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New York Film Festival · 2019

New York Film Festival 2019

Spotlight On Documentary

Programme

13 films · 7 reviews

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45 Seconds Of Laughter

Documentary about The Actors' Gang Prison Project.

(Country: US; Year: 2019; Director: Tim Robbins; Stars: Tim Robbins, Sabra Williams, Jeremie Loncka, Tim Robbins, Sabra Williams, Jeremie Loncka)

63 Up

Follow-up documentary about a group of people who have talked about their lives on camera at intervals across the decades since their childhoods.

(Country: UK; Year: 2019; Director: Michael Apted; Stars: Lynn Johnson, Tony Walker, Nicholas Hitchon, Charles Furneaux, Suzanne Dewey, Peter Davies, Jacqueline Bassett, Bruce Balden, John Brisby, Neil Hughes, Symon Basterfield, Susan Sullivan, Andrew Brackfield, Paul Kligerman, Lynn Johnson)

See: Michael Apted in conversation with Anne-Katrin Titze at the Film Forum US theatrical première of 63 Up , Michael Apted in conversation on growing up, Coronation Street, Wild Strawberries, Paul Almond, and 63 Up , DOC NYC Visionaries Tribute Lifetime Achievement and Critics Choice Documentary Landmark Award honouree Michael Apted in conversation on 63 Up

Bitter Bread

Review preview for Bitter Bread

This is a bald recording of the lives being lived and the stoicism needed to keep going even in these most grim of circumstances.

Amber Wilkinson · 3.5 out of 5
Documentary about a community of refugees living in a tent camp in Lebanon’s Beqaa Valley.

(Country: Lebanon, Iraq, France; Year: 2019; Director: Abbas Fahdel)

Full review

The Booksellers

Review preview for The Booksellers

This is an immersive tour of bookselling and collecting that breezes along as pleasantly as a beach read, while still carrying with it chapter and verse.

Amber Wilkinson · 4 out of 5
A tour of New York’s book world, past and present.

(Country: US; Year: 2019; Director: DW Young; Stars: Parker Posey, Fran Lebowitz, Rebecca Romney, Susan Orlean, Gay Talese, Nicholas D. Lowry, Nancy Bass Wyden, Zack Hample, Syreeta Gates, Bibi Mohamed, Adina Cohen, Arthur Fournier, Adam Weinberger, Tom Lecky, Jay Walker)

Full review

Born To Be

Review preview for Born To Be

Born To Be is an important contribution to public understanding.

Jennie Kermode · 4 out of 5
Documentary, charting the emotional and physical journey of surgical transitioning, as experienced by patients at New York’s Mount Sinai Hospital.

(Country: US; Year: 2019; Director: Tania Cypriano; Stars: Leiomy Maldonado, Jess Ting, Mahogany Phillips, Devin Benitez, Jordan Rubenstein, Cashmere, Shawn Frederick Sr., Leiomy Maldonado, Jess Ting, Mahogany Phillips, Devin Benitez, Jordan Rubenstein, Cashmere, Shawn Frederick Sr.)

Full review

Bully. Coward. Victim. The Story of Roy Cohn

Documentary about the life and death of Roy Cohn, the closeted, conservative American lawyer whose first job out of law school was prosecuting filmmaker Ivy Meeropol’s grandparents, Julius and Ethel Rosenberg.

(Country: US; Year: 2019; Director: Ivy Meeropol)

College Behind Bars

Four-part documentary charting incarcerated students as they work for exams.

(Country: US; Year: 2019; Director: Lynn Novick)

Cunningham

Review preview for Cunningham

With searing use of colour and that sense of joy in physicality that was key to the master's work, this is a film that you will find it very hard to look away from.

Jennie Kermode · 5 out of 5
Profile of choreographer Merce Cunningham.

(Country: Germany, France, US; Year: 2019; Director: Alla Kovgan; Writer: Alla Kovgan)

Full review See: Rashaun Mitchell and Silas Riener in conversation on the choreography of Merce Cunningham and the 3D for Cunningham , Alla Kovgan in conversation on Merce Cunningham, Rei Kawakubo, Robert Rauschenberg, John Cage, Carolyn Brown, Hauschka, and the 3D for Cunningham

Free Time

Restored documentary capturing New York life in the Sixties.

(Country: US; Year: 2019; Director: Manfred Kirchheimer)

My Father And Me

Review preview for My Father And Me

An intimate story of a relationship between a son and his father, a personal documentary, therapeutic session and a memento for British history.

Mateusz Tarwacki · 4 out of 5
The filmmaker charts his relationship with his humanist-pacifist father, Maurice Broomfield, a factory worker turned photographer.

(Country: UK; Year: 2019; Director: Nick Broomfield)

Full review

Santiago, Italia

Nanni Moretti tells the story of the efforts of the Italian Embassy to save and relocate citizens targeted by the fascist Pinochet regime in Chile.

(Country: Italy, France, Chile; Year: 2018; Director: Nanni Moretti; Writer: Nanni Moretti)

State Funeral

Review preview for State Funeral

What the cumulative effect of masterfully restored newsreel may lack in action, it more than makes up for with the numbing, slow-burn sensation of being drawn under the spell of state-orchestrated mass mourning.

Matthew Anderson · 4 out of 5
Documentary based on footage from March 5 - 9, 1953, when the USSR mourned and buried Joseph Stalin.

(Country: Netherlands, Lithuania; Year: 2019; Director: Sergei Loznitsa; Writer: Sergei Loznitsa)

Full review