With over 60 features, this year’s annual showcase for non-fiction film promises a very packed five-day program. While some higher-profile documentaries were unavailable for preview, DCist staff sampled a dozen of this year’s titles, and even if there’s no obvious knockout like the 2013 breakout The Act of Killing, the festival looks as strong as ever. AFI Docs runs from June 14-18, with screenings at Landmark E Street Cinema, the AFi Silver, and the Newseum. See the complete schedule here.
(AFI Docs)
Watching Dom Chico struggle to refurbish the movie house his father once owned, it’s difficult not to think of last year’s festival offering Cinema, Mon Amour. Outside of taking place in Brazil rather than Romania, both films juxtapose the ethereal magic of the silver screen with the blood, sweat, and tears it takes to maintain a brick and mortar theater space. Where last year’s film found a winsome charm in the reconstruction’s stumbling blocks, Cine Sao Paulo is a little lower-fi, really getting into the nitty-gritty of an undertaking this taxing. Directors Ricardo Martensen and Felipe Tomazelli intercut majestic images from classic films with endearing anecdotes from Chico about the theater’s rich history, but the real meat and potatoes is in the sacrifices theater owners and workers make in order to project escapism for the masses. This documentary may make you think twice the next time you see a film on Christmas or encounter a bedraggled theater employee having a long day. —Dominic Griffin
Watch the trailer.
Saturday, June 17th at 1:30 p.m. at The AFI Silver Theatre and Sunday, June 18th at 6:45 p.m. at Landmark’s E Street Cinema.
(AFI Docs)
Spanish director Chico Pereira follows a particularly harebrained adventure with his 73-year-old uncle, Manuel Molera. The retiree has always enjoyed long walks through the countryside with his favorite donkey, Gorrión, and his dog, Zafrana, so he comes up with the ultimate quest—taking the animals across the Atlantic to the U.S., where together they’ll walk the length of the Trail of Tears. In Molera’s mind, there’s just one obstacle—somehow shipping the donkey across the ocean. As the title suggests, Pereira’s uncle has more than a little bit in common with Cervantes’ iconic character (watch out for windmills). But instead of offering any opinion or telling the story through his own relationship with his uncle, Pereira merely serves as an observer, accompanying Molera on his preliminary journey and listening to him talk to his animals as friends and try to explain his plan to all the dumbfounded humans along the way.—Elena Goukassian
Watch the trailer.
Thursday, June 15 at 6:45 p.m. at AFI Silver Theatre and Friday, June 16 at 8:15 p.m. at. E Street Cinema.
(AFI Docs)
Is there anybody out there? That question will most likely be answered by a school bus-sized vehicle currently floating through the outer solar system. Launched in 1977, NASA’s Voyager is meant to explore deep space for millennia. How do you create a vehicle so resilient, and what do you put on it should aliens ever wonder what kind of creatures launched this intrepid vessel? Through interviews with scientists and engineers, archival footage, and stunning images from beyond our tiny planet, The Farthest tells the fascinating story behind one of the greatest feats in astrophysical engineering.—Lauren Landau
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Sunday June 18 at 12:00 p.m. at Landmark E Street Cinema.
(AFI Docs)
Directors Jeremy S. Levine and Landon Van Soest open their film in a courtroom, where a judge tells 17-year-old Daje Shelton that she must transfer to an alternative high school in order to graduate. Like a lot of poor black kids in the St. Louis area, she was labeled a “bad kid” early on and always found herself in trouble. For Ahkeem, narrated by Shelton, tells the story of her eventful last two years in high school. As she struggles to pass her classes, Shelton becomes pregnant, a friend is shot and killed, and her boyfriend’s minor drug-related offense haunts his future prospects. The film’s star is an extremely likeable young woman who often sings to herself while walking down the street and is driven to make the world a better place for herself and her son, Ahkeem. In fact, everyone in the film is sympathetic, at least in part due to the filmmakers’ rare access to some of its subjects’ most personal, moving, and profound conversations. The dialogue is so intimate (and the cinematography so beautiful) that at times this documentary seems like fiction, but it’s not. It’s a true story of real kids, who remain totally silent while watching the news of Trayvon Martin’s murder on TV and later show each other their own bullet wounds.—Elena Goukassian
Watch the trailer.
