Documentary Showcase UK: ‘If Women Had More Power, the World Would Be Safer’
Hope and inspiration at the event for contending female filmmakers, featuring former New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern, producer Gigi Pritzker and more
A dispatch from the Documentary Showcase event in London on Dec. 1, co-presented by The Ankler and Pure Nonfiction.
What began as a series of small, intimate gatherings at the home of filmmaker Sarah McCarthy has bloomed into Documentary Showcase, an exclusive, invite-only event for nonfiction filmmakers in the awards race.
Founded and hosted by McCarthy, whose films have premiered at places like the Telluride Film Festival, Toronto International Film Festival and DOC NYC, the inaugural Showcase gathered a high-caliber lineup of Sundance breakouts, Oscar contenders and festival darlings on Dec. 1 at BAFTA 195 Piccadilly in London. Among the guests in attendance were Oscar-winning filmmaker Lisa Remington (The Only Girl in the Orchestra), Oscar- and BAFTA-winning producer Odessa Rae (Navalny) and acclaimed producer Gigi Pritzker, as well as the subject of Pritzker’s latest documentary, Prime Minister, Dame Jacinda Ardern, the former prime minister of New Zealand.
McCarthy framed the day around a simple thesis: “If women had more power, the world would be a safer place,” she said. “I believe in the power of women coming together to lift one another, and our stories, up and the chance to showcase these films and their female creatives is an honor and a joy.”
The joyous event — engineered for filmmakers, by filmmakers, with the intention of long-term community building — was sponsored by Surina Narula from Filmistan, Sawsan Asfari from Cocoon Films, Maria Logan and Shabnur Gayibova from New Generation Europe, Victoria Clay from Bentley and Skinner and Georgia Wallace and Georgia Cook from Molinare, in addition to The Ankler and Pure Nonfiction.
“What began as a grassroots act of sisterhood now becomes an industry-facing event designed to lift up female voices,” McCarthy said. “Almost every opportunity in my own career has come from women; from Sheila Nevins, Sara Bernstein and Maria Logan financing my films to Julie Huntsinger selecting them for the Telluride and Annie Roney and Penny Wolf selling them to Netflix and HBO. I’ve had help from men too, most notably Thom Powers at Pure Nonfiction who has been a great partner on ‘Documentary Showcase’ and has previously programmed my films for TIFF and Doc NYC. I hope Documentary Showcase can pay some of that forward.”
Films That Matter From Diverse Voices
The event kicked off with co-director Sara Khaki, whose film Cutting Through Rocks — the IDFA-winning portrait of Iranian trailblazer Sara Shahverdi Khaki directed with Mohammadreza Eyni — has been on a world tour since Sundance in January, when it took the fest’s World Cinema Documentary Grand Jury prize.
Co-Existence, My Ass, directed by Amber Fares, came next. The movie focuses on comedian Noam Shuster Eliassi, whose one-woman show tackles the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and the struggle for equality by “confronting audiences with uncomfortable truths, even as her pursuit of coexistence starts to sound absurd.” In keeping with the premise, Fares fielded questions that were equal parts political and comedic, and her answers reminded the room that humor remains one of the last surviving tools of resistance when the geopolitical landscape is bleak enough to warrant its own trigger warning.
Fighting back is also the focus of Mr Nobody Against Putin, the story of a Russian teacher (the film’s co-director and subject, Pasha Talankin) who secretly documents his school’s transformation from a place of learning into a war recruitment center during the Ukraine invasion. Talankin, alongside the film’s producer Helle Faber, mapped out the personal cost of dissent inside Russia’s education system.
During a lunch break, guest speakers Rae and Pritzker spoke with guests about their upcoming projects. Rae’s latest, The Voice of Hind Rajab, is in the thick of the best international feature Oscar race (it won the Silver Lion for directing at this year’s Venice Film Festival for director Kaouther Ben Hania). Pritzker, meanwhile, is promoting the U.K. release of Prime Minister, which is also now streaming on HBO Max. During her keynote speech, Prime Minister subject Ardern discussed empathetic leadership as something we should expect from our politicians and from ourselves.
The afternoon session opened with clips from Prime Minister, which follows Ardern as she leads her country through terrorist attacks, natural disasters and a global pandemic — all while breastfeeding her newborn. Director Lindsay Utz was also breastfeeding her second child while crafting the intimate portrait of a world leader.
In the Q&A around The Dating Game, director Violet Du Feng treated everyone to a riotously funny and politically incisive exploration of gender imbalance in China. The laughter during the clips was uproarious, but beneath the humor lay a stunningly clear geopolitical analysis of what happens in a society where women are undervalued to an extreme.
In China, there are 30 million surplus men because of the one-child policy and the fact that millions of girl babies were killed off or abandoned by their families because of their lack of future earning potential. The Dating Game tells the story of three such surplus bachelors putting their hearts on the line in a high-stakes, seven-day dating camp led by China’s top love guru.
Finally, the Netflix short All the Empty Rooms brought an emotional close to the film portion of the Showcase. The film from director Joshua Seftel focuses on the work of broadcast journalist Steve Hartman and photographer Lou Bopp, who spent seven years together documenting the empty bedrooms of children killed in school shootings in the U.S. In attendance to support the critical, heartbreaking movie was editor Erin Casper, who spoke with the kind of quiet clarity that seemingly could only come from editing material so heavy it lodges in the sternum.
Documentary Showcase ended, however, with a celebration as Remington shared clips of her Oscar-winning 2023 short, The Only Girl in the Orchestra. The filmmaker also revealed exclusive excerpts of the upcoming The Bend in the River, directed by Robb Moss and produced by Remington, Joel Coen and Frances McDormand, among others. The movie is the conclusion of a trilogy of documentaries Moss directed about a group of friends navigating their way through life and was shot over 50 years.
Remington’s reflections on long-game producing, creative purpose and the questionable economics of a 50-year production timeline were a refreshing antidote to awards season fever. Her closing question — “If we’re not asking the big questions through our films, what are we even doing?” — hit the room like a benediction.