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Tribeca Festival · 2019

Tribeca Festival 2019

Documentary Competition

Programme

12 films · 4 reviews

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17 Blocks

Review preview for 17 Blocks

There's a searing honesty and immediacy about the footage.

Amber Wilkinson · 4 out of 5
Using two decades of intimate home video, 17 Blocks tells the story of the Sanford family, whose struggles with addiction and gun violence eventually lead to a journey of love, loss, and acceptance.

(Country: US; Year: 2019; Director: Davy Rothbart; Writer: Jennifer Tiexiera)

Full review See: Davy Rothbart on the challenges of making 17 Blocks

World premiere

The Dog Doc

Review preview for The Dog Doc

Meehl puts her animal subjects at ease and is relaxed enough with her human ones that they sometimes - Goldstein included - say a little bit more than they might have meant to.

Jennie Kermode · 2.5 out of 5
Called a maverick, a miracle-worker, and a quack, Dr Marty Goldstein is a pioneer of integrative veterinary medicine. By holistically treating animals after other vets have given up, Goldstein provides a last hope for pet owners with nothing left to lose.

(Country: US; Year: 2019; Director: Cindy Meehl)

Full review

World premiere

For They Know Not What They Do

When the Supreme Court legalised marriage equality, the backlash by the religious right was swift, severe, and successful. Karslake's documentary looks at four faith-based families with LGBTQ children caught in the crosshairs of sexuality, identity, and scripture.

(Country: US; Year: 2019; Director: Daniel G Karslake; Stars: Gene Robinson, Sarah McBride, Victor Febo, Sally McBride, Rob Robertson, David McBride, Harold Porcher, Coleen Porcher, Linda Robertson, Elliot Porcher, Annette Febo, Gene Robinson, Sarah McBride, Victor Febo, Sally McBride)

World premiere

Leftover Women

In China, single women are under immense pressure to marry young or face the stigma that comes with being “leftover.” Through marriage markets, matchmakers, and government-sponsored dating festivals, Leftover Women follows three hopeful singles seeking to define love on their own terms.

(Country: Israel; Year: 2019; Director: Shosh Shlam, Hilla Medalia; Writer: Shosh Shlam, Hilla Medalia)

World premiere

Mystify: Michael Hutchence

Michael Hutchence was flying high as the lead singer of the legendary rock band INXS until his untimely death in 1997. Richard Lowenstein’s kinetic yet intimate documentary examines Hutchence’s deeply felt life through his many loves and demons.

(Country: Australia; Year: 2019; Director: Richard Lowenstein; Writer: Richard Lowenstein; Stars: Michael Hutchence)

World premiere

Our Time Machine

Conceptual artist and puppeteer Ma Liang begins work on an ambitious performance piece about time and memory. For collaboration, he turns to his father, a former director of the Shanghai Chinese Opera, who is beginning to lose his own memories.

(Country: China, US; Year: 2019; Director: S Leo Chiang, Yang Sun, Shuang Liang; Writer: S Leo Chiang)

World premiere

Recorder: The Marion Stokes Project

Review preview for Recorder: The Marion Stokes Project

Wolf and his top-notch editor Keiko Deguchi build a picture of both a life consumed by news and the way that news has, in some ways, come to consume all our lives with its 24-hour cycle.

Amber Wilkinson · 3.5 out of 5
Beginning in the 1970s, Marion Stokes recorded an incredible 70,000 VHS tapes of unfiltered daily television. At the time, her compulsion raised eyebrows, but revisited through the lens of today’s media landscape, Stokes’ unusual life’s work becomes an extraordinary archive of television — and American — history.

(Country: US; Year: 2019; Director: Matt Wolf)

Full review

World premiere

Rewind

An unflinching personal narrative that reconstructs the unthinkable story of director Sasha Joseph Neulinger’s boyhood and bravely exposes the dynamics of abuse passed through generations.

(Country: US; Year: 2019; Director: Sasha Joseph Neulinger)

World premiere

Scheme Birds

As her childhood turns into motherhood, teenage troublemaker Gemma comes of age in her fading Scottish steel town. But in a place where “you either get knocked up or locked up,” innocent games can easily turn into serious crime.

(Country: Sweden, UK; Year: 2018; Director: Ellen Fiske, Ellinor Hallin; Writer: Ellen Fiske, Ellinor Hallin)

World premiere

Seahorse (Seahorse: The Dad Who Gave Birth)

Review preview for Seahorse

Finlay has a good eye for the details that help us connect to people and places.

Jennie Kermode · 4 out of 5
Charts a transgender man’s path to parenthood after he decides to carry his child himself. The pregnancy prompts an unexpected and profound reckoning with conventions of masculinity, self-definition and biology.

(Country: UK; Year: 2019; Director: Jeanie Finlay)

Full review See: Interview with Freddy McConnell about Seahorse: The Dad Who Gave Birth

World premiere

Watson

Founder of Greenpeace and Sea Shepherd, Captain Paul Watson has spent 40 years fighting to end the destruction of the ocean’s wildlife and its habitat. Part pirate, part philosopher, Watson’s methods stop at nothing to protect what lies beneath.

(Country: US, Costa Rica, Tonga; Year: 2019; Director: Lesley Chilcott)

World premiere

A Woman's Work: The NFL's Cheerleader Problem

Football and feminism collide in this documentary that follows former NFL cheerleaders battling the league to end wage theft and illegal employment practices that have persisted for 50 years.

(Country: US; Year: 2019; Director: Yu Gu; Writer: Elizabeth Ai)

World premiere