Many would say that at this year's Academy Awards got the documentary film category "right". The "right" doc film won and even the final nominees were worthy mentions. But all this doesn't make the Cinema Eye Honors mission less "important".
So how does Yojiro Takita's Departures (Okuribito) beat out heavy favorites Israel's Waltz With Bashir and France's The Class? Smart pick ups and adequate marketing plans just don't cut it when it comes to promoting titles for Oscar campaigns and Sony Pictures Classics seemed to have botched, undersold both titles the moment the final five titles were announced.
As usual, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences' makes a shortlist of doc films, leaves many popular titles out in the cold, has weird rules that take out many quality films from the competition (Waltz with Bashir and Up the Yangtze) and brings attention to titles that I haven’t a clue where they come from.
Folks at Celluloid Dreams have taken the world rights (excluding N.America) to the Sundance/Berlin film festival favorite, the 23-year docu project called Nerakhoon (The...