'A Sisters’ Tale’ Review: An Iranian Woman Pursues the Musical Dreams Her Country Is Determined to Stifle in an Affecting Doc

Leila Amini’s “A Sisters’ Tale” centers on the filmmaker’s sister Nasreen, a Tehran housewife with a traditional husband, two young kids, and one big unrealized dream to sing. It’s an unfulfilled desire she shares with many a fellow “sister” in Iran, all of whom have been banned from expressing themselves through public singing since the establishment of the Islamic Republic in 1979. And it’s a story Amini followed closely with her camera as a not neutral observer for seven years, forever rooting for Nasreen to pursue her passion while simultaneously fearing the consequences if she in fact succeeds.

To read the rest of my Toronto Film Festival review visit IndieWire.

The Feedback: Emily Packer’s Many Forms of Hybridity in ‘Holding Back the Tide’

In Holding Back the Tide, Emily Packer’s “docu-poetic meditation on New York’s oysters,” the humble bivalve becomes much more than the sum of its pearls. Indeed, the experimental filmmaker has inventively chosen to reimagine the once ubiquitous mollusk as a queer icon, and cast the gender-fluid creature alongside a host of other thought-provoking characters, both real and fictional. We’re introduced to folks like Moody “The Mothershucker” Harney (real), who’s bringing oysters back to the average diner through his cart, taking inspiration from Thomas Downing, the 19th-century Black Oyster King of New York. And Pippa Brashear of SCAPE Landscape Architecture, which is harnessing the oyster to protect Staten Island’s Tottenville neighborhood through its Living Breakwaters project. Even former WNBA star Sue Wicks has gotten in on the mollusk action, having retired to her Violet Cove Oyster Co. farm (where she knows each of her bivalves by name). Between scenes with these colorful individuals in their natural environment are staged encounters with Packer’s gender-unbounded collaborators, who pass along the cinematic baton through striking visuals and lyrical words. A woman emerges from a shell on a beach. Diners feasting on oysters discover a new identity. Social constructs like race and binary categorizations fall by the wayside, ultimately swept out to sea by the power of “we.” Or as the director themself optimistically puts it, “We took inspiration from the oyster, which thrives when connected and fails when isolated.” Before its theatrical debut, Documentary recently caught up with Packer to learn all about Holding Back the Tide, from its Hurricane Sandy origins to the intersectional queer production process.

To read my interview visit Documentary magazine.

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“My Hope Is That the Film Itself Is An Impact Campaign”: Alex Hedison on Her Sundance Short Alok

“What lives outside of the frames of this camera and your own eyes?” is the question the poet/comedian/actor/public speaker Alok Vaid-Menon challenges the viewer to ponder at the very start of Alex Hedison’s Sundance-premiering short Alok. Currently on the Sundance Film Festival Short Film Tour, and premiering at IFC Center on June 14th (with both the nonbinary star and Hedison, who also happens to be married to her EP Jodie Foster, in attendance), the doc is based on footage Hedison shot during the performer’s recent international tour and is supplemented with highly stylized interviews with the spiritually enlightened artist and their equally deep-thinking friends (including Dylan Mulvaney, who poignantly self reflects that “replacing fear with fascination” is what has made her life worth living). Indeed, for Alok, eliminating the binary between “us” and “them” is more important than the blurring of he and she. (Alok likewise stresses that the most controversial pronoun they have is “we,” which requires acknowledging our interconnectedness.) Transphobia is just another form of pain, they firmly believe. And by the end, as in the beginning, we’re faced with another potentially revolutionary question: “What would it look like if our weapon was love?” To learn more about Alok and Alok, Filmmaker reached out to Hedison, likewise an internationally-acclaimed artist and actor (and fine art photographer whose work has graced galleries throughout Europe); along with producers Natalie Shirinian and her wife Elizabeth Baudouin (also credited as music supervisor), who together founded indie production company Not All Films.

To read my interview visit Filmmaker magazine.

