All these wonderful things

RESTREPO's Tim Hetherington & Sebastian Junger on Their Unlikely Partnership and What They Learned From Each Other

Note - This is the first in a series of interviews with the directors of some of our favorite nonfiction films from 2010.

How to describe the journey that famed journalist and writer (The Perfect Storm) Sebastian Junger and noted photog and sometime documentary cinematographer (THE DEVIL CAME ON HORSEBACK) Tim Hetherington have been on the past few years?  First, they were put together, shotgun marriage-style by Vanity Fair to work in Afghanistan on assignment for the magazine, later realizing that they may indeed have the footage to make a documentary.  Then came surviving an edit, premiering and winning the Grand Jury Prize at Sundance (where it was described as a nonfiction HURT LOCKER) and now a whirlwind trip on the Oscar shortlist.

Earlier this year, I wrote briefly about seeing their film, RESTREPO, projected over a river in Kosovo, the sounds of machine gun fire echoing off the sides of the mountains and buildings.  What struck me then was the film's refusal to advance an overt political message, although it's not hard to finish the film with some sense of mission futility. 

We met a couple weeks ago as the duo were prepping to launch the DVD of RESPTREPO.  The conversation was lively and genuine – they are comfortable enough with one another to rib each other in front of another writer/filmmaker – and you get the sense that they’re still wondering just how they ended up here, in this situation, together.

All these wonderful things: How did you guys meet? Or how did this project come that you guys worked on it together?

Sebastian Junger: I convinced Vanity Fair to let me follow a platoon for a whole deployment and I needed a good person to work with, a photographer, but also someone who could shoot video, because I had this sort of crazy idea that, if I shot a lot of video, if we shot a lot of video, maybe we could make a documentary.  I just had no idea… It was an incredibly naïve thought, but luckily Tim sort of knew about that world and so, the first trip I was by myself – I was with another photographer that was a friend of mine, but essentially I was on my own – and the project really started on the second trip, when I went out there with Tim.  Tim and I immediately just synched up really well together, he saw the potential in the film and in the project and that was when the project really began.  Ultimately, he was put on the assignment by Vanity Fair.

Tim Hetherington: We met in the airport lounge in Heathrow.  He was changing planes and I was coming…

SJ: I talked with him on the phone and just asked him some questions because I knew how hard it was out there and I wanted to make sure he had his shit together and was fit.

ATWT: And did you guys have any idea that you would still – it’s a long journey to take together.

SJ: No, no. (laughter)

TH: (laughter) No, absolutely no idea.  Absolutely no idea. Yeah, everything just grew organically.  You know, as Sebastian points out, we got on really well straight away.  If we hadn’t got on well, we wouldn’t have been able to have done it.  You know what I mean?  Because the whole process is so super intense – not just being together in Afghanistan in very extreme situations but also being together in the edit, just making decisions together.  I mean, that really, in some ways, there were parts of the edit that really stretched our relationship in ways…

SJ: Yeah, it was hard.

As Critics Prepare to Weigh in, THE OATH and MARWENCOL Still Lead Honor Roll

Think of it as a different kind of shortlist. 

The Academy weighed in their list of 15 films that will move forward in the Oscar race.  Some of those titles have done really well in awards and nominations leading up to the Granddaddy of them all while others haven't made a blip on the radar until now.

On our annual Nonfiction Feature Honor Roll, we usually find that things really begin to coallesce as the year ends.  Thus far we've heard from festival juries & audiences, and we've got nominees for each of the year's other big nonfiction awards (Spirits, Cinema Eye, IDA & Gothams).Starting today, with the National Board of Review weighing in on the year's best films, we'll start hearing from critics groups and then the various guilds.

But if we were to take the information we have to date - which 15 films would make the Honor Roll shortlist?  [We'll give you a hint - only 6 of the 15 are on the Academy's shortlist.]

2010 Film Fests (Part One): In Praise of Dokufest and Ashland

Before we dive in to the fall festival season, a look back at the festivals and films that have made this year so notable...

