Docs in Orbit

In this episode, we feature a conversation with Italian - American Filmmaker, Mo Scarpelli about her most recent feature documentary, El Father Plays Himself. El Father Plays Himself is a dual character study of a father and son relationship. The film follows Venezuelan director, Jorge Armand, as he returns to Venezuela to make a fiction film about the troubled past of his father in the illegal goldmines of the Amazonian jungle.The film premiered this year at Visions du Reel, winning a s...

In this episode, we feature a conversation with Nuria Giménez, the director of My Mexican Bretzel (2020). My Mexican Bretzel is Nuria’s debut feature-length film made entirely from her grandfather's home footage; Super 8 and 16mm films from the 1950s and 1960s are juxtaposed with excerpts from a diary to reveal the inner thoughts of Vivian Barrett. The film is a personal reflection where love, desire, and death are explored. Through personal archives, we become privy to Vivian's see...

A conversation with the director and producer of Off the Road (2020), which is set to premiere at Visions du Réel. Off the Road is a genre-blending documentary film set in a remote town in Baja, California, Mexico, following locals preparing for the Baja 1000 - the world's biggest off-road motorsport race that passes through their small village.José Permar, the director, was born in South Baja California, Mexico. He studied Audiovisual Arts at the University of Guadalajara and is a reci...

A conversation with Director / Producer Afsaneh Salari from Iran about her feature film, The Silhouettes (2020). The Silhouettes, tells the intimate story of an Afghan refugee family living in Iran for over 35 years as their youngest son makes the difficult decision to return to Afghanistan because of the limited opportunities for immigrants in Iran. Afsaneh has an impressive eye that is immediately visible in her framing from the film's first frame and carries t...

A conversation with three filmmakers, Isabella Rinaldi from Italy, Cristina Hanes from Romania, and Arya Rothe from India, who make up the NoCut Film Collective on their transnational, collaborative approach to documentary filmmaking. Their debut feature-length documentary, A Rifle and a Bag (2020), premiered earlier this year at the International Rotterdam Film Festival (IFFR) in the Bright Future Competition section, where it was awarded a Special Mention from the jury. The ...

A woman, too afraid to leave her house, begins to make a series of calls to authorities reporting suspicious activity happening outside her window.We kick off our premiere podcast with a conversation with Farah Kassem about her award-winning short documentary film, Cleaning Schaerbeek (2017), available to stream for a limited number of days, courtesy of the filmmaker. Farah Kassem is a filmmaker from Lebanon whose work inspires us to think about interior-based filmmaking practices. Set e...