2020 Films
46 Years
dir. Catherine Hoffman
46 Years chronicles the Nation of Islam, an unsolved murder in 1967, a man who had to grow up without a father and a man who had to live with the guilt of his brother’s death for almost five decades. The filmmaker grew up with broken and contradictory accounts of her grandfather’s murder, the stories scattered across states and generations. In 46 Years, she attempts to glue the pieces together and unearth the truth of an event that rocked a family and the Black Muslim community across America.
Being Erika
dir. Seiler Burr
More than six years ago, a lifelong love of insects brought Erika Thompson to a class where she realized her passion for beekeeping. Being Erika is an observational documentary filmed in central Texas that explores Thompson’s transition from passion to business, as well as her role in preserving bee populations. This short film takes the audience into the heart of Texas and is a love letter to those who turn their passions into reality.
Compagnon de ma calamité
dir. Nick Corder
“Last semester, I went to Canada, leaving the Midwest in search of the cosmic je-ne-sais-quoi.” Compagnon de ma calamité (Companion in My Calamity) is an immersive travel film in which the director explores aspects of living abroad vis-à-vis his experience living in Quebec. As summer turns into a Canadian winter, postcard images of his neighborhood pop up like memories. What do we remember when we leave a place? How do we process it? What narratives can we construct from our past? Why?
Diary of a Teenage Zealot
dir. Megan Liz Smith
A diaristic self-portrait of a filmmaker’s ongoing crisis of faith, this film combines materials gathered both during and after her life in the Assemblies of God church, the world’s largest Pentecostal denomination. Featuring transparent confessions to the camera and eye-opening images from the past, the film examines the chasm religious identity can leave in the middle of families. As the director loses her faith, she struggles to reconcile the reality of her beliefs with the love she has for her family and friends, whose beliefs equate atheism with eternal damnation.
Winner of the Stronger Than Fiction 2020 Jury Prize for Best Editing
First Holiday
dir. Myles Murdock
On the day the filmmaker’s grandfather died, his grandmother was the only person to whom he wanted to speak. When he called her that evening to see how she was doing, she immediately turned the question on him. “Holding a lot back,” he said “I’m doing okay. It’s just been a hard day,” to which his grandmother replied “A hard day because of school or a hard day because Bob died?” The film explores the loss of love and its impact on how descendants of that first couple experience it.
The Forward Momentum of Madellyn Knightley
dir. Jackson Kinkead
The Forward Momentum of Madellyn Knightley is an experimental docufiction about high school addiction and invasive poppy flowers. Madellyn is an introverted heroine who reflects on her drug trauma. Her testimony gives insight into an off-screen drug culture and charts her path extracting herself from youthful despair.
The non-chronological narrative and expressive visual symbolism create a volatile and hallucinatory structure. The film confronts itself using on-screen text and inhuman juxtapositions. As Madellyn softly reconsiders her past, the film simultaneously exorcizes its own narrative reliability. Madellyn’s individualism is one such questioned element. Despite the experimental tendencies, the film subtly adheres to direct observations about Madellyn’s story.
The initial work for this film began in 2015. In 2019, prior to production commencing, the director learned from the city of Louisville’s largest syringe exchange office and internalized the concept of harm reduction. During production, interview sessions were spontaneous to allow Madellyn to use her surroundings to speak for what was internally unutterable.
Green Cheese Moon
dir. Colleen Andrae
The film focuses on Robert Richardson, who spent nearly nine years in prison due to Missouri's HIV criminalization laws. Since being put in place in 1988, these laws have seen few revisions and none of them addresses modern scientific understanding of prevention, transmission and treatment of HIV. Green Cheese Moon chronicles Richardson’s fight to change the outdated laws and end the stigma they perpetuate.
