Overview:
The ballad of a Chilean miner, the covert rebellion of a Russian primary school teacher, a look back at an unlikely marriage, and more stories we’d like to catch at Full Frame.
Documentaries take many years and false starts to make, so they can’t ever be a true 1:1 mirror of the moment they’re released. On the other hand, documentaries often have the uncanny ability to speak to the future.
So what do the 49 films in this year’s Full Frame Documentary Film Festival—held in downtown Durham, April 3-6, this year—tell us about our current moment?
Thematically, several films orbit the past and present politics of Eastern Europe; four are about Ukraine. Several are about democracy. Several more are about climate change, if by different names. One is about childhood fears and the lurking shadows around the corner, imaginary or real (or, both at the same time?); others invite deep contemplation about sexuality, illness, and aging. Two kinds of bears, both quite different, have titular prominence. Romance factors, if in lowercase.
All films, ultimately, tell us a little more about the world we live in. It’s difficult to narrow down a list of must-see movies, but here, at least, are five that we especially hope to catch at the festival’s 27th year.
I’m Not Everything I Want to Be
“Now is not the right time for art, my mother says. But why can’t I live on my own terms?” a narrator intones, as a series of black-and-white photographs flash onto the screen over heavy, propulsive electronic music. Czech photographer Libuše Jarcovjáková (“the Nan Goldin of Soviet Prague”) guides audiences through 1968, a seminal year in her personal life, as she explores underground scenes and her sexuality—as well as a turbulent, newly communist Czechoslovakia. Raw footage and poetic voiceovers from Jarcovjáková’s diary promise to give an intimate look into one of Europe’s most important photographers.
The Last Partera
It’s fitting that this documentary, a portrait of Costa Rican centenarian Doña Miriam Elizondo, has its world premiere at Full Frame: the team behind it—Victoria Bouloubasis (a former INDY food editor), Ned Phillips, and Pilar Timpane—are all based in Durham. With crisp, vivid, intimate cinematography, The Last Partera chronicles Elizondo’s final years, as she passes on her knowledge as the last traditional midwife in Costa Rica to a new generation eager for women-centered health care.
Mr. Nobody Against Putin
All right, this is the film I’m probably the most excited to see at Full Frame. While both the title and the film’s intro posit this almost as a quirky mockumentary-style project (“In this moment, I have no idea the trouble I’m about to cause for myself”), the task that fun-loving protagonist Pasha Talankin undertakes in Mr. Nobody Against Putin is incredibly risky: to film the Russian primary school he works at as it transforms, amid the war, into a site of nationalist propaganda and military recruitment.
Cue the children marching. Cue the children practicing with toy guns. Apparently, Talankin initially planned to resign from his position in protest when the war began, but then realized that it was an opportunity to tell the school’s story—and maybe a bigger story? When it premiered earlier this year, the film won Sundance’s World Cinema Documentary Special Jury Award.
Helen and the Bear
The man—“the bear”—that producer Alix Blair’s free-spirited Aunt Helen married 40 years ago looked like a dashing Hollywood actor, was her Republican boss, and was 26 years her senior. Not, in other words, a likely match. This is exactly the kind of documentary I love, one that takes an ordinary (albeit, a uniquely fascinating) subject close to a filmmaker’s life and, through care and close attention, uses it as a conduit for universal questions. What makes a love story, a life?
Helen’s beautifully scripted diaries and home video footage propel the story through the years and the couple’s complicated marriage, as Helen wrestles with questions about her sexuality and what life after her much-older husband might look like. This film also has local ties: Blair is a Duke alumna, and producer Rebekah Fergusson is a Center for Documentary Studies alumna and current Durham resident.
The Fabulous Gold Harvesting Machine
Find a way to watch the trailer, even if you can’t make it to this screening: The Fabulous Gold Harvesting Machine looks to be a beautiful, fascinating glimpse of aging and a distant way of life in the Chilean Tierra del Fuego.
A character-driven documentary, the film follows Toto, a 60-year-old whose health is failing after 40 grueling years working in the mines. Enter Jorge, his cowboy son who embarks on a project that sounds like it’s out of a fairy tale: building a gold-harvesting machine that could make their lives easier. The warmth and commitment the two have for each other makes for a compelling documentary subject.
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Follow Culture Editor Sarah Edwards on Bluesky or email sedwards@indyweek.com.