the girly who shall end all girls

Doc about dogsled racer Lance Mackey. Very smooth blend of archival content and footage shot for the film. Mackey is a champion racer, a cancer survivor, and an all-around character. Nice Alaska slice of life in addition to the sports story, excellent cinematography. loved it, got to greet him and his dog Ace after the film. This was the world premiere. Look for it, especially if you love dogs.

Almost good Spanish doc about sherry. Again, too high context for me. Here's a flamenco singer for no reason I am able to understand. I think he was one of the old guard dudes from the flamenco doc. Lots of cool anecdotes and an oneologist rundown of how sherry is made and a sadly un-narrated barrel making sequence. But mostly it was 2 hours of movie with 30 to 60 minutes of content.

HELL YES. This why I come to the festival.
Slice of life in a scrap metal yard in the outskirts of Tehran, where Iranians work side-by-side with Afghan refugees. Iranian boy and Afghan girl steal time together in a rickety old container and dream of a life together. Lots of showing not telling and scenes without dialogue, but I never felt bored or lost. Excellent acting, clear motivations, no mustache twirling villainy. I left emotionally exhausted, but so satisfied. Highly recommended, I saw it at press screening, so all showings are upcoming. Go!

Doc about the one-panel cartoons in the New Yorker. Full of charming talking heads and a nice balance of history/how the magazine works/what makes a good cartoon. Perfect for small screen viewing, look for it on Netflix.

Jason Schwartzman, Olympia Dukakis, pointless, plotless, walkout.

Backstage doc about the 2013 production of Aida in Verona. (It's the world's largest outdoor opera, held in a Roman amphitheater.) I enjoyed it, but it's of the show don't tell school and is very light on explanation of what is going on. I'm still trying to figure out if they actually get away with using a loudspeaker backstage during performances. Everything about the production is huge - life-sized mechanical elephant, chariots, set pieces coming in by crane.* I left humming the famous bits of Aida and considering a trip to Verona.

*First bad q&a of the festival: some woman held forth on the elaborate nature of the production and how this was ruining opera. Never did ask a question, audience was audibly complaining. I think she actually said she had sung Aida at Verona. If this is true, either she's delusional or opera people don't study theater history. I'm going with delusional.

Call to action doc about mass extinction. It will be on Discovery soon. I was not as enthusiastic as the rest of the audience...no, I don't consider tourism a viable economic replacement for fishing, especially considering the carbon cost of getting rich people to a coastal village in Indonesia. Lots to think about around China; in this as in many things they are becoming who we were to the world 40 years ago. Not the tear-jerker I expected. I didn't learn anything new. But I don't think I'm their audience. It's slick, well-made, and full of info.

Kyrgyz historical epic! it's a little slow, and a little homemade. But who cares, because I knew next-to-nothing about their history and culture, so I was fascinated by their material culture and the landscape and had no idea what would happen next. THEY ARE IN CENTRAL ASIA AND THEY WRITE WITH RUNES. They're Muslims but there are sacred carved stone figures?!? Kurmanjan is badass because she's a survivor and a politician, not a warrior. I would recommend this for the textiles and the mountains alone; the story is okay and the acting is passable, but it's just so anthropologically interesting.