Dysinger, Ferraro, Hessman, Kudrna, Nicoara and Poitras join Sundance Institute’s Doc Story Lab

The Sundance Institute have picked projects from the likes of Carol Dysinger, Gayle Ferraro, Robin Hessman, Tomáš Kudrna, Mona Nicoară and Laura Poitras (along with their editors) as 2009’s Documentary Edit and Story Lab Fellows – a one week “intensive artist-to-artist collaborative experience”. This next batch of documentary films that are most likely going to be featured at the 2010 edition of the festival – I’ve already pegged a couple of the titles below as future item to cover.

This year’s mentors include: editors: Kate Amend (Academy Award–winner Into the Arms of Strangers and The Long Way Home), Joe Bini (Roman Polanski: Wanted and Desired, Grizzly Man) Richard Hankin (Home Front, Capturing the Friedmans) and  Mary Lampson (Harlan County, A Lion in the House), Directors: Greg Barker (Sergio, Ghosts of Rwanda) and Jennifer Fox (Flying: Confessions of a Free Woman, Beirut: The Last Home Movie).

The films selected for the 2009 Sundance Institute Documentary Editing and Story Lab are:

ALL THAT GLITTERS (Czech Republic / Kyrgyzstan)

Situated at the a crossroads of global interests, Kyrgyzstan reflects the political rivalry between Russian and America influence, reveals the religious rivalry between Christianity and Islam, and lies between the economic  predominance of China and Russia. All That Glitters examines how strange capitalism and democracy can be when introduced to a former Soviet country, one where people never before given autonomy are suddenly expected to make their own financial and political decisions.

CAMP VICTORY, AFGHANISTAN (U.S. / Afghanistan)

U.S. National Guardsmen are stationed in Herat, Afghanistan with the Afghan officers they have been sent to train. Together they are charged to bring the 207th Corps of the nascent Afghan National Army into an institution capable of providing security, stability, and a civilian government to a tattered, volatile nation. The Americans came, not to fight, but to teach. Camp Victory is the story of things that keep them apart, and  the one unlikely friendship that makes it all seem possible.  

MUHAMMAD YUNUS BANKS ON AMERICA (U.S.)

This film journeys with Dr. Muhammad Yunus, 2006 Nobel Peace Laureate and the architect of microfinance, as he continues building opportunities for the poor world-wide and as close to home as in Queens, New York through Grameen micro credit, his original social business.

OUR SCHOOL (Romania)

The descendants of former slaves, Romanian Roma (“Gypsies”) continue to live in poverty, at the edges of society. Over the course of several school years, Roma children struggle to break the barriers of segregation in a small Transylvanian town. Our School documents one of the first integration efforts following a European Court of Human Rights judgment similar to Brown v. Board of Education in the United States.

RELEASE (U.S. / Yemen)

Filmed in Yemen, Release is a family drama about two men whose fateful encounter in 1996 set them on a course of events that would lead to Afghanistan, Osama bin Laden, 9/11, Guantanamo Bay, and the U.S. Supreme Court. Release  is the second documentary (after My Country, My Country) in a trilogy titled The New American Century about America post 9/11.

RUSSIA’S PEPSI GENERATION (working title) (US/UK) 

Russia’s Pepsi Generation tells the story of the last generation of Soviet children brought up behind the Iron Curtain. Just coming of age when the USSR collapsed, they witnessed the world of their childhood crumble and change beyond recognition. Told through the lives of a married couple and their childhood friends, the film interweaves their memories of the past and their lives in contemporary Moscow to reveal how Communism’s crossover children are adjusting to their post-Soviet reality.