Cinemafile

Director, Producer, Cinematographer and Writer Mstyslav Chernov drop by to talk about the harrowing, heroic and profoundly moving experience that is his remarkable documentary film, 2000 METERS TO ANDRIIVKA. 

2000 METERS TO ANDRIIVKA follows a Ukrainian battalion as they try to recapture the small town of Andriivka just after it had been overtaken by Russian soldiers. The Ukrainian soldiers equipped with body cams on their person and Go-Pro cameras on their helmets takes the viewers on this journey and brings us into the middle of the conflict and the struggle to take back the land from the Russians. With incredible footage coupled with precise editing and a powerful musical score, Oscar® winning director Mstyslav Chernov (20 DAYS IN MARIUPOL) focuses on the harrowing experience of these young soldiers and the intensity of the daily battle for their country and their lives.

IT’S NEVER OVER, JEFF BUCKLEY, directed by Oscar-nominated filmmaker Amy Berg (DELIVER US FROM EVIL, JANIS: LITTLE GIRL BLUE, WEST OF MEMPHIS), covers the life of the rising young star with an otherworldly voice and boundary-pushing artistry, who left the '90s music world reeling when he died suddenly, at age 30, after the release of his critically acclaimed debut album “Grace.” Told through never-before-seen footage from Buckley’s archives and intimate accounts from his mother Mary Guibert, former partners Rebecca Moore and Joan Wasser, Jeff’s former bandmates, including Michael Tighe and Parker Kindred, and luminaries like Ben Harper and Aimee Mann, IT’S NEVER OVER, JEFF BUCKLEY illuminates one of modern music’s most influential and enigmatic figures. Director Amy Berg joins us for a enlightening conversation about the short, but brilliant AND the “what-if” career of singer / songwriter / musician Jeff Buckley.

Renown filmmaker Viktor Kossakovsky (Gunda, Aquarela) presents his spectacular new documentary, ARCHITECTON, as  a poetic meditation on architecture and how the design and construction of buildings from the ancient past may reveal much about our looming destruction – as well as offer hope for survival and a way forward. He reflects on the rise and fall of civilizations while focusing on a landscape project by the Italian architect Michele De Lucchi, using imagery from the temple ruins of Baalbek in Lebanon, dating back to AD 60, to the recent destruction of cities in Turkey following a 7.8 magnitude earthquake in early 2023.

Director Viktor Kossakovsky joins us to talk about the age of sugar and concrete, working with Michele De Lucchi and what this experience has taught him about the potential fate of humanity.

Before Fred Rogers and Jim Henson, there was Shari Lewis, a children’s television pioneer whose whimsical characters and ebullient spirit have guided generations of children as they came of age. Raised in the Bronx by a proud feminist mother and a professor father who moonlighted as Peter Pan the Magic Man, Shari became a multitalented dancer, singer, and magician. But when an injury sidelined her dance aspirations, she channeled her creativity into a passion for ventriloquism, creating the now beloved sock puppet characters Charlie Horse, Hush Puppy and, of course, Lamb Chop. From her early years of TV success to the crush of her show’s cancellation to her 1990s comeback in her 60s.

Director Lisa D’Apolito joins us for a conversation about Shari’s early days, and the connection that her characters had on children, her bounce back after her show’s cancellation and Lisa's own memories in front of a TV set watching the gentile lives Lamb Chop and Hush Puppy. 

Disabled film Director Reid Davenport (I DIDN’T SEE YOU THERE) and Producer Colleen Cassingham trenchantly probes the legacy of Elizabeth Bouvia — a disabled California woman who, at the age of 26, sought “the right to die.” Her 1983 case provoked a national debate about the value of disabled lives, and Davenport sees echoes in chilling contemporary cases of disabled people dying prematurely — at their own hands and from a broken health care system. Through moving interviews and rich archival material, LIFE AFTER looks critically at where progressive values of bodily autonomy collide with the devaluing and fear of disabled lives. Director Reid Davenport & Producer Colleen Cassingham join us to talk about the wide-ranging and complex conversations taking place within the disability, medical communities and law-makers responsible for public policies that address a slew of complex considerations.

About the filmmaker - Reid Davenport (Director) makes documentaries about disability from an overtly political perspective. Reid’s first feature film, I DIDN’T SEE YOU THERE, won the Directing Award for U.S. Documentary at the 2022 Sundance Film Festival. The film won the Grand Jury Prize at Full Frame Documentary Film Festival and the McBaine Bay Area Documentary Award at the San Francisco International Film Festival.

About the filmmaker - Colleen Cassingham (Producer) is a producer at Multitude Films focused on politically committed artful nonfiction. Most recently, she produced the IDA Awards-nominated shorts collection QUEER FUTURES, which premiered at CPH:DOX 2023 and is streaming on the Criterion Channel. Her past credits include Co-Producer on IT’S ONLY LIFE AFTER ALL (Sundance 2023), and Associate Producer on PRAY AWAY (Tribeca 2020), CALL CENTER BLUES (SXSW 2020), ALWAYS IN SEASON (Sundance 2019), THE FEELING OF BEING WATCHED (Tribeca 2018), and LOVE THE SINNER (Tribeca 2017).

