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Shortlist of 15 films to be announced on December 17.

Us box office hits Won’t You Be My Neighbor?, Rbg, Three Identical Strangers and Free Solo have made it on to the 166-strong longlist of documentary feature Oscar hopefuls.

The shortlist of 15 films will be announced on December 17. Thursday’s (8) longlist includes Fahrenheit 11/9, Crime + Punishment, Generation Wealth, Maria By Calas, The Price Of Everything, Pope Francis – A Man of His Word, Ruben Blades Is Not My Name, Shirkers, They’ll Love Me When I’m Dead, Trust Machine, and Matangi / Maya / M.I.A. are also in contention.

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Bing Liu’s “Minding the Gap,” an look at small-town American life through the lens of a group of skateboarder friends, led the 2018 Cinema Eye Honors nominations for nonfiction filmmaking Thursday.

The film, a Hulu original documentary, landed seven bids, for direction, editing, cinematography, original score, debut feature and the audience award, in addition to outstanding achievement in nonfiction feature filmmaking, the organization’s top prize. It was also mentioned in the “Unforgettables” sidebar honoring the subjects of many of this year’s documentaries.

The seven-nomination haul was enough to match Cinema Eye’s record, held by Louie Psihoyos’ “The Cove,” Lixin Fan’s “Last Train Home” and Ari Folman’s “Waltz With Bashir.”

The other nominees for outstanding achievement in nonfiction feature filmmaking were “Bisbee ’17” (five nominations), “Hale County This Morning, This Evening” (five nominations), “Of Fathers and Sons” (three nominations), “Three Identical Strangers” (three nominations) and “Won’t You Be My Neighbor?...

“Minding the Gap,” a documentary that mixes stories of skateboarding teens with a dark family story, led all films in nominations for the Cinema Eye Honors, one of the top awards devoted to all facets of nonfiction filmmaking.

Bing Liu’s highly personal film tied a Cinema Eye record by receiving seven nominations overall, one in a previously announced category and six in the 10 categories that Cinema Eye announced on Thursday. Those included nominations for directing, editing, cinematography and music, as well as one in the marquee category, Outstanding Achievement in Nonfiction Feature Filmmaking.

Other nominees in that category were Robert Greene’s “Bisbee ’17,” RaMell Ross’ “Hale County This Morning, This Evening,” Talal Derki’s “Of Fathers and Son,” Tim Wardle’s “Three Identical Strangers” and the 12th highest-grossing documentary of all time, Morgan Neville’s “Won’t You Be My Neighbor?”

Also Read: 'Minding the Gap' Film Review: Powerful...

Starz announced Thursday that it has acquired the rights for nine documentary films, including Matt Tyrnauer’s “Scotty and the Secret History of Hollywood,” about closeted gay stars, spanning four decades.

The doc follows Scotty Bowers, a World War II Marine combat veteran who became a legendary bisexual male hustler and all-purpose date-arranger for Hollywood movie stars from the 1940s through the beginning of the AIDS epidemic in the 1980s. Bowers first shared his experiences in his best-selling memoir, “Full Service: My Adventures in Hollywood and the Secret Sex Lives of the Stars.”

The film premiered to strong reviews at the Toronto International Film Festival last September and was released theatrically this past April. It will premiere on Starz early next year.

Also Read: 'Scotty and the Secret History of Hollywood' Review: Sex Abounded in Hollywood's Golden Age

The other eight docs that Starz will premiere later this...

“This Is Congo” is not an easy documentary to watch. And anyone who knows anything about the tumultuous, war-torn country would understand that from the get-go. Still, despite expectations, it is an engaging, if unsettling, film about the decades of violence that have ravaged the central African country, the poverty and displacement that has abounded, and all the stolen promise of a land so rich in culture and resources. Which, it might be argued, is to say it is a film about the Democratic Republic of Congo.

Continue reading ‘This Is Congo’ Is A Devastating & Unsettling Portrait Of A War-Torn Nation [Review] at The Playlist.

Filmmaker Debra Granik made a splash at the start of this decade with Winter’s Bone and she finally returns to theaters with her Sundance debut Leave No Trace with Ben Foster and Thomasin Harcourt McKenzie. Bleecker Street hopes to replicate the box office success of Granik’s previous feature, which helped catapult the career of Jennifer Lawrence. The company is taking Leave No Trace in a number of cities this weekend. Jessica Chastain stars in A24’s Woman Walks Ahead, based on a true story. The feature was written by Who Wants to Be a Millionaire creator Steven Knight. Neon is heading out with Sundance doc Three Identical Strangers, hoping to tap some of the nonfiction success of fellow documentaries Rbg and Won’t You Be My Neighbor?, both of which also debuted at the festival. And Fip is sending out bio-drama Sanju in 355 North American theaters this weekend,...

