Great new films from POV alumni will screen in the coming weeks at the Tribeca Film Festival and Full Frame Documentary Film Festival. Filmmakers include Marshall Curry – Racing Dreams (POV 2012), If a Tree Falls (POV 2011), Street Fight (POV 2005); Jesse Moss – Speedo: A Demolition Derby Love Story (POV 2004); Aron Gaudet and Gita Pullapilly – The Way We Get By (POV 2009); and Stephanie Wang-Breal – Wo Ai Ni (I Love You) Mommy (POV 2010).
Point and Shoot by Marshall Curry
At first glance, Matthew VanDyke—a shy, Baltimore native with a sheltered upbringing and a tormenting OCD diagnosis—is the last person you’d imagine on the front lines of the 2011 Libyan revolution. But, after Matthew graduated college and escaped the U.S. for ‘a crash course in manhood,’ a winding path leads him just there. Motorcycling across North Africa and the Middle East spending time as an embedded journalist in Iraq, Matthew lands in Libya forming an unexpected kinship with a group of young men who transform his life. Matthew joins his friends in the rebel army against Gaddafi, taking up arms (and a camera); along the way, he is captured and held in solitary confinement for six terrifying months. Academy Award®-nominated director Marshall Curry brilliantly captures Matthew’s remarkable story. (Description from Tribeca Film Festival)
Tribeca Film Festival – New York, NY – April 19, 21, 23, 24
The Overnighters by Jesse Moss
After hydraulic fracturing uncovers a rich oil field in North Dakota, a small conservative town is tested as hordes of unemployed men chasing the “American Dream” pour into its borders. Desperate men, often running from their past, find compassion and refuge in the form of a local pastor. Providing his church and even his own home as shelter to the visitors, he exposes himself, and by extension the town, to unfamiliar pressures that test the true limits of the commandment “Love Thy Neighbor.” The more responsibility he shoulders, the more everything threatens to come crumbling down. With unfettered access to the citizens of Williston, documentarian Jesse Moss crafts a smoldering film about dualities in this provocative modern-day parable that challenges the very fabric of our society. (Description from Tribeca Film Festival)
Tribeca Film Festival – New York, NY – April 22, 23
Beneath the Harvest Sky by Aron Gaudet and Gita Pullapilly
A Stand By Me for the next generation of boys becoming men, writer-directors Aron Gaudet and Gita Pullapilly’s Beneath the Harvest Sky shares the intimate journey—both metaphorical and literal—of two Maine teenagers. Frustrated and restless, best friends Dominic and Casper are making plans to escape their small town to start new lives in Boston. In order to get the money, Dominic spends the summer harvesting potatoes while Casper becomes involved in the family business—smuggling drugs over the Canadian border. The divergent paths of the two boys, both trapped in different ways, will change their friendship forever. An authentic portrayal of adolescent frustration, with stellar performances from Emory Cohen and Callan McAuliffe, culminates in a heartbreaking coming-of-age drama not to be missed. (Description from Tribeca Film Festival)
Tribeca Film Festival – New York, NY – April 18, 24, 26, 27
Tough Love by Stephanie Wang-Breal
Both Hannah, in New York City, and Patrick, in Seattle, have lost custody of their children. After Hannah was reported for neglect, her two kids were removed from her home by the Administration for Children’s Services and placed with their paternal grandmother. Patrick lost his daughter to a foster family after a struggle with substance abuse. Both parents love their children deeply and are desperate to get them back. Tough Love takes us through the challenges and victories of Patrick and Hannah’s attempts to be reunited with their kids by proving to the child welfare system that they have learned from their mistakes and deserve a second chance. Through vérité footage, intimate access to sessions at family treatment court, and interviews with foster parents and case workers, we came to undestand the tangle of bureaucracy and economic realities that make it so difficult for parents—however reformed and determined—to get their kids back home. (Description from Full Frame Documentary Film Festival)
Full Frame Documentary Film Festival – Durham, NC – April 5
Art and Craft by Sam Cullman and Jennifer Grausman
Mark Landis is perhaps the most prolific art forger the U.S. has ever seen. He’s duped curators throughout the nation with precise imitations from Matisse to Picasso, curiously never asking for money, but instead donating his counterfeits free of charge. After 30 years of conning the art industry, Landis is first discovered by Matthew Leininger, a registrar from Cincinnati, who has since dedicated years to tracking the man who hoodwinked him, in search of answers. But Landis’ motivations are far more layered than simple deception. Diagnosed with schizophrenia, there’s a question if he even knows that he is being deceptive at all. Through a richly complex lens, Art and Craft delicately balances a portrait of an outsider living with mental illness and the universal desire to be a part of a community. (Description from Tribeca Film Festival)
Tribeca Film Festival — New York, NY — April 17, 19, 23, 26
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