Photo of Edna O’Brien
Preview by Brad Balfour
What: DOC NYC
When: November 13 – December 1, 2024
Where: Various Venues in NYC
For over a decade DOC NYC has assembled documentary filmmakers from around the world to tell unique stories. DOC NYC returns, running November 13th to December 1, 2024, at theaters across New York City including the IFC Center and SVA Theater, with many of the docs also including appearances from the filmmakers.
Included are 32 World Premieres and 24 U.S. premieres, with eight of those presented in the U.S. Competition, for new American-produced nonfiction films, and another eight featured in the International Competition, for work from around the globe. The Kaleidoscope Competition for new essayisti and formally adventurous documentaries continues, while the festival’s long-standing Metropolis Competition, showcasing New York stories and personalities, also returns. In addition, the festival includes thematically organized sections that spotlight new films on music, sports, activism, and more.
The Opening Night presentation of the 2024 festival is “Blue Road:- The Edna O’Brien Story,” a rich documentary portrait of the famed Irish writer from director Sinéad O’Shea (“Pray for Our Sinners”). In 1960, a young Irish woman wrote a sexually frank debut novel, “The Country Girls.” O’Brien became a literary sensation, writing for The New Yorker, delivering provocative interviews and authoring screenplays. Her success enraged her writer husband and made her a pariah in her native Ireland, where her books were banned and burned. She would make her home in London, where she conducted numerous love affairs, hosted star-studded parties and made and lost a fortune.
In July 2024, Edna passed away and this film provides a final testimony from her, aged 93, as she reflects upon her extraordinary life. Granting the director access to her personal journals — read aloud in the film by the Oscar-nominated Irish actress Jessie Buckley — and with additional perspectives offered from Gabriel Byrne, Walter Mosley and an array of renowned writers, Edna does not shy from any subject.
Other films include DOC NYC’s centerpiece and world premiere of “All God’s Children” directed by Ondi Timoner, about a rabbi and a pastor working together to de-escalate tensions between Jewish and Black Brooklynites. This film delves into the complex histories of Congregation Beth Elohim and Antioch Baptist Church as their leaders strive for unity and justice.
Black Box Diaries follows director Shiori Ito’s courageous investigation of her own sexual assault in an improbable attempt to prosecute her high-profile offender. Unfolding like a thriller and combining secret investigative recordings, vérité shooting and emotional first-person video, her quest becomes a landmark case in Japan, exposing the country’s desperately outdated judicial and societal systems.
In Black Snow, directed by Alina Simone, Natalia Zubkova fights to expose the truth behind the Russian government’s corruption around coal.
Balomania, from Sissel Morell Dargis, is a look at the free spirited and outlandish world of Brazilian baloeiros –- groups of men who craft and launch elaborate hot-air balloons.
“Art Spiegelman: Disaster is My Muse” is a documentary from Molly Bernstein and Philip Dolin on the acclaimed comic artist and creator of the Holocaust memoir Maus. This is only a sampling of the documentaries being screened.
DOC NYC’s 11th annual Visionaries Tribute will take place on Wednesday, November 13, 2024 at Gotham Hall, bestowing Lifetime Achievement awards to Emmy Award-winning filmmaker Alan Berliner (Letter to the Editor) and Emmy Award-nominated filmmaker Marcia Smith (president and co-founder of Firelight Media, a nonprofit organization that supports, resources, and advocates on behalf of documentary filmmakers of color).
To learn more, go to: https://www.docnyc.net/