Thursday, June 15 at 1:45 p.m. at AFI Silver Theatre and Friday, June 16 at 9:15 p.m. at E Street Cinema.
(AFI Docs)
After the Brexit vote and the election of Donald Trump, many in the Western hemisphere have grown to fear the political outsider and the idea of populism. But in India in 2013, a former accountant named Arvind Kejriwal became a hero in the Delhi local elections, leading his fledgling Aam Aadmi Party (“Common Man’s Party”) to victory against the increasingly corrupt Indian National Congress party. An Insignificant Man chronicles the first two years of Kejriwal’s populist party, one that started as an anti-corruption campaign and grew into a political contender, promising to cut bloated electricity bills by half and providing free water to every household—two promises it was actually able to achieve. The film serves as a glowing example of outsiders and populism working in a way that truly benefits ordinary citizens, all led by a humble leader who refers to himself as “an insignificant man.” —Elena Goukassian
Watch the trailer.
Saturday, June 17 at 11 a.m. at AFI Silver Theatre.
(AFI Docs)
Filmmaker Dustin Harrison-Atlas set out to follow his brother-in-law Frank Linn as he opened his own restaurant, Frankly…Pizza!, but ended up with a dual narrative exploring Aaron Silverman’s concurrent project Rose’s Luxury. Within this top to bottom, prismatic look at how both of these District eateries go from loose concept to physical reality, Harrison-Atlas has created an exploded diagram take on every HGTV series or Food Network special, pleasing foodies and lovers of quick turnaround construction projects alike. More so than the economic logistics of running a business, it’s a touching look at the interconnected elements of the service industry as a whole, from chefs to staff to owners’ spouses, up to the critics who ultimately pass judgement on the finished product. It’s both thrilling and exhausting to see the agony and self-stretching it takes to bring such dreams to their logical conclusion as a group text dinner suggestion.—Dominic Griffin
Watch the trailer.
Friday, June 16th at 4:00 p.m. at Landmark’s E Street Cinema and Sunday, June 18th at 4:00 p.m. at The AFI Silver Theatre
(AFI Docs)
The power of Adel Khan Farooq and Ulrik Imtiaz Rolfsen’s haunting portrait of alleged Norwegian ISIS recruiter Ubaydullah Hussain lies not in sensationalist exploration of Islamic extremism, but in the absolute banality of his life. For much of the film, Hussain is seen as a casually charming screen presence, extolling his interpretation of Islam with elan and poise. The film lulls you into his hypnotic charm before clearly drawing connections between Hussain’s acquaintances and terror attacks that have occurred in the last few years. Late in the narrative, Farooq and Rolfsen’s footage is seized by Norway’s secret police and the documentary turns into a low-key treatise on free speech, falling off the rails despite that theme’s relevance. But it’s in seeing Hussain’s true nature, the film finds intrigue and resonance, familiarizing a perspective typically shrouded in cinematic otherness.—Dominic Griffin
Watch the trailer.
Friday, June 16th at 8:45 p.m. at Landmark’s E Street Cinema.
(AFI Docs)
RUMBLE: THE INDIANS WHO ROCKED THE WORLD
This solid rock documentary about the unsung role of Native Americans in pop music history takes its name from the signature instrumental hit by Link Wray. Born in North Carolina in 1929, his family moved to the D.C. area in 1955; but that’s a story for another film. Wray is profiled alongside artists like The Band’s Robbie Robertson, jazz singer Mildred Bailey, bluesman Charley Patton, and others. The movie doesn’t seem to have much of a common thread until the penultimate profile; in contrast to celebrating Wray’s impact on rock ‘n’ roll, the story of ’70s guitarist Jesse Ed Davis is a more cautionary tale of a musician with Comanche and Kiowa roots whose time as a session musician led him on a destructive path to drug addiction, which ended his life in 1988. Rumble is not comprehensive—it doesn’t tell the stories of Alaska soul man Archie James Cavanaugh, or the artists compiled on Light in the Attic’s essential Native North America anthology, but this will introduce you to some new faces and recontextualize old ones.—Pat Padua
Watch the trailer.
Friday, June 16 at 6:30 p.m. at Landmark E Street Cinema.