“A Shapeshifter in Constant Motion”: Sandi DuBowski Spent 21 Years Filming ‘Sabbath Queen’

It’s been 23 years since Sandi DuBowski’s groundbreaking Trembling Before G-d, which uncloaked the lives of Hasidic and Orthodox gays and lesbians, made its Sundance debut. Since that time DuBowski has built a career at the intersection of religion and queerness, social activism and filmmaking, always avoiding the binary choice in favor of the “and.” This insistence is a bond shared by the director-producer and the riveting Israeli-American star of his latest feature Sabbath Queen—a doc over 21 years in the making focused squarely on Rabbi Amichai Lau-Lavie, a descendant of 38 generations of Orthodox rabbis. This member of rabbi royalty is also the creator of drag persona Rebbetzin Hadassah, the founder of Jewish congregation Lab/Shul, and a queer dad to three young kids. And also a Jewish Theological Seminary-trained Conservative rabbi with a loving family entangled in a heartbreaking war back home. In other words, it’s complicated. Which is why Documentary decided to reach out to the veteran activist-filmmaker to learn all about his Tribeca-premiering Sabbath Queen, the film’s unconventional lead, and embracing the messy nonbinary nature of humankind itself.

To read my interview visit Documentary magazine.

“Production Was a Kind of Durational Epic”: Nesa Azimi Reflects on ‘Driver’

“No one enters trucking from charm school,” notes Desiree Wood, star of Nesa Azimi’s long-haul road trip film Driver, which follows the founder of REAL Women in Trucking as she works her minimum wage on (18) wheels job from coast to coast. Indeed, Wood, a forty-something who retired from stripping and now finds herself in a financially precarious gig (that puts her at far greater risk of sexual assault to boot), serves as our no-nonsense guide to a sightseeing-cinematic world hidden in plain sight. As another seasoned trucker attests, it’s a beautiful country and she gets paid to see it—though another veteran later caveats, “Seeing the United States is awesome—but it’s not a vacation.” Which makes sense if, like Desiree, you can’t afford to ever leave your home on the road. The day before the Tribeca premiere of Driver, Documentary caught up with Azimi, a TV producer who abandoned her own secure job to pursue her first independent feature from the cab of a truck.

To read my interview visit Documentary magazine.

“In Smoke Sauna Sisterhood, the Women are Voicing Out Their Deepest Feelings and Thoughts, But Here in Sauna Day the Focus is On the Unsaid”: Anna Hints and Tushar Prakash on their Cannes-Debuting short Sauna Day

When I last interviewed Estonian filmmaker Anna Hints it was to discuss her Sundance 2023-premiering Smoke Sauna Sisterhood, which would go on to win the World Cinema Documentary Competition Directing Award. (It also nabbed Best Documentary at the 36th European Film Awards on its way to becoming Estonia’s entry for Best International Feature Film at the Oscars.) The film offers quite a unique peek into a UNESCO-designated tradition that for centuries has allowed women like those the director (and contemporary artist and experimental folk musician) respectfully lenses to bond, heal and reveal in a safe space of smoke and sweat. And now Hints’s painstakingly crafted short Sauna Day, co-directed with her “partner in life and art,” Indian filmmaker Tushar Prakash (who also served as an editor on Smoke Sauna Sisterhood), transports us to “the world of Southern Estonian men who go to the dark-intimate space of a smoke sauna after a hard day’s work” (per the mysterious synopsis). But if you’re expecting a sort of “brotherhood” followup, think again. Not only is Sauna Day not a look at a group of guys experiencing emotional release as they free themselves from society’s gender-specific constraints, it’s not even purely nonfiction with two very intense actors woven into the otherwise vérité proceedings. Which admittedly made a certain sense to me since Sauna Day happens to include what could be viewed as some hot and sweaty catharsis of the homoerotic sort. Just after the 13-minute film’s Cannes (Critics’ Week Special Screening) debut, Filmmaker reached out to the unconventional duo to learn all about collaborating on such an unusual and rather provocative project.

To read my interview visit Filmmaker magazine.