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Sheffield DocFest · 2024

Sheffield DocFest 2024

People And Community

Programme

12 films · 4 reviews

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The Accidental President

When Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya put her name on the ballot alongside authoritarian Belarusian president Alexander Lukashenko she had no idea she would win. This is her story.

(Country: UK; Year: 2024; Director: Mike Lerner, Martin Herring)

Agent Of Happiness

Review preview for Agent Of Happiness

As the surveys continue, different ideas of happiness emerge along with moments of shared humanity.

Amber Wilkinson · 4 out of 5
Amber is one of the many agents working for the Bhutanese government to measure people’s happiness levels among the remote Himalayan mountains. But will he find his own along the way?

(Country: Bhutan, Hungary; Year: 2024; Director: Arun Bhattarai, Dorottya Zurbó)

Full review See: Arun Bhattarai and Dorottya Zurbó on their latest documentary collaboration

The Battle For Laikipia

Review preview for The Battle For Laikipia

The documentarians invested several years in the project and it pays off in this impressively balanced assessment of a conflict over land that has been exacerbated by climate change and drought.

Amber Wilkinson · 4.5 out of 5
Unresolved historical injustices and climate change raise the stakes in a generations-old conflict between Indigenous pastoralists and white landowners in Laikipia, Kenya, a wildlife conservation haven.

(Country: Kenya, US; Year: 2024; Director: Daphne Matziaraki, Peter Murimi)

Full review See: Peter Murimi and Daphne Matziaraki on striking in a balance in The Battle For Laikipia

The Contestant

Review preview for The Contestant

An intriguing piece of work which probes the psychology of contestant, producers and viewers alike.

Jennie Kermode · 4.5 out of 5
The story of a Japanese reality TV star left naked in a room for more than a year, tasked with filling out magazine sweepstakes to earn food and clothing.

(Country: UK; Year: 2023; Director: Clair Titley; Writer: Clair Titley; Stars: Tomoaki Hamatsu, Toshio Tsuchiya)

Full review See: Interview with Clair Titley about The Contestant

Daughters

Review preview for Daughters

For the most part the film comes across as a celebration of this moment as a light in the darkness, but it will likely leave some viewers additionally uncomfortable.

Jennie Kermode · 3.5 out of 5
Four young girls prepare for a special Daddy Daughter Dance with their incarcerated fathers, as part of a unique fatherhood program in a Washington, DC, jail.

(Country: US; Year: 2024; Director: Angela Patton, Natalie Rae)

Full review

Democracy Noir

(Country: US, Germany, Denmark; Year: 2024; Director: Connie Field; Stars: Katya Andrusz, Jordan Bardella, Malin Björk, Damian Boeselager, Daniel Freund, Paul Gosar, Balázs Hidvéghi, Jean-Claude Juncker, Kari Lake, Emmanuel Macron, Angela Merkel, Louis Michel, Péter Márki-Zay, Viktor Orbán, Vladimir Putin)

Pirópolis

A company of volunteer firefighters in the Chilean port city of Valparaiso battle wildfires, and witness political and social turmoil of a more man-made kind.

(Country: Chile; Year: 2024; Director: Nicolás Molina)

The Remarkable Life Of Ibelin

Mats Steen, a Norwegian gamer, died of a degenerative muscular disease at the age of 25. His parents mourned what they thought had been a lonely and isolated life, when they started receiving messages from online friends around the world.

(Country: Norway; Year: 2024; Director: Benjamin Ree; Stars: Kelsey Ellison, Zoe Croft, Paul Wild, Ed Larkin, Elena Pitsiaeli, Sebastian Tjørstad, John Andrew Mclay)

This Is Ballroom (Salão De Baile)

On the outskirts of Rio de Janeiro, the city’s top ballroom houses convene in a sweaty, euphonic competition, in this portrait of contemporary queer Brazil.

(Country: Brazil; Year: 2024; Director: Juru, Vitã)

Three Promises

The director's childhood in Palestine wasn’t something that he and his parents spoke of as a family, so when he found a box of his mother’s home videos from the early 2000s, an especially perilous and tumultuous period in the West Bank, the tapes became a means for remembering and comprehending a painful past.

(Country: Palestinian Territories; Year: 2023; Director: Yusef Srouji; Writer: Mahdokht Mahmoudabadi, Yusef Srouji)

The Trouble With Mr Doodle

The story of an extraordinary boy born into an ordinary family in an unremarkable English town and how a childhood passion threatened to take over his life, his home and his mind.

(Country: UK; Year: 2024; Director: Ed Perkins, Jaimie D'Cruz; Stars: Morgan Davies, Sam Cox, Neil Cox)

We Can Be Heroes

A group of neurodivergent, queer, and self-proclaimed nerdy teenagers find solace at a LARP (live action role play) summer camp. They discover inner strength, heal from traumas, and emerge as their own heroes: both in fantasy and in reality.

(Country: US; Year: 2024; Director: Carina Mia Wong, Alex Simmons; Stars: Adelaide Eli)