The Hat
dir. Thomas Rechenberg
The Hat explores viewers’ visceral emotions evoked by the most politically divisive symbol of our time: President Donald Trump’s MAGA hat. Director Thomas Rechenberg travels to three US cities capturing thoughts on how an inanimate object can be so polarizing. The film challenges audiences to decide whether the true meaning of the hat lies with the individual wearing it—or the person seeing it.
Las Vegas
dir. Amanda Amodeo
Las Vegas immerses the audience in a modern city symphony situated in downtown Las Vegas. This experimental documentary presents the narrative conflicts of man versus nature, man versus society and man versus himself. This biased portrait of the heart of the city encapsulates its spirit through a naive lens. This film provides an experience of manufactured, man-made beauty of a city built in the Mojave Desert.
My Fellow Countrymen
dir. Aleksandar Petraskovic
My Fellow Countrymen centers on two families who have emigrated from Serbia, one living in Sweden and the other in Canada. In these new lands, the families are reexamining their national identities through the prism of their children who have now spent most of their lives far away from their home countries. Balancing their children’s well-being and nostalgia for home, the families have yet to decide whether to return to Serbia home. The question now is just where is home?
My Name is Clotilda
dir. Clotilda DeMauro
After rediscovering an old camcorder at the age of 22, a young woman pieces together her journey in mental health, relationships, and self-image using footage of her younger and older selves. Performance, poetry, and music are used to tell the story of the ones who never felt they had a place in this world and were left with only one option—to make worlds of their own.
Natchez
dir. Daniel Christian
In a small Mississippi town known for its opulent antebellum homes, a handful of locals who work in or adjacent to the tourism industry go about their daily lives. With tourism the town’s primary economy, myths of the Old South are not merely felt beneath the surface but make up the surface itself, and everyday interactions are inevitably imbued with the region’s fraught past. Stuck in the amber of a Confederate fantasy, locals eternally contend with questions of history and mythology, of industry and power. The characters of Natchez find joy, peace and melancholy amidst these specters in this vibrant portrait of life in the American South.
Winner of the Stronger Than Fiction 2020 Jury Prize for Best Film
Parallel
dir. Yuejiao Jiang
The lives of the two young Chinese men cross at a fast food restaurant during the summer in the ancient town of Yueyang. Nineteen-year-old student Huang takes a delivery job to support himself while skating with his friends. Eighteen-year-old Liu dropped out of high school and now owns several small catering businesses. The film observes the peers’ intersecting lives, challenging the audience to choose a favorite.
Second Semester Senior Year
dir. Manuela Kalamboukas
Following a state order to close all schools for the remainder of the academic year, a high school senior and her friends try to carry on when all sense of normalcy in their last months in high school have been stolen from them.
Tecopa Lost
dir. Danny Mac Stayton
Tecopa is a small town in the middle of the Mojave Desert just outside of Death Valley. Most people drive right through, drawn like moths to the bright lights of Las Vegas and Los Angeles. But there is something special in this hot, dry place--something worth stopping for. Hot springs pool under the cloudless sky. This hidden gem of the desert is an oasis. But just who are the people who decide to stay and call this oddball paradise home?
Winner of the Stronger Than Fiction 2020 Jury Prize for Best Nonfiction Collaboration
Thoughts and Prayers
dir. Sarah Sabatke
As a community prepares to mark the 20th anniversary of the shooting at Columbine High School, two award-winning journalists reflect on their coverage of the event and its long-term effects. Meanwhile, community members remember their lost loved ones amid unrelenting media attention - until, three days before the anniversary, a new threat puts the community on high alert. Thoughts and Prayers explores how people remember the day of the shooting and how they navigated media coverage of the event, from both sides of the camera. Set against the lead-up to the event’s 20th anniversary, the film follows journalists and survivors as they reflect on the past two decades and strive to spread a message of hope. Intimate access allows viewers into the lives of individuals impacted by the tragedy as they deal with the new wave of media attention brought to town by the anniversary.
Winner of the Stronger Than Fiction 2020 Jury Prize for Best Director