Awards FYC 2024

A fascinating delve into the life and work of Shere Hite and her contributions to the feminist movement, the intriguingly titled feature documentary is blessed with challenging and evocative archival material as it examines responses to her ground-breaking 1976 survey of thousands of women’s individual sexual experiences, while also detailing the modelling work she did to make ends meet while undertaking her research.

The values, passions and beliefs of poet Nikki Giovanni are celebrated and examined to great effect in Joe Brewster and Michele Stephenson’s strikingly immersive documentary which astutely focusses on Giovanni’s opinions and work rather than taking the more customary chronological route through her life story.

Fifteen films make the cut in each of the Documentary Film and Documentary Short Film categories. Mstyslav Chernov’s 20 Days In Mariupol (Ukraine) and Kaouther Ben Hania’s Four Daughters (Tunisia) are additionally shortlisted in the International Feature Film category. Nominations for the 96th Academy Awards will be announced on January 23 2024.

In his Oscar short-listed feature doc, Luke Lorentzen follows outspoken hospital chaplain Mati and supervisor David as the former engages in an emotionally challenging and physically exhausting year-long residency at Manhattan’s Mount Sinai during Covid. “It was Mati pushing back that I think made the film a really profound and deeper dive into the work, but it required a reorientation of a certain way of working that I had applied in other projects,” the filmmaker tells BDE.

In Island In Between, nominated for an Oscar in the Short Doc category, S. Leo Chiang reflects on his relationship with Taiwan, China and the US from the islands of Kinmen, just a few miles from mainland China. “Kinmen connects Taiwan to China but also keeps them apart. Maybe that’s why I’m drawn to this place. I want to make sense of it. Growing up, this channel of water was the edge of our universe, separating good from evil,” the director underlines.

Released in the US by Kino Lorber and with ticket sales in Germany even exceeding those in its country of origin, Suzanne Raes’ Dutch feature documentary sets out to answer a fundamental question about Johannes Vermeer, arguably The Netherlands’ greatest artistic export. Among all the fakes, copies and false attributions, what makes a true Vermeer masterpiece? BDE puts director Raes in the frame.

Frederick Wiseman can’t remember what he ate the first time he went to Le Bois Sans Feuilles restaurant in Ouche, France, but knows it was good. In fact it was so good he asked top chef and future successor César Troisgros if he could document life in the extablishment. “It’s very rare that I eat in a 3-star restaurant, and I can’t turn off my documentary filmmaker eye. I hadn’t planned to do it but I just blurted it [the idea] out and I was happy when he said why not,” Wiseman tells BDE.

In Pulitzer Prize-winning Mstyslav Chernov’s 20 Days In Mariupol, Ukrainian journalists trapped in the besieged city struggle to continue their work documenting atrocities of the Russian invasion. As the only international reporters who remain in the city, they capture what later become defining images of the war: dying children, mass graves, the bombing of a maternity hospital, and much more. The director discusses his film with Danish director Simon Lereng Wilmont.

Directors Kris Bowers and Ben Proudfoot discuss their Oscar nominated short film The Last Repair Shop with two-time Academy Award winning film composer Hans Zimmer. Produced by Breakwater Studios, the film concerns a Los Angeles downtown warehouse where a handful of devoted craftspeople keep over 80,000 student instruments in good repair.

Chilean Maite Alberdi talks to BDE about her Oscar-nominated feature doc The Eternal Memory, her second nomination in four years after The Mole Agent in 2021. The Eternal Memory offers a gentle, probing examination of a marriage, that between journalist and author Augusto Góngora, and Paulina Urrutia (an actress and former Minister of Culture). They’re a couple devoted to one another, and have been together for more than two decades. But Augusto has Alzheimer’s, and his memory is no longer reliable.