DOC NYC Reveals Influential Awards Short List
By Anne Thompson
October 17, 2023
Thirteen-year-old DOC NYC, America’s largest documentary festival, has revealed its influential 15-film Short List. The festival will run its main lineup of 114 features and 129 short films in-person November 8-16 in New York City’s IFC Center, SVA Theatre and Village East by Angelika and continue online until November 26 with films available to viewers across the U.S. All the films will have theatrical screenings at the festival, often with the directors in person.
Historically, most of the DOC NYC shortlist titles overlap with the Academy’s official 15-film Oscar Shortlist. With the notable exception of Netflix’s Oscar-winning “My Octopus Teacher,” for 11 years the festival has screened the documentary that went on to win the Academy Award, including “Navalny,” “Summer of Soul,” “American Factory,” “Free Solo,” “Icarus,” “O.J.: Made in America,” “Amy,” “Citizenfour,” “20 Feet From Stardom,” “Searching for Sugar Man,” and “Undefeated.” The festival has also screened 49 of the last 55 Oscar-nominated documentary features. In 2022, DOC NYC screened 12 of 15 titles named to the subsequent Academy Award Documentary Feature Shortlist.
Overlapping with Monday’s Critics Choice Award nominations for Best Documentary Feature are Matthew Heineman’s “American Symphony,” featuring Jon Batiste, Ukraine war film “20 Days at Mariupol,” Maite Alberdi’s love story “The Eternal Memory,” and Roger Ross Williams’ “Stamped from the Beginning.”
In his second year, DOC NYC Artistic Director Jaie Laplante now curates the Short List of films that may be in the running for the Academy Award for Best Documentary feature. (Also weighing in is former DOC NYC chief Thom Powers, Director of Special Projects.) This year’s list of 15 features showcases a spectrum of subject matter, including Sundance debuts, fall festival hits, and less widely viewed films from a range of funders and distributors.
In order to make the top 15, LaPlante and Powers debated every title. “We both had to believe in it personally: this was something we stood behind,” said Laplante in a phone interview with IndieWire. “All 15 films we are passionate about. It’s hard to stop at 15. That’s why we have a Winner’s Circle where we add films we are also passionate about that for one reason or another didn’t make the Shortlist.”
That’s where North Korean escape movie “Beyond Utopia” and black-and-white trans portrait “Kokomo City” wound up. Other high-profile films missing from the DOC NYC Short List are CCA Best Feature nominees “The Deepest Breath,” “Judy Blume Forever,” “The Mission,” and “Still: A Michael J. Fox Movie.” Laplante said that film, at least, “has got a great profile.”
Per usual, the DOC NYC Shortlist is intended to influence Oscar documentary branch voters when they choose their shortlist of 15. “Yes, we believe that these films should be seen before you vote and make your final selections,” said Laplante.
“20 Days in Mariupol” (Frontline/PBS) is an intense and immersive look at the impact of the Ukraine war on one city over 20 days, said Laplante, “watching the city disintegrate in front of your eyes is riveting in the worst way.”
“American Symphony” (Netflix) is Matthew Heineman’s “symphony of editing,” said Laplante. “The juxtaposition of what’s going on, crosscutting between Jon Batiste performing and [his wife] Suleika [fighting leukemia] is so heartfelt.”
“Bobi Wine: The People’s President” (NatGeo) debuted at Telluride last year, but was held back for release in 2023. “It’s powerful, with a sense of danger,” said Laplante. “Army crackdowns, bullets flying, the camera shaking. It’s visceral and immediate. Bobi is a great complex character.”
“The Disappearance of Shere Hite” (IFC Films) from Nicole Newnham (who was nominated for “Crip Camp”) did not win any Sundance prizes, but is grabbing more attention now. “I love movies that normalize sexual conversations around identities and gender,” said Laplante.
“The Eternal Memory” (MTV Documentaries) from Chilean filmmaker Maite Alberdi (“The Mole Agent”) focuses on a couple coping with Alzheimer’s and won the Sundance World Cinema Documentary Grand Jury Prize. “It is profound and so simple so many ways,” said Laplante. “All Maite’s films have the feeling of living the experience of her subjects.” This year, Alberdi is accepting DOC NYC’s award for Documentary Excellence.
