Sundance Film Festival world premiere documentaries are lining up their next festival appearances. Jaripeo, Who Killed Alex Odeh? and the docuseries The Story of Documentary Film are among the projects heading to the Berlinale next week.
American Doctor, Closure, Soul Patrol, Nuisance Bear (winner of Sundance’s Grand Jury Prize for U.S. documentary) and To Hold a Mountain (winner of the Grand Jury Prize for World Cinema Documentary), meanwhile, have lined up berths at True/False in Columbia, MO.
Before the curtain came down on the final Sundance in Park City, Utah, Deadline’s Doc Talk podcast spoke with directors of some of the top films at the festival including Michał Marczak (Closure), Oscar nominee Poh Si Teng (American Doctor), Oscar winner Alex Gibney (Knife: The Attempted Murder of Salman Rushdie), Emmy winner Alex Stapleton (The Brittney Griner Story) and Emmy winner Judd Ehrlich (Jane Elliott Against the World).
Marczak’s Closure centers on Daniel, a man desperately searching for his missing son who was last seen on a bridge overlooking the Vistula River in Warsaw, Poland. The filmmaker tells us how he happened to meet Daniel on the body of water during the latter’s exhaustive search, and how Marczak used specially modified film equipment to capture the moving story.
We also speak with several of the participants in Sundance documentaries, among them the brave physicians of American Doctor who volunteered their time and expertise to treat severely injured children in Gaza. They describe in terrifying terms what they witnessed in the occupied territory under Israeli assault, and why they think the American public must be made aware of the destruction of innocent Palestinian life there.
Rushdie, author of The Satanic Verses, tells us how he managed to survive a brutal knife attack inflicted by a fanatic intent on fulfilling the Ayatollah Khomeini’s fateful fatwa on Rushdie. And WNBA star Griner reveals the incredible conditions she endured in a Russian gulag after she was convicted on a drug charge in a Moscow court.
Ehrlich’s film centers on the uncompromising Elliott, a nonagenarian white woman from Iowa who for decades has tried to open the eyes of white America to its embedded racism.
That’s on the new episode of Doc Talk hosted by Oscar winner Ridley (12 Years a Slave, Shirley) and Carey, Deadline’s senior documentary editor. The pod is a production of Deadline and Ridley’s Nō Studios.
Listen to the episode above or on major podcast platforms including Spotify, iHeart and Apple.
English (US) ·