photo courtesy of Mind’s Eye Productions)
The memorable documentary “Facing the Wind” takes a candid look at two married couples coping with each husband having Lewy body dementia. It shows real and raw experiences from the caregivers’ perspectives. “Facing the Wind” had its world premiere at the 2024 edition of DOC NYC.
Directed by Deirdre Fishel, “Facing the Wind” is not a long feature-length film (its total running time is only 58 minutes), but it can leave an impact on viewers, regardless of whether or not viewers have personal experiences with Lewy body dementia or terminal illnesses. Lewy body dementia is a brain disease that has symptoms which are similar to Alzheimer’s disease, such extreme forgetfulness, hallucinations, declining motor skills, frequent confusion and big mood swings. However, as explained in the documentary, people with Lewy body dementia (which currently has no cure) are often misdiagnosed as having a personality disorder or a mental illness because someone with Lewy body dementia could not have symptoms for several days in a row.
The two middle-aged married couples who are the focus of Facing the Wind” are Linda Szypula, Jim Szypula, Carla Preyer and Patrick Preyer, whose ages range from their late 50s to mid-60s at the time this documentary was filmed in 2022 and 2023. All of their adult children are briefly shown in the documentary. However, the wives, not the children, are primary caregivers of their terminally ill husbands.
Linda and Jim lived in Sicklervlle, New Jersey, when the documentary began filming. The couple later moved to New Orleans to be closer to their son Andrew, who is the eldest of their three adult children. Carla and Patrick lived in Sacramento, California, during the filming of the documentary. Linda, who has a very outspoken personality, gets the most screen time in the documentary.
Linda (a former science teacher) and Jim met in their early 20s, when they were co-workers at Morey’s Piers, an amusement park in Wildwood, New Jersey, where he was an electrician. As Linda describes it in the documentary, it was attraction at first sight for her when she saw Jim, and she predicted to a friend shortly after seeing Jim for the first time that she would marry him. Linda says she had a “rough childhood,” and Jim was like her “knight in shining armor.”
Patrick (who used to be an operating nurse at a hospital) and Carla (who was the owner of a beauty salon) dated and got married when they were in their 30s. They have an adult son together named Patrick Jr. (P.J.), who lives a “five-and-half hours away,” Carla says in the documentary. Carla describes how Patrick loved his job but had to retire because he became forgetful on the job.
Carla also says that she had to “fight” hard to get the correct diagnosis of Patrick’s health issues because he kept getting misdiagnosed. It wasn’t until she went out of her health insurance network and went to Stanford University Medical Hospital that Patrick was properly diagnosed with Lewy body dementia. Footage of Patrick and Carla together shows him to be at a stage where he has to have his activities closely monitored and cannot be left completely alone.
Carla describes how Lewy body dementia robs people of their original personalities. She says before Patrick got Lewy body dementia, Patrick had a great sense of humor. “He prided himself on taking care of people he loves,” she adds. After getting Lewy body dementia, Carla says, “The goofy side of him … that all disappeared.”
And instead of taking care of people, Patrick needed a full-time caregiver. Carla says in the documentary that she eventually had to close her salon to become Patrick’s caregiver. Later, in the movie, Carla mentions that she followed people’s advice to get a part-time caregiver to help her.
In the 1980s, Jim used to be in a band called the McLean Affair. The documentary shows that he still knows how to play guitar, which he does as a source of comfort, even though it’s obvious that his guitar-playing skills are now limited to basic strumming. Patrick isn’t as lucky. As shown in the documentary, his motor skills have deteriorated to the point where he sometimes has difficulty walking. When he does walk, he has a tendency to wander outside and get lost if no one is looking after him.
In order to cope with the stress and not feel so isolated, Linda started an online support group for caregivers of people with Lewy body dementia. Carla is one of the members of the support group. Through the support group, she befriended a Lewy body dementia patient named Curry Whisenhunt (from Kansas City, Missouri), who started his own online support group for people with Lewy body dementia. Together, Whisenhunt and Linda co-host a podcast called Lewy Body Roller Coaster.
“Facing the Wind” includes footage of some of the support group sessions that take place online and in person. These sessions show the realities that caregivers (who are often portrayed as unrealistically saintly in movies and television) have very real human flaws that affect their caregiving. Many of the caregivers admit that they lose their tempers and feel a lot of resentment over how their loved ones with Lewy body dementia take them for granted or mistreat them when the patients in a bad mood. Many of the caregivers talk about how caregivers often have no one looking out for caregivers, who are often exhausted and stressed-out.
Meanwhile, many of the people in Whisenhunt’s support group share heartbreaking stories of being misunderstood and having suicidal thoughts. Lewy body dementia patients say they feel a sense of hopelessness and shame that they can no longer physically do a lot of things they used to be able to do, or they have severe memory lapses about their loved ones. They also feel guilty that their loved ones who are full-time caregivers have had to upend their own lives and careers to become full-time caregivers. The combination of shame and guilt can lead to patients losing their tempers, with their caregivers often the targets of their anger.
One of the more interesting aspects of the documentary is when Linda decides that she and Jim need a change of scenery to get away from their house for a while. And so, Linda decides they will go on a cross-country road trip by RV to fulfill Jim’s dream of visiting national parks and to visit other people in Linda’s support group. Matt “Manny” Gilliano, a friend of Linda’s from high school, is along for the trip to help with the driving.
During the trip, Linda and Jim visit Curry Whisenhunt (who has a mostly upbeat personality) and his wife, who is also named Linda. Both of the Lindas share their experiences of how they’re coping with caring for a spouse with Lewy body dementia. Linda Szypula says she’s the type of person who can’t hold her emotions in (for better or for worse), while Linda Whisenhunt says that she’s found it best to stay in the background and be reserved because Curry has a “take charge” dominant personality.
“Facing the Wind” isn’t all gloom-and-doom depression. There are many tender and sweet moments that show these spouses still love each other a lot, despite the trauma of dealing wth this horrible disease. And one of the more memorable scenes in the move is when Linda Szypula and Carla Preyer meet up with two other women from their support group—Jax Brown and Wendy Cogan—for some friendship bonding.
When people take the marriage vows that say that they will stay in the marriage “in sickness and in health,” there’s no real way to prepare when those marriage vows are put to the test. “Facing the Wind” shows only the perspectives of people who stay in a marriage to someone with a terminal illness. An unidentified man in Curry Whisenhunt’s support group wasn’t so lucky because he says his wife left him because she didn’t believe he had Lewy body dementia. That type of abandonment is not explored in this documentary.
Carla Preyer comments on why she stayed married to her husband Paul after the Lewy body dementia diagnosis: “He’s my soul mate, my spiritual partner. And that just doesn’t go away.” One of the most heartwarming parts of the documentary shows Carla and Paul renewing their marriage vows.
“Facing the Wind” doesn’t have a lot of medical discussions about Lewy body dementia. This is not the type of terminal documentary that shows people at medical checkups or lengthy interviews with medical experts. There is a very brief clip toward the end of the documentary of Linds Szypula and Curry Whisenhunt interviewing Dr. Jason A. Cohen of Montefiore Medical Center, located in New York City.
This is a documentary that is ultimately a bittersweet and intimate story about how four spouses affected by Lewy body dementia coped with it during the disease’s later stages. It’s a documentary that will make viewers think about what they would do if they were the caregivers or the ones who needed the care. And ultimately, “Facing the Wind” will give viewers an appreciation of how precious life is, even with stressful difficulties, and how to keep going and move forward when those difficulties seem to be unbearable.
