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Lush Environmental Doc ‘Love Thy Nature’ Dares to Offer Some Hope
“[A sense of] wonder is central to what it means to be human,” says one of the interview subjects in Love Thy Nature, an earnest call to arms written and directed by Sylvie Rokab. As with many documentaries imploring us to respect the Earth and understand that homo sapiens are just an actor on its […]
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Anti-Sex-Trafficking Drama ‘Sold’ Means Well, at Least
The issue of sex trafficking is so serious, a horror whose global reach is so staggering, that it feels churlish to do anything but praise projects shining a light on it. But Sold, written by Joseph Kwong and Jeffrey Brown (who also directs) and starring Gillian Anderson in a small white-savior role, is such a […]
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Must-See Wrongful-Conviction Doc ‘dream/killer’ Indicts a System
Watching the documentary dream/killer knowing that its falsely accused and wrongfully convicted subject, Ryan Ferguson, was freed after spending nearly ten years in prison does nothing to mitigate the tension (and mounting fury) of seeing Ferguson and his father, Bill, navigate the American legal system. Director Andrew Jenks’s film isn’t about the Ferguson family’s nightmare […]
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Don’t Miss ‘Frame by Frame,’ a Great Doc About Afghan Photographers
In both the popular and historical imagination, Afghanistan has been a country caught in a loop of repeated invasions, war, and fractured identity, at the mercy of whoever is occupying it at the moment. Frame by Frame, about a post-Soviet, post-U.S., post–9-11, and Taliban Afghanistan, is fraught with the weight of history but utterly of […]
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Fulu Moguvhani’s Star Turn Is Just One of the Strengths of South African Coming-of-Age Film ‘Ayanda’
“My mission is really to capture what it means to be African,” says a secondary character, a fledgling filmmaker, early in Ayanda. “I feel like we’ve been completely misrepresented. It’s not all civil wars.” Anchoring the film’s faux-documentary subplot, that character is clearly the surrogate for screenwriter Trish Malone and director Sara Blecher, spelling out […]
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Philippine-Independence Drama ‘Heneral Luna’ Aspires to Truth but Settles for Machismo
The centuries-long Philippine struggle for independence indicts both Europe (Spain) and the U.S. as culprits in the country’s oppression, and Jerrold Tarog’s Heneral Luna pulls no punches in naming names and outlining offenses. But the would-be epic film’s real goal is to lionize General Antonio Luna, who led the Philippine Revolutionary Army in the Philippine-American […]
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Examining a Dictatorship, Bolivian Drama ‘Olvidados’ Exposes Brutal Truths
Olvidados (Forgotten) has a twist ending that’s easy to figure out, dialogue that veers into didacticism, and sets whose sterile perfection renders some scenes stage-bound rather than lifelike. Yet the film — directed by Carlos Bolado from a script by Elia Petridis, Carlos Ortiz, and Mauricio D’Avis — captures the visceral terror of torture so […]
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We All Almost Died in a Nuclear Accident in 1983. Here’s the Doc (and the Dude) Who Saved Us
In 1983, Soviet military computers erroneously detected American missiles headed toward the USSR. Stanislav Petrov, a Soviet commanding officer at the time, had to decide whether to launch missiles in return. Going on instinct, he decided not to “retaliate,” thus averting catastrophe. It’s the stuff angst-ridden action flicks are made of. In this multinational co-production, […]
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In Alarming Doc ‘Prophet’s Prey,’ Charismatic Fundamentalists Get Away With Monstrousness
Director Amy Berg’s documentary on the sexual, psychological, and financial exploitation at the core of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (FLDS) is grim but riveting viewing, a layered commentary on this country’s moral and spiritual underbelly. Coming on the heels of the Duggar scandals, and both Kim Davis and Donald Trump […]
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The Predictability of Teary Kids Doc ‘My Voice, My Life’ Doesn’t Make It Any Less Powerful
Director Ruby Yang doesn’t even try to upend the clichés that practically define the kind of inspirational documentary she’s made about art transforming the lives of at-risk and disabled students. She embraces them while pushing the film toward an eye-misting ending you’ll see coming from the opening moments. Hong Kong teenagers from schools for poor […]