Fearless civil rights lawyer Chase Strangio battles at the Supreme Court for transgender adolescents' access to gender-affirming healthcare, confronting not only the legal system but also a media landscape that distorts public perception and threatens the struggle for trans rights. With the dangerous SCOTUS decision upholding the ban on life-saving healthcare, HEIGHTENED SCRUTINY is an urgent call to action against bigotry and injustice. The Supreme Court recently delivered a significant setback for transgender rights by upholding a Tennessee law that restricts access to gender-affirming care for minors. In U.S. v. Skrmetti, the court, in a 6-3 decision, sided with the state, allowing it to ban hormone therapy and other treatments for transgender youth with gender dysphoria. This ruling effectively allows other states to implement similar restrictions on transgender healthcare for minors. Director Sam Feder & Producer Amy Scholder stop by to talk about the harrowing times these are for the trans community, their families and the people who love them.

DEATH and TAXES is a feature documentary about wealth, inequality, and the American Dream, viewed through the lens of the estate tax. It is also the very personal story of a father and son at odds over what kind of inheritance we want to leave our kids and our country. Filmmaker Justin Schein's father, Harvey Schein, liked to say he lived the so-called "American Dream": rising from poverty in Depression-era Brooklyn to great financial success as one of America's top CEOs of the 1970s. But Harvey Schein also spent the last 20 years of his life fixated on trying to keep his hard-earned wealth from the taxman-an obsession that almost broke the Schein family apart. More broadly, inherited wealth and the tax system that shields it have badly distorted American democracy, perpetuating racial and economic inequity in the country. Filmed over more than 20 years, and weaving intimate family footage with interviews with prominent experts from all sides of the debate, DEATH AND TAXES tells this crucial story through the tale of one American family. Director and son of Harvey Shein, Justin Schein joins us for a conversation on the impact his father had on him and his family.

It starts with a kick to the head. Mixed martial arts competitor Lukas has just handily defeated his opponent and celebrates with his wife, child, and friends backstage, setting the scene for a nimble combination of communal bonding and looming horrors. 

Writer-director Laurynas Bareiša, an ND/NF veteran for his debut feature Pilgrims, takes us on a non-linear journey through the experiences and recollections of those who survived tragedy (and those who didn’t), shot with unceasing patience and formal rigor. 

DROWNING DRY was the second of Bareiša’s films selected as Lithuania’s entry for the Best International Feature Academy Award. Winner of Locarno’s Best Director and, in recognition of its indispensable ensemble of four, Best Performance awards. A Dekanalog release. –New Directors/New Films 2025

Meredith Monk — composer, performer, and interdisciplinary artist — is one of the great artistic pioneers of our time, yet her profound cultural influence is largely unrecognized. With Monk’s music at its center, and featuring interviews with Björk and David Byrne, MONK IN PIECES is a mosaic that mirrors the structure of Monk’s own work, and illuminates her wildly original vocabulary of sound and imagery. As a female artist in the male-dominated downtown arts scene of the 1960s and ‘70s, Monk had to fight for recognition and resources. Early reviews in the mainstream press were vicious and sexist: “A disgrace to the name of dancing” wrote Clive Barnes, and “so earnestly strange in a talented little-girl way,” wrote John Rockwell. Yet as her celebrated contemporary, Philip Glass, says, "she, among all of us, was — and still is — the uniquely gifted one. MONK IN PIECES made its world premiere at the 2025 Berlin International Film Festival and will be released theatrically on Friday, July 25 at New York’s IFC Center followed by LA’s Laemmle Royal on Friday, August 1. A wider national rollout will follow.

A KING LIKE ME follows members of the Zulu Club, New Orleans’ first Black Mardi Gras krewe, as they work to bring the Zulu parade back to the streets for Mardi Gras Day 2022, in the face of a global pandemic, hurricane Ida and the loss of members due to COVID and gun violence. A KING LIKE ME benefits from the unprecedented access to a stalwart community and cultural institution as it documents a modern portrait of Black brotherhood, leadership and community.

About the filmmaker - Director / Producer Matthew O. Henderson, is a native New Yorker who has worked in the Film & Television Industry for over fifteen years. As a producer, he’s worked on a number of films including Fragments of Paradise, which had its World Premiere at the 2022 Venice Film Festival, winning Best Documentary on Cinema; True Justice: Bryan Stevenson’s Fight for Equality, which won a Peabody Award and an Emmy Award for Outstanding Social Issue Documentary; The Soul of America; Gordon Parks: A Choice of Weapon; and Obama: In Pursuit of a More Perfect Union. Matthew bridges the technical and creative hemispheres having worked for over ten years as a Camera Assistant and Camera Operator. Matthew’s passion for storytelling coupled with his ability to conceptualize and create compelling, and soulful visuals has allowed him to film all around the world. Whether it’s a remote aboriginal village in Eastern Australia, floating along the Venice like canals of Makoko, Nigeria in Africa, or filming at depths of five-hundred feet below the Atlantic Ocean, his approach to filmmaking is always the same – tell the story you find, not the one you expect to find.