From Lee Isaac Chung's Minari to Chloe Zhao's Nomadland, Asian American filmmakers have gained widespread recognition over the past year for their ability to tell stories that are universal. Running from March 4-14, 2021, the 9th Annual Seattle Asian American Film Festival does what it has been doing for years:...
Hailing itself as Slamdance Film Festival's "largest and most accessible festival yet," Slamdance 2021 runs virtually from February 12th through 15th, and can be accessed with an impressively cheap $10 festival pass. With its long-time focus on emerging artists, the 27th edition of the festival boasts 25 features plus 107...
In the Criminal Justice Club at Horizon High School in El Paso, Texas, students bond and gain camaraderie while also rigorously training for careers in law enforcement. Horizon's program is the subject of At the Ready, filmmaker Maisie Crow's enthralling yet challenging documentary that premiered at Sundance Film Festival in...
In her 2021 documentary, Film About a Father Who, filmmaker Lynne Sachs recalls how her dad, Ira Sachs, owned two identical red Cadillacs that he swapped out for each other, never letting his family in on his con. While benign, this secret was the first of many more, which were...
In Through the Night, a lovely new documentary by first-time director Loira Limbal, daycare owner Nunu coaxes an anxious young boy to put aside his electronic tablet and be more present with the other kids. With a rueful laugh, she asks, "I'm down on my knees; are you going to...
In the powerful new documentary, Since I Been Down, a swastika-tattooed man named Chad Walton explains that Taking Education and Creating History (T.E.A.C.H.) -- an initiative of the Black Prisoners' Caucus -- is best described as "prisoners lifting up prisoners." Officially founded in 1972, the Black Prisoners' Caucus is an...
When Moroni Benally signs the paperwork to run for Navajo Nation president, he giggles. Moroni For President, a charming documentary profile of his 2014 campaign, captures the high stakes of the race to become the leader of the Navajo Nation, the largest Native American territory by landmass and population. Moroni,...
Two months following the tragic and unexpected passing of independent filmmaker Lynn Shelton -- known for such films as Sword of Trust (2019), Laggies (2014), and Humpday (2009) -- Duplass Brothers Productions and Seattle's Northwest Film Forum announced the Lynn Shelton Of a Certain Age Grant in July 2020. In...
John Lewis gets stopped in airports. A lot. In John Lewis: Good Trouble, a new documentary by director Dawn Porter, there’s a scene where we follow Lewis through an airport terminal as strangers approach him to call him a hero and an inspiration. His son says, with a rueful laugh,...
When filmmaker Matt Wolf (Recorder, Wild Combination) first saw photos of eight scientists dressed in red jumpsuits and standing beside a glass pyramid in the Arizona desert, he assumed they were characters from a sci-fi movie. He soon discovered that between 1991 and 1993, the scientists lived in a gleaming,...
Despite Kadazia Allen-Perry's youth, her cystic fibrosis has forced her to confront her own mortality. In her autobiographical documentary, Chronic Means Forever, the African-American first-time filmmaker provides an intimate exploration into the feelings of alienation and frustration which accompany her life-long diagnosis. Allen-Perry is faced daily with the perpetual struggle to...
Oh, North Korea. The mechanics of filmmaking are lost upon you, are they not? You may have read about it -- which is why you probably attempted to control the script of Under The Sun and escorted the filmmakers to a number of pre-determined filming locations -- but what you...