Directed by Justin Schein; co-directed by Robert Edwards
Culture Representation: The documentary film “Death & Taxes” features a predominantly white group of people (with a few African Americans and Asians), who are middle-class or wealthy, discussing the pros and cons of United States estate taxes (also known as “death taxes”) which apply only a small percentage of wealthy people.
Culture Clash: People who support estate taxes say that these taxes benefit everyone in democratic societies, while people who are opposed to estate taxes say that these taxes are unfair discrimination against the wealthiest taxpayers in the United States.
Culture Audience: “Death & Taxes” will appeal primarily to people who are interested in learning how estate taxes affect political systems and wealth distribution, for better or for worse.
“Death & Taxes” gives a competent overview of estate taxes, while admirably showing a balance of supporters and opponents of these taxes. This documentary, directed by Justin Schein, includes his family history as a very personal perspective. As of 2024, federal estate taxes are mandated for a deceased person’s assets that are worth at least $13.61 million at the time of death. At times, “Death & Taxes” seems more like a family biography than a documentary about estate taxes. However, “Death & Taxes (which was co-directed by Robert Edwards) makes the subject matter more relatable to viewers because Justin Schein shares intimate details about how his domineering businessman father Harvey Schein (who was vehemently opposed to estate taxes) affected his family’s perspectives on taxes and economic inequalities
In the United States, federal estate taxes apply to a deceased person’s assets of at least $13.61 million per person or $27.22 million per married couple. This minimum amount has steadily increased over the years—a trend that suggests that less millionaires are required to pay these estate taxes. This trend has gotten praise (mostly from political conservatives) and criticism (mostly from political liberals). Justin Schein makes his viewpoints known early on in the movie when he says that he’s politically liberal on this issue. He thinks estate taxes help lessen financial inequalities between the very rich and the very poor because the taxes go toward resources that can benefit those who need the resources the most.
“Death & Taxes” (which had its world premiere at the 2024 edition of DOC NYC) begins with archival footage filmed in 2003 of Harvey Schein at the family’s country home in Connecticut. In the footage, Harvey talks about how he doesn’t want his assets to be taxed after he dies. “I don’t want to give half of our estate to the federal government,” Harvey says emphatically. (Harvey Schein died in 2008, at the age of 80.)
Justin Schein, who is the voiceover narrator for the documentary, comments wryly in the voiceover: “Welcome to a Schein family meeting. That’s my dad holding forth on his favorite subject: keeping his hard-earned money from the tax man when he dies. It’s not a bad problem to have—as long as you don’t let it drive you crazy. But, unfortunately, it did.”
Justin describes his relationship with his father as “complicated.” They often argued about money and politics. Justin elaborates in a voiceover commentary: “He was the classic self-made man who embodied the American Dream, if there really is such a thing—and I inherited it. And ever since I was a kid, I’ve been trying to figure out what that literal good fortune means for me, my family and my country—especially in this moment when inequality in America has grown dramatically.”
“Death & Taxes” interweaves anecdotes and facts about Harvey’s life with interview commentaries from experts in economics and politics. Born in New York City in 1927, Harvey was raised in a working-class home, where his father Morris was a textile worker. Growing up during the Great Depression made a tremendous impact on Harvey because he developed a lifelong obsession with saving as much money as possible. According to Justin (who was born in 1968), his father Harvey would constantly lecture his children Justin and Mark (born in 1966) about how not to waste money and how to be “frugal.”
Harvey graduated from New York University and served in the Naval Reserve toward the end of World War II. Through a G.I. bill (which the documentary points out was a privilege only open to white men at the time), Harvey received a scholarship to attend and graduate from Harvard University Law School. After law school, Harvey became a hard-driving executive at CBS Records and later at Sony, where he is credited with being a master marketer for the Betamax video machine. Harvey became a multimillionaire because of all of his success in business, even though he made enemies because of his ruthless and unkind way of treating employees and other colleagues.
Several people in the documentary, including Harvey’s ex-wife Joy Schein (the mother of Justin and Mark), describe him in the same the way that she describes him: “charming, funny, difficult and demanding.” Joy, who also grew up in New York City, met Harvey at a party, and she says she was instantly attracted to him because of his confident charisma. Clive Davis, former president of CBS Records, comments on Harvey: “He had one Achilles heel: He had a tendency to be argumentative.” Yvonne Johnson, a former administrative assistant of Harvey’s, has this to say about him: “Everybody knows … he had a brilliant mind but a very difficult personality.”
Justin says that as a child, he thought his father was like a superhero. But Justin—like many other people in Harvey’s life—both admired and feared Harvey. As an adult, Justin says he developed very different opinions from his father about socioeconomic inequalities and wealthy people’s responsibilities in helping underprivileged people. Conflicts over Harvey’s personality and financial obsessions eventually took a toll on his marriage to Joy and led to their divorce.
“Death & Taxes” has a fairly even amount of screen time given to supporters and opponents of estate taxes. Robert Reich—who was U.S. Secretary of Labor from 1993 to 1997, during the administration of President Bill Clinton—believes that estate taxes are essential. Reich comments in the documentary: “If more and more wealth can be generated and provided to heirs without paying any taxes, then we are on the way to a permanent aristocracy in America.”
By contrast, Republican pollster/strategist Frank Luntz believes that estate taxes are a form of tax discrimination. He thinks estate taxes should be abolished and doesn’t believe that the wealthiest U.S. taxpayers should get these additional taxes imposed on them. Luntz is a firm believer in the “trickle-down economics” policies (made famous by President Ronald Reagan) which touts that wealth is better distributed through charities and consumer spending, rather than higher taxes for the wealthy.
Other people interviewed in “Death & Taxes” include Princeton University sociologist Matthew Desmond, Roosevelt Institute president/CEO Felicia Wong, New School economist Darrick Hamilton, Americans for Tax Reform founder Grover Norquist, Institute for Policy Studies senior scholar Chuck Collins, economist Ann Price, Institute on Tax and Economic Policy Amy Hanauer, New York Times columnist/economist Paul Krugman, ProPublica reporter James Bandler, Justin Schein’s cousin Beverly Edreich, Justin Schein’s brother Mark Schein, New York University finance professor Jimmy Berman, and “Winners Take All: The Elite Charade of Changing the World” author/journalist Anand Giridharadas.
“Death & Taxes” director Schein also gets his wife Eden Wurmfeld to comment. She says it’s “tricky” to to do the documentary without “making it look like some poor little rich white boy story with the tiniest violin.” Wurmfeld isn’t wrong because “Death & Taxes” does come across as a “rich guilt” documentary from a filmmaker with earnest intentions in better understanding how his wealth and privilege can help those in society who aren’t wealthy or privileged. Whether or not estate taxes are a correct way to try to distribute wealth will remain an ongoing debate that “Death & Taxes” doesn’t try to resolve but instead takes a very humanistic and personal approach that makes these issues easier for the average viewer to understand.
Culture Representation: Taking place in various parts of the United States, from 2017 to 2024, the documentary film “No One Asked You” features a predominantly white group of people (and some African Americans and a few Latin people and Asian people) who are on both sides of the debate over abortion rights and policies in the United States.
