The filmmaking team behind 2016's critically acclaimed, BAFTA nominated Weiner, proved that they were adept at capturing rivetingly unselfconscious, humanising, and often very funny, footage of the former Congressman turned New York mayoral hopeful Anthony Weiner. Next for The Fight, directors Eli B. Despres, Josh Kriegman and Elyse Steinberg, joined by executive producer Kerry Washington,... Continue Reading →
Film Review: Welcome to Chechnya ★★★★
Oscar-nominated filmmaker and journalist David France follows his searing AIDS activism documentary, How to Survive a Plague, and the poignant The Death and Life of Marsha P. Johnson, with a deeply unsettling look at Chechnya’s anti-LGBTQ purge. Inspired by Masha Gessen's The New Yorker article Forbidden Letters: The Gay Men Who Fled Chechnya’s Purge, Welcome... Continue Reading →
Exclusive Interview: queer Mexican filmmaker Bruno Santamaría on his delicate portrait of gender expression Things We Dare Not Do “it was a very personal movie & it changed my life”
Selected to play at Mexico's cancelled Guadalajara Film Festival in March, queer director, cinematographer and co-editor Bruno Santamaría's hauntingly beautiful Things We Dare Not Do/Cosas que no hacemos finally premiered in the World Showcase section at the 2020 Hot Docs Canadian International Documentary Festival, which ran online from May 28th until June 6th. Following his... Continue Reading →
2020 US Human Rights Watch Film Festival goes digital June 11-20th
The Human Rights Watch Film Festival has announced its first full digital edition. Available nationwide in the USA June 11th - 20th 2020, it will feature free live in-depth online discussions for each of the 11 films with filmmakers, documentary subjects, and Human Rights Watch researchers. The line-up includes David France's Sundance and Teddy award-winning... Continue Reading →
Film Review: Socks on Fire ★★★
It’s easy to see why queer poet and filmmaker Bo McGuire’s feature debut Socks On Fire took home Tribeca’s jury award for Best Documentary Feature this week. Due to world premiere at the postponed festival, the film is at once a lyrical, inventively told, deeply personal portrait of McGuire’s Southern family, a hymn to the women who shaped... Continue Reading →
Film Review: P.S. Burn This Letter Please ★★★★★
Update: P.S. Burn This Letter Please is now streaming in the US on Discovery+. The outstanding feature documentary P.S. Burn This Letter Please, which was due to world premiere at this month’s Tribeca Film Festival, uncovers the history of New York’s drag queens of the 1950s and '60s. Following the discovery of a box of... Continue Reading →
DOC NYC 2019 Film Review: Killing Patient Zero ★★★★
This Sunday 10th November sees the United States premiere of Laurie Lynd’s Killing Patient Zero at DOC NYC in New York. It’s a compelling exploration of how a French Canadian flight attendant, Gaetan Dugas, came to be branded by the media as ‘Patient Zero’ and was widely blamed for bringing the HIV virus into the... Continue Reading →
DOC NYC 2019 Film Review: I’m Gonna Make You Love Me ★★★★★
Karen Bernstein’s I’m Gonna Make You Love Me received its world premiere at DOC NYC, America’s largest documentary film festival, in New York tonight. The deeply personal, artfully executed film weaves archive footage, photographs, classic movie clips and talking head interviews to paint an intimate portrait of Brian Belovitch. Assigned male at birth, Belovtich transitioned... Continue Reading →
NewFest 2019 Film Review: Queer Japan ★★★★1/2
Graham Kolbeins' documentary, Queer Japan, is packed with accounts of experiences and ideas from members of the LGBTQ community in Japan, the result of more than 100 interviews over three years. It gives insight into the lives of interesting and unconventional people who are challenging social norms for themselves and others. For all its outward... Continue Reading →
