The four day event will run at the Bay Area in San Francisco from the 17th to the 20th October.
The complete programme for the upcoming event, celebrating its 10th anniversary has been confirmed, in which across the four day period 10 features, two shorts blocks, two filmmaking and industry talks, and a documentary filmmaking workshop for teens will be included.
This year will welcome new and returning filmmakers to Doc Stories including Kevin Macdonald, Robinson Devor, Yuval Abraham and Basel Adra, Elizabeth Lo, Ben Proudfoot, Brett Story and Stephen Maing, Amy Berg, and Bonni Cohen, Pedro Kos, and Jon Shenk amongst others.
Meanwhile, the Doc Stories Talks will feature onstage conversations with film industry veterans including Laura Kim, Carrie Lozano, Justine Nagan, and Keri Putnam.
Opening Night is One to One: John & Yoko from Kevin Macdonald and co-director Sam Rice-Edwards which chronicles John and Yoko’s musical, personal, artistic, social, and political world set against the backdrop of a turbulent era in American history, and deeply explores the state of pop culture during their first 18 months living in the US in the early 1970s.
The closing night feature is Suburban Fury from Robinson Devor who received an SFFILM Rainin Grant in 2012 in support of the early development of this project. It tells the story of Sara Jane Moore, who attempted to shoot President Gerald Ford on a crowded sidewalk in San Francisco’s Union Square in September of 1975. Moore holds the center of this nonfiction drama which Devor has created with the feel of a 1970s thriller.
Other features to be included in the event are: Architecton from Victor Kossakovsky; Ernest Cole: Lost and Found from Raoul Peck; Mistress Dispeller from Elizabeth Lo; No Other Land from Yuval Abraham, Basel Adra, Hamdan Ballal, and Rachel Szor; The Remarkable Life of Ibelin from Benjamin Ree; Union from Brett Story and Stephen Maing; and The White House Effect from Bonni Cohen, Pedro Kos, and Jon Shenk.
In addition to the main programme, SFFILM’s Doc Congress will be convened, connecting filmmakers, industry professionals, and film funders, and a full programme of Schools at Doc Stories designed for students and teachers will run concurrently. Classes from across the Bay Area will attend weekday in-person and online matinees of curated Doc Stories film programs at no cost to students or educators. Filmmaker guests from around the world will also visit local classrooms in person and online to discuss their films with students. Finally, SFFILM’s College Days program will bring Doc Stories filmmakers to four Bay Area universities for in-class visits and discussion.
SFFILM’s Director of Programming Jessie Fairbanks said:“Documentaries offer a critical lens through which audiences can contemplate challenging world issues and core ideological beliefs. Now more than ever we rely on this genre of filmmaking to help lead public discourse,”
she continues “Doc Stories is such a special programme because there is time to digest and discuss each film. This festival fosters storytelling, networking, and community, as we collectively reflect and interrogate the art form and its impact.”
To find out more visit: https://sffilm.org/