“Every Body” (Focus Features) from Julie Cohen “skillfully weaves NBC News archive footage into the modern movement of today of intersexuality, identity, and activism,” said Laplante.
“Four Daughters” (Kino Lorber) shared the top documentary prize at Cannes with “Mother of All Lies.” Both movies take stylistic leaps with re-enactments, said Laplante. “Both are beautifully constructed.”
“Going to Mars: the Nikki Giovanni Project” (HBO Documentary Films) relaunched after its Sundance U.S. Grand Jury Prize win at the New York Film Festival. Laplante regards the editing on this and Errol Morris’ “The Pigeon Tunnel” (a last interview with novelist John le Carré) as “sophisticated, with so much joy of the craft. They are so well put together, intricately cut and stylized.”
“Lakota Nation vs. United States” (IFC Films) provides “a high level viewpoint of indigenous relations with the United States,” said Laplante. “Even if you know the facts, seeing them chronologically laid out gives them a new power.”
“Little Richard: I Know Everything” (CNN Documentary Films) from Lisa Cortés lays out “an important part of Black music history,” said Laplante. “It’s an important correction of a lot of our perceptions of how rock and roll got started. Whitewashed is a good word for what happened to Little Richard. Lisa pointed out the undertone of anger and hurt in his outrageous statements that people wanted to take as comedy, but there was an edge to it.”
“Silver Dollar Road” (Amazon) from Raoul Peck takes you inside a Black family fighting to save their farm from rapacious developers. “I felt like a member of the family, going through what they were going through,” said Laplante. “It made me nauseous. Raoul Peck’s films are sometimes headier than this one, but here you are transported into this situation.”
“Stamped from the Beginning” (Netflix), an examination of racism in America from veteran documentarian Roger Ross Williams, hit Laplante hard, he said. “Illuminating complex ideas is Roger’s gift as a filmmaker. They are so strong, it’s like having smelling salts under your nose. It’s a wakeup movie.”
“While We Watched” (POV/PBS) played both Toronto and Doc NYC last year. “This film is trying to wake up the world,” said Laplante. “Independent journalism is under attack all over the world, and India is one of the prime offenders in not protecting independent journalists. They are being attacked and murdered.”
The festival’s new Come As You Are section highlights films about people striving to find their place in the world, or in their communities.
See below for the complete slates for each section.
SHORT LIST: FEATURES
For the fifth year, the Short List: Features will vie for juried awards in four categories: Directing, Producing, Cinematography, and Editing, with the addition of a new category in 2023 for Original Score. Last year’s winners were Descendant (Directing), Retrograde (Producing), Fire of Love (Editing), and All That Breathes (Cinematography).
This year’s selections for Short List: Features are:
20 DAYS IN MARIUPOL
Director: Mstyslav Chernov
Producers: Mstyslav Chernov, Michelle Mizner, Raney Aronson Rath, Derl McCrudden
An AP team of Ukrainian journalists trapped in the besieged city of Mariupol struggle to continue its work documenting atrocities of the Russian invasion. (PBS Distribution/Frontline)
AMERICAN SYMPHONY (NYC Premiere)
Director: Matthew Heineman
Producers: Matthew Heineman, Lauren Domino, Joedan Okun
While undertaking his most ambitious project to date, musician Jon Batiste and his life partner Suleika Jaouad cope with the discovery that her cancer has returned after a decade in remission. (Netflix)
BOBI WINE: THE PEOPLE’S PRESIDENT
Directors: Moses Bwayo, Christopher Sharp
Producers: Christopher Sharp, John Battsek
Bobi Wine, a popular Afrobeats musician, directs his charisma to politics as he runs for office as Uganda’s presidential opposition candidate, challenging longtime leader Yoweri Museveni. (National Geographic Documentary Films)
THE DISAPPEARANCE OF SHERE HITE (NYC Premiere)
Director: Nicole Newnham
