Full Frame 2022: Day 4
Dan Chen's Accepted follows four students at T.M. Landry College Preparatory in rural Louisiana, examining the daily life at the school and, for better or worse, the extreme results that are achieved by its graduates. Making a splash from a flurry of viral videos of students celebrating getting into prestigious colleges, the spotlight was on and the media couldn't get enough. Boasting that 32% of its graduates get into Ivy League schools and 100% of its graduates get into college, the students feel the pressure to measure up to its illustrious alumni.
Choosing to follow these four students in their senior year, you get an up-close look at the inner workings of the school and its founder and main teacher, Mike Landry. The more we see of him and his teaching process, the more we’re exposed to the cracks in the school's ideology and perceived brilliance. There are some twists and turns that transform a fairly straightforward documentary into an engrossing drama, and it’s best to go in not knowing much and simply ride the highs and lows with these kids. Expertly edited and directed, this is a must-see documentary. Grade: A —Joel Winsted
Eat Your Catfish is an honest and brutal look at Kathryn, a mother paralyzed with ALS, through the eyes of her son (and co-director), Noah Amir Arjomand. He, along with co-directors Adam Isenberg and Senem Tüzen (Motherland), deserve endless amounts of praise for their honest depiction of Kathryn’s disease and its effect on the family members and friends around her. This isn’t a sappy film in any way and it's truly amazing seeing the raw emotions on display from Noah, Kathryn, and her husband Said — who proves to be one of the most complex and divisive figures I’ve encountered in any recent documentary film. This intimacy is captured by an amazing filmmaking technique wherein the directors seem to have strapped a small camera to the back of Kathryn’s wheelchair, never allowing their audience to see her face. From this perspective (which practically the entire film is shot from), we get a sense of what Kathryn deals with on a day-to-day basis. For this reviewer, it makes Eat Your Catfish the most empathetic doc I’ve encountered at this year’s Full Frame. Grade: A —Josh McCormack
It goes without saying that no one wants to end up in prison, but for those in the penitentiary system and their loved ones, I’m so thankful for the subjects of Video Visit. Sponsored by the Brooklyn Public Library, inmates are given the chance to speak with their loved ones via video call. The story follows the perspectives of two mothers who use the program and the people who run it, and over the film's 22-minute runtime, we’re given insight into the emotions these people feel. It subtly shows the audience why this program matters and just how difficult it is to run, resulting in a mix of sympathy and anger by its end. There’s no sort of “narrative fat” in the story, which allows emotions to ring true and makes it my favorite short of the festival. Grade: A —Gabe Lapalombella
Directed by James Jones, Chernobyl: The Lost Tapes is composed entirely of archival footage with some recent and archival interviews mixed in. Much of this imagery was effectively buried by the Russian government after the 1986 nuclear accident and unseen until now. The footage is shown chronologically, depicting the city of Chernobyl as it was imagined: an Atomic City built to draw in young people. But most of the clips are of the incident’s aftermath and cleanup, highlighting the "liquidators" who were tasked with cleaning up all the radioactive material on the neighboring rooftops, and the group’s trial-by-error approach to clearing the debris.
Both fascinating and harrowing, the side effects of radiation poisoning forever changed the lives of those affected, from birth defects to cancer. And the government's attempts at keeping a lid on the true reason all these families and children were dying, lying to the public and going so far as blaming it on “Radiophobia," is truly eye-opening. If you aren't already jaded by governmental meddling and propaganda, this film will get you there. Grade: A —JW
Soldat Ahmet follows Ahmet, the dutiful son of Turkish immigrants, now living in Austria. Ahmet is a career soldier who is now 30 years old and facing the pressures of his parents to marry and have children. As we watch him go through his daily routines, the audience slowly learns more about him, revealing a layered and charming character. Through what’s basically a series of vignettes, we witness Ahmet in his successful boxing career, his burgeoning acting career, and his grappling with masculinity and inner peace. It’s a personal story with so much access that it truly is a fly-on-the-wall experience. Over a brief 75 minutes, director Jannis Lenz deftly uses multiple cameras and cuts to create what at times feels like a narrative feature. Ahmet has enough charisma to keep the runtime from dragging, and, in the end, his cathartic release is worth the wait. Grade: A —JW
Violet Columbus and Ben Klein’s The Exiles is a lot of things — all of them wonderful. Part artist biography, part history lesson, part political rabble-rouser, and part “film within a film,” The Exiles covers a lot of ground with a sense of style and pacing as irreverent as its subject matter. In the months following the 1989 massacre at Tiananmen Square in Beijing, documentary filmmaking provocateur and activist Christine Choy (a Chinese immigrant living in New York) spent weeks filming three of the uprising’s leaders who were forced into exile following the demonstration’s events.