Culture Clash: Abortion Access Front, a non-profit group founded by comedian/writer Lizz Winstead, encounters obstacles in the group’s activism for abortion rights.
Culture Audience: “No One Asked You” will appeal primarily to people who are inclined to have pro-choice viewpoints and are interested in documenatries about grass-roots activism for reproductive rights.
Kat Green, Derenda Hancock and Ian Harvie in “No One Asked You” (Photo courtesy of Ruthless Films)
“No One Asked You” gives an insightful chronicle of the pro-choice activism of Abortion Access Front (formerly known as Lady Parts Justice League) from 2017 to 2024. The documentary infuses comedy as a way to deal with the animosity that the activists get. Because the documentary is told from the activists’ point of view, people who are opposed to what these activists are doing are not really the intended audience for the film. However, “No One Asked You” does show the viewpoints of people who want abortion to be illegal everywhere by having footage of these anti-abortion activists and politicians expressing their opinions in TV interviews and at public gatherings.
Directed by Ruth Leitman, “No One Asked You” had its world premiere at the 2023 edition of DOC NYC, where it was a runner-up for the Audience Award. “No One Asked You” was originally planned as a documentary series titled “Lady Parts Justice in the New World Order,” whch premiered two episodes at DOC NYC in 2018. The series didn’t get a distribution deal, so the documentary was revamped as a feature film with the title “No One Asked You,” with updated footage.
Lizz Winstead, co-creator of Comedy Central’s “The Daily Show,” founded the non-profit group Lady Parts Justice League in 2015, and is the driving force in all of the group’s initiatives. As she explains in “No One Asked You,” the group changed its name in 2019 to Abortion Access Front so that it would have a title that is inclusive to all genders and to take away the stigma associated with the word “abortion.” Abortion Access Front has fundraising initiatives (often through comedy shows) for pro-choice causes, provides assistance to those who give and receive abortion services, and participates in public protests and campaigns for pro-choice and reproductive rights.
In 2017, the group embarked on a Vagical Mystery Tour across the United States to visit various facilities that provide abortion care to help workers escort patients into clinics and provide other assistance to facility employees. As shown in the documentary, anti-abortion protesters often station themselves in front of or near these clinics and do some form of shaming that ranges from religious preaching to aggressively insulting or harassing patients and pro-choice activists. Abortion Access Front volunteers counteract some of the hate with comedic remarks, even if the people who gets these remarks have little or no chance of changing their angry tactics.
Winstead, who has on-camera and voiceover commentary throughout the documentary, says in the beginning of the movie: “Our movement watched abortion erode since 1973.” During the course of making the documentary, predictions and warnings turned out to be true that the U.S. Supreme Court would overturn Roe v. Wade, the landmark 1973 case that gave federal protections to make abortion legal in the United States. In 2022, after the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe. v. Wade, several states began passing strict abortion laws that have the biggest effect on pregnant women and pregnant girls who can’t afford to travel to states where they can get safe and legal abortions.
Abortion is a personal issue for Winstead, who says in the documentary (as she has said in many other interviews) the first time she had sex at age 16, she got pregnant. It was an unplanned and unwanted pregnancy by her and the fellow student who impregnated her and blamed her for getting pregnant. Winstead says wryly that she got a safe and legal abortion but had to get the money by stealing it from the father of the teen who impregnated her. There’s a brief scene in the documentary about going back to her alma mater Southwest High School in Minnesota because she was inducted into the school’s Hall of Fame.
The Vagical Mystery Tour footage includes the group’s visits to various clinics, comedy shows to raise funds and awareness and the group attending public protests. The group also gets involved in educating communities and protesting aganst crisis pregnancy centers, which are not medical facilities but are centers (usually funded by religions groups) whose main purpose is to tell women and girls not to have abortions. Abortion Access Front objects to any deceptive or misleading information that these crisis pregnancy centers give to unsuspecting people.
A scene in the movie shows intern Solange Azor and comedian Alex English pretending to be an unmarried couple with an unplanned pregancy and going to a crisis pregnancy center. The undercover video footage that they took is limited, but it shows an unidentified center worker carefully choosing words when describing what the center is about, by avoiding calling it a medical facilty and trying to downplay the center’s religious agenda. Azor and English then reported that they were interviewed separately at the center and were treated very differently, with Azor gettng more lectures shaming her into practicing abstinence from non-marital sex.
Other past or present Lady Parts Justice League/Abortion Access Front people who are in the documentary include marketing manager Moji Alowode-El, former managing director/head of production Kat Green, and former communications director Nicole Moore. The issue of race comes up a few times women of color are disproportionately affected by stricter abortion laws. Many crisis pregnancy centers are operated by white people and are set up in predominantly black communities.
Moore (who is black) comments in the documentary during the 2018 mid-term elections: “Black women are changing the face and the tone of these elections. People don’t even see their privilege They don’t even understand how they are oppressing other people. Step back and let black women talk about reproductive justice because it’s all connected when you’re talking about social change.”
Elsewhere in the documentary, it’s pointed out that many right-wing anti-abortion activists were among those in the mob who went to the U.S. Capitol on June 6, 2021, with the intent of overturning the election results of the 2020 U.S. presidential election. An epilogue mentions that Abortion Access Front has been involved in reporting anti-abortion extremists who break laws, including Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances [FACE] laws, resulting in numerous arrests and convictions. Winstead says in the documentary that pro-choice activists and supporters should not be passive by overlooking the lawbreaking done in the name of anti-abortion.
Several employees of clinics who provide abortion services are featured in the documentary—most notably Derenda Hancock, a clinic escort at the Jackson Women’s Health Organization (also known as the Pink House because the building was a painted pink) in Jackson, Mississippi. Hancock engages with anti-abortion activists not by getting into shouting matches but by reasoning with them on a personable level. Even though she is cordial, her patience is also tested by those who accost the clinic’s patients and workers, and she nearly breaks down in tears during one particular emotionally draining incident.
“No One Asked You” also features people who own or work at facilities that provide abortion services and who talk about how their own lives are at risk because of constant death threats from anti-abortion extremists. The abortion providers in the documentary include Whole Woman’s Health founder Amy Hagstrom Miller, Northland Family Planning owner/CEO Renee Chelian, Trust Women CEO Julie Burkhart, Northland Family Planning vice president Laura Chelian (Renee’s daughter), Jackson Women’s Health Organization director Shannon Brewer and Dr. LeRoy Carhart, who died in 2023, at age 81.
The comedians shown performing at the Lady Parts Justice League/Abortion Access Front fundraising shows include Sarah Silverman, English, Joyelle Johnson, Gina Yashere, Greg Proops, Mehran Khaghani, Helen Hong, Jaye McBride, Ian Harvie and Aida Rodriguez. At an event titled Life Is a Living Nightmare: A Telethon to Fix It, actor Mark Hamill is a participating entertainer. Singer/songwriter Jill Solube is shown performing at another event.
The anti-abortion activists who get screen time in “No One Asked You” include Mississippi politicians Dan Eubanks and Steve Hopkins, who co-authored a bill that would ban abortions in Mississippi for any pregnancy past six weeks. The fate of that bill is mentioned in the documentary. Operation Save America officials Jason Storms (current national director) and Rusty Thomas (former national director) are seen giving anti-abortion speeches.
