Innholdsfortegnelse for Award Special 1 36A November 2019 i The Hollywood Reporter

In Queen of Hearts, the Danish contender for the 2020 international feature Oscar, Anne, a 40-something lawyer, mother and wife who appears to have it all, puts everything at risk to seduce her teenage stepson in a lurid (and graphically hard-core) affair. In the Dutch Oscar entry Instinct, at least the sex is between consulting adults. But the pairing — between a prison therapist (Carice van Houten of Game of Thrones) and a convicted serial rapist (Aladdin’s Marwan Kenzari) — is problematic, too. In the Austrian drama Joy, from writer-director Sudabeh Mortezai, Anwulika Alphonsus plays the eponymous sex worker — a Nigerian woman, brought to Austria and working off her trafficking debt — who is exploited and, in turn, exploits once she’s tasked with grooming a terrified new girl (Mariam…

If you’re not sure about the differences between sound editing and mixing, or the meaning of ADR and Foley, a new documentary offers an informative and entertaining look at these fields that could help give you an edge in your Oscar pool. Making Waves: The Art of Cinematic Sound, out Oct. 25, dives into game-changing films from The Jazz Singer to Star Wars. Documentary director Midge Costin, herself a sound editor (Armageddon, Crimson Tide), tells the story of sound through interviews with filmmakers such as George Lucas, Barbra Streisand, Steven Spielberg and Ryan Coogler, and sound trailblazers including Ben Burtt — who created the voice of R2D2 and the swoosh of a lightsaber in Star Wars — Gary Rydstrom (Toy Story), Walter Murch (Apocalypse Now) and Cece Hall (Top Gun).…

If you spontaneously tear up (or get red in the face) every time Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s face appears as a winner in the Democratic Party’s primary election in the Netflix documentary Knock Down the House, you are not alone. “A lot of people say that,” says director Rachel Lears, who followed the cultural phenomenon from candidacy announcement to election triumph. While it was a powerful moment both onscreen and in real life, Lears doesn’t believe the viewers’ emotional reaction to Ocasio-Cortez’s victory exists in a vacuum. “The secret sauce is the other characters and what you see them go through,” says the director, who followed four women recruited by Justice Democrats and members of Brand New Congress to run for office in 2018. “It was very important to us to explore…

Photographer and documentarian Timothy Greenfield-Sanders and Nobel Prize-winning author Toni Morrison were friends for 38 years. The trust that Morrison, who died in August, had with the director emanates throughout Toni Morrison: The Pieces I Am. As she opens up about her life, touching on motherhood, civil rights, book bans and more, Morrison looks straight at the viewer while sitting against a plain background. It’s a similar style to Greenfield-Sanders’ list series that Morrison helped inspire and encourage him to pursue, appearing in his initial film, The Black List. Greenfield-Sanders, 67, spoke to THR about his history with the author, how this tribute to her took shape and the impact it leaves in the wake of her death. How did you and Toni build such trust over the years? I…

Ben Berman’s film about an ailing magician’s return to the stage was never intended as a nose-thumbing to the documentary form. In fact, as Berman drove out to Las Vegas in 2017, seeking to gather material for a short film about illusionist John Szeles — The Amazing Johnathan in 2014 had declared in front of a live audience that he had cardiomyopathy and a year to live — there wasn’t much of a plan at all. Berman saw an opportunity to document the return of a still alive-and-kicking Szeles announcing that he was coming out of retirement while mixing in interviews from comedy and magic act peers including Eric Andre, Penn Jillette and Criss Angel. As far as documentaries go, this was all pretty standard stuff. Then — as Berman’s…

For Instinct, her debut feature as a director, acclaimed Dutch actress Halina Reijn was able to call in favors to cast two of the biggest stars in the Netherlands — Carice van Houten (Game of Thrones) and Marwan Kenzari (Jafar in Disney’s live-action Aladdin) to play the leads. Van Houten plays Nicoline, a prison psychologist tasked with assessing Idris (Kenzari), a serial rapist who is scheduled for imminent release. Against her better judgment, and any sense of professional decorum, Nicoline begins to fall for a man she has every reason to fear and despise. Getting van Houten and Kenzari to sign on for Instinct wasn’t hard. Reijn and van Houten are best friends and co-producers on the film — the first project under their Man Up Productions banner, which aims…

