by Sue Giustino
The Hampton Doc Fest was a huge success! Celebrating its 17th year, the event ran from December 5-11, 2024. 32 documentary film screenings were enjoyed by enthusiastic audiences at the Sag Harbor Cinema and the Bay Street Theater. I had the opportunity to see three movies this year- all were based on completely different topics and were fabulous…A New Kind of Wilderness, directed by, Silje Evensmo Jacobsen; The Thinking Game, directed by, Greg Kohs and Zurawski V Texas, directed by Maisie Crow and Abbie Perrault.
In A New Kind of Wilderness, Jacobsen follows Maria, Nik, and their four children who live on a small farm in Norway surrounded by a fir forest. The family’s unconventional choice to grow their own food, practice homeschooling, and sleep together is a fulfilment of their dream of a free and independent life- close to each other and nature.
Through the incredible cinematography and editing, the audience becomes entangled in the day-to-day wonder of their incredible family dynamics built around the freedom to live, explore, and learn with and from the world and each other. When tragedy strikes, I felt the intensity of seeing the world they knew turn upside down.
Overwhelmed by their new reality, the family reluctantly change their lifestyle as they must adapt to modern society. Through the eyes and words of the beautifully innocent children and their loving parents, the audience explores a lovely alternative lifestyle.
The Thinking Game is a first-hand look into DeepMind, one of the world’s leading AI labs. The film enables the audience to explore the inner workings of experimentation and exploration as scientist Demis Hassabis and his team venture to solve the enigma of artificial general intelligence (AGI).
Incredible insight into this world of technological advancement is revealed. The filming takes place over five years, capturing the moment when Hassabis and his team make history with AlphaFold, a groundbreaking program that solved a 50-year grand challenge in biology. Through this eye-opening film I was able to expand my own personal knowledge of the topic of AI, as well as leave with questions and a few concerns about its future implications for our society,
Zurawski V Texas is a timely film that was inspired by the likely possibility that Roe v. Wade would be overturned. The Directors had the insight to explore how they could cover the repercussions of that decision as they unfolded. After meeting with attorney Molly Duane through the Center for Reproductive Rights, they chose the case being filed for Amanda Zurawski and four other women with the hope it ‘would enable them to show the trauma along with some degree of hope’.
Amanda Zurawski, who was denied an abortion under Texas’ ambiguous and unforgiving abortion bans, band together with four other women under the guidance of their fearless attorney Molly Duane, to sue Texas. These women share their personal tragedies at the expense of their own emotional and mental well-being. The revealing and reliving of their awful experiences while battling in multiple courts against the state and its immovable Attorney General, is obviously traumatic and overwhelming. I was brought to tears as I journeyed along with these strong, inspiring, and courageous women as they ‘wrestled to regain their reproductive futures and set a precedent for millions of other women and families.’
Congratulations to the event coordinators and all of the participating film makers. Once again, the chosen films awed, entertained, inspired, and educated their audiences.
2024 BROWN HARRIS STEVENS AUDIENCE AWARD WINNER: “MUSICA!”
Jacqui Lofaro, founder and executive director of Hamptons Doc Fest, has announced that the winner of the 2024 Brown Harris Stevens Audience Award for Best Documentary Feature is the uplifting film “Música!,” which was the first film to play on opening day, December 5.
“There’s always a bit of intrigue in guessing what film will win the Audience Award,” says Jacqui Lofaro, “but when the tallies are in, we all say ‘of course that was the one.’ This year’s film program of 32 films was star-studded, so I congratulate directors Rob Epstein and Jeffrey Friedman on their outstanding documentary and well-deserved award. And we thank Brown Harris Stevens for their continuing support of our mission and documentary film festival.”
The film had also been selected as the recipient of the Hamptons Doc Fest’s 2024 Art & Inspiration Award, sponsored by the Tee & Charles Addams Foundation. Full of music, it follows several passionate young Cuban musicians, including a pianist, a double bass player and a trumpeter, as they work to find success and fulfillment, whether in Cuba or abroad.
The directors, who both attended the festival and the Q&A at the Sag Harbor Cinema, had earlier won an Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature with the film “Common Threads: Stories from the Quilt,” and Bob Epstein had also won an Oscar for “The Times of Harvey Milk.” They had also won a Grammy for Best Music Film for “Linda Ronstadt: The Sound of My Voice.”
“It’s been a joy to see how ‘Música!’ resonates with audiences,” said Epstein and Friedman. “Receiving the Hamptons Documentary Festival Audience Award is a wonderful affirmation of that connection.”
Robert Nelson, Executive Managing Director of Brown Harris Stevens of the Hamptons added: “We extend our heartfelt congratulations to the directors of ‘Música!’ and everyone at Hamptons Doc Fest for another sensational season of documentary films. It’s an honor to continue our tradition of supporting the arts in our local Hamptons communities through the Brown Harris Stevens Audience Award.”
For those interested in seeing the Q&A where Andrew Botsford interviews the directors, all of the Q&A’s from Hamptons Doc Fest’s 17th festival can be viewed on the website at www.hamptonsdocfest.com
TWO HAMPTONS DOC FEST AWARD FILMS NAMED TO OSCAR DOCUMENTARY SHORTLIST
Hamptons Doc Fest executive director Jacqui Lofaro and artistic director Karen Arikian announced that two of the feature films screened at this year’s 17th annual Hamptons Doc Fest, were named to the Oscars Shortlist of 15 films in the Documentary Feature Film category by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. They are “Daughters” and “Union,” which were both Hamptons Doc Fest awards films.
“Daughters,” directed by Angela Patton and Natalie Rae, who both appeared at the Sag Harbor Cinema on December 8 for their Q&A after the film, received the Hamptons Doc Fest’s prescient new award this year—the first Breakthrough Director Award—presented by the film’s co-presenters, Hamptons Doc Fest executive director Jacqui Lofaro and New York Women in Film & Television (NYWIFT) CEO Cynthia Lopez.
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The film, which took eight years to make, follows four young girls as they prepare for a special Daddy Daughter Dance with their fathers who were incarcerated in a Washington D.C. jail, some for 20 year sentences, where they’re not allowed to touch or hug their children. Speaking to the program’s success rate, ninety-five percent of the participants in this 12-week “Date with Dad” program that now exists in a dozen prisons never returned to jail after being paroled.
The film, available globally on Netflix, premiered at the 2024 Sundance Film Festival and also won two awards there in the U.S. Documentary Competition—Festival Favorite and Audience Choice.
“Union,” which won a Grand Jury Prize at the 2024 Sundance Film Festival, and Best Documentary Feature at several other film festivals, was sold out at its screening at the Sag Harbor Cinema on December 6. It was preceded by a presentation of this year’s Hamptons Doc Fest Impact Award to the Ford Foundation’s JustFilms Program Officer Paulina Suarez by PBS American Masters founder Susan Lacy, for its 75 years of funding social impact films like “Union.” After the screening, both directors Brett Story and Stephen Maing appeared live for their Q&A. The film chronicles the story of a group of warehouse workers as they launched a grassroots campaign at an Amazon fulfillment center on Staten Island to start the American Labor Union.
Stay tuned on January 17, when the smaller list of five “nominees” in each Oscar category will be announced, with the ultimate winner receiving the Oscar at the Academy Award ceremony on March 2.