Winstead doesn’t mince words when she describes the Operation Save America people who advocate for violence as “domestic terrorists.” As a sobering reminder of how abortion providers are targets for murder, there’s a scene in the movie that briefly features David Gunn Jr., the son of Dr. David Gunn Sr., who was murdered in 1993, in Pensacola, Florida, because Dr. Gunn was an abortion provider. David Gunn Jr. confronts anti-abortion protestors at a clinic and points out the hypocrisy of so-called pro-lifers who think it’s justified to murder abortion providers.
“No One Asked You” is not trying to solve the ongoing controversies over abortion. However, the documentary does a capable job of raising questions and awareness of how much control people in the United States might or might not want the government to have over their personal family planning. Because of the involvement of so many religious groups (mostly Christian) in trying to get abortion banned everywhere in the United States, these matters also involve concerns about separations between church and state. Ultimately, as long as these issues continue to be extremely divisive, there will never a resolution that will please everyone who has an opinion about abortion.
Ruthless Films released “No One Asked You” in select U.S. cinemas on October 18, 2024. Jolt premiered the movie on October 25, 2024.
Celebrating its 15th edition in 2024, the annual DOC NYC, which is headquartered in New York City, is one of the world’s leading documentary festivals, with a slate of more than 200 films (of which more than 100 are feature-length films) from a diverse array of topics. In 2024, DOC NYC takes place from November 13 to December 1, and continues the festival’s tradition of offering an outstanding variety of feature films and short films, with several of the movies focusing on under-represented people and marginalized communities. In-person screenings will take place at IFC Center, SVA Theatre and Village East by Angelika from November 13 to November 21. All of the festival’s movies will be available to view online to the general public from November 13 to December 1. Tickets are available on the official DOC NYC website.
For the fifth year in a row, DOC NYC is having competitions for U.S. documentaries, international documentaries and short films, among other categories. All competitive awards are voted for by appointed juries, except for the Audience Award.
“Black Box Diaries” (Photo courtesy of MTV Documentary Films)
DOC NYC’s annual Short List spotlights movies (features and shorts) that are considered top contenders to get Oscar nominations. This year, the Short List for features are “The Bibi Files,” “Black Box Diaries,” “Dahomey,” “Daughters,” “Ernest Cole: Lost and Found” “Frida,” “Mountain Queen: The Summits of Lhakpa Sherpa,” “No Other Land,” “Queendom,” “The Remarkable Life of Ibelin,” “Soundtrack to a Coup d’Etat,” “Sugarcane,” “Union” and “Will & Harper.” The Short List: Features jury gives awards in the categories of Director, Producer, Editor and Cinematographer. The Short List: Shorts jury gives a Director Award.
For the fifth year in a row, the festival is presenting DOC NYC’s Winner’s Circle collection, which spotlights movies that have won awards at other film festivals, but might be underrated or overlooked for Oscar nominations. Winner’s Circle documentaries this year are “Hollywoodgate,” “A New Kind of Wildnerness,” “Nocturnes,” “The Last of the Sea Women,” “Patrice: The Movie,”
DOC NYC, which was co-founded by Thom Powers and Raphaela Neihausen, also has special events in addition to screenings. Even though most of the movies at DOC NYC have had their world premieres elsewhere, DOC NYC has several world premieres of its own. A complete program can be found here.
With the help of golden retrievers and palomino horses at an animal therapy retreat, a group of Ukrainian children who had been abducted by the Russian army and rescued by their family members get a chance to heal. Deep in a forest by the Baltic Sea, the families portrayed in this tender and poetic film overcome their traumatic experiences. A timely cinematic reminder of what love and nature can do for the soul in a time of war.
“After the Rain: Putin’s Stolen Children Come Home”
Concerned about escalating tensions between Jewish and Black Brooklynites, the spiritual leaders of Congregation Beth Elohim in Park Slope and Antioch Baptist Church in Bed-Stuy embark on a radical experiment to bring the change they hope to see in their communities. The rabbi and the pastor lead delegations to their places of worship to learn from each other, but soon tensions emerge, testing their dreams of unity. Tackling their complex histories head on, these two New York City devotional institutions find communal traction, fighting side by side for justice and compassion.
Emmy-winning producer Wendy Lobel makes her feature debut with this side-splitting, piercingly perceptive look at anxiety through a group of contemporary comedians who channel their experiences into their acts…and their everyday lives. Part therapy, part behind-the-scenes take on stand-up acts, and all-brilliant, Lobel’s revelatory film is a rarity.
This insightful documentary delves into the life and work of Art Spiegelman, the Queens-raised artist who revolutionized comics by exploring dark, complex themes. Shaped by his Holocaust-survivor parents and inspired by MAD magazine’s irreverent satire, Spiegelman’s most famous work, MAUS, is a poignant Holocaust narrative that redefined the medium. The film showcases his resistance to fascism, from Nazis to Trump, and features rich illustrations from his comics, highlighting his significant impact as an artist and cultural critic.
A renowned and successful record company CEO, known for his brilliance—and his combativeness, Harvey Schein lived a rags-to-riches story that embodied the American Dream. But over time he also became obsessed with how to pass on his wealth to his heirs while avoiding taxes. Director Justin Schein turns the camera on his father as a case study in America’s long and problematic history of tax benefits for the wealthy. This timely film deftly interweaves complex family dynamics with American economic policy, illustrating how the rich stay rich and what it costs our country to keep them that way.
An archval photo of Harvey Schein and Justin Schein as a baby in 1968 in “Death & Taxes” (Photo courtesy of Shadowbox Films Inc.)
Linda and Carla each care for their beloved spouses who are living with Lewy body dementia. Eager to learn and share information with others, Linda starts a podcast with Curry, who has the disease, and a community of support groups begins to grow. Linda and Jim decide to go on an epic road trip, and Carla quits her job to devote her time to Patrick. As life becomes overwhelming, their online support group is a lifeline. Intimate, raw, and full of life, this moving portrait gracefully explores the stark realities of caregiving.
Bertolt Brecht asked whether there would be singing in the dark times. In the throes of war, the United Ukrainian Ballet Company defiantly insists there will be dancing, too. Far from the land they call home, young dancers take quiet comfort from art. For a while, their work feels like the old days, except there is a new troupe member: a soldier learning to dance with prosthetic legs.
With his witty wordplay and wacky props, Leo Gallagher became one of the biggest comedy acts of the 1980s. The comedian’s most famous bit: smashing a watermelon with a giant mallet to the messy delight of audiences. His signature act was a gift and a curse, shooting him to superstardom while breeding both dismissive detractors and imitators, including his own brother. As tastes change, the aging Gallagher seeks the respect he deserves as an innovator in the art of stand-up comedy.
“Gallagher” (Photo by Jeremy Portje/Telegraph Herald via AP)
From his harsh childhood in the burnt-out Lower East Side, musician Harley Flanagan burst onto the punk music scene at age 11 as drummer for his aunt’s band, the Stimulators. The founder of the Cro-Mags tells his inconceivable story, with interviews with hard rockers and icons like Flea, Ice-T, Henry Rollins, Michael Imperioli, and surprising guests. Featuring gritty footage of NYC’s downtown 1970s and ’80s music scene, this passionate film showcases Harley’s against-the-odds transformation from chaos to peace, driven by music, family, and personal growth.
