2024 got off to an auspicious cinematic start with the very first Sundance selection I saw staying with me all year long.
As I wrote in my intro to an interview I did with the film’s director Silje Evensmo Jacobsen, “A New Kind of Wilderness is a film structured in a way I’ve not seen before. With a title that likewise could apply to the psychic space into which the audience is thrust, the rural Norway-set doc is an intimate, first-person narrated, cinematic essay from a director whose story it is not.
“Indeed, straight from its bold opening, the viewer is left abruptly disoriented, forever second-guessing whose eyes we are actually looking through. It’s a deft structural feat that in turn emotionally transports us into the shoes of the free-spirited, forest-dwelling – and above all grieving – Payne family, five protagonists deeply connected both to one another and to nature; who are unexpectedly forced to find their own individual footing in a brand new dizzying world.”
And from Park City on to Austin the nonfiction landscape continued to thrill, with the SXSW-debuting Adrianne & The Castle inspiring me to pen an (A-minus) review about this loving tribute to “Adrianne Blue Wakefield St. George, the star and subject of Shannon Walsh’s documentary Adrianne & The Castle and a woman who also once proclaimed: ‘I am my own art.’
“Indeed she was. A gloriously Rubenesque force of nature who appeared to take her fashion and beauty tips from Divine, Adrianne was muse not only to herself but likewise to her adoring husband Alan St. George, who built a castle for — and his entire life around — his beloved wife of 30-plus years.”
Then it was on to Hot Docs where I was finally able to catch Brendan Bellomo and Slava Leontyev’s Sundance US Grand Jury Prize: Documentary-winning film focused on a pair of porcelain sculptors, and include it in my festival coverage.
“Porcelain War follows three Ukrainian artists, including co-director Leontyev and the film’s DP Andrey Stefanov, as they practice their delicate art in a war zone. Having lost the passion to paint — not to mention the physical touch of family since evacuating his wife and twin daughters to Poland — DP Stefanov has now turned to filming the destruction wrought by Russian troops but also the defiant beauty crafted by the hands of his dear friends Leontyev and Leontyev’s partner Anya Stasenko.”
And before I knew it the fall fest season was in full swing, which allowed me to interview the director behind yet another beautiful discovery (which I also reviewed) birthed from Putin’s destruction.
“One of the cinematic highlights of this year’s TIFF, Olivier Sarbil’s Ukraine-set (and Darren Aronofsky-produced) Viktor
And as my year of unexpected revelations came to a close, I was fortunate enough to interview the British creators of a DOC NYC selection that had been on my radar since the beginning of 2024.
“Jacob Perlmutter and Manon Ouimet’s Two Strangers Trying Not To Kill Each Other is as breathtakingly understated as its title is arresting. The doc, which picked up a Special Mention: DOX:AWARD when it world-premiered at CPH:DOX last March, stars the celebrated and prolific photographer Joel Meyerowitz (a two-time Guggenheim Fellow and NEA and NEH awards recipient with 50-plus books and over 350 museum and gallery exhibitions to his credit) and his less famous partner of 30 years, the British artist-musician-novelist Maggie Barrett.
“It’s also an up close and personal (literally — the filmmaker couple lived with their protagonists during production) encounter with the highs and lows of a long-term relationship, staged in a manner more reminiscent of a theater piece. For now that Joel, in his mid-eighties, is forced to become caregiver to his 75-year old wife after she breaks her femur, the pithy phrase ‘in sickness and in health’ is put to the test.
“What unspools over the next 100 minutes is a painfully raw and refreshingly honest reckoning with both a bumpy past and an uncertain future — and in Maggie’s case, thwarted ambition as a result of decades of living in the shadow of a creative giant. Until, that is, a talented duo enter with a camera and smartly shine a spotlight on the unsung heroine at the heart of this forever love affair.”
May our love affair with the movies continue the whole next year through.