From September 26th to 30th, the Irish Film Institute (IFI) will present its keenly anticipated 16th Documentary Festival. The festival will showcase 15 features in total, and will also put on its familiar and much-loved shorts programme. In addition to the standard viewing experience, the festival will seek to provide a holistic appreciation of documentary-making as a genre, with panel discussions and special guests from around the world offering diverse insights into, and interpretations of, the works that will be showcased.
Significantly, the Documentary Festival will play host to seven Irish premieres. Perhaps most notable of these premieres is the festival’s opening film, the critically lauded Minding The Gap by Bing Liu, fresh from its recent victory at the 2018 Sheffield Doc/Fest new talent and audience awards. Minding The Gap delves intimately into the dilemmas, tensions and anxieties faced in the lives of Zach and Keire, two skateboarding fanatics hurtling towards manhood and the terrors of burdensome responsibility. Bing Liu delicately fosters themes such as fatherhood and the conflict between the carefree, breezy freedom of youth and the grinding tedium of maturity. Minding The Gap will undoubtedly move audiences at the IFI with its tenderly affectionate look at the human stories of people moving forward into uncertain futures, all the while wrestling with the emotional significance of their blighted and troubled pasts.
Another highlight from the upcoming festival will surely be found in the shape of director Frank Shouldice’s unusual yet charming documentary, The Man Who Wanted to Fly. This documentary follows the uplifting exploits of octogenarian Bobby Coote who remains invigorated in his older years by his lifelong ambition to fly. This beautifully shot, heartwarming tale will convince its audience that although our bodies age, our dreams are not diminished in their power by the passing of time. Bobby Coote, the director, and Dave Perry will also be present for a questions and answers session afterwards, where the audience will have the chance to interrogate them about the airborne antics that inspired the work.
The Documentary Festival boasts a schedule teeming with variety. In complete divergence from the films described above, Our New President will bring a more insidious, politically charged tone to proceedings. This skilfully edited exploration of Donald Trump’s presidential campaign and the extent of Russian involvement in it takes the viewer into unsettling territory. Director Maxim Pozdorovkin is uninhibited in pulling together some of the most bizarre, sinister and hilarious footage along with some highly esoteric internet propaganda to create a viewing experience that will excite and repel in equal measure.
Documentaries are unlike any other genre of film insofar as they allow us to enter, first-hand, the lives of individuals and groups we would otherwise never come to know or meet. They have the unique ability to allow people to tell their own stories in an authentic, honest way. However, the irony is that very often we find the documentary’s subject matter to be stranger than even the most surreal of fantasy films. The IFI Documentary Festival gives those attending a chance to immerse themselves in undiscovered, unknown spheres of life, equally as real as our own.