When we set out a couple years ago to try to rank the world’s best documentary film festivals, there were unintended consequences to this notion.  One was that the festivals themselves might care where they might fall on such a homemade list.  The other was that filmmakers – particularly those that were just starting out – would take such a list as some kind of fifth gospel.

Not that we hadn’t taken it seriously.  We had.  But we also knew that lists, as much as they might spur discussion and be insanely linkable, are fallible.

And so, when we ventured out to make a second edition of this list last winter, we tried to make it less fallible.  We asked more than 75 pros in the documentary world to weigh in on their choices.  But still, but still, this is not a perfect system, because we are not Arthur Frommer, and there were/are some festivals that we have yet to attend.  And thus the list is second hand.  A really, really strong second hand, but still…

Thus, when we were invited to a couple of the festivals on our list this year that we hadn’t before experienced, there was a strong sense of excitement and no small fear that perhaps we had led those young, nubile filmmakers astray.

Certainly, encouraging folks to make the trek to southern Kosovo, to the decidedly buzzed-about Dokufest in Prizren, programmed by the much beloved Veton Nurkollari, wasn’t exactly a slam dunk, no matter what our insiders had determined in December.  After all, it’s no easy feat to reach this cultural heritage spot in a country whose independence had just been recognized by the International Court of Justice a couple weeks prior to this week's fest in early August.  Flights into Pristina, Kosovo or even neighboring Skopje, Macedonia require a certain amount of finangling, and these are followed by mountainous roads populated by traffic and drivers that give aggressive a new reputation.

But aren’t the best festivals worth a little bit of effort?

And Dokufest is certainly that.  Artfully programmed by Nurkollari from the best of the international documentary scene, projected onto screens indoor and outdoor throughout the city, Dokufest is actually creating the very notion of cinema in southern Kosovo.  Because for the past decade-plus, since the brutal war that tore up this portion of the Balkans, there has been no cinema in Prizren, which is otherwise a town filled with culture, both ancient and youth. 

No cinema at all. 

The young people of Prizren – and they are legion (if you’re told once that the average age of Kosovars is 25, you’ll be told it 100 times – in fact, the Isreali-made advertisement that runs before the each of the screenings drums home the point: “Kosovo – The Young Europeans”) are, for the very first time, encountering cinema in their streets and in their town. 

And that cinema is documentary film.

And if that isn’t enough to give you a docu-boner, I don’t know what is.

Toronto 2010: New Docs from Errol Morris, Kim Longinotto, Alex Gibney, Ondi Timoner and Werner Herzog in 3D

indieWIRE has the latest on an amazing Toronto Film Festival documentary lineup, including the second nonfiction Gala of Thom Powers' tenure at TIFF - Thom Zimmy's Bruce Springsteen doc THE PROMISE: THE MAKING OF DARKNESS AT THE EDGE OF TOWN  (his first was 2006' SHUT UP AND SING), along with a handful of world premieres from masters of the documentary form: TABLOID from Errol Morris, PINK SARIS from Kim Longinotto, CLIENT 9: THE RISE AND FALL OF ELIOT SPITZER from Alex Gibney (which had a work-in-progress screening at Tribeca) and the first 3-D feature from Werner Herzog - CAVE OF FORGOTTEN DREAMS, about the cave paintings in the Chauvet Cave in Southern France.

Toronto will also feature some of the North American debut of the breakout titles of the 2010 Cannes Film Festival - Janus Metz' ARMADILLO, Frederick Wiseman's BOXING GYM and Charles Ferguson's INSIDE JOB - and a film that is sure to stir up controversy, Ondi Timoner's COOL IT, which promises a very unconvenient look at the issue of global warming.

The Toronto slate continues what has been one of the most powerful year's for nonfiction on record, following a Sundance lineup that was chock-a-block with Oscar nominees & winners and a SXSW crop that intro'd some extraordinary new voices in documentary.

The Monday Brief: Berlinger Supporters Number More Than 400, EXIT Hits $1M and Cannes In Progress

We're more than half-way through the fifth month of 2010.  Can summer be far behind?...

