Winners Circle International Award Winners
ACASA, MY HOME
Dir: Radu Ciorniciuc
Prod: Monica Lăzurean-Gorgan
Winner: Krakow
A large Roma clan who have lived off the grid in the wilderness for 20 years are forced to resettle in the unfamiliar city.
BEAUTIFUL SOMETHING LEFT BEHIND
Dir: Katrine Philp
Prod: Katrine A. Sahlstrøm
Winner: SXSW
An affectionate and intimate child’s eye view of New Jersey’s Good Grief counseling center, which offers a holistic approach to mourning the loss of loved ones.
INFLUENCE
Dir: Richard Poplak, Diana Neille
Prod: Bob Moore, Neil Brandt
Winner: Durban
This portrait of the founder of the infamous public relations firm Bell Pottinger explores the disturbing way our perceptions—and politics—are shaped by outside forces.
MAYOR
Dir/Prod: David Osit
Winner: Full Frame
Musa Hadid, the Christian mayor of Ramallah, Palestine, navigates day-to-day civic responsibilities, but the darker realities of life under occupation are never too far away.
THE REASON I JUMP
Dir: Jerry Rothwell
Prod: Jeremy Dear, Stevie Lee, Al Morrow
Winner: Sundance
Based on the groundbreaking book written by Naoki Higashida, this film explores the interior worlds and fascinating daily experiences of five nonverbal autistic young people.
SONGS OF REPRESSION
Dir: Estephan Wagner, Marianne Hougen-Moraga
Prod: Heidi Elise Christensen, Signe Byrge Sørensen
Winner: CPH:DOX
Executive produced by Joshua Oppenheimer, this complex portrait reveals the dark truth behind Chile’s seemingly idyllic German colony, Colonia Dignidad, formerly led by a cruel cult leader.
STRAY
Dir/Prod: Elizabeth Lo
Prod: Shane Boris
Winner: Hot Docs
A remarkable portrait of three dogs in Istanbul, where strays are an everyday part of the fabric of the community, belonging to no one and everyone at the same time.
THE WALRUS AND THE WHISTLEBLOWER
Dir/Prod: Nathalie Bibeau
Prod: Frederic Bohbot
Winner: Hot Docs
An eccentric former marine animal park trainer wages a war via social media and the courts to save Smooshi, his beloved walrus, from deplorable conditions.
Masters Films By Nonfiction Auteurs
9TO5: THE STORY OF A MOVEMENT
Dir/Prod: Julia Reichert, Steven Bognar
Oscar-winners Julia Reichert and Steve Bognar (American Factory) explore the 1970s movement by secretaries and female office workers to demand better working conditions.
CRAZY, NOT INSANE
Dir/Prod: Alex Gibney
Prod: Ophelia Harutyunyan, Erin Edeiken, Joey Marra
Alex Gibney profiles Dorothy Lewis, who grew up driven to understand what makes people into killers, leading her to become a psychiatrist specializing in serial killers.
LOVE & STUFF
Dir/Prod: Judith Helfand
Prod: Hilla Medalia, Julie Parker Benello
Faced with the loss of her beloved mother and becoming a first-time mom herself at the age of 50, filmmaker Judith Helfand has a lot of stuff—both literal and figurative—to deal with.
MLK/FBI
Dir: Sam Pollard
Prod: Benjamin Hedin
Using recent declassified files, MLK/FBI examines J. Edgar Hoover’s relentless campaign of surveillance and harassment against Martin Luther King, Jr.
MY PSYCHEDELIC LOVE STORY
Dir/Prod: Errol Morris
Prod: Robert Fernandez, Steven Hathaway
Errol Morris profiles the unforgettable Joanna Harcourt-Smith as she tells tales of sexual escapades and psychedelic tripping during her life on the run with the High Priest of LSD Timothy Leary.
ORIGIN OF THE SPECIES (World Premiere)
Dir/Prod: Abigail Child
Abigail Child offers an eerie and exciting look into the present and future of artificial intelligence through the perspectives of robotics scientists, entrepreneurs, and a Black lesbian robot named BINA48.
PARIS CALLIGRAMMES (North American Premiere)
Dir: Ulrike Ottinger
Prod: Thomas Kufus, Kornelia Theune
German auteur Ulrike Ottinger constructs an epic memoir tracing the influence of the time she spent living in Paris in the 1960s.
Ameridan Perspectives Explore the the USA
CHASING CHILDHOOD (World Premiere)
Dir: Eden Wurmfeld, Margaret Munzer Loeb
Prod: Eden Wurmfeld, Lisa Eisenpresser
Reformed “helicopter” parents and education professionals reveal the benefits of allowing kids to have freedom to play unencumbered by schedules and structure.
DEAR SANTA
Dir/Prod: Dana Nachman
Prod: Chelsea Matter, Brendan Gaul, Christopher Karpenko
Each year, volunteers for the USPS’s Operation Santa answer letters to Santa, bringing holiday cheer to children nationwide.
THE DILEMMA OF DESIRE
Dir/Prod: Maria Finitzo
Prod: Cynthia Kane, Diane Quon
A timely and radical film about gender politics, sexuality, and the barriers society and culture have placed on the acknowledgement of female sexual desire.
FOR THE LOVE OF RUTLAND
Dir/Prod: Jennifer Maytorena Taylor
Once prosperous but now reeling from the opioid epidemic, the town of Rutland, Vermont, becomes the center of an ideological debate on refugee resettlement.
HAMTRAMCK, USA
Dir/Prod: Justin Feltman, Razi Jafri
In Hamtramck, Michigan, America’s first majority Muslim city, an election splits the typically harmonious community along ethnic lines.
THE OIL WAR (World Premiere)
Dir/Prod: David Schisgall
Iconoclastic historian Andrew Bacevich delivers an anti-colonial critique of US foreign policy in the Middle East, which he sees as one long Oil War.
THE PLACE THAT MAKES US
Dir/Prod: Karla Murthy
Prod: Alexandra Nikolchev
Demonstrating resilience and ingenuity, residents of post-industrial Youngstown, Ohio, once a booming steel and mining town, work to restore their community.
RESTAURANT HUSTLE (World Premiere)
Dir: Frank Matson
Prod: Tim McOsker
Executive produced by Guy Fieri, this is an intimate chronicle of the impact of the pandemic on the restaurants of four celebrity chefs: Antonia Lofaso, Marcus Samuelsson, Maneet Chauhan, and Christian Petroni. Co-presented by Grub Street.
WOMEN IN BLUE
Dir/Prod: Deirdre Fishel
Prod: Beth Levison, Aideen Kane
Three female officers from the Minneapolis Police Department must cope with the interdepartmental politics that arise from the appointment of the city’s first female chief.
End Part 3