Hale County This Morning, This Evening
UK + Ireland Release: 18 January 2019
Dir. RaMell Ross
USA 2018, 76 min., English
World Premiere: Sundance Film Festival 2018
One of the most important works of non-fiction filmmaking of 2019, the Oscar- and Academy Award-nominated Hale County, This Morning, This Evening is an innovative, impressionistic portrait of contemporary life in Hale County, Alabama. Filmed over five years, RaMell Ross’ careful and considered feature offers an urgent political critique, questioning issues of representation and stereotype prevalent in images of Black America.
Meteors (Meteorlar)
UK + Ireland Release: 7 December 2018
Dir. Gürcan Keltek
Netherlands / Turkey 2017, 84 min., Kurdish/Turkish with English subtitles
World Premiere: Locarno Film Festival 2017
Set in a Kurdish town in eastern Turkey and focusing on the troubled history of this conflict-stricken area, Meteors deftly explores the ethics of how we remember the stories, places and voices which have disappeared.
Dead Souls
UK + Ireland Release: 30 November 2018
Dir. Wang Bing
France / Switzerland 2018, 496 min., Chinese with English subtitles
World Premiere: Cannes Film Festival 2018
This monumental eight-hour work unearths the testimonies of China’s re-education camp’s survivors. Following Wang Bing’s Fengming, A Chinese Memoir (2007) and The Ditch (2010), Dead Souls is the third chapter of the director’s in-depth inquiry into the tragic legacy of the Communist Party of China.
Orione
UK + Ireland Release: 23 November 2018
Dir. Toia Bonino
Argentina 2017, 65 min., Spanish with English subtitles
World Premiere: Buenos Aires International Festival of Independent Film (BAFICI) 2017
Nuanced and unsettling, Orione is centred on the life of Buenos Aires gang member Alejandro. Through a series of engaging and sometimes uneasily juxtaposed fragments, the film builds a complex picture of a man – and a society – full of contradictions.
The Son (Syn)
UK + Ireland Release: 28 September 2018
Dir. Alexander Abaturov
France / Russia 2018, 71 min., Russian with English subtitles
World Premiere: Berlin International Film Festival 2018
Alexander Abaturov’s feature-length documentary immerses the viewer in the unforgiving world of the Russian military training apparatus, observing the changes that take place in young soldiers as they prepare for violent conflict, their lives intertwined with the fate of the group.
In Praise of Nothing
UK + Ireland Release: 7 September 2018
Dir. Boris Mitić
Serbia / Croatia / France 2017, 78 min., English
World Premiere: Locarno Film Festival 2017
Shot over eight years by 62 cinematographers in 70 countries and narrated in rhyming verse by Iggy Pop, this offbeat and satirical essay-film interweaves moments of playful superficiality with insightful commentary and formal lyricism.
Braguino
UK + Ireland Release: 24 August 2018
Dir. Clément Cogitore
France / Finland 2017, 50 min., Russian with English subtitles
World Premiere: Marseille Festival of Documentary Film (FID) 2017
In this documentary directed by the French artist, filmmaker and photographer Clément Cogitore, two feuding families – part of an ancient Russian Orthodox Church sect – live in adjoining but otherwise isolated compounds deep in Siberia’s boreal forest.
Distant Constellation
UK + Ireland Release: 17 August 2018
Dir. Shevaun Mizrahi
USA / Turkey / Netherlands 2017, 80 min., Turkish, English, and French with English Subtitles
World Premiere: Locarno Film Festival 2017
Sitting somewhere between ethnography and magical realism, Shevaun Mizrahi’s debut documentary feature records the stories told by the residents of a retirement home in Istanbul.
Cocote
UK + Ireland Release: 27 July 2018
Dir. Nelson Carlo De Los Santos Arias
The Dominican Republic / Argentina / Germany 2017, 106 min., Spanish with English subtitles
World Premiere: Locarno Film Festival 2017
Blurring the distinctions between fiction and non-fiction, Cocote follows evangelical Christian Alberto as he returns home to the Dominican Republic to attend the funeral of his murdered father. Juxtaposing ethnographic recordings with scripted scenes featuring both professional and non-professional actors, the film offers an immersive and visceral engagement with the violence of loss.
Extinction (Extinção)
UK + Ireland Release: 20 July 2018
Dir. Salomé Lamas
Germany / Portugal 2018, 80 min., Russian with English subtitles
World Premiere: CPH:DOX 2018
Hypnotic and multi-layered, Extinction meditates on the troubled borders of Eastern Europe. Shot in black and white, this filmic essay follows Kolya, a young Moldovan national who declares himself a citizen of Transnistria. Navigating through dreamlike echoes of the Soviet past and Kolya's politically charged encounters in the present, the film describes a landscape in which the borders between past and present remain unsettled.
Tranny Fag (Bixa Travesty)
UK + Ireland Release: 15 June 2018
Dirs. Claudia Priscilla, Kiko Goifman
Brazil 2018, 75 min., Portuguese with English subtitles
World Premiere: Berlin International Film Festival 2018
The rock documentary and political manifesto Tranny Fag depicts the life of Brazilian musician and spoken word artist Linn da Quebrada, a self-proclaimed ‘tranny fag’, who uses her body and music as weapons to fight machismo, transphobia, racism and conformity.
The Wild Boys (Les garçons sauvages)
UK + Ireland Release: 11 May 2018
Dir. Bertrand Mandico
France 2017, 110 min., French with English subtitles
World Premiere: Venice Film Festival 2017
Modelled after William S. Burroughs apocalyptic novel from the early 1970s and featuring an all-female cast at its centre, The Wild Boys is a surreal portrayal of a group of schoolboys exiled to an exotic island after committing a violent crime.
The Young Karl Marx
UK + Ireland Release: 4 May 2018
Dir. Raoul Peck
France / Germany / Belgium 2017, 118 min., English and French with English Subtitles
World Premiere: Berlin International Film Festival 2017
Between censorship and police raids, riots and political upheavals, Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels meet in Paris in 1844, and together, become defining voices for the burgeoning labour movement. This period drama traces the lives of these radical young philosophers from their first meeting through to their co-authorship of The Communist Manifesto.
Plot 35 (Carré 35)
UK + Ireland Release: 9 March 2018
Dir. Eric Caravaca
France / Germany 2017, 67 min., French with English subtitles
World Premiere: Cannes Film Festival 2017
In this deeply personal documentary, director Eric Caravaca explores his family’s painful past, investigating his parents’ lifelong silence about his elder sister, who died aged three. What starts as a chronicle of a forgotten life turns into a universal exploration of existence, death and intimacy.
The Nothing Factory (A Fábrica de Nada)
UK + Ireland Release: 26 January 2018
Dir. Pedro Pinho
Portugal 2017, 177 min., Portuguese with English subtitles
World Premiere: Cannes Film Festival 2017
Unexpectedly morphing from a vérite-like drama into a neorealist musical, The Nothing Factory follows a group of Portuguese workers as they occupy their factory in anticipation of mass layoffs.
