Editor’s note: Earlier this month, the 2023-24 University of Illinois College of Media Roger Ebert Fellows attended the True/False Film Festival in Columbia, MO. It’s an ideal first festival for any moviegoer, its documentary focus allowing for a wide range of stylistic and thematic encounters and venues of all sizes. Here are their reports. HANNA … Read more
For thirty-two years, the Republic of Artsakh, a tiny country in the South Caucasus, flourished under its own flag before falling to invasion by Azerbaijan, forcing its inhabitants to be displaced mostly in its welcoming neighbor Armenia. Director Emily Mkrtichian’s “There Was, There Was Not,” a documentary whose name derives from how Armenian fairy tales … Read more
When a film hits me as hard as Benjamin Ree’s “Ibelin” did at Sundance, I tend to take a while to write about it: You need time to unwrap the ball of emotion whose center turned you to tears. “Ibelin” is a special film. It begins with a prototypical frame: A Norwegian family has recently … Read more
Considering only one week separated the beginning of True/False and the end of the Berlin International Film Festival, I can’t help but compare the two. There are of course the superficial differences: Berlin is a major city; the theaters are resplendent gigantic movie houses; the attendees are more generally from across the globe. True/False has … Read more