Shot over three years, Flophouse America is the unflinching debut feature by Norwegian photographer-turned-filmmaker Monica Strømdahl. The documentary offers an intimate, often harrowing portrait of Mikal, a boy growing up in a crumbling motel alongside his parents, Jason and Tonya, both trapped in cycles of addiction and poverty. In her conversation with Documentary Magazine, Strømdahl reflects on the ethical challenges of filming such vulnerable subjects over an extended period, the responsibility she felt toward Mikal and his family, and how her background in photography shaped the film’s aesthetic. With Flophouse America, she not only delivers a powerful creative statement but also raises urgent questions about systemic neglect, resilience, and the role of the documentary filmmaker as both witness and storyteller.
docs by women
While SXSW undoubtedly has its share of buzzy (i.e., some combination of the true crime, music, and celebrity genre) documentaries, navigating through the admittedly unwieldy program can also be a fun treasure hunt. In the end, you’re likely to be gifted with at least a handful of inspiring U.S. nonfiction films no one is talking about yet. This latest edition (March 7–15) began with the added bonus of a trio of female-helmed films, all focused in different ways on one virtually off-the-radar topic: motherhood and its intersection with the law: Baby Doe, Arrest the Midwife, and Uvalde Mom.
Makarenko, a public school in the Parisian suburb of Ivry-sur-Seine, is the subject of Elementary , the latest vérité study from renowned French
Documentary is happy to debut an exclusive clip from Beth Lane’s debut feature UnBroken , which won a prize for best documentary feature premiere at
In The Dialogue Police , protests, Quran burnings, and political gatherings take center stage. This timely doc, helmed by veteran Susanna Edwards
Noam Shuster Eliassi’s standup comedy show “Coexistence, My Ass!” is now the basis for a documentary of the same name, Coexistence, My Ass!, in which Lebanese Canadian filmmaker Amber Fares follows her through the COVID-19 pandemic, the anti-corruption protests in Israel, and the aftermath of the October 7th attack and Israel’s brutal retaliation in Gaza. Ahead of the film’s premiere at Sundance, we sat down with Fares over Zoom to discuss its long filming process and how October 7 shifted the tenor of the project.
For 15 years, Amy Berg wanted to make a film on Jeff Buckley. The joy of watching It's Never Over, Jeff Buckley then resides in witnessing Berg’s commitment to telling a known story and using rare archives, of the singer’s aching voice in elaborate voice messages he sent his loved ones. The film premiered at the Sundance Film Festival and after, Berg spoke to me about the making of the documentary and whether her love for the artist altered in the process.
Isabel Castro’s sophomore feature centers the family band that catapulted Mexican American singer Selena into pop stardom. Given voice as never before through “hundreds, potentially thousands” of hours of archival footage, Selena Quintanilla constantly gushes about her band—sister Suzette on drums, brother A.B. on bass/producing duties, eventual husband Chris on guitar, and parents Marcella and Abraham as just about everything in between—as the key to her fame. I spoke with Castro a week before her film’s Park City debut, which was yesterday. We discuss the herculean process of combing through the Quintanillas’ archives, paying homage to Gregory Nava’s 1997 biopic and the filmmaker’s favorite Selena song.
Located only 200-odd miles from the Arctic Circle, Pasvik Folk High School in Norway offers teenagers on the precipice of adulthood an opportunity to get some distance from the fast-paced demands of modern society and immerse themselves in snowy survivalism. Longtime collaborators and co-directors Heidi Ewing and Rachel Grady (Jesus Camp, Detropia) follow three students—the ever-determined Helge, socially awkward Bjorn Torne and keenly sensitive Romain—throughout the school year. While rooted in the filmmakers’ interest in unconventional educational institutions, FOLKTALES also marks one of their most ambitious projects yet, which necessitated a dozen two-day trips from New York to the remote Norwegian wilderness over a nine-month shooting period. Ewing and Grady spoke with me over Zoom the week before FOLKTALES premieres in Park City. Below, they shed insight on the origins of this project, the magic of finding one’s “dog twin” and embarking on a five-day shoot to secure the film’s poetic final shot.
At the start of Violet Du Feng’s Sundance-debuting The Dating Game we learn that, due to the former one-child policy, China now has 30 million more men than women, an eye-catching number that presents dire implications for the country. But behind the cold facts are flesh and blood human beings—and potential clients for a dating coach named Hao. While the doc is specific to China, it’s also universal in its critique of how capitalism, consumerism, and social media collide to create a generation that assumes everyone is faking who they are and therefore concludes that they too must “fake it to make it.” A week before the film’s World Cinema Documentary Competition premiere today, Documentary reached out to Feng, whose Peabody and Emmy-nominated Hidden Letters (2022) tackled gender stereotypes from the female side. This interview has been edited.