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Finding distribution for independently made documentaries was a hot topic of conversation at the 20th edition of the Maine-based Camden International Film Festival, which kicked off on Sept. 12.

Founder and CEO of Cinetic Media John Sloss, who sold the Christopher Reeve documentary ‘”Super/Man” to Warner Bros. Discovery for a reported $15 million out of Sundance earlier this year, admitted that finding homes for some of the most popular docs at festivals including “No Other Land” has been difficult.

About the resistance of Palestinian activists against forced displacement and settler expansion in the West Bank community of Masafer Yatta, “No Other Land” was part of the Ciff lineup. Most recently the film screened at TIFF and Telluride. The IDFA-supported doc debuted in February at the 74th edition of the Berlin Film Festival, where it won the Documentary Award and Panorama Dokumente Audience Award.

Sloss didn’t go into details about why...

Every American soldier has left Afghanistan, but that doesn’t mean Afghanistan has left them. Jon Shenk and Bonni Cohen’s heartfelt documentary gives new meaning to the term “forever war” by showing the lasting impact that multiple deployments have had on a trio of Navy SEALs still struggling to truly come home years after retiring from the military. “In Waves and War” — the title is taken from a passage in “The Odyssey” about moving on from suffering in order to embark on a new adventure — focuses on, and ultimately becomes part of, an emerging movement to treat post-traumatic stress disorder via two hallucinogens that have shown remarkable results when taken in tandem.

Those would be ibogaine and 5-MeO-dmt. The former is derived from the bark root of the iboga tree in Gabon, while the latter is extracted from Sonoran Desert toads — an imposing cocktail to be sure, but one...

Jon Shenk and Bonni Cohen‘s at times emotionally overwhelming documentary gets its title via a quote from “The Odyssey” that opens the film.

“By now, I am used to suffering. I have endured so much in waves and war. Let this next adventure follow.”

The Navy SEALs who are the subjects of “In Waves and War” aren’t just used to suffering. Many long thought that bearing the emotional cost of suffering was their only option. Multiple tours in Afghanistan and Iraq over years left unseen scars as wall as visible ones, and Ptsd can be so intractable an enemy, despite multiple therapies and prescription drugs, that a lot are left to think that just “bearing it” is all they can do.

Shenk and Cohen‘s film makes a powerful case that there may be another option: Psychedelic drugs, not approved for use in the U.S., may help...