Edinburgh
International Film Festival artistic director Hannah McGill has announced that the fest will showcase twenty-two documentary
features this year.
Highlights include Chris Waitt's comical A
Complete History of My Sexual Failures, featuring interviews with all of his
ex-girlfriends about where he went wrong; Sundance Film Festival Grand Jury Prize and Audience Award
Winner Man On Wire, directed by James Marsh, about World Trade Center tightrope walker Philippe Petit. Oscar-winner Errol Morris's investigation into the infamous events of Abu Ghraib five years ago, Standard Operating Proceedure, also receives an airing.
All three filmmakers, and Philippe Petit, are expected to make it to Edinburgh for the festival in its new slot this year from 18 to 29 June.
Werner Herzog, a longtime favourite of the EIFF and good friend of Errol Morris, is expected to be in Edinburgh for the UK premiere of his eccentric and visually exquisite documentary on Antartica Encounters At the End of the World. Erik Nelson, producer on Herzog's film, also brings his directorial debut feature, Dreams With Sharp Teeth, which explores the life and work of science fiction writer Harlan Ellison.
Varied programme
Another of Herzog's regular
collaborators, German actor Klaus Kinski, is the subject of Jesus Christ Saviour, directed
by Peter Geyer. The film is a long-lost record of a 1971 theatrical monologue
that became an endurance test for the actor, who was faced with an audience
wanting a discussion, rather than a sermon.
The Document section includes films
from eleven different countries. Also, from Germany is Alexandra Westmeier's Alone In Four Walls (Allein in Vier Vanden). Scandinavian offerings include Danish director Phie
Ambo's Mechanical Love and Paradise (Paradiset), by Swedish director
Jerzy Sladkowski.
Sweden provides the backdrop
for British filmmakers Robert Cannan and Corinna Villari-McFarlane's Three Miles North of Molkum, a quirky
rollercoaster ride through the experiences of the participants at a spiritual
festival in Sweden.
Other titles from the UK which will feature in the Document Section, include
Neasa Ni Chianain's Fairytale of Kathmandu, a UK and Ireland co-production; We Went to Wonderland, a China and UK
co-production directed by Xiaolu Guo; and Gideon Koppel's Wales-set Sleep Furiously, which will be having its
World Premiere at the EIFF.
Nine of the documentary features originate
from the United States.
These include Daniel O'Connor and Neil Ortenberg's Obscene which chronicles the life and times
of publisher Barney Rosset, who has battled censorship and hypocrisy at every
turn; Ron Davis and Stewart Halpern's Pageant which follows five male contestants competing in the Miss Gay
America Pageant; Margaret Brown's The Order of Myths which examines
the culture of the community of Mobile, Alabama whose existing segregation is
symbolised by two annual Mardi Gras parades - one organized by the
city's white families and one by the black community; and C. Karim
Chrobog's War Child, the
story of a rising hip hop star, who as a child was taken from his family and
forced to fight in the Sudanese civil war. Argentina has Miguel Kohan's Cafe de los Maestros, a film about
the origins of Tango, executive produced by Walter Salles.
There is a strong female presence in the
subject matter of the line-up, with Israeli director Tamar Yarom's To See If I'm Smiling (Lirot Im Ani Mehayechet), the story of women who served in the occupied territories; Louise Hogarth's Angels in the Dust, a film telling the inspiring story of Marion Cloete,
who fearlessly walked away from a privileged life in a wealthy Johannesburg
suburb to establish Boikarabelo, a village and school providing shelter, food,
and education to orphaned South African children; and David Schisgall's Very Young Girls which examines the issue of
child prostitution in the United States. The Art Star and the Sudanese Twins, directed by Pietra Brettkelly, is New Zealand's offering which follows
performance artist Vanessa Beecroft
on a mission to adopt two Third
World children.
For some, the documentary section is the best part of the EIFF and perhaps in the less frantic atmosphere of its new slot in the calendar, these films will have what artistic Hannah McGill has called "breathing space" for the subject-matter to gain wider exposure.
The full EIFF programme will be announced on 7 May and the box office opens at noon on Friday 9 May.