Producers: R.J. Cutler, Kimberley Ferdinando, Nicole Newnham, Molly O’Brien, Elise Pearlstein, Trevor Smith
Feminist sexologist Shere Hite, who helped change public perception toward female sexuality in the 1970s and ‘80s, mysteriously fell from prominence over time. This film explores why we don’t know more about her groundbreaking work. (IFC Films)
THE ETERNAL MEMORY
Director: Maite Alberdi
Producers: Maite Alberdi, Juan de Dios Larraín, Pablo Larraín, Rocío Jadue
A wise and compassionate look at an elderly couple’s challenges, revealing their profoundly moving love and their commitment to individual and collective remembrance, via the cultural vocations of their youth, in the face of life’s tempests. (MTV Documentary Films)
EVERY BODY
Director: Julie Cohen
Producers: Molly O’Brien, Tommy Nguyen
Capturing a new generation of intersex people who are living loudly and proudly, this film covers the history, science, and politics of a movement advocating against medically unnecessary surgeries on intersex children. (Focus Features)
FOUR DAUGHTERS
Director: Kaouther Ben Hania
Producer: Nadim Cheikhrouha
Filmmaker Kaouther Ben Hania takes a novel approach to telling the story of the Tunisian mother Olfa Hamrouni, who spoke out about her grief when two of her four daughters ran away to join the Islamic State in Libya. (Kino Lorber)
GOING TO MARS: THE NIKKI GIOVANNI PROJECT
Directors: Joe Brewster, Michèle Stephenson
Producers: Joe Brewster, Michèle Stephenson, Tommy Oliver
Nikki Giovanni is a trailblazing poet who rose to be a key figure in the Black Arts Movement of the 1960s and remains just as vibrant today. (HBO Documentary Films)
LAKOTA NATION VS. UNITED STATES
Directors: Jesse Shortbull, Laura Tomaselli
Producers: Benjamin Hedin, Phil Pinto
The Lakota Indigenous tribe’s new generations continue to stand against the U.S. government’s historic failures to honor past treaties and the Lakota’s traditional sacred land. (IFC Films)
LITTLE RICHARD: I AM EVERYTHING
Director: Lisa Cortés
Producers: Robert Friedman, Lisa Cortés, Liz Yale Marsh, Caryn Capotosto
The Black queer origins of rock ‘n’ roll are revealed as the whitewashed canon of American pop music is exploded to reveal the innovator – the originator – Little Richard. (Magnolia Pictures)
THE MOTHER OF ALL LIES (U.S. Premiere)
Director / Producer: Asme El Moudir
On a handmade set recreating her Casablanca neighborhood, Moroccan filmmaker Asmae El Moudir enlists family and friends to help solve the troubling mysteries of her childhood.Figurines and miniatures of the filmmaker’s Moroccan family and neighborhood – built by her father – inspire moments of catharsis and unearth previously unspoken secrets and traumas.
THE PIGEON TUNNEL
Director: Errol Morris
Producers: Errol Morris, Dominic Crossley-Holland, Steven Hathaway, Simon Cornwell, Stephen Cornwell
Oscar-winning filmmaker Errol Morris interviews David Cornwell aka John Le Carré, keeping the visuals as lively as the conversation, creating his own cinematic imaginings of Cornwell’s history along with clips from famous film and TV adaptations of Le Carré’s thrillers. (Apple TV+)
SILVER DOLLAR ROAD
Director: Raoul Peck
Producers: Raoul Peck, Rémi Grellety, Blair Foster, Hébert Peck
Oscar-nominated filmmaker Raoul Peck focuses on the case of the Reels family in North Carolina to chronicle the way real estate developers work in blatant and subtle ways to divest Black families from inherited property. (Amazon Studios)
STAMPED FROM THE BEGINNING
Director: Roger Ross Williams
Producers: Alisa Payne, Roger Ross Williams, David Teague
Oscar-winning filmmaker Roger Ross Williams takes inspiration from author Dr. Ibram X. Kendi’s work exploring the history of anti-Black racist ideas and their impact on the United States, examining those themes with an array of powerful film techniques. (Netflix)
WHILE WE WATCHED
Director: Vinay Shukla
Producers: Vinay Shukla, Khushboo Ranka, Luke Moody
Filmmaker Vinay Shukla gives shape to the melancholy and fear the daily news brings into our screens and lives, in India and all over the world. (BritDocs/POV)