Michael Zahs (Northland Films)
Frank and Indiana Brinton were entertainment pioneers who put on magic lantern and early motion picture programs in America’s heartland in the late 19th century. This wonderful documentary by Tommy Haines and Andrew Sherburne provides an impressive glimpse of what was then a newfangled spectacle. But as the title suggests, the real subject of this film is the quest, and its quixotic dreamer, the endearing Michael Zahs, who discovered the Brinton collection in a basement and spent 32 years trying to find someone who thought it mattered (disclosure: part of this documentary was shot at the National Audio-Visual Conservation Center in Culpeper, part of the Library of Congress, where I work, but I was not involved in the projects depicted in the film.) . Watching this documentary, you wonder why it took him so long to persuade anyone; he’ll have you eating out of his hand as soon as you learn that he takes in stray animals on his Iowa farm (this revelation appears about 30 seconds into the movie). As someone who tries to keep readers informed of 35mm film screenings in town, of course I would say this ode to film preservation is a must-see. But that’s thanks to Zahs and his remarkable character, gentle but persevering in the face of indifference.—Pat Padua
Watch the trailer.
Saturday, June 17 at 4:15 p.m. at the AFI Silver and Sunday, June 18 at 4:15 p.m. at Landmark E Street Cinema
(AFI Docs)
Staging a play is hard work. But when the professionals do it, at least they have a script and (ideally) a team that’s ready to work. In a small town on a Tuscan hilltop, all the world is a stage, but not enough of the men and women are players. For the past 50 years, the residents here have written a play about their lives, performing it for an audience that comes from miles around to see the annual spectacle. But the founders of this tradition are getting older, the young people in town aren’t interested, and some of the people who have signed up are far from reliable. On top of issues with casting, the producers have to create a stage with little money for materials, and they face a creative problem: When writing a play about small-town life, what can be said that hasn’t already been done? The townspeople struggle to write, rehearse, and stage the big show, while dealing with a financial crisis that threatens their way of life. As summer nears, the dedicated members of this community troupe toil and troubleshoot to pull it all off by opening night. As with life, the show must go on.—Lauren Landau
Saturday, June 17 at 9:30 p.m. at AFI Silver Theatre and Sunday, June 18 at 11:15 a.m. at Landmark E Street Cinema.
(AFI Docs)
When Chinese parents end up in prison, the shame of their crimes can make even the children pariahs in their own families. If their extended families can’t afford to take care of the youngsters, such children find a home at Sun Village, a school for children of the incarcerated. Despite its many adult staff members, Sun Village is largely set up like a commune for kids, where older residents take care of (and sometimes discipline) the younger ones. Waiting for the Sun follows a handful of children living in the village, some newcomers and others longtime residents. The film acknowledges that the crimes of these children’s parents are often horrendous—one parent murdering the other is tragically the most common offense, and in one case was witnessed by their young kids. A few surviving parents appear speaking to their kids during visitation hours in prison or reuniting with them years after their convictions. Despite these tragic backstories, Sun Village seems to really help these kids, providing them with all their basic needs, an education, and a community of fellow youngsters who have experienced similarly unspeakable traumas. —Elena Goukassian
Watch the trailer.
Thursday, June 15 at 6:15 p.m. at E Street Cinema and Friday, June 16 at 11:15 a.m. at AFI Silver Theatre.
(AFI Docs)
It took years for court videographer and filmmaker Jairus McLeary to earn the respect necessary to film The Work, which won the award for best documentary at SXSW. Set in a single room in Folsom Prison, the film shows the incredible process that occurs over the course of a four-day-long intensive group therapy session. Men from the outside enter the secure grounds to find healing and growth alongside gang members, thieves, murderers, and worse—some have truly committed unspeakable acts of violence. From start to finish, The Work puts intense vulnerability and raw emotion on display. The session’s trained facilitators know how to get hardened criminals to soften. The emotions will hit you like a train, and come just as quickly. Extreme feelings of discomfort may follow. They share, scream, cry, and hold one another, sometimes physically piling on. It’s a lot to handle, but so is life. —Lauren Landau
Thursday, June 15 at 2:45 p.m. at Landmark E Street Cinema and Saturday, June 17th at 6:30 p.m. at AFI Silver Theatre.