“Isla Familia” Directed by Abraham Jimenez Enoa and Claudia Calviño
Co-director and protagonist Abraham Jiménez, one of the most important voices of Cuban independent journalism, is expecting a baby with his wife, producer/co-director Claudia Calviño. As they become more and more exhausted and depressed from the constant harassment of the Cuban government, the young family embarks on a journey off the island and become political exiles in Spain. A heartfelt, intimate look at daily life in Cuba and the measures taken by one family to protect their freedom.
Janis Ian had one of the most remarkable debuts in modern music history. At the age of 13, she began performing her original songs at New York City gigs alongside future legends. From there, the precocious teenager turned fearless singer-songwriter built a career with many chapters–winning Grammys while navigating personal and professional highs and lows–in a remarkable trajectory now entering its fifth decade. Ian’s emotionally transporting songbook and turbulent life story make compelling echoes for the generation of American women who came of age in the 1960s and 1970s, discovering and voicing their power.
In 1949, philosopher and novelist Simone de Beauvoir wrote the groundbreaking The Second Sex, launching a disruptive discourse on women’s oppression and second-class citizenship. This film dissects the origins and relevance of this bible of feminism, charting de Beauvoir’s fact-finding journey across the US to research her book. The timely and fascinating film honors de Beauvoir’s brilliance and limitations, connecting her revolutionary ideas to the pressing issues women face today.
This documentary paints a portrait of Paul Bridgewater, a quirky, charming, gay NYC art dealer who hitchhiked to Manhattan at 18, eventually becoming a beloved figure in the art world. As Paul preps gallery shows and cooks gourmet meals in his tiny East Village apartment, his passion for art shines. While his impeccable eye for discovering artistic talent shaped careers, his disregard for money ultimately would prove ruinous. A warm, nostalgic tribute to an eccentric art lover.
A community of mothers in a Nigerian village struggle to persevere while grieving for their daughters, who were kidnapped by Boko Haram. Intertwining the stories of multiple families, the filmmakers show how life continues in the wake of unspeakable horror. At once cinematically gripping and emotionally stirring, this story of endurance shows the ongoing personal ramifications of an event long forgotten by the news media.
What if you lived in a coastal city never knowing that the ocean hid a deadly poison? That’s exactly what LA residents did for decades, until a scientist alerted LA Times journalist Rosanna Xia to a problem ignored by officials for years. They discover that as many as half a million barrels of DDT waste had been dumped into the ocean, and are finally able to connect the dots between sick sea lions, a poisoned ecosystem, and the legacy of health issues in all who’ve been exposed.
After the Black Lives Matter movement sees an international tipping point in the summer of 2020, three young Minneapolis community leaders intersect in their local activism to preserve the legacy of George Floyd, fight systemic injustice, and strive for meaningful change. Jeanelle and her team of caretakers work to transform offerings from the recent uprising into artifacts for the Black historical archive; Robin works to replace the police with a new approach to community safety; and Toshira focuses on demanding justice and accountability for lives stolen by policing. These committed women find they must dig deep to disrupt complacency and reconcile nuanced contradictions within their own communities.
“It’s not every day that you meet an old Nazi.” So begins American historian Jonathan Petropoulos, recalling the day in 1998 when he met Bruno Lohse, who was Hermann Göring’s art agent in Paris during World War II. In this riveting account, Petropoulos details Lohse’s role in stealing countless masterpieces from prominent French and Dutch families, while evading meaningful punishment, and continuing to deal art profitably for most of the rest of his life. This explosively compelling tale calls the international art market to task for its continuing lack of regulation.
Just north of New York City, Sing Sing Correctional Facility is one of the country’s most notorious prisons. Veteran crime reporter Dan Slepian forges a bond with Jon-Adrian Velazquez, a man serving a 25-to-life sentence in the facility, that leads him on a two-decade-long journey for justice. Directed by Dawn Porter, this multi-part exposé featuring original investigative reporting and thorough research into over 1,000 hours of archival footage, chronicles the two men’s steadfast perseverance against a tragic failure of the American carceral system. Episodes 2 and 4 of the 4-part series will be screened.
“The Sing Sing Chronicles” (Photo courtesy of MSNBC_
This documentary exposes housing injustice in NYC, following the David-and-Goliath battles between ordinary renters and powerful developers. Through stories from neighborhoods across the boroughs, the film reveals the harsh realities of unsafe housing, unethical landlords, and an overwhelmed housing court system. It also uncovers a troubling pattern of desirably located properties being seized for luxury developments in low-income neighborhoods, often with the system’s complicity. Slumlord Millionaire is both empowering and sobering, highlighting grassroots activism in the fight against relentless gentrification.
Yankee Stadium has seen a plethora of legends over the franchise’s storied history, but few have left a legacy as unique as Jim Abbott’s. On September 4, 1993, the pitcher, who was born without a right hand, threw a no-hitter in front of the Yankee faithful. This astonishing achievement is merely one in a lifetime of perseverance, as Abbott continues to advocate for people with disabilities.
Astronaut Eileen Collins is the first woman to pilot and command the space shuttle. From her small town beginnings, she went on to smash many glass ceilings at NASA in her career, culminating in four dramatic and dangerous space shuttle missions. Through sensational archival materials and intimate interviews, Hannah Berryman’s nail-biting film considers the emotional drama Eileen’s family experienced, and a philosophical question about what level of risk is acceptable in human endeavor.
In the world of superstar fashion designers, Thom Browne stands apart with his theatrical runway shows, dramatic ready-to-wear creations, and eye-popping originality. From his headquarters in New York City’s Fashion District, Browne recounts his early breaks in the fashion world, how his work garnered support from celebrity fans such as Michelle Obama, Billie Eilish, Zendaya, Lebron James and Anna Wintour, and how his reconceptualization of the classic men’s business suit became his signature achievement. Sparkling highlights from Browne’s personal archives showcase the years of growing wit, edge, and mastery, all the while contrasted with Browne’s humble, gently welcoming persona.
In the 1970s, Satish Bhaskar became a turtle walker: He walked nearly the entire coastline of India and the spectacular Andaman and Nicobar Islands in search of sea turtles. Carrying a camera and a notepad, he documented turtles’ nesting areas and tried to save them from extinction. Then the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami struck, putting all his work and the creatures he loved in peril.
“Unearth” Directed by John Hunter Nolan; co-directors byAuberin Strickland and Dunedin Strickland
In the pristine Bristol Bay area of Alaska, two sets of siblings are alarmed when they learn of plans for the proposed Pebble Mine in the vicinity of their homes. The Salmon sisters, Native Alaskans, work on the regulatory front – pushing the federal EPA to block the project, and remaining hyper-vigilant to political pressures that could shift at any moment. The Strickland brothers, independent fishermen who know they could be just one mine accident away from losing their livelihood, probe closed-door meetings to expose the truth behind what the developer tells the public. Together, the Salmons and the Stricklands remind us never to quit until Goliath has fallen.
The intimate relationship that a photographer develops with the people whose photos he’s taking is at the heart of this film. New York-based Martin Schoeller won acclaim for his ultra close-up portraits of figures like George Clooney, Barack Obama, and Taylor Swift, yet here director Josephine Links focuses on his work featuring people who are not in the public eye, including homeless people and death row exonerees. Through testimonies from everyday people he’s interested in capturing, this documentary shows how some of us survive on the margins of society.