17 BLOCKS (MTV) The ironic title of Davy Rothbart’s 17 Blocks refers to the distance between the U.S. Capitol and the Washington neighborhood where the family at its center resides. It’s not a long distance geographically, but it might as well be worlds away, judging by the harsh realities of the daily lives so powerfully chronicled in the documentary. Considering that it was filmed in bits and pieces over two decades, it’s not surprising that 17 Blocks is disjointed in its storytelling, nor that its technical elements are ragged. But it nonetheless packs a potent emotional punch. — FRANK SCHECK APOLLO 11 (NEON) Todd Douglas Miller’s film, which is experiential rather than informative, picks up on the morning of July 16, 1969, with the looming launch of the Saturn V…

International entries are no strangers to controversy in subject matter, onstage and behind the camera, as these five films from Iran, Sweden, France, Germany and Italy clearly display. From directors boycotting the ceremony in protest to a cavalcade of court trials arguing for and against a film’s merits, Oscar history is replete with winners who faced skirmishes. THE SALESMAN (2016) Director Asghar Farhadi boycotted the 89th Academy Awards as a form of protest over President Trump’s executive order blocking the entry of citizens from Iran and six other Muslim-majority nations into the U.S. He enlisted Anousheh Ansari, the first female space tourist, and Firouz Naderi, a former director of Solar System Exploration at NASA, to accept the award for the Iranian film in his stead. THE TIN DRUM (1979) Volker…

FOR SAMA Directed by Waad al-Kateab and Edward Watts, For Sama tells al-Kateab’s story as a young mother from the beginning of the Syrian conflict in 2012 through the fall of Aleppo in December 2016. The Syrian documentary, which won the Golden Eye prize at Cannes, is told in a video diary format, for al-Kateab’s daughter. THE CAVE The National Geographic doc, Feras Fayyad’s companion piece to his Oscar-nominated Last Men in Aleppo, follows a woman doctor in an underground hospital as she treats victims of the Syrian conflict. THR’s review called it “both intensely real and a carefully wrought work of cinema.”…

ST. LOUIS SUPERMAN Bruce Franks Jr., 35, doesn’t need a cape to prove he’s a superhero in St. Louis. “You can’t walk down the street without people approaching him — wanting to talk to him, celebrate him, come to him with their problems,” says Smriti Mundhra, 39, who codirected St. Louis Superman with film school classmate Sami Khan, 40. The doc, which is MTV Documentary Films’ first acquisition, follows the activist, battle rapper and state representative as he tries to pass a bill on the House floor that would effectively declare youth violence a public health epidemic, provide critical funding to address the root causes of gun violence and mark June 7 as Christopher Harris Day in honor of his brother, who was killed at just 9 years old. “We…

To make Running Against the Wind — Ethiopia’s official entry for the international feature Oscar — director Jan Philipp Weyl knew he would have to go the extra mile. As a white, European filmmaker — Weyl is German — he would also have to be accepted by the Ethiopian people as one of their own. “I know how it could be depicted, as this white guy coming to Africa to tell their story,” Weyl says. “I needed to make this film as authentic as possible. To do that, I knew I had to become Ethiopian.” Running Against the Wind is a coming-of-age tale about two boys from rural Ethiopia who travel very different paths. Abdi trains to be an Olympic runner, trying to emulate national hero and two-time Olympic gold…

Somewhere around the middle of It Must Be Heaven, Elia Suleiman’s fourth feature and his first in a decade, there’s a line that perhaps conveys the entire message behind the typically deadpan comedy from Palestine’s answer to Buster Keaton. In a French film company’s minimalist white office, Suleiman — playing himself as the central character — is told by a producer (played by his actual sales agent, Wild Bunch boss Vincent Maraval) that, despite the company being “sympathetic to the Palestinian cause,” his latest script simply “isn’t Palestinian enough” to support. Perhaps unsurprisingly, this came from a genuine experience, one Suleiman says he had while in Paris pitching his 1996 debut feature, Chronicle of a Disappearance. “They were sympathetic to the Palestinian cause, but would simply never believe that I’m…

THE CHAMBERMAID (MEXICO) In its way as clean-lined and efficiently structured as the high-rise Mexico City hotel in which it is set, Lila Avilés’ quietly distinctive feature also has something of the hotel’s chilly remoteness. But its dispassionate approach toward the major injustices and minuscule triumphs that make up the life of its protagonist, superbly played by Gabriela Cartol, are always balanced by compassion, perhaps making it more effective than any impassioned rant. — JONATHAN HOLLAND INCITEMENT (ISRAEL) A rare look into the mind of an assassin, Incitement provokes and disturbs. It tells the story of Yigal Amir, the young law student who killed Yitzhak Rabin in 1995, dooming the peace process that the Israeli prime minister had sought to implement and changing the history of the Middle East. An…