Daniel McCabe’s potted documentary about the Drc takes in colonial history, independence and its dire modern struggles. It’s a difficult, necessary watch

Photographer-turned-filmmaker Daniel McCabe’s This Is Congo feels like the documentary equivalent of a long read about the humanitarian crisis in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. The film’s potted history in 92 minutes will no doubt frustrate experts as superficial. But here’s a necessary reminder of a conflict that has gone on for so long that the world seems to have disengaged and moved on to other war zones.

McCabe interviews two soldiers; one of them a high-ranking officer, the other a charismatic young colonel who boasts that his soldiers have been trained in human rights. (Earlier in the film we watch a few of them beat a man with a belt). Bibianne, known to everyone as Mama Romance, is a single mother who...

"Our hope was always to bring civilization to Congo..." Abramorama has debuted the official trailer for a documentary titled This Is Congo, a film made by war photographer Daniel McCabe. This looks like an incredible inside look at the African country known as the Congo (in full: the Democratic Republic of the Congo). "From embedding on the front lines with the national army, to displacement camps, to the black market for minerals, McCabe had unprecedented access to many sides of a decades long struggle for control over the most mineral-rich country in Africa. To capture the footage, McCabe shot with customized camera rigs and used creative sound recording solutions often acting as a one-man crew." This will be released in theaters in NY & La in late June this summer, timed to the 60th Anniversary of the Democratic Republic of Congo's independence. Holy hell does this look terrific, a definitive portrait...

Exclusive: Abramorama has landed rights and set a release date for This Is Congo, the documentary from celebrated war photographer Daniel McCabe. The docu is set to open in New York City at the Maysles Documentary Center and in Los Angeles at Laemmle’s Music Hall on June 29 before a U.S. and Canada rollout.

Check out the exclusive clip above.

This Is Congo marks the feature debut of McCabe and its release date is timed to the 60th anniversary of The Democratic Republic of Congo’s independence on June 30. This is Congo made its world premiere at the Venice Film Festival in the fall of 2017.

McCabe’s docu provides an immersive and unfiltered look into Africa’s longest continuing conflict and those who are surviving within it. By following four compelling characters — a whistleblower, a patriotic military commander, a mineral dealer and a displaced tailor — the film offers viewers...

There’s a pliability to the title of Daniel McCabe’s documentary “This Is Congo”: It’s both a contract between the author and his audience and an apathetic shrug of the shoulders. McCabe immediately announces his purpose in making the film, a primer on the status of the Democratic Republic of Congo, while also capturing the surrender his subjects give to that status. Dr Congo is a land in flux and has been for centuries thanks to incursions from foreign interlopers as well as corrupt Congolese rulers.

Continue reading ‘This Is Congo’ Is A Gripping Look At Congo’s Troubled History [Doc NYC Review] at The Playlist.

Both an unexciting and by-the-numbers history lesson and an inside-view, you-are-there look at an underreported armed conflict, the documentary This Is Congo is almost as full of contradictions as the nation it is trying to portray. Directed by New York-based photographer-turned-documentarian Daniel McCabe, who directed and shot the film, this investigation into a recent armed struggle in the Democratic Republic of the Congo premiered in Venice as an Out of Competition title and looked decent if not always great on the big screen.

Based on its topic, it should see interest from festivals and distributors specialized in nonfiction fare or...

On the heels of the Toronto International Film Festival announcement earlier this week, Venice Film Festival have now delivered their full lineup and while there’s no Terrence Malick as rumored, there’s a plethora of highly-anticipated titles. Along with the previously-announced opener Downsizing and the expected Suburbicon, mother!, The Shape of Water, and Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri, there’s Lucrecia Martel’s Zama, Andrew Haigh’s Lean on Pete, Abdellatif Kechiche’s Blue is the Warmest Color follow-up Mektoub, My Love: Canto Uno, and Brawl In Cell Block 99, the latest film from Bone Tomahawk director S. Craig Zahler.

Also in the lineup is Errol Morris’s Netflix crime drama Wormwood, Paul Schrader’s First Reformed, Frederick Wiseman’s Ex Libris – New York Public Library, Hirokazu Koreeda’s The Third Murder, Takeshi Kitano’s closing night film Outrage Coda, Michaël R. Roskam’s Racer and The Jailbird, the Kirsten Dunst-led Woodshock,...