Culture Representation: Taking place in Las Vegas, the documentary film “Cirque du Soleil: Without a Net” (filmed from 2020 to 2021) features a predominantly white group of people (with a few African Americans) who are connected in some way to the Montreal-based live performance company Cirque du Soleil.
Culture Clash: The team behind Cirque du Soleil’s long-running “O” show prepares to make a comeback in Vegas after being shut down for more than a year because of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Culture Audience: “Cirque Du Soleil: Without a Net” will appeal mainly to people who are fans of Cirque du Soleil, acrobatic live performances, and documentaries about how businesses recovered from the COVID-19 pandemic.
A scene from “Cirque du Soleil: Without a Net” (Photo courtesy of Prime Video)
“Cirque du Soleil: Without a Net” is exactly what it appears to be: It’s a feel-good, occasionally dull promotional documentary about Cirque du Soleil’s “O” show return to Las Vegas after the COVID-19 pandemic. Only a few performers get personal profiles. Therefore, som viewers might be bored. This is the type of movie that should be seen on the biggest screen possible or viewers might quickly lose interest. Most of the documentary’s appeal is in the climactic scenes showing the spectacular results of the rehearsal footage that takes up most of the film.
Directed by Dawn Porter, “Cirque du Soleil: Without a Net” (which was filmed in 2020 and 2021) had its world premiere at the 2022 edition of DOC NYC but wasn’t released until nearly two years later on Prime Video. The movie’s epilogue wasn’t updated and still has wording as if 2023 is in the future. “Cirque du Soleil: Without a Net” also seems outdated in other areas too. The human stories behind the “O” show comeback hold the movie together when the footage about the show’s technicalities becomes repetitive and not very surprising.
“Cirque du Soleil: Without a Net” begins by explaining that “O” isn’t just the longest-running Cirque du Soleil show, but it’s also the highest-grossing show in live entertainment. Most people who’ve seen “O” probably wouldn’t be able to tell you what the show’s story is about, but they usually rave about the spectacle of it all. There really is no plot to “O,” which has themes of surrealism and romance inspired by water and by European and Eastern cultures.
It’s a performance extravaganza of acrobats, artistic swimmers, trapeze artists, bike riders and dancers doing eye-popping and difficult stunts in an elaborate production set, including a massive stage filled with water. Documentary viewers are told that “O” needs about 2,000 costumes—just to give you an idea of how big the production is. The music of “O” (composed by Benoit Jutras) has a blend of classical Western and world instrumentation.
“Cirque du Soleil: Without a Net” begins in March 2020, when the COVID-19 pandemic caused shutdowns and quarantines worldwide. As most people know, businesses that require in-person interactions and were deemed “non-essential businesses” were hit the hardest by the pandemic. All of Cirque du Soleil’s shows around the world suddenly came to a halt and were cancelled. Because of the COVID-19 pandemic, Cirque du Soleil (which is headquartered in Montreal) had to lay off more than 90% of its employees. The company also filed for bankruptcy.
Daniel Lamarre, who was Cirque du Soleil’s president/CEO at the time, is seen commenting during the start of these shutdowns: “I never felt in my life we’d have no shows—nothing … For a moment, I thought this was the end.”
It wasn’t the end, of course, but it was a very long hiatus: about 400 days. During this hiatus, many Cirque du Soleil employees had to find other jobs. Some could not return to the company when Las Vegas lifted many quarantine and mask policies, and live shows were allowed to resume. (Lamarre stepped down as Cirque du Soleil’s president/CEO in December 2021, and he was replaced by Stéphane Lefebvre.)
“Cirque du Soleil: Without a Net” shows the preparations made for “O” to resume in Las Vegas, with the re-opening set for August 2021. The “O” performers whose personal lives are featured include:
Amber Basgall, an acrobat who took gymnastics as a child to help cope with her attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder.
Danut Coserat, an artist coach who is a single father to two children.
Emma Garrovillo, an aerialist whose husband Jeffrey Garovillo is a Cirque du Soleil technician.
Rob Knowles, a dancer who fondly remembers his formative years when he and his brother would take dance classes together.
Bill May, an artistic swimmer who hopes to someday compete in the Olympics if or when men are allowed in artistic swimming for the Olympics.
Basgall has the most compelling personal story. During the COVID-19 pandemic, she was going through a difficult divorce. She also opens up about how the death of her brother (an Iraq War veteran who died when she was a teenager, after he returned home to the U.S.) has had a profound and lasting effect on her. She will only say that her brother died by gun violence. And during rehearsals, Basgall was dealing with anxiety issues, as well as some friction with her boyfriend Dre Brown.
Also featured in the documentary Cirque du Soleil employees who are not performers, such as senior artistic director Pierre Parisen, human performance manager Dan Niehaus, manager Joe Walsh, director of public relations Ann Paladie, hair/makeup technician Roger Stricker and senior company manager Tony Ricotta. The documentary only shows the personal lives of a select number of performers. And even then, it’s only fleeting, except for Basgall.
Most of the Cirque du Soleil employees who are identified by name in the documentary do not get enough screen time for viewers to find out anything meaningful about them as people. Also shown in “Cirque du Soleil: Without a Net” are acrobat Pierre Cottin, coach Al Light, carpentry supervisor Steve Dietrich, writer Franco Dragone, coach Kari Kreitzer, artistic director Christina Jones, acrobat Andriy Marchuk, diver Jorge Coseru, acrobat Artur Akhtiamov and coach Didier Antoine.
“Cirque du Soleil: Without a Net” shows the technicalities that go into producing the “O” show, but there’s nothing surprising about the behind-the-scenes preparations. Even the “race against time” to get the show running again in less than a month doesn’t seem too suspenseful. Watching “Cirque du Soleil: Without a Net” is a perfectly fine way to pass the time for people interested in this subject matter, but this is a very “play it safe” documentary that doesn’t go beyond what you might expect from a corporate-approved movie.
Prime Video premiere “Cirque du Soleil: Without a Net” on July 25, 2024.
Some language in French, Danish and Italian with subtitles
Culture Representation: Filmed in Europe, the United States and Asia, from 2009 to 2022, the documentary film “Apolonia, Apolonia” features an all-white group of people discussing the life and career of French Danish painter artist Apolonia Sokol.
Culture Clash: Sokol has various struggles in her personal and professional lives, including occasional poverty, self-doubt, and difficulties breaking into the male-dominated art world to become a paid professional.
Culture Audience: “Apolonia, Apolonia” will appeal primarily to people who are interested documentaries about struggling artists from a female perspective.
Apolonia Sokol in “Apolonia, Apolonia” (Photo courtesy of Grasshopper Film)
What does it really take to be an artist who struggles for years to get industry respect and professional wages? “Apolonia, Apolonia” gives viewers an insightful look at one such artist. Filmed between 2009 and 2022, this sprawling documentary is as much about painter artist Apolonia Sokol as it is about her friendship with director Lea Glob. These blurred lines sometimes give the film an uneven tone, but it’s still a fascinating watch.
“Apolonia, Apolonia” has its world premiere at the 2022 International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam. Throughout 2023, the movie made the rounds at several film festivals, including the BFI London Film Festival and DOC NYC. “Apolonia, Apolonia” also made it on the shortlist for the 2024 Academy Awards in the category of Best Documentary Feature.
The movie opens with a scene taking place in Paris in 2013. Sokol is shown in front of a bathroom mirror as she cuts her bangs and wears shaving cream where a moustache and a “soul patch” would be on her face. It’s the first indication that that Sokol is an unusual person.
