Spotlight
Wondering which films to watch? Spotlight presents thematically grouped, must see films, hand-picked by Fandor's curators.
Photographic Memory
Love and Other Anxieties
The Skin I'm In
Sink or Swim
The Beaches of Agnès
Dear Zachary
Dear Pyongyang
Phantom Limb
The Sheik and I
5 Broken Cameras
Extreme Private Eros
Her Master's Voice
Nobody's Business
Her Name is Sabine
The Waiting Time
Personal Documentary
Usually when someone says “it’s personal,” what they really mean is that “it’s private.” End of story, they’ll say no more. But the filmmakers featured here are a different sort. Whether by choice or by chance, they’re intimately connected to their subject, so telling the entire story means revealing a part of themselves (even if it’s not always in the most flattering light). These aren’t simply cinematic selfies but rather films committed to full disclosure.
Selected Films
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Photographic Memory
Filmmaker Ross McElwee finds himself in frequent conflict with his son, a young adult who seems addicted to and distracted by the virtual worlds of the internet. To understand his fractured love for his son, McElwee travels back to St. Quay-Portrieux in Brittany for the first...Watch Movie
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Love and Other Anxieties
Faced with the reality that her only child will flee the nest for college, film-funder turned filmmaker Lyda Kuth gets anxious not only about how her daughter will fare in today’s world of love and romance, but also about her relationship with her husband of twenty years. What...Watch Movie
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The Skin I'm In
In 2005, filmmaker Broderick Fox was found on the Berlin subway tracks with his head split open and a lethal blood alcohol level of 0.47. Strangers pulled him to safety, giving him a second chance at life and propelling him on a global journey to explore the limits of body, mind, spirit and art....Watch Movie
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Sink or Swim
A contemporary classic and a landmark in autobiographical filmmaking, SINK OR SWIM is an unflinching account of the highly charged relationship between a daughter and her father. Through a series of twenty-six short stories, a young girl chronicles the childhood events that shaped her ideas about...Watch Movie
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The Beaches of Agnès
Agnès Varda takes a cinematic stroll through her career—and the history of French film—in this jovial first-person documentary that "walks backwards" across the beaches, landscapes, and movie sets of her life and times. For some, turning eighty may mean settling down, but for...Watch Movie
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Dear Pyongyang
A young girl's father sends her three brothers from Japan to live permanently in a homeland foreign to them: North Korea. In this autobiographical documentary spanning ten years, the daughter left behind, filmmaker Yonghi Yang, struggles to understand why her loving father would split his family...Watch Movie
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Dear Zachary
On November 5, 2001, Dr. Andrew Bagby was murdered in a parking lot in western Pennsylvania; the prime suspect, his ex-girlfriend Dr. Shirley Turner, promptly fled the United States for St. John's, Canada, where she announced that she was pregnant with Andrew's child. She named the little boy...Watch Movie
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Phantom Limb
PHANTOM LIMB revisits the childhood death of the filmmaker's younger brother, a major tragedy that spun Jay Rosenblatt's family on a sad axis. Rosenblatt's treatment of the death and decades of grieving, through personal narrative, amazing scenes of amputation and experimentation from medical...Watch Movie
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The Waiting Time
THE WAITING TIME is an experimental documentary exploration of desire, conception and the long waiting time of gestation. It is a study of a year in the filmmaker's body at age thirty-five, becoming a mother for the first time. THE WAITING TIME is a feminist attempt to address...Watch Movie
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The Sheik and I
Commissioned by a Middle Eastern Biennial to make a film on the theme of "art as a subversive act," independent filmmaker Caveh Zahedi goes overboard. Told that he can do whatever he wants except make fun of the Sheik of Sharjah (who rules the country and finances the Biennial), Zahedi decides to...Watch Movie
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5 Broken Cameras
Nominated for Best Documentary Feature at the 2013 Academy Awards®, 5 BROKEN CAMERAS is an extraordinary work of both cinematic and political activism and a deeply personal, first-hand account of non-violent resistance in Bil'in, a West Bank village threatened by encroaching...Watch Movie