INTERNATIONAL FE ATURE FILM Parasite (South Korea) Recently hailed by The New York Times as “the film of the year,” Bong Joon Ho’s dark comedy won Cannes’ Palme d’Or and was a critical and commercial triumph. It is now all but certain to go where no Korean film has gone before — to a best international feature Oscar nomination — and, in all likelihood, to a win, as well. The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind (United Kingdom) The directorial debut of Oscar nominee Chiwetel Ejiofor — who also plays a key supporting role — is a Chichewa-language film set in Malawi about a teen who tries to devise a scientific way of saving his village from famine. It premiered at Sundance, where it won the Alfred P. Sloan prize. The…

“30 years ago I was warned, ‘Please, when you go looking for a job, don’t say the word documentary.’ ” “What has happened with our film through Netflix is that people in rural America are watching it.” “I still love seeing films with an audience and hearing people laugh or clap.” “Ironically, the people who we want to see the film most are the people who can’t see it, the Chinese people.” “In a time when our country’s news is profit-driven, we’re not doing this for ratings.” “I enjoy going to a cinema. I realize it’s a rare experience that documentary can get in that space.” In an era when trust in mainstream media is dwindling, documentaries are thriving — and tackling the shifting idea of truth itself. In her…

I love your movie, especially the music,” used to be the best backhanded compliment you could pay a filmmaker. But when it comes to many of this year’s documentaries vying for awards, music is front and center as the star of the show, along with the artists and institutions that created the sounds that have defined American music through the decades. There are mavericks like legendary music executive Clarence Avant and institutions such as Harlem’s Apollo Theater and Blue Note Records, not to mention legends like Bruce Springsteen and Linda Ronstadt, and David Crosby, the embattled member of the 1970s rock quartet Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young. Still, no matter the topic, the hurdles are the same — access, archival footage, clearing music rights and burning as few bridges as…

Honeyland Ljubo Stefanov and Tamara Kotevska shot their debut feature over three years in Macedonia, capturing the intimate dedication of Europe’s last female wild beekeeper, Hatidze Muratova. As her peaceful bargain with nature is thrust into upheaval with the arrival of an ambitious beekeeping family, she must restore a balance to her livelihood and the nature she reveres. Sea of Shadows Nat Geo’s winner of the Sundance Audience Award tells a gripping tale of the rescue of sea life on the verge of extinction. When the Sea of Cortez waters are polluted by drug cartels and traffickers trying to poach the rare totoaba fish, activists, the Mexican navy and investigators step in to save endangered species like the world’s smallest whale, the vaquita porpoise. The Elephant Queen Victoria Stone and…

When South Korean filmmaker Bong Joon Ho was in his early 20s, he took a job as a tutor for the son of a wildly wealthy family in Seoul. The family lived in a palatial home in one of the city’s most exclusive enclaves, and Bong, who grew up in considerably less lavish circumstances, was to be the boy’s math tutor. He’d been introduced to the family, somewhat incognito, by his girlfriend at the time — now his wife of more than 20 years — who was already tutoring the boy in English. “They wanted another tutor for math, so she put me forward as a trustworthy friend, even though I was actually really bad at math,” Bong explains. “That’s how it works with those jobs. It’s not as if…

If there is one film in the international feature race guaranteed to cause controversy, it’s The Painted Bird. The official Czech Republic entry, from director Václav Marhoul, triggered mass walkouts at its festival screenings in Venice and Toronto — with even hardened film critics unable to stomach the unflinching depictions of wartime horror in Marhoul’s three-hour, black-and-white epic, adapted from Jerzy Kosinski’s controversial novel from 1956. The World War II-set film follows a young Jewish boy who wanders from village to village across Eastern Europe, facing one brutal violation after another. The book’s title comes from a rural tradition of catching birds, painting them in bright colors and then releasing them into the wild, where these “painted birds” are rejected by their own families as foreign and pecked to death.…

For the 35th Academy Awards in 1962, La Dolce Vita was not submitted by Italy for best foreign-language film. Instead, Nanni Loy’s The Four Days of Naples got the nomination. Perhaps the Italians felt that Federico Fellini’s eighth film, which centered on a gossip columnist (Marcello Mastroianni) wandering into fountains with Anita Ekberg and partaking in Rome’s high life, had received too much publicity already. The Vatican paper L’Osservatore had called Vita “disgusting,” and the Church’s Centro Cattolico Cinematografico ratings board gave it an “E” for “Escluso,” meaning it was “unsuitable for all.” American critics, though, were more receptive. “This is a great picture,” gushed The Hollywood Reporter in its review. “Italian neo-realism, which breathed fresh air into the postwar period … is back in business with a very big…