Glob who is the documentary’s narrator, explains in a voiceover in the beginning of the documentary the reason why she decided to devote so many years to chronicling the life of Sokol: “For as long as I can remember, I’ve seen the world through my camera. But no motif has caught my eye as she did.” Glob also says she began filming Sokol from the day that she met Sokol in Paris in 2009, on Sokol’s 26th birthday.
Sokol, who is the only child of her parents, was born in Paris in 1983 to unconventional, artistic parents. Sokol’s mother Aleksandra Tlolka was a Polish immigrant whose parents were displaced under the rule of Joseph Stalin. Sokol’s father Hervé Breuil was a native of France. Long before social media existed, Tlolka and Breuil filmed themselves and their lives, which they kept archived on videotapes for Sokol watch as she grew up.
One video that her parents didn’t want her to see until she turned 18 was the sex video that her parents made that showed her being conceived. Snippets of some of these archived videos are shown in “Apolonia, Apolonia,” including the video of Sokol being born. It’s an example of how Sokol was literally born to be on camera. Her parents raised her among “artists, dissidents and activists” and continued to film their lives.
At the age of 8, Sokol’s life changed when her parents split up. Because her father’s name, not her mother’s name, was on the lease for the family home, Tlolka found herself and Sokol homeless when Tlolka moved out and took Sokol with her. They eventually found a place to live, but living in poverty had a profound effect on Sokol. Tlolka and Sokol moved to Denmark, where Sokol spent the rest of her childhood and part of her young adulthood
Years later, in 2009, the documentary shows Sokol once again on the verge of homelessness. She had moved back to Paris to live with in the Chateau Rouge area, a working-class neighborhood, in a ramshackle art theater called Lavoir Moderne Parisien, which used to be a laundromat. Her parents, although no longer a romantic couple, were business partners in the theater, which was on the verge of shutting down because the business was losing too much money. The parents were selling furniture and appliances in the building in an effort to raise money.
It was under these grim circumstances that Sokol met Glob, who gives her own personal background on what led her to become a filmmaker. Glob says that as a child, her grandfather was a painter artist who would pay her one euro and hour to let him paint her portrait. Instead of becoming interested in painting, Glob says she became interested in filmmaking.
While in film school, Glob was assigned to do a documentary about someone. She heard about an unusual aspiring painter who grew up in an art theater in Paris and who “wanted to walk in the footsteps of the great painters.” That aspiring painter was Sokol.
The documentary gives a raw and often intimate look at the highs, lows and everything in between in Sokol’s quest to become a professional artist. Sokol, whose specialty is painting portraits of people, experiences many expected roadblocks and uphill battles, including sexism, her own self-doubt, and trying to get gallery showings of her work without an agent.
Sokol’s journey takes her to various cities other than Paris, such as Copenhagen, New York City, Los Angeles, Istanbul and Rome. She enrolls in the elite École nationale supérieure des Beaux-Arts in Paris. When Sokol moves to Copenhagen, she has mixed feelings about returning to Denmark. Just like her mother, Sokol says that she feels more comfortable as an artist in Paris.
Things take an interesting turn when Sokol moves to Los Angeles and gets investment money, use of an art studio, and encouragement from art benefactor Stefan Simchowitz, who is introduced to Sokol by Sokol’s friend Isabelle Le Normand. Emmy-winning writer/producer Mike White (of HBO’s “The White Lotus”) makes a random appearance in the movie when Le Normand introduces him to Sokol.
At one point in the conversation with White, Sokol mentions that she and Simchowitz will be meeting with Harvey Weinstein. (This particular footage was obviously filmed before disgraced entertainment mogul Weinstein’s scandalous downfall in 2017.) The meeting with Weinstein is not mentioned again in the documentary.
Simchowitz becomes Sokol’s mentor, but there’s something a little “off” about this mentorship, because Simchowitz seems to be the type of investor to seek out young, attractive female artists and show them off like arm candy. When he and Sokol are at an event together, an eager young female artist approaches Simchowitz asks if her remembers her. Their conversation is brief and polite but slightly awkward. You can almost hear the other woman thinking about Simchowitz: “So this is your latest pretty young protégée.”
Sokol is completely financially dependent on Simchowitz during her stay in Los Angeles. He gives her constructive advice and introduces her to important people in the art world. But the underlying question that astute viewers will have but isn’t said out loud in the documentary is, “What does Simchowitz really want out of his relationship with Sokol?”
Sokol presents herself as a free spirit who doesn’t have any hangups about nudity in her art or by being naked herself on camera. Later, during her stay in Los Angeles, she spontaneously takes off all of her clothes and posing next to giant inflatable butt plug at an outdoor art exhibit, even though she risked getting arrested for indecent exposure.
For a while, Sokol seems caught up in the glitz and glamour of the Los Angeles art scene. She also gets an important gallery exhibit (with Simchowitz’s help) and learns the importance of having the right connections. But then, the movie shows her back in Copehagen again. What happened to Simchowitz and his enthusiastic support? The documentary never goes into details, so it can easily be assumed that Sokol and Simchowitz parted under uncomfortable circumstances that Glob chose not to put in the documentary.
That’s not the only information void in “Apolonia, Apolonia.” The movie takes a harrowing turn when Glob turns the camera on her own personal life, when she documents her recovery from a near-death experience that left her in a coma while she was pregnant and had to undergo an emergency C-section. Fortunately, her baby son Luca was born healthy and unharmed. Her recovery took months, but the documentary never gives details on what caused Glob’s serious injuries.
Sokol’s personal life also goes through a series of ups and downs. During the hardest times of her struggling artist years, her roommate and best friend was Oksana Shachko (born in 1987), an artist who was a refugee from Ukraine. In Paris, Sokol and Shachko were part of a tight-knit circle of feminists who supported each other and practiced left-wing politics. However, throughout their friendship Sokol expresses concern for Shachko’s mental health, because Sokol thinks Shachko has depression and anorexia.
Because “Apolonia, Apolonia” is primarily focused on Sokol as an artist, her love life doesn’t get much screen time. Early in the movie, a boyfriend named Max Lanos Plaquer breaks up with her o camera when she’s living in Paris. After much moving around in different countries, Sokol is seen with another boyfriend in Paris. At one point in the movie, Sokol and Shachko both say that they don’t want to have children.
As for Sokol as an artist, judging her talent is subjective, and she constantly grapples with her own insecurities and how other people perceive her. The documentary has some lingering shots of Sokol starting a painting and then showing the finished art, but the movie doesn’t take much time to explore how and why Sokol chooses the people whose portraits she paints. The people in her paintings are not interviewed either.
Despite the questions that remain unanswered by “Apolonia, Apolonia,” the documentary is a very compelling story of commitment to being an artist when facing much resistance, criticism and adversity. It’s a career where the odds are stacked against most people to get enough financial rewards to become full-time, professional artists. Sokol is the type of artist who doesn’t have a “backup plan” to switch careers if things get too tough for her. “Apolonia, Apolonia” shows the pain and tragedy as well as joy and hope during this 13-year period of Sokol’s life, which is not the kind of life that a lot of people would want to have, but it’s a life lived authentically.
