The Full Frame Documentary Film Festival, one of the world’s premier showcases of nonfiction cinema is taking place this weekend for its 21st annual festival in Durham, N.C. this weekend (April 5-8).
The NEW DOCS program includes 42 titles—32 features and 10 shorts—selected from nearly 1,800 submissions from around the globe. These films are eligible for the Full Frame Audience Award and are shortlisted for a variety of additional juried awards offering a combined value of $40,000 in cash prizes. Award winners will be announced at the annual Awards Barbecue on Sunday, April 8. The Invited Program includes 22 feature films screening out of competition.
“I am overwhelmed by the stories, artistry, and people presented in this year’s program,” said Full Frame artistic director Sadie Tillery. “They are a reminder of the extraordinary ways documentary encourages us to look up and out at the world around us and invites us to examine essential questions about our own personal beliefs, actions, and values. I am grateful to the filmmakers for allowing Full Frame to share their outstanding work.”
Festival passes and ticket packages available here.
You can check out festival highlights below and view the full lineup with more information here:
Contemporary interviews bring to life scenes from home movies, newsreels, and photographs of one of the most violent civil disturbances in U.S. history, the 1967 Detroit riot, when police brutality against African American citizens ignited a five-day standoff.
Charismatic activist Deborah Payne tirelessly battles developers of a new multibillion-dollar freight yard that threatens to destroy Englewood, her neighborhood on Chicago’s South Side. World Premiere
The Hoeks are united in name but severed by history: Ethiopian-born Daniel and his estranged Dutch father, Joop, each tell their story, but who can be trusted in this tangled tale of regret and misdeed?
This portrait of the pop culture icon revisits the years before he took the art world by storm. Archival footage and intimate stories from a circle of friends, lovers, and neighbors recall both a singular talent and the New York City scene that influenced his career.
During the 2016 U.S. presidential election, three friends travel to North Carolina to do voter protection work at the polls. This on-the-ground look at their efforts to help potential voters navigate the new laws and requirements that may prevent their vote reveals shocking accounts of voter suppression in play. World Premiere
This powerful film follows twelve brave whistleblowers who speak out against illegal policing quotas in the NYPD and the retaliation they experience after refusing to make arrests targeting minority populations.
Haitian, French, and adopted by Jewish parents, 34-year-old David embarks on a mission to better understand who he is in this beautifully nuanced observation of self-discovery. North American Premiere
Observational and impressionistic, this poetic film is a humanist exploration of an Alabama community, where mostly black, working-class families live, work, dream, celebrate, and struggle together.
The work of Jack O’Dell, who once worked alongside Martin Luther King, Jr., is revealed through a conversation with the 94-year-old activist, who delves into his historical involvement in the civil rights struggle as well as the movement’s contemporary incarnation under the stewardship of groups like Black Lives Matter.
During the Cold War, the U.S. government deployed some of its greatest jazz musicians around the world to promote democracy, even as many of them suffered Jim Crow racism in their own country. Rich archival material and powerful interviews delve into the deep conflict at the heart of the story. World Premiere
Interviews with family, friends, and political luminaries combine with archival footage and photographs in this captivating portrait of Maynard Jackson, Atlanta’s first black mayor, whose extraordinary influence spanned three terms in office.
Skateboarding and strained family relationships bond three friends together in this introspective saga about the journey from youth to adulthood.
This energetic film unpacks the complex history of home ownership in America to reveal the postwar housing economy’s racist underpinnings—the creation of a large middle class simultaneous with the systematic defunding and segregating of communities. World Premiere
In 1944, Recy Taylor, a 24-year-old black woman, was abducted and raped by six white men in Alabama. The film centers on her unprecedented response—a fight for justice, with the aid of Rosa Parks and other black activists—whose profound influence on the civil rights movement still reverberates today.
In a Ghanaian safe house, a team works to rehabilitate two young men who were trafficked into slavery to fisherman on Lake Volta. As it moves from rescue operation to healing process, this riveting film follows the men through their recovery and reveals the extraordinary dedication of their rescuer.