Her footage from ‘89 is captivating on its own, as it brilliantly captures the stress, exhaustion, and determination these men held for their cause, and could have made a compelling documentary by itself. But, to add another layer of complexity, Choy decides to track down her subjects — all of whom are still living in exile — and catch up with them about their families, regrets, and continued aspirations for their Chinese homeland. Admittedly, it’s all a bit of a whirlwind, but as we get to know Choy, it becomes clear that a whirlwind is the only thing that can do her gigantic personality justice. In the end, The Exiles is a fascinating think-piece about the price of direct action and perseverance despite the risks to oneself and one’s family, all told through the eyes of a truly one-of-a-kind artist. Grade: A-minus —James Rosario
A searingly personal film in a festival full of them, William D. Caballero’s Chilly & Milly boldly continues the director’s focus on his eponymous parents and their life in a Fayetteville, N.C. trailer. Almost assuredly aware of how heavy the subject matter will play for many viewers, Caballero turns to animation to make his father’s kidney ailments easier to vicariously experience — an approach that also somehow amplifies the intensity of his mother’s love and support for her husband. A 10-minute runtime also helps keep viewer pain to a minimum, though a few more minutes likely would have helped as the film takes a sudden late turn that, while well-earned, nearly derails the film’s flow with its abruptness. Grade: B —Edwin Arnaudin
In Kameelah Janan Rasheed: The Edge of Legibility, director Carrie Hawks closely examines the titular artist’s work from her Brooklyn-based studio. Rasheed is a text-based artist trying to find the meaning of her art through fragments of words. Any text will do, and she takes from multiple sources for each piece, being deliberate in her choices to challenge the viewer to sit with the art and unpack its meaning. Over the course of eight brief minutes, director and subject work in tandem to explain Rasheed’s craft as best they can with Hawks excelling at matching her filmmaking style with that of Rasheed's art. It’s all too short a glimpse at a fascinating artist who warrants a feature-length look. Grade: B —JW
We Met in Virtual Reality is a wonderful experiment of a film that might have worked a bit better as a short subject. Director Joe Hunting amazingly captures a whole series of relationships completely in a Virtual Reality app known as VRChat. From a central romance, to an ASL teacher, to even some sort of VR strip club, the digital settings inhabited by users are certainly always fascinating and lead to some interactions that are often hilarious and others that might make the less initiated cringe with second-hand embarrassment. But while Hunting attempts to fill the later parts of the documentary with some genuine emotional beats (especially from the romance of two avatars), I couldn’t help but shake the feeling that this was mostly a 90-minute documentary that relies mostly on a gimmick than any deeper emotional connection. However, it’s still worth a watch for its creativity alone. Grade: B —JM
Told mostly from the perspective of Steeve — a long-time sufferer of ALS — Joris Cottin’s Expiration is an often saddening examination of the effects of COVID-19 isolation on the dying. Knowing he’s near the end of his life, yet unable to say his goodbyes in person due to visiting and distancing guidelines, Steeve and his girlfriend move into a hotel room as an attempt to feel and act as normal as possible while he awaits his doctor-assisted dignified death. While Steeve’s plight is certainly a worthwhile one to explore, Cottin doesn’t quite reach the level of emotion one might assume would come with this type of story. It is compelling, no doubt, but even at just 21 minutes, it often feels disjointed and somewhat aimless. However, it remains worth a look, especially for those who’ve lost someone to ALS, or for those who were not able to attend memorials or say goodbye to loved ones due to COVID restrictions. Grade: B-minus —JR
Representation is important and disabled filmmaker Reid Davenport’s perspective is a welcome one, but I Didn’t See You There is an endurance test that would have been far more effective as a short. Told from the director’s perspective, the film opens with multiple shots of the rapidly-moving sidewalk beneath his motorized wheelchair that’s bound to induce motion sickness for all but the most iron-stomached viewer. When he’s not capturing such borderline-unwatchable imagery, Davenport delivers non-nauseating yet still overlong visuals of his struggles with everyday activities, but also sprinkles in sidewalk scenes of able-bodied people either ignoring him with the titular unspoken excuse or disregarding his right-of-way in crosswalks — brilliant depictions that convey his daily disadvantages. Twenty minutes gets the point across, but another hour remains and fast-forwarding with occasional stops suggest no change in this frustrating approach. Grade: DNF —EA
(Photos courtesy of Full Frame)
