John Haptas and Kristine Samuelson co-directed the Oscar-nominated documentary short Life Overtakes Me, an IDA Enterprise Documentary Fund grantee. Set in Sweden, the film offers an inside look at refugee families caring for children experiencing resignation syndrome, a trauma-related condition inciting a coma-like state lasting months or years. Interviewed together, the married filmmakers discussed their creative choices and production strategies. DOCUMENTARY: As a production crew of two, how did you structure your roles? KRISTINE SAMUELSON: John shot the film. I did the sound. We boomed
Latest Posts
Have you ever wondered what it would be like to live in an ultra-conservative patriarchal society? If your answer is, "No, it's already depressing enough waking up in the nightmare of Trump’s America," read no further. However, if you've ever wanted to know what it is like to be a female in Afghanistan, to peek behind that particular curtain, then Grain Media and Lifetime Films have a documentary for you. Documentary recently spoke with director Carol Dysinger about the making of the IDA Documentary Award-winning Learning to Skateboard in a Warzone (if you’re a girl), and the significance of
After the success of her feature documentary A Suitable Girl, Al Jazeera's Witness series asked Smriti Mundhra to make another film. It wasn't long before she knew who she would like as her subject. In the wake of the 2016 US Presidential election, with everyone despondent and the news cycle intolerable, she had been looking for inspiration in local stories. Through online trawling she discovered Bruce Franks Jr., a celebrated battle rapper who had won a seat on the Missouri State Legislature. Franks had been very active in the Ferguson protests over the 2014 murder of the unarmed African
Though The Edge of Democracy is Brazilian filmmaker Petra Costa's final piece in a personal trilogy, it's the first to nab her an Oscar nomination for Best Documentary Feature. A year after the doc was acquired by Netflix at the 2019 Sundance Film Festival, the cinematic exploration appears to have struck a timely chord far beyond the borders of the divided nation in which it is set. Costa's epic film is a sweeping mélange made up of the director's expert cinéma vérité camerawork and vast trove of home movies, plus archival footage and media coverage spanning decades of her country's history
For many years Yusuf Abdurahman, the charismatic protagonist of Eunice Lau's Accept the Call, seemed to be living the American Dream. A refugee who fled civil war in the '90s, Abdurahman went from a life filled with famine and death in Somalia to one of hope and possibility in Minnesota. One of the founders of what is now the largest Somali community in the United States, Abdurahman married, had kids, and today works as a translator and facilitator at a Head Start office. Though divorced, he continues to lovingly devote himself to his seven children—including his eldest, Zacharia, the reason
Screen Time is your curated weekly guide to excellent documentaries and nonfiction programs that you can watch at home. As the impeachment trial of President Trump gets underway, and as the US launches into another rough-and-tumble presidential election year, FRONTLINE presents America's Great Divide: From Obama to Trump, a two-part, four-hour documentary series investigating America's increasingly bitter, divided and toxic politics. Michael Kirk directs. Following Martin Luther King Jr. Day, explore the history of the American Civil Rights Movement through the definitive series Eyes on the
Sundance Film Festival is back at Park City this month. In addition to seven IDA-supported film screenings, our Executive Directory, Simon Kilmurry, will be moderating “ Streaming: Next-Generation Opportunities for Documentary Storytelling” panel. The protagonists of two IDA Enterprise Documentary Fund grantees, A Thousand Cuts’ Maria Ressa and Welcome to Chechnya’s Masha Gessen will open up about what it takes for journalists to go up against powerful regimes in the “ Truth to Power” session. Other IDA staffers will also be in attendance in various capacities: Filmmaker Services Manager Toni
It's been a bit of a hiatus since the last Essential Doc Reads, but we’re back with our curated selection of recent features and important news items about the documentary form and its processes, from around the Internet, as well as from the Documentary magazine archive. We hope you enjoy! On the eve of Sundance, Ben Sisario and Nicole Sperling of The New York Times investigate the story behind Oprah Winfrey’s last-minute pullout as executive producer of Kirby Dick and Amy Zeiring's Sundance-premiering On the Record, which tracks allegations of sexual abuse leveled against music mogul Russell
"I take half, and I leave half" is the wise refrain, often repeated by Hatidze Muratova, apiarist and central character in Honeyland, one of the most honored films of 2019. The documentary, by Ljubomir Stefanov and Tamara Kotevska, kicked off the year by garnering three awards at the Sundance Film Festival: the Grand Jury Prize for World Cinema and Special Jury Awards for Cinematography and Impact for Change. At year's end, among many other accolades, the film won two IDA Documentary Awards: the Pare Lorentz Award and the Best Cinematography Award. And now, completing the trajectory that began
The spa resort of Hot Springs, Arkansas bubbles with history. Grand bathhouses that date from more than a century ago line one side of Central Avenue, leading to the foot of the imposing Arlington Hotel. On the hotel's 7th floor is the Babe Ruth Suite, a tip-of-the-cap to a famed visitor to Hot Springs, back when the town hosted some Major League teams for spring training. Another celebrity of yesteryear, Al Capone, was also known to patronize the Arlington. The history that the town is making today is of the cinematic kind. The community hosts one of the longest-running documentary film