Cinemafile

Trifole, Igor, an aging truffle hunter, faces failing health and disappearing woodlands while struggling to keep pace with the modern truffle trade. Into his quiet, tradition-bound life bounds Dalia, his 28-year-old granddaughter from London, estranged from her roots and searching for direction. Tasked with caring for him, their uneasy reunion softens as she is drawn into his passion for truffle hunting—and his world. The sophomore feature by emerging Italian director Gabriele Fabbro, Trifole stars newcomer Ydalie Turk in a fresh breakthrough performance alongside two Italian acting screen legends. Umberto Orsini, playing Igor, is known for his breakout performance in Luchino Visconti’s The Damned in 1969. 

Gabriele Fabbro is a filmmaker from Milan, Italy. He earned his BFA in Filmmaking from the New York Film Academy’s Los Angeles campus. Fabbro has directed, written and produced over 20 productions, including short films, documentaries, music videos and commercials. His short film, 8 (2019), screened at the 76 Venice Film Festival for the Giornate Degli Autori official program. In 2021, Gabbro’s film The Grand Bolero (2021) was an official selection for the Austin Film Festival.

From director Nathan Silver, "CAROL & JOY was born from a convergence of mothers. In my previous documentary, CUTTING MY MOTHER, I followed my own mom Cindy’s life and discovered that she was in a b'nai mitzvah class in her late 60s (customarily reserved for pre-teens). This would become the original premise of my fiction film BETWEEN THE TEMPLES, and Carol Kane would play the b'nai mitzvah student. Carol’s character in the film is a music teacher, and during the shoot I learned her own mother Joy was a music teacher too—or still is, in her late 90s. Joy gave Carol a major reference for her performance: Joy started her life over in her 50s by picking up and moving to another country. Just like Carol’s character, Joy had the urge to reinvent herself later in life.” Director Nathan Silver stops by to talk about a magical afternoon gathering and how this entertaining, insightful and life-affirming short documentary came together.

About the filmmaker - Nathan Silver's latest film, BETWEEN THE TEMPLES, premiered in competition at the Sundance Film Festival. The film was nominated for Best Screenplay at the Gotham Awards and won the New York Film Critics Circle Award for Best Supporting Actress (Carol Kane)

NUNS VS. THE VATICAN is a groundbreaking investigative documentary that exposes a historic showdown inside the Catholic Church. NUNS VS. THE VATICAN follows Gloria, a former nun who risked everything to challenge the church's silence on abuse, corruption and systemic erasure of women's voices within Catholic power structures. After she experienced this abuse at the hands of her mentor and guide, Father Rupnik, who was revered for his faith and art in the Church, she decided to speak up and make change for others. The film uncovers the harrowing details regarding the nuns and women that have long endured abuse at the hands of priests within the Vatican Church. At the film's core are the brave women whose testimonies challenge the very foundations of faith and power, insisting on truth and accountability. This gripping exposé pulls back the curtain on a decades-long battle for truth, equality, and reform inside one of the world's most secretive institutions. The documentary arrives at a crucial moment as the Vatican faces renewed scrutiny over transparency and gender equality. NUNS VS. THE VATICAN blends investigative rigor with intimate storytelling, positioning these nuns not as victims but as reformers.

At 15, he took a life. Three days later, his brother’s life was taken. A moving chronicle of forgiveness, family, and the transformative power of art, SONGS FROM THE HOLE weaves music and mixed-media storytelling into an innovative documentary visual album. Through clear-eyed narration and lyrical journal entries, incarcerated musician James “JJ’88” Jacobs reveals his innermost struggles as a person who has both committed and experienced violent harm. In a unique creative process, our guest, director Contessa Gayles collaborated with protagonist/writer JJ’88 and producer/music producer Richie Reseda to interweave the collective storytelling of the film’s non-fiction participants, with imagined memories, dreams and spiritual dialogues set to JJ’88’s original music. The result is a powerful mix of truth-telling, healing and liberation that is possible within us all. SONGS FROM THE HOLE it won the 2024 SXSW Audience Award in the Visions category. Director Contessa Gayles (The Feminist on Cellblock Y, The Debutantes) joins us for a fascinating conversation on being open to a very creative way of telling this complex story.

Filmmaker Charlie Shackleton was hot on the trail of the next great American true crime documentary—a riveting account of a highway patrolman's quixotic effort to identify and capture the infamous Zodiac Killer. Shackleton devised a plan, began collecting interviews, and shot “evocative B-roll” footage of ghostly California freeways and parking lots where the killer may have once lurked. And then the project fell apart, leaving Shackleton with fragments of the unfinished film and time to ruminate on shortcuts and signifiers of the ubiquitous genre. A witty and beautifully assembled deep dive into our obsession with serial killers and the stories we tell about them, Shackleton’s ZODIAC KILLER PROJECT emerges  from the ash heap to probe and deconstruct the form with the incisive eye of a true crime connoisseur. Our guest Charlie Shackleton’s last project, the performance film As Mine Exactly, won the Immersive Art & XR Award at the 2022 BFI London Film Festival and went on to have extended runs at the Barbican Centre in London and the Museum of the Moving Image in New York.

