CAMDEN, Maine, August 22,
2022 – The Camden International Film Festival (CIFF)
has announced the slate of feature and short films for its
18th edition, which will take place in person from September
15-18 at venues in Camden and Rockland, Maine, and online
from September 15-25 for audiences across North America.
Longtime sponsor SHOWTIME® returns as a Headlining Sponsor,
and is joined this year by YETI, MSNBC Films, CNN Films, and
the RandomGood Foundation.
The CIFF Box
Office is open
and passes are on sale now! Online registration for pass
holders begins on September 1. General tickets for
screenings will open on September 8.
A program of the Points North Institute, CIFF remains widely
recognized as a major platform championing the next
generation of nonfiction storytellers and one of the hottest
documentary and industry festivals on the festival and
awards calendars. This year's edition is the most
international and formally adventurous to date and includes
34 features and 37 short films from over 41 countries. Over
60% of the entire program is directed or co-directed by
BIPOC filmmakers and this is the 6th consecutive program the
festival has reached gender parity within the program and
across all competitions.
Nearly half of the feature program will be US or North
American premieres, including several new titles fresh from
Venice, Locarno, and TIFF premieres, alongside award-winning
films from Sundance, Rotterdam, Cannes, and Visions du Reel.
This year's program celebrates the diversity of voices and
forms in documentary and cinematic nonfiction," says Ben
Fowlie, Executive and Artistic Director of the Points North
Institute, and Founder of the Camden International Film
Festival. "These films help us make sense of an
ever-changing world, and do everything we expect from great
art - they ask provocative questions and interrogate the
form. This year’s program emphasizes the international that
represents the 'I' in CIFF, and reminds us time and again of
the limitless creative potential and potency of the
documentary form. Just as we have been for each of the past
seventeen years, we are grateful to the filmmakers who have
made these works of art and shared these stories."
Major Festival highlights include the US Premiere of Tamana
Ayazi and Marcel Mettelsiefen’s new Netflix release In
Her Hands, a powerful film about Zarifa
Ghafari, one of Afghanistan’s first female mayors filmed in
the months leading up to the Taliban takeover in 2021; Sr.,
an endearing portrait of the life and career of Robert
Downey Sr. and his relationship to his son and the latest
film by award-winning filmmaker Chris Smith; and, a special
sneak preview of My Imaginary Country,
by acclaimed director and documentary icon Patricio Guzman,
which chronicles the recent protests in Chile’s in which
millions took to the street to demand democracy, dignity,
and a new constitution. CIFF will also present two world
premieres, an unlikely Western set in the world of the
American national cowboy poetry gatherings called Cowboy
Poets by Mike Day and This Much We
Know by Lily Frances Henderson.
The festival will present seven North American Premieres
from some of the most inventive filmmakers working across
the globe, including Foragers by
Jumana Manna, which will be one of two films opening CIFF
and which recently took home the Green Dox Award at Dokufest
Kosovo; recent Locarno premieres It Is Night In
America by Ana Vaz and Matter Out
Of Place, the latest from award-winning
director Nikolaus Geyrhalter; the winner of Rotterdam’s
prestigious Tiger Award EAMI by Paz Encina; Polaris by
Ainara Vera, which recently premiered at the Cannes Film
Festival; and the Visions du Reel special jury
award-winning Herbaria, by Leandro
Listorti.
In honor of Diane Weyermann, the widely
beloved industry veteran and former Chief Content Officer at
Participant who passed away last October, CIFF will screen
several of the last films she Executive Produced. Films
include A Compassionate Spy by
Steve James which is set to premiere at Venice next month, Lowndes
County and the Road to Black Power by Geeta
Gandbhir and Sam Pollard, and the Sundance award-winning Descendant by
Margaret Brown. Last November, Points North established a
memorial fund for Diane, and is currently developing a
filmmaker fellowship to honor her legacy and the impact she
had on the global documentary community.
The feature slate also includes two alumni of Points North’s
Artists Programs. Reid Davenport’s I Didn’t See
You There, which received a Director prize at
Sundance, was developed through the organization’s Points
North Fellowship and received a grant from the American
Stories Documentary Fund. Jon-Sesrie Goff’s After
Sherman was also part of the inaugural cohort
of American Stories grantees in 2020.
Storyforms, CIFF’s exhibition of
immersive documentary experiences will feature a large-scale
video installation of recent work by Colectivo Los
Ingrávidos from Mexico, whose films and artworks have been
exhibited across the world, including at the Whitney
Biennial.
Organizers also announced that CIFF will continue with its
Filmmaker Solidarity Fund for the third consecutive year.
Established in 2020, this year the fund will provide $300
honoraria to all feature and short filmmaking teams
participating in the virtual festival. The Filmmaker
Solidarity Fund is presented by Bright West Entertainment.
This year also marks the return of in-person panels and
masterclasses through the festival's Points North
Forum program, which will feature conversations
around the ethics of film financing, an exploration of
experimental filmmaking about the climate, a masterclass/performance
with veteran editor Maya Daisy Hawke, and a special
performance lecture on sensorial cinema led by award-winning
Iranian artist Maryam Tafakory. The Forum program will
conclude with a “town hall” gathering of the documentary
community following the screening of Subject,
which will include participants from Hoop Dreams, The
Square, a sneak preview of the Documentary Accountability
Working Group’s upcoming publication, "From Reflection to
Release: A Framework for Values, Ethics, and Accountability
in Nonfiction Filmmaking."
Once again the festival will run concurrently with Points
North Artist Programs. 21 projects will be supported through
four fellowship programs, 15 indigenous filmmakers will be
present for a special alumni gathering of our 4th World
Media Lab collaboration with Nia Tero, and nearly twenty
additional fellows on the ground via continued partnerships
with Bay Area Video Coalition and Brown Girls Doc Mafia.
Dozens of industry leaders will be in attendance for the
Points North 1:1 programs, making the CIFF weekend the most
dynamic and intimate documentary market experiences in the
US.
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