Tagged Doc/Fest 2015

A record producer by trade, Jayson Jackson's first film project is What Happened, Miss Simone?, a frank and intimate exploration of Nina Simone. We sat down with Jackson at the end of Sheffield Doc/Fest to...

At first glance, Tell Spring Not To Come This Year feels like more of what we’ve already seen in war documentaries like Sebastian Junger’s Restrepo and Korengal. We see soldiers relaxing in the barracks or...

In A Sinner in Mecca, director Parvez Sharma documents his Hajj pilgrimage to Mecca - knowing that, as an openly gay man, he could be executed just for setting foot in Saudi Arabia. We sat down with Sharma...

There are two things that every university student must do, says young idealist Zhao Changtong: get a job in the students’ union, and fall in love. It sounds like pretty standard practice for students...

The debate about drones is only in its infancy, but Drone proves that there’s plenty of discussion to be had. Interviews with former drone pilots in the US and human rights lawyers in Pakistan highlight...

The first time we meet young Ukranian artist Fedor Alexandrovich, he’s producing a play called Dreams of a Ridiculous Man. It’s an apt description of Fedor himself. With his wild eyes and unkempt facial...

Doc/Fest was made for films like Orion: The Man who would be King – stories so ridiculous and unbelievable that they must be true. The archival footage of singer and Elvis sound-alike Jimmy Ellis gyrating...

Given that, in the words of director Michelle Coomber, Britain "voted itself back into the 1980s" last month, Generation Right could hardly feel more timely. Coomber interviews academics, activists and...

Imagine Richard Curtis directed Catfish and you’ll have some idea of what Lia Jaspers’ Match Me! is all about. We follow three people as they try various methods of finding a partner. Johanna attends a...

In a way, it will always be "too soon" for a documentary about the tragic elementary school shooting in Newtown, Connecticut. Jezza Neumann’s film shows a community ripped apart by the cataclysmic event,...

One imagines Brad Bird would be very enamoured with Moss and Galison’s work – there are parallels to be drawn between the message of Tomorrowland and the tone of this documentary about the disposal of...

The opening credits of Falciani’s Tax Bomb look like Wes Anderson made Catch Me if You Can. Much like the rest of the film, it’s a stylish little sequence that ultimately doesn’t really tell...

If it’s true that the act of observing something changes the nature of the thing being observed, it’s equally true that it changes the observer. In Spectres of the Shoah, director Claude Lanzmann...

“A feel-good film about depression” isn’t the easiest of sales pitches, but it’s an apt description of Good Girl. It’s bleak subject material, not least in depicting Solveig’s treatment by...

After exploring the gay Muslim community in A Jihad for Love, filmmaker Parvez Sharma turns the camera on himself as he clandestinely films his pilgrimage to Mecca. Sharma's journey shines a light on Saudi...