Winner of the 2025 Sundance Film Festival Grand Jury Award winner (World Cinema Documentary) Co-directors Sara Khaki & Mohammadreza Eyni's Cutting Through Rocks drops us into the world of the fearless mid-wife Sara Shahverdi, who decides she wants to be the first woman to run for the local area council. Not only does she win, she takes on the local patriarchy in her remote Iranian village. Sara fearlessly breaks traditions by stopping child marriages and training teenage girls to ride motorcycles. When accusations arise questioning her intentions to empower the girls, her identity is put in turmoil.

Co-director /Producer / Editor Sara Khaki and Co-director / Producer / Editor / Cinematographer Mohammadreza Eyni join us to talk about their eight year journey to document and bear witness to the fierce determination of Sara as she works to make the world a better place, one young woman at a time.

Decades after the disappearance of her uncle during Argentina’s Dirty War, a filmmaker joins the Caravan of Mothers, a group of Central American women who travel by bus along the migrant route in search of their loved ones who have disappeared trying to reach the U.S. Their stories intertwine across generations and geographies, the film becomes a powerful testament to resilience, memory, hope, and solidarity. A PLACE OF ABSENCE is a lyrical and profoundly moving documentary that explores unresolved grief, boundless love, and the unbreakable strength of women. Director /Producer / Writer / Co-editor Marialuisa Ernst talks about the impacts of state sponsored terror, the societal, cultural and personal trauma that it caused and how these brave women set out on a dangerous journey to uncover the truth, begin their own healing process and help those they meet to do the same. A Place of absence is screening Monday, November 17 - 4:30 PM (EST) at Village East by Angelika followed by a Q&A with Director Marialuisa Ernst and with film participant Anita Zelaya. Also available on-line at DOCNYC.net (https://www.docnyc.net/film/a-place-of-absence/)

Currently screening at 2025 DOCNYC, FLOPHOUSE AMERICA places us in the middle of the ongoing housing crisis in the U.S.,where many people are forced to live in rundown hotels,  known as flophouses. Twelve-year-old Mikal shares a small, inexpensive room in one of these hotels with his parents and their cat, Smokey. Their home is marked by chaos and alcohol abuse, but also by love and the hope for a better future. Director Monica Strømdahl has spent years traveling across the U.S., documenting life in these hotels. Eight years ago, she met Mikal, one of many children growing up in this environment. Flophouse America is an exceedingly moving and meticulous coming-of-age documentary follows him over three years, capturing the pain of a fractured childhood alongside the warmth and complexity of family. Quoting the filmmaker, “Filming Mikal and his family came with immense responsibilities — both as filmmakers and as fellow human beings. Flophouse America captures a family facing hardship, often in difficult and vulnerable situations.” I urge anyone listening to our conversation to seek out this beautiful and moving film. 

Co-directors Peter Yost & Michael Rohatyn’s DROP DEAD CITY is the first-ever feature documentary devoted to the NYC Fiscal Crisis of 1975, an extraordinary, overlooked episode in urban American history that saw an already crumbling city of eight million people brought to the edge of bankruptcy and social chaos by a perfect storm of debt, greed, ambitious social policy and poor governance. Named after the famous New York Daily News headline “Ford to City: Drop Dead,” Drop Dead City overturns present day assumptions about politics and compromise, showing what bitter rivals achieved through shared sacrifice. . It examines the origins of the crisis and documents the increasingly desperate clashes of stakeholders - unions, banks, local, state and federal governments, and average citizens  - as, together, they slide ever nearer to the unthinkable - bankruptcy.  Co-directors Peter Yost & Michael Rohatyn join us to talk about their personal connection to the financial crisis and finding many of the key people who worked to get New York City back on solid financial footing, gathering together an amazing array of archival material and the satisfaction of telling a very complex story in a way that illuminates the past that offers a perspective on our own future. 

Endlessly struggling to feel seen, David becomes infatuated with a mysterious company’s promise to transform people’s lives by permanently changing the color of their eyes. After traveling to India to get the controversial procedure, he begins to question if this artificial beauty will give him the fulfillment he truly seeks. CATERPILLAR explores the lengths that people are willing to go in pursuit of physical “perfection”. Award winning director Liza Mandelup joins us for a conversation on her “narrative” approach to documentary storytelling and how it informed Caterpillar. Her first film Jawline, which premiered at Sundance Film Festival,  went on to win the Special Jury Award for Emerging Filmmaker. The New York Times called it "A Grey Gardens for Gen-Z”. She currently has a scripted TV show with A24 titled Lifted which explores the real and imagined lives of teenage girls looking for purpose and power. The show centers around an online community of Shoplifters and the young women's attempts to find themselves through the group's radical messaging. The Lifted pilot has been completed and is awaiting series order.