Grasshopper Film released “Apolonia, Apolonia” in New York City on January 12, 2024. The movie was released in Denmark, Norway, Finland, and Spain in 2023. Documentary+ will premiere “Apolonia, Apolonia” on a date to be announced.
Some language in Arabic and Kurdish with subtitles
Culture Representation: Taking place mainly in Clarkston, Georgia, the documentary film “Refuge” features a racially diverse group of people (Asian, white and African American) who are working-class and middle-class residents of Clarkston and nearby cities.
Culture Clash: A former Ku Klux Klansman and a Muslim doctor of Syrian Kurd heritage become friends in Clarkston, a city that has a large population of immigrants from Asia and Africa.
Culture Audience: “Refuge” will appeal mainly to people who are interested in documentaries with frank discussions about racism and how former racists can be redeemed.
Amina Osman in “Refuge” (Photo by Tomesha Faxio/Shout! Studios)
“Refuge” is an inspiring story of how a community can heal from hate and how it’s never too late for people who’ve been terrible bigots to genuinely seek redemption. This documentary is centered in Clarkston, Georgia, but its life lessons are universal. The movie doesn’t shy away from difficult and uncomfortable conversations about racism. “Refuge” had its world premiere at DOC NYC in 2021.
Directed by Erin Bernhardt and Din Blankenship, “Refuge” mostly follows the story of the friendship between a former Ku Klux Klansman and U.S. Army veteran named Chris Buckley and a Muslim doctor of Syrian Kurd heritage named Heval Kelli. At the time that this documentary was filmed Buckley lived in Lafayette, Georgia, but he visits Clarkston often, since Kelli lives in racially diverse Clarkston, and Buckley has befriended many people in the Clarkston community.
In the documentary, Kelli describes Clarkston as having so many refugees from other countries, “It looks like a United Nations refugee camp.” It’s exactly the type of place that Buckley would’ve hated when he was a hardcore racist. Buckley was in the U.S. Army for 13 years, where he fought in the war in Afghanistan, which he says added fuel to his already existing hatred of Muslims and people who aren’t white. He was motivated to enlist in the Army after the 9/11 terrorist attacks.
Buckley says of his war experiences: “Every injury I sustained was by a Muslim.” he watched one of his best friend die in front of him. Buckley says that all he could think at the time was, “I hate the people who did this. All I know is that they’re Muslims.”
After getting out of the Army, Buckley became a leader in the Ku Klux Klan (one of the oldest white supremacist hate groups in the U.S.), which ordered him to get KKK tattoos. Buckley explains, “When I took over for the [KKK] head of security for the state of Georgia, they [KKK officials] said, ‘Look, you need to brand yourself.'”
Like many people who join hate groups, Buckley says he came from an abusive background. His alcoholic father used to beat him, and he was raised primarily by his grandmother. Buckley has also struggled with drug abuse, which is also a common trait of people who join hate groups.
Later in the documentary, Buckley reveals that what set him on a path to drug addiction was after her broke his back in a car accident. He was discharged from the military and got addicted to painkillers. “Opiates led to crystal meth,” he says. “In retrospect, I was alienating everyone who cared about me and was just ruining my life.”
What turned Buckley’s life around? He says that after we was arrested on drug charges, he went to court-ordered rehab. And he became a more devoted family man. His wife Melissa Buckley and their two children—son C.J. Buckley and daughter Miera Buckley—are also featured in the documentary. However, Melissa said the last straw for her was when Chris joined the KKK.
Through research on the Internet, Melissa found Arno Michaelis of the Forgiveness Project, a foundation devoted to helping people get out of hate groups and fostering healing relationships in communities that have been harmed by hate. Michaelis, who says he has been an ex-white supremacist since 1994, also describes himself as an extremist interventionist. He helped stage an intervention on Chris and continues to be in contact with the Buckley family.
Chris says about his current life as a former racist who has gotten clean and sober: “I’m the byproduct of someone’s act of kindness. I was undeserving of that. It set off a series of changes in my entire life.” Heval adds, “Chris is a reflection of the forgotten America.”
Chris’ military background has spilled over into how he raises his children. Chris says he taught his kids how to have tactical survival skills in the woods. But something he regrets doing now is taking his son C.J. to KKK meetings. Chris and his wife Melissa are teaching their children that Chris’ involvement in the KKK was a terrible mistake.
As for Kelli, he immigrated to the U.S. from Syria when he was 12 years old in September 2001, which was one of the worst months to be a Muslim in the United States. But even with anti-Muslim hate in America reaching new heights after the 9/11 terrorists attacks, Kelli says that there were many other Americans who proved that not all Americans are racist, xenophobic and Islamophobic.
Kelli remembers when he was 18 years old, “Southern Christians came knocking on our door. They came to welcome us to America. I knew then there was something special about this country.” Kelli had his own troubled history with his father. Heval Kelli’s mother Saaida Kelli describes Heval’s father as a lawyer who lived with depression.”
“Refuge” has footage of Chris and Heval doing speaking appearances together to talk about their friendship, as proof that it’s possible for bigots to stop the hate inside of themselves and get to know the types of people they used to hate. The documentary also takes a broader look at how Clarkston is an example of the changing demographics of the United States, a country that has had growing population of people of color.
The white supremacists who hate these changing demographics often like to ignore historical facts, such as the genocide of Native Americans, who lived on the land centuries before white colonialists invaded and took over the land. And most people in the U.S. who aren’t Native Americans can trace their ancestries back to people who immigrated to the United States. The city of Clarkston is a reminder that the United States is a country of immigrants from all over the world, so it’s fallacy to believe that only one race or one ethnicity should be superior to everyone else.
Ted Terry, who was mayor of Clarkston from 2014 to 2020, says in the documentary that he’s proud of Clarkston being so welcoming of immigrants, particularly refugees: “Less than one percent of refugees get invited to settle in one of the 17 countries in the developed world. It’s like winning the lottery.”
New American Pathways resettlement manager Safia Jama says, “An immigrant chooses to come here, but you never choose to be a refugee.” One of the more memorable Clarkston residents in the documentary is Amina Osman, a Somalian immigrant who was in her 90s at the time she was filmed for “Refuge.” She has the nicknames Ambassador of Clarkston, Queen of Clarkston and Mama Amina. “I like to be the mama of everyone,” she quips.
Also interviewed in the documentary are Rabbi Joshua Lesser of Bet Haverim in Atlanta and Pastor Crispin Ilombe Wilondja of Good Samaritan Lutheran Ministry at St. John’s Lutheran Church in Stone Mountain, Georgia. They talk about the horrific mosque shootings that happened in New Zealand in 2019. The “Refuge” filmmakers made a misstep by not having a Muslim clergyperson as part of this discussion, since so much of the documentary is about battling against anti-Muslim bigotry.
With a total running time of 80 minutes, “Refuge” tells its story clearly and concisely without feeling too rushed. Viewers will get a vibrant look at the multiculturalism that makes Clarkston a reflection of what so many other communities in America are or will become. And the message of “Refuge” is obvious: Bigots who want to go back to the shameful era when racial segregation in America was legal, or think that people should be persecuted for their religious beliefs, will continue to be in miserable denial. “Refuge” shows that those who have lives of racial tolerance (through actions, not just words) are more likely to have a healthier and happier outlook on life and are more likely to make positive impacts in their communities.
Shout! Studios released “Refuge” in select U.S. cinemas, on digital and VOD on March 24, 2023.
