What We Leave Behind by Iliana Sosa
Ji.hlava IDFF (26-31 October) has announced the sixteen “remarkable” documentary projects by directors and producers based in the United States that will be presented at the Ji.hlava New Visions Forum.
They include new projects from Godfrey Reggio and Sara Dosa, Fern Silva, and Brent Chesanek. The projects in the development stage will be presented physically on Thursday, October 28 (17.30-19.00 CET), and pitches of projects in production post-production will take place on Friday, October 29 (17.30-19.00 CET). All pitches will also be streamed to holders of industry accreditations.
The platform is designed to connect the US doccers with potential co-producers, distributors, sales representatives and film festivals from Europe. The selected projects will be presented by the director-producer pair along alongside a preview of the upcoming film.
The 20 European projects selected for the Ji.hlava New Visions Forum will be announced in October.
US PROJECTS IN DEVELOPMENT
BACKSIDE
Director: Raúl O. Paz-Pastrana
Producers: Gabriella Garcia-Pardo, Patricia Alvarez Astacio
Production Company: Backside Film LLC
Runtime: 90’. Estimated date of premiere: January 2024
Synopsis: Backside details the daily life and skills of the under-recognized migrant workers behind the Kentucky Derby, the most famous horse race in the world. This observational film follows a racing season from beginning to end, revealing a web of class, labor, and wealth in the American South. With its intimate cinematography and access, Backside is a feature documentary that disrupts stereotypes of “low-skilled” immigrant labor while elevating the daily lives of grooms to a sensory experience.
CREDIBLE FEAR
Director: Gabrielle Ewing
Producer: Kimberly McFarland
Production Company: Sad Donut Films LLC
Runtime: 60’. Estimated date of premiere: May 2023
Synopsis: Two mothers, an asylum seeker from Guatemala and an energy lawyer, become unlikely allies while they fight a broken U.S. immigration system. The overall effect is to demystify distorted reportage in hopes of championing urgently needed reforms and disrupting the status-quo of the “immigration genre.” Beneath the surface, this is a film about what it means to be a mother and how to find the common humanity in each other.
DESIRE LINES
Director: Jules Rosska
Producer: Jules Rosska
Production Company: MamSir Productions
Runtime: 90’. Estimated date of premiere: February 2024
Synopsis: It’s an open secret among transgender men: after coming out as trans, many develop an attraction for other men. Desire Lines is a feature-length documentary essay exploring what’s at stake for everyone when our sexual desires lead to feelings of social and political precarity. Anchored in bodies, public and private spaces, and the changing social sphere of the bathhouse, Desire Lines is a timely new work that reveals as much about why sexual desires might change as gender presentation changes as it does about masculinity in our culture.
HUMBOLDT USA
Director: G. Anthony Svatek
Producer: Elijah Stevens
Production Company: Humboldt USA LLC
Runtime: 80’. Estimated date of premiere: September 15, 2023
Synopsis: Humboldt USA is a portrayal of the dissonant ways Americans protect and relate to their rapidly changing environments. Using 19th century naturalist Alexander von Humboldt as a historical anchor, the film interweaves the stories of people in three ‘Humboldt’ placenames in Nevada, Chicago, and California who take unique steps toward tackling environmental concerns in their communities. These oft-disparate narratives raise the question: in the face of ecological collapse and increasing virtualization of nature, what does it mean to be an environmentalist in America today?
REBOUNDS
Director: Fern Silva
Producer: Fern Silva
Production Company: Fern Silva
Runtime: 70’. Estimated date of premiere: February 2024
Synopsis: Rebounds (The Impossible Return) is a hypnotic portrait of basketball culture in modern-day Greece. The film draws parallels between the origins of competitive sport in Ancient Greece and contemporary spectator sport culture. Finding how in the midst of economic turmoil, aspirations of class mobility, masculinity, and nationalism pave ways for familiar fantasies to unfold amongst citizens and immigrants alike.
THE ANARCHIST
Directors: Philip Cartelli, Mariangela Ciccarello
Producer: Philip Cartelli
Production Company: Nusquam
Runtime: 90’. Estimated date of premiere: December 2023
Synopsis: Five people are connected through an apocryphal story: a decade ago, a group of anarchists from the U.S. stole Leon Trotsky’s ashes from their resting place in Mexico. This central narrative is articulated through those of a Mexican activist lawyer, a Greek professional couple, a Tunisian journalist and a Kurdish student. Each has some connection to international networks of solidarity and activism, which, for some, are now in the past. Filmed in New York, Marseille, and Athens, their separate recollections converge in a portrait of the tensions between the personal and the political today.
THE PROMETHEUS COMPLEX
Director: Ross Lipman
Producer: Ross Lipman
Production Company: Corpus Fluxus
Runtime: 120’. Estimated date of premiere: 2023
Synopsis: The Prometheus Complex is second in a series of four documentary-fiction hybrid films investigating the house of mirrors of the subconscious mind. The film looks at the history of the human race’s strange attempts to create artificial life. Within the framework of a fiction, a hallucinatory kaleidoscope of archival film clips from classic works of cinema reveal a hidden history. The first film in the series, The Case of the Vanishing Gods looks at the history of ventriloquism, and premiered at the Locarno Film Festival in August 2021.
