Once upon a time, Documentaries had titles like The History of Paint, or How Liverpool Cathedral Was Built. They were hardly designed to entertain as well as inform, and certainly not to engage a broad audience in a range of contemporary social issues.
But all that has changed. Documentaries are now very much in the mainstream, with big players such as Sky, Prime and Netlifx regularly churning out their own efforts, all designed for prime-time viewing.
I’m never more proud of what this city can achieve than when DocFest hits town. Over the six days of film screenings, live podcasts, alternate reality installations, talks and interviews with filmmakers and producers, the scope and depth of its achievements astonish me year after year. Post-Covid, the event is back to attracting a global audience and is one of the top documentary film festivals in the world. I feel privileged every time I attend, as I have the chance not just to watch films, some of which are national and international premieres, but it provides the opportunity to meet some of the people who make them. Everything you see and hear comes from life itself. Nothing in the Marvel or DC Cinematic Universe comes close to being as entertaining, moving and engaging as the films showcase here. I was often in tears, sometimes with laughter, but at other times not, as I experienced some harrowing stories which will live with me forever.
Just about everything I mention here was available to everyone, not just DocFest delegates, and if you didn’t manage to get there this year, make it your mission to go in 2024 and I promise you won’t be disappointed.
One strand that changes, develops and improves every year is the Alternate Realities exhibition, held in the Site Gallery, which will still be there for a few weeks after the festival closes. Storytelling with media other than film is now a well-established feature of DocFest. Some installations use immersive VR headsets and headphones, but others just use TV screens or images projected inside a dome. I was most affected by The Man Who Couldn’t Leave, where creator Singing Chen takes us inside Taiwan’s notorious Green Island Prison, to tell a harrowing story of a political detainee who never escaped.
I watched around 20 films over the festival, some short, some feature-length, so I’ll mention the best ones before giving you my personal top five to look out for over the coming months.
Sky Documentaries were at Docfest for their third year of promoting their own films. Two of these were The Good Fight Club, the first of a four-part series, and an ambitious stand-alone film, The Right To Fight. Each fighter in The Good Fight Club has a different reason for taking up ‘cage fighting’ or Mixed Martial Arts, and Jack Retallack does a superb job of drawing out their stories. In The Right To Fight, Georgina Cammalleri expertly tells the almost unknown story of the women who attempted to break into that most macho sport of all: competitive boxing. They had to battle for acceptance in a sport from which they were legally barred, and we hear of the sacrifices they made, both in and outside the ring.
The Body Politic is a portrait of Brandon Scott, Baltimore’s youngest-ever black mayor, who tries a new approach to try to bring change to a city ravaged by over 300 gun deaths every year. Director Gabriel Francis Paz Goodenough follows him as he endeavours to effect change in the face of the Republican state governor’s ‘lock more of them up for longer’ approach, which clearly isn’t working.
This being 2023, much of what we see is the product of lockdown and covid; that unique time in all our lives. For some creators, it was the opportunity to edit footage, often unfinished, into a film, and there were several of those. Others saw the pandemic as the catalyst for the film’s creation, and this was never more so than in the film Handle With Extreme Care. Patrick Ginnetty and Bowie Alexander made a revealing and often funny account of life(!) in a New York mortuary, which struggles to cope with the sheer number of deaths at the height of the Covid crisis. One employee even has to prepare his own father for a final farewell. The events they are all dealing with are on an epic scale, and the film manages to capture how they deal with this trauma whilst getting on with their lives.
If you’re looking for charm and beauty told with a ‘direct cinema’ approach, where the two women in the film are allowed to gently tell their own story, with no narration or explanation, go and see The Castle. Martin Benchimol tells the story of Justina, a domestic worker, who has lived in an Argentine castle since she was 5. The now-deceased owners have left it to her, on condition she doesn’t sell it. She lives there with her teenage daughter, who, understandably, now has ambitions to leave.
