Canadian film “Yintah” won the main competition jury prize, which comes with 8,000 euros, at the 22nd edition of the Millennium Docs Against Gravity film festival. The documentary event, which played in Warsaw and six other Polish cities, ended on May 18.
“Yintah” tells the story of a Canadian-based Indigenous nation’s fight for sovereignty as it resists the construction of multiple oil and fracked-gas pipelines across its territory. Co-directed by Brenda Michell, Michael Toledano, and Jennifer Wickham, the docu captures the Wet’suwet’en nation’s right to stewardship and sovereignty over their territories.
The jury called it “a painfully beautiful viewing experience that challenges us to imagine and enact resistance — before it’s too late.”
“Bedrock,” by first-time filmmaker Kinga Michalska, about contemporary Poles living on Holocaust sites, won the best Polish film award.
The themes of these films — history, genocide, resistance and resilence — were on the minds of many of the filmmakers who came to Warsaw with their films. Iranian filmmaker Farahnaz Sharifi brought “My Stolen Planet,” in which she documents in diary style her life under the strict Islamic code in her home country. Another film that prompted many conversations at the festival was Andres Veiel’s “Riefenstahl,” which explored the German filmmaker’s Leni Riefenstahl’s connections to the Nazi regime through new interview footage.
Other films in the main competition included rediscoveries from other festivals. Sundance (“Come See Me in the Good Light,” “2000 Meters to Andriivka”), IDFA (“A Want in Her”) and even last summer’s Venice (“Apocalypse in the Tropics”).
“My Stolen Planet” premiered for first time more than a year ago at the Berlinale. Putting these films in conversation with more recent offerings, like “Mr. Nobody Against Putin,” gives Millennium Docs Against Gravity’s main competition a singular position among non-fiction festivals; it becomes truly a showcase of the best of the best.
The festival’s repertory program also drew engaged audiences with films that still resonate many years after their initial release. Guy Davidi showed his Oscar nominated “5 Broken Cameras,” which he co-directed with Emad Burnat in 2011. The film captures a family’s resilience in a West Bank village, which had added resonance with the current war in Gaza being on the minds of many. U.S. filmmaker Lauren Greenfield showed her Imelda Marcos biopic “Kingmaker” (2018), and that fallen politician’s rise back to power, through her son, the current president of the Philippines, recalls what happened in American politics in the last year.
The festival supplements films with special events. This year that slate included an exhibit of Ernest Cole’s photography to coincide with the showing of Raoul Peck’s “Ernest Cole: Lost and Found.” Comedian Noam Shuster-Eliassi was on hand as the protagonist of opening night selection “Coexistence, My Ass!,” directed by Amber Fares. She also drew crowds, especially younger people, to a stand-up show presented as part of the festival, which raised money for charities in Gaza.
Millennium Docs Against Gravity fosters an intimate environment for its guests to meet, and they can’t stop talking favorably about the festival. “I was here in 2010 with the film ‘Gunnar Goes God,’ and fell in love with the atmosphere of the festival. There’s passion for the films and filmmakers, not the money side of it,” said filmmaker Gunnar Hall Jensen, whose latest “Portrait of a Confused Father,” a visceral examination of his own relationship with his son, was another hit with festival goers. “And now I am back here at the festival, 15 years later, with a new film, and I am astonished and touched that the festival has kept its integrity. It is a bigger festival, but there is still that certain intimacy that I cherish so much. A transparent open heartfelt connection between the festival, the filmmakers and the audience.”
It’s not only guests with multiple visits to the festival who feel this energy. First timers do too. “I was quite impressed with the MDAG experience – the curation, event production and guest selection were all top-tier. It was my first time in Warsaw, and by the time I left, I’d not only received a great introduction to the city and its history, but also its non-fiction sensibilities,” said Opal H. Bennett, senior producer at POV and a participating subject-matter expert at the festival’s industry section. “I almost want to keep it my little gem of a secret. But I absolutely think everyone should make it their business to visit MDAG.” With its growing industry section and audience participation, it seems like everybody is already doing just that.