THE SEA, THE ISLAND AND THE PEOPLE
Director: Chivas DeVinck
Producer: Chivas DeVinck
Production Company: Dialogue Talk
Runtime: 90’. Estimated date of premiere: 2023
Synopsis: The Sea, the Island and the People is a feature length documentary about Guam, an unincorporated territory of the United States that few people in America and the rest of the world know anything about. Its economy is almost entirely dependent on the presence of U.S. military bases and Japanese tourism. Although Guam is located over 6,000 miles away from the U.S. mainland, its American-style malls and road signs are indistinguishable from the United States. The film, similar to Beau Travail, will bear witness to the activities of soldiers in a colonized land, while also giving voice to the natives.
PROJECTS IN PRODUCTION & POSTPRODUCTION
EXODUS STORIES
Directors: Ilse Fernandez
Producer: Ilse Fernandez
Production Company: Viva Vida Productions
Runtime: 90’. Estimated date of premiere: April 2022
Synopsis: A mass exodus via the caravan movement. A dangerous 2,600-mile trek to a promised land where a border separates Central American nightmare from American Dream. Through intimate access, Exodus Stories follows the journeys of three immigrants fleeing violence and persecution. Once at the U.S border, they seek asylum, an institution they find under siege amidst a surge of anti-immigrant sentiment during the Trump Era.
IMPOSSIBLE TOWN
Directors: Meg Griffiths, Scott Faris
Producer: Meg Griffiths
Production Company: Universe Creative
Runtime: 75’. Estimated date of premiere: January 2023
Synopsis: When her father passes unexpectedly, Dr. Ayne Amjad is thrust to the helm of a decades-long struggle to aid a southern West Virginia town beset by cancer-causing chemicals. After formulating an audacious plan to relocate the town’s residents, Ayne must decide how much she is willing to sacrifice – and who of her allies she can count on – to fulfill her late father’s mandate to “help others” at all costs.
IN THE BONES
Directors: Kelly Duane de la Vega, Zandashé Brown
Producer: Jessica Anthony
Production Company: Three Frames
Runtime: 85’. Estimated date of premiere: January 2022
Synopsis: In the Bones is a lyrical documentary that explores the personal and political by interweaving the lives of 12 characters living in Mississippi during a legislative session in which equal pay for equal work and abortion rights are being decided. Although set in three distinct regions of Mississippi, In the Bones is a much broader exploration of our culture, an unsettling portrait of America that shines a light on the weight women live under in this country and also the resilience expressed in everyday acts of survival.
NOMOTOPOWELL
Director: Brent Chesanek
Producer: Brent Chesanek
Production Company: Auxerrine
Runtime: 76’. Estimated date of premiere: February 2022
Synopsis: Nomotopowell is a mythical documentary travelogue exploring the lost settlements of a little known village in Florida, where the ghosts of two pivotal figures in American history loom large. One a Confederate assassin, the other a Seminole warrior, their lives and deaths contain numerous coincidences and parallels. Combining landscape tableaux, archival texts, and a cast of abstracted voices, Nomotopowell operates on contemplation, uncertainty, and vagary. The film summons the spirits that haunt a shape-shifting territory, reflecting a violent national residue without ever leaving the village.
OCEANIA: ENCOUNTERS AT THE EDGE
Director: Natalie Zimmerman
Producers: Godfrey Reggio, Sara Dosa
Production Company: Social Satisfaction Studio
Runtime: 90’. Estimated date of premiere: January 2023
Synopsis: OCEANIA is an immersive journey into the fragile yet beautiful connections we humans have to one another and the planet. Focusing on the filmmaker’s inner voice and her evolving relationships to a community living at the ocean’s edge – on an island predicted to be uninhabitable due to sea level rise by 2030 – OCEANIA spans opposite sides of the Pacific Ocean in search of what ties our seemingly fragmented histories, disparate experiences and fates together.
SOUND MECHANIC
Director: Skizz Cyzyk
Producer: Skizz Cyzyk
Production Company: Beef Platter
Runtime: 90’. Estimated date of premiere: 2022
Synopsis: Neil Feather invents new musical instruments and sound making devices, which he then uses in live performances and installations. Rather than telling Neil’s life story, Sound Mechanic gives the audience a chance to spend some time with Neil, getting to know him, seeing him working, and watching his performances.
SWING AND SWAY
Directors: Fernanda Pessoa, Adriana Barbosa
Producer: Thiago Zanato
Production Company: Not for Sale Productions, LLC
Runtime: 80’. Estimated date of premiere: January 2022
Synopsis: Two friends unveil their bodies and lenses in a filmic dialogue while following the trace of women experimental filmmakers that came before them. Separated by America’s hemispheres, one in Brazil and the other in the United States, dilemmas from turbulent times flow between both of them: the need to confront the everyday fears, the deconstruction of the domestic reality, their place in feminism and the desire of an encounter.
WHAT WE LEAVE BEHIND
Director: Iliana Sosa
Producers: Emma D. Miller, Iliana Sosa
Production Company: Borderchild Productions LLC
Runtime: 71’. Estimated date of premiere: January 2022
Synopsis: After filmmaker Iliana Sosa’s grandfather, Julián, is told that he can no longer travel to the U.S. to visit family, he begins building a new house in his rural Mexican hometown that he says will be for the whole family once he’s gone. What We Leave Behind follows Julián in the twilight of his life, as his granddaughter pieces together how their transnational family has built and rebuilt their home over decades of separation.
