What’s Up Doc?: Moore Docu Surprises, Locarno Begins, Telluride, Venice & TIFF Loom

The fall festival rush is upon us. Locarno is currently ramping up. Venice has released their line-up and Thom Powers and the Toronto International Film Festival team have dropped a bomb with a previously unannounced new feature from powerhouse docu-provocateur Michael Moore. It is truly a miracle that the production of a film such as Moore’s upcoming Where To Invade Next (see still above) managed to go completely undetected by the filmmaking community until it was literally announced to world premiere at one of the largest film festivals in the world. Programmed as a one of the key films in the Special Presentations section at TIFF, the film sees Moore telling “the Pentagon to ‘stand down’ — he will do the invading for America from now on.” Also announced to premiere at TIFF was Avi Lewis’ This Changes Everything, which has slowly been rising up this list, as well as Geneviève Dulude-De Celles’ Welcome to F.L. and Mina Shum’s Ninth Floor (see trailer below), amongst others.

Earlier last month Locarno announced they would be premiering not only Chantal Akerman’s long in the works and newly renamed No Home Movie (see clip here), which, according to The New York Times, is “an intimate extended visit with her mother, who died at the age of 86, in April 2014.” The film marks Akerman’s first doc feature since 2006’s Là-bas (be sure to check out Chrysanthi Nigianni’s superb analysis of that film here). Also premiering at the famed Swiss fest so known for taking on nontraditional, often bold cinematic statements is Ben Rivers’ hybrid feature length companion piece to his expansive BBC installation The Two Eyes Are Not Brothers. His gaudily named film The Sky Trembles and the Earth Is Afraid and the Two Eyes Are Not Brothers follows his exquisite full length collaboration with Ben Russell, A Spell To Ward Off The Darkness. Completely new to this list and additionally debuting in Locarno is a beautifully lensed debut doc titled Dead Slow Ahead (see trailer below) by Spanish director and cinematographer Mauro Herce. Word on the street is its “a revealing and hypnotic trip on board the freighter ‘Fair Lady’, whose sailors are overwhelmed by an industrialized world in which they seem to be mere gears.”

Moving up the ranks this month with the debut of a funny, yet deeply touching new trailer is director Vaishali Sinha and her film Ask The Sexpert (see trailer below). Back in 2013 Sinha received a Catapult Grant to kickstart production on the film after completing the short doc My Kashmir, while last year she received funds from the MacArthur Foundation to continue working on the project, it seems Sinha is nearing completion of what looks to be quite a fun, culturally inquisitive film about how “a longtime sex advice columnist gains popularity against the backdrop of a ban on comprehensive sex-education in schools in several Indian states.”

Robert Zemeckis’ zeitgeist capturing Back to the Future series continues to be celebrated as a monumental touchstone of 80s pop-culture. Back in March, director Jason Aron launched a massively successful Kickstarter campaign to fund his nostalgic documentary Back In Time, which looks to essentially be a feature length reflection of the cultural impact of the series featuring interviews from all the essential cast and crew members such as Zemeckis and Marty McFly himself. According to an update from the Kickstarter page, the film has moved into post-production and a trailer (see below) has been released on the film’s website. I wouldn’t be surprised to see this pop up as a late, high profile addition to TIFF or possibly DOC NYC.

Coming out of seemingly nowhere with a brand new film premiering this Sunday on BBC, the tireless Mark Cousins has collaborated with Mogwai to present Storyville: Atomic – Living In Dread And Promise (see trailer below). While he’s been hard at work on a revisionist docu history film titled Dear John Grierson: A Postscript to The Story of Film and recently premiered the Christopher Doyle shot I Am Belfast at the Belfast Film Festival and subsequently Karlovy Vary International Film Festival, this latest work, according to indieWIRE, “explores life in the atomic age, from the death and destruction of the bombs, to the improvements in quality of life provided by X-Rays and MRIs, all done featuring only archive film and a brand new score by Scottish rockers Mogwai.” In a month full of cinematic surprises, this one ranks high.

As mentioned previously, for those attached to any of the docs mentioned below — please feel free to share any updates on the status of your projects. I can be reached at jordan [at] ioncinema dot com. Here is our most anticipated Top 100 docs in the pipeline.

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