Music documentaries are often a sure-fire hit. Wham! was a joyous celebration of their surprisingly short career, with a follow-on Q&A which included Andrew Ridgeley; but Let The Canary Sing, Alison Elwood’s exploration of both the personal and the public life of Cyndi Lauper, topped it for me. Cyndi was – and continues to be – a major campaigner within women’s and LGBTQI+ spheres, not least with her re-purposed song, ‘Girls Just Wanna Have FunDamental Human Rights’. The film features one of my DocFest highlights: when she duets with Patti Labelle on ‘Time After Time’. It’s as powerful of a performance as I have ever seen on film, with two singers reaching almost unbearable heights of both power and quiet subtlety in one song. Astonishing.
David Harewood and Rose Ayling-Ellis were two fascinating interviewees, particularly Rose, as she gave us an insight into her forthcoming film, Signs For Change, a documentary made using British Sign language. It was noticeable how many events at DocFest were made more accessible for hearing-disabled delegates, which is hopefully another step forward towards inclusivity being something that just becomes part of the fabric at all such events.
One aspect that I always like to champion, and never more so than this year, is the Film-Maker Challenge, where six early career filmmakers are given the task to make a film during DocFest. Everything was filmed on one day, in Sheffield, under the guidance of Kevin MacDonald, with all six films screened on the final day. The films themselves were all superb, and from a purely personal point of view, they provided me with an opportunity to see my hometown through the eyes of others. I learned about a hairdresser on Abbeydale Road (not Sabino), took a boat trip on the River Don as it slowly flowed through the centre of town, and in my favourite, by Rosie Baldwin, I watched as an artist sketched volunteers who happened to be shopping on the Moor for free, and saw their reaction to his artwork. I’d love to see these made more widely available, as together they all formed a lovely essay in tribute to the people of Sheffield.
THE BEST OF THE FEST: PERKO’S TOP PICKS
OK, time for my round-up of the best of the festival. All purely personal and not definitive in any way, (I only saw around a fifth of the films on offer!).
The Gullspang Miracle
Do whatever it takes to see this remarkable film. If ever a true story could be called stranger-than-fiction, this is it. It begins when two sisters happen upon someone who they are convinced is their older sister, who they were told had taken her own life decades earlier. At this point, the two of them recruit filmmaker Maria Fredriksson to help unravel what on earth is going on. What follows is a strange, often hilarious family drama. There is true crime, deception and loss, with a narrative that never once goes in the direction in which it seems to be heading.
20 Days In Mariupol
Ukrainian filmmaker and journalist Mstyslav Chernov joined us live from Ukraine at the start of this film, reporting from the war zone, wearing body armour, to urge us to spread the word about the contents of this film. That in itself was remarkable, and what followed was not an easy film to watch. Several people in the audience felt they had to leave. One fainted. Quite simply, it shows the brutal, barbaric and senseless siege and invasion of the city of Mariupol, filmed by a crew who refused to leave with all the other journalists. Sheltering in a hospital, with no idea if they will survive, they continue to film, hoping their witness to this war atrocity will be seen by the world.
Your Fat Friend
A worthy Audience Prize winner, Jeannie Finlayson filmed writer Aubrey Gordon over six years as she finally revealed herself publicly after writing and posting essays about fatness, hate and discrimination directed toward fat people. It is a masterclass in gentle documentary storytelling, which charms and seduces us throughout the film.
The Greatest Show Never Made
We only got to see part one of this three-part Prime documentary, but I am desperate to see more. In 2002, reality TV was relatively new and incredibly popular. Six young people were recruited to take part in a reality TV show, with £100,000 on offer as the prize. They left jobs, homes and partners, and travelled to film the show, without knowing that it was all a hoax. The show didn’t exist. The participants are still searching for answers, and we can only guess at the reluctance they must have felt to agree to become involved in Ashley Francis-Roy’s film, after being so hurt and deceived previously. What really happened we can only guess for now, until the remaining episodes are streamed on Prime.
Hummingbirds
This was the first film I saw at this year’s DocFest, and it remained a firm favourite throughout. Two friends hang out over one summer in the border town of Laredo, Texas. They talk as the weeks and months ahead seem aimless and uncertain. In terms of a story, that’s pretty much it. But over the course of the film, we learn about their lives, their fears, their immigration and right-to-work status, sexuality, gender identity – in short, everything that shapes their lives. The film slowly becomes a testament to the power of friendship and the uncertainty of youth.