The Joe Berlinger/Chevron/CRUDE raw footage-subpeona situation continues to resonate throughout the nonfiction community.  An open letter of support for Berlinger, spearheaded by Patrick Creadon and Doug Blush - and supported by the IDA, was released on Wednesday and signed by nearly 200 folks in the documentary community.  Oscar winner Errol Morris signed onto the letter on Thursday, along with another 200 people (as of Monday) in the comments section here and 40 on the IDA's website.

Bill Moyers and Michael Winship, who both signed the letter, wrote in an opinion piece that while all eyes are on the oil spill in the gulf, "there's another important story involving Big Oil and pollution -- one that shatters not only the environment but the essential First Amendment right of journalists to tell truth and shame the devil":

"Some of the issues and nuances of Berlinger's case are admittedly complex, but they all boil down to this: Chevron is trying to avoid responsibility and hopes to find in the unused footage -- material the filmmaker did not utilize in the final version of his documentary -- evidence helpful to the company in fending off potential damages of $27.3 billion.

This is a serious matter for reporters, filmmakers and frankly, everyone else. Tough, investigative reporting without fear or favor -- already under siege by severe cutbacks and the shutdown of newspapers and other media outlets -- is vital to the public awareness and understanding essential to a democracy. As Michael Moore put it, "The chilling effect of this is, [to] someone like me, if something like this is upheld, the next whistleblower at the next corporation is going to think twice about showing me some documents if that information has to be turned over to the corporation that they're working for.""

More coverage of the letter at The Wrap, firedoglake blog and the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press.

At the theatrical box office, it was more of the same that we've seen the past couple weeks.  The Banksy/Shepard Fairey/Mr. Brainwash documentary EXIT THROUGH THE GIFT SHOP continued its stellar DIY run - taking in another $230K for an estimated cume-to-date of $1,284,000.  That makes EXIT the third million-dollar-doc of 2010, following the success of Disneynature's OCEANS ($17.7M and counting, although now seemingly less likely to reach $20M) and Focus' BABIES, which declined a respectable 53% in its second weekend, still taking in just over $1M.  BABIES is now just shy of $4M.

The Top 25 Film Festivals for Documentaries, 2nd Edition - #22. Dokufest Kosovo

Previously: #21 Doc Lisboa

#22. Dokufest Kosovo

Our take:  It takes some getting to, but folks who've been are talking about their experiences in Prizren, Kosovo.  The five year old festival takes place in one of the country's major historical and cultural centers where Dokufest has become a major August event, drawing crowds to its unique outdoor screenings.  When we say it's a bit of a journey, we're not talking an hour and a half in a shuttle bus.  There's been mention of hair-raising, 2-hour-plus bus rides through the mountains slowed down by road-blocking farm animals and social gatherings.  Screens only a handful of US titles in a mix of the best of international docs from the previous year on the circuit.

Selection of US films screened at 2009 festival:  FIXER: THE TAKING OF AJMAL NAQSHBANDI, THE WAY WE GET BY, PATTI SMITH DREAM OF LIFE, THE GLASS HOUSE, YOUSSOU NDOUR: I BRING WHAT I LOVE

Our coverage of Dokufest Kosovo here.

RENE, THE SOLITARY LIVES OF CRANES Take Top Prizes at Kosovo's DokuFest

DokuFest, the increasingly influential documentary festival in Prizren, Kosovo, closed out the 8th edition of its festival on Sunday announcing this year's jury prize winners with Helena Trestikova's RENE, the acclaimed, decade-long look at the relationship between filmmaker and troubled subject, taking the top prize as Best Feature Documentary.

RENE won the Best Documentary prize at last year's European Film Awards.  It screened this year at SXSW, Hot Docs and Silverdocs.

Filmmaker Eva Weber received the Best Short Documentary prize for her film, THE SOLIDARY LIFE OF CRANES, which is currently part of the IDA's DocuWeeks line-up.

The Best Balkan Documentary award went to SISTERS OF LILITH by Turkish director Emel Celebi.

DokuFest has become the largest annual cultural event in Prizren, a historic city (and former capitol) in southern Kosovo.