Giving you our points of view on the latest docs in release and on the circuit.
In As the Crow Flies, director Tess Girard captures a visually stunning journey through the clouds piloted by a group of young recruits of the Royal Canadian Air Cadets, many not yet 18, as they grapple with being simultaneously placed in the pilot seat of their lives and a massive machine.
Lennon’s Last Interview (UK, 65 min.) Dir. Brian Grant December 8, 2020 marks the 40th anniversary of John Lennon’s death. His murder, a first among rock icons, devastated a generation of fans who saw Lennon and the Beatles change the way that people made and imagined music. The sudden and senseless act meant an ironically violent end for a man who used his platform as an advocate for peace. Before the tragic ending to Lennon’s story, however, he synthesized many of his highs, lows, viewpoints, and contradictions in an expansive interview with Andy Peebles, a radio DJ with the BBC.
2020 has delivered its fair of crazy stories. However, no doc this year quite has a jaw-on-the-floor ick factor like Baby God does. This true crime/#MeToo investigation is further proof that truth is often stranger than fiction.
My Psychedelic Love Story is the latest in what’s getting to be long a line of docs made by Errol Morris, which encourage his central characters to tell their side of what happened in key moments in their lives.
The streets of São Paulo erupt in performance, colour, and conversation in Southern Sorceresses. Less of a cohesive narrative and more of a kaleidoscopic portrait, the film is an invigorating glimpse into Brazil’s LGBTQ+ community amid the country’s current conversations and reckonings.
In Passage, director Sarah Baril Gaudet’s return to her hometown in small-town Québec is seen through the eyes of two teens on the cusp of leaving it, as she did nearly a decade earlier.
Objector tells the story of Atalya Ben-Abba, who was jailed at 19 years of age when she refused to enlist in the Israeli army. Although Ben-Abba is the dominant voice in the documentary, she represents a growing number of young Israelis who are conscientious objectors.
Into the Light brings discussions about domestic violence in Canada’s immigrant communities into the open and refreshingly destigmatises the act of speaking out.
Despite all the odds, Zappa’s work provides a soundtrack that continues to resonate for those with open ears. Its refusal to die remains laudable, and Winter’s Zappa provides just the kind of electroshock boost needed to keep its beat ticking for years to come.
Night Shot (Visión Nocturna) (Chile, 80 min.) Dir. Carolina Moscoso “I’m very sorry about the situation,” a participant writes, “but I hope your wounds heal outside the law.” This message appears among the intertitles that contextualise Carolina Moscoso’s Night Shot. It arrives late in the film and relatively far in the director’s story, but one senses that the disappointing news is the impetus for Moscoso’s thoughtful odyssey. The experimental Night Shot is a meditation on grief and trauma that eviscerates the broken system that protects aggressors while leaving survivors of sexual assault to their own devices. One senses that this
