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Meet the 2023 SFFILM Documentary Film Fund Finalists

Celebrate these 2023 Documentary Film Fund Finalists with us.

Since its launch in 2011, the SFFILM Documentary Film Fund (DFF) has supported feature-length documentaries in post-production that are distinguished by compelling stories, intriguing characters, and an innovative visual approach. DFF has distributed nearly $1 million to advance new work by filmmakers worldwide, many of whom go on to premiere at festivals like Sundance, our own San Francisco International Film Festival, Tribeca and more, as well as collect dozens of nominations and awards including the Oscars.

Previous DFF winners include Sarvnik Kaur’s Against the Tide, winner of the Sundance 2023 Vérité Filmmaking Prize; ​​Alejandra Vasquez and Sam Osborne’s Going Varsity in Mariachi, winner of the Sundance 2023 Jonathan Oppenheim Editing Award; Rintu Thomas and Sushmit Ghosh’s Writing With Fire, which won Audience and Special Jury Awards at the 2021 Sundance Film Festival; Ljubo Stefanov and Tamara Kotevska’s Honeyland, which won a record number of juried awards at the 2019 Sundance Film Festival and was nominated for Academy Awards for both Best Documentary Feature and Best Foreign Language Film; RaMell Ross’ Hale County This Morning, This Evening, which won a Special Jury Prize at Sundance 2018 and was nominated for the 2019 Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature, and many others.

The 2023 Documentary Film Fund is made possible thanks to support from Jennifer Hymes Battat and the Jenerosity Foundation along with Katie Hall and Tom Knutsen.

Meet the 2023 Documentary Film Fund Finalists

Company of Steel

Yuliia Hontaruk, Director/Producer; Ivanna Khitsinska, Producer; Alexandra Bratyshchenko, Producer; Uldis Cekulis, Producer; Katarina Krnacova, Producer

After enduring the horrors of the war in eastern Ukraine since 2014, three young veterans return home. As they struggle to find their place in daily life as civilians, the Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022 throws them right back into the trauma they have tried so hard to escape.

Daughters

Natalie Rae Robison, Director/Producer; Angela Patton, Director/Executive Producer; Lisa Mazzotta, Producer

An intimate portrait of a generation of youth bearing the weight of mass incarceration through the lens of four young girls as they prepare for a special father-daughter dance with their fathers in jail.

The Impossible Dream

Javid Soriano, Director/Producer

A world-class opera singer, now unhoused in San Francisco, embarks on a musical journey into the brightest and darkest regions of his life.

Milpa

Efraín Mojica, Director/Producer; Rebecca Zweig, Director/Producer; Sarah Strunin, Producer

At the rural rodeos in Michoacán, México, a hypermasculine tradition is rife with hidden queer encounters. In Jaripeo, director Efraín steps into the frame to follow two rancheros as they navigate desire, machismo, and mass migration from one rodeo season to the next.

Patrice the Movie

Ted Passon, Director; Kyla Harris, Producer; Innbo Shim, Producer; Emily Spivack, Producer

Patrice the Movie is a nonfiction rom-com about the next phase of marriage equality – disability. In her late 50s, Patrice has finally found the love of her life, Garry, who is also disabled. They want nothing more than to get married, but if they do—or were even to move in together—the benefits they need to survive would be cut. Despite the scrutiny they’re under, they decide to plan a commitment ceremony that could risk their entire future. Blending verite footage and stylized school play-inspired recreations, the film follows Patrice in the present day while weaving in scripted scenes that reveal events from her past.

SEEDS

Brittany Shyne, Director/Producer; Danielle Varga, Producer; Sabrina Schmidt Gordon, Executive Producer

SEEDS is a portrait of centennial farmers in the geographical south. Using lyrical black-and-white imagery, this meditative film examines the decline of generational black farmers and the significance of owning land.

The Track

Ryan Sidhoo, Director/Producer

The Track is a coming-of-age journey of three teenagers chasing their Olympic dreams in post-war Bosnia. Training on their bullet-riddled luge track left over from the 1984 Winter Games in Sarajevo, the heart of the project is found in the relatable, sometimes humorous and exciting portrayal of friends striving for a better life despite religious strife and a murky economic future. Ultimately, the film begs the question: Where does a generation go after civil-war?

Untitled Mistress Dispeller Project

Elizabeth Lo, Director; Emma D. Miller, Producer; Elizabeth Lo, Producer; Maggie Li, Producer

Wang Zhenxi works as a “mistress dispeller” in China, hired to break up extramarital affairs and save marriages in crisis. Untitled Mistress Dispeller Project follows Wang in her work on an unfolding case, offering extraordinarily intimate access to private lives usually kept hidden. Through a Rashomon approach that allows sympathies to shift between husband, wife, and mistress, the film paints a picture of disconnection and desire that is both specific to China and relatable across cultures.

Untitled Pyrenees Bears Film

Max Keegan, Director/Producer; Amanda McBaine, Producer; Jesse Moss, Producer; Elizabeth Woodward, Producer

Viktor

Olivier Sarbil, Director/Producer Darren Aronofsky, Producer; Dylan Golden, Producer; Brendan Naylor, Producer; Sigrid Dyekjær, Producer

Viktor is an intimate epic about a Ukrainian searching for purpose in a war he cannot hear.

Stay In Touch With SFFILM

SFFILM is a nonprofit organization whose mission ensures independent voices in film are welcomed, heard, and given the resources to thrive. SFFILM works hard to bring the most exciting films and filmmakers to Bay Area movie lovers, to support emerging filmmakers, and to educate youth through cinema. To be the first to know what’s coming, sign up for our email alerts and watch your inbox.

Meet the 2023 SFFILM Rainin Recipients

Celebrate these 2023 SFFILM Rainin Recipients with us.

Supporting feature filmmakers since 2009

SFFILM is thrilled to announce the recipients for the 2023 SFFILM Rainin Grant, the flagship artist development program offered by SFFILM Makers in partnership with the Kenneth Rainin Foundation. Seventeen filmmaking teams have been selected as recipients of the SFFILM Rainin Grant which includes funding and professional support for their narrative projects at different stages of production.

The SFFILM Rainin Grant program is the largest granting body for independent narrative feature films in the US, and supports films that address social justice issues—the distribution of wealth, opportunities, and privileges—in a positive and meaningful way through plot, character, theme, or setting. Awards are made to multiple projects once a year, for screenwriting, development, and post-production. Recipients are offered a cash grant up to $25,000 for screenwriting and development, post-production as well as a two-month residency at FilmHouse, SFFILM’s premier artist residency space.

The program is open to filmmakers from anywhere in the world who can commit to spending time developing the film in San Francisco. Applications for 2024 will reopen in late fall.

2023 SFFILM Rainin Recipients

Blue Veil

Screenwriting
Shireen Alihaji, Director/Screenwriter; Jaime Ballesteros, Producer

In the wake of 9/11, a First-Gen Muslim teenager discovers her mother’s cassette tapes. As music unlocks memories, she discovers who she is.

In Case of Apocalypse

Screenwriting
Olivia Peace, Director/co-screenwriter/Producer; Imani Mixon co-screenwriter

After a mysterious toxic algal bloom leaves them stranded on an island off the coast of Detroit, a DJ and local scam queen must find their way to shore before the island, and their romantic relationship, crumbles around them. Whether they survive has everything to do with what they decide to keep… and what they have the courage to leave behind.

The Deaf Club

Screenwriting
Jessica Flores, Director/Screenwriter

San Francisco Mission District 1979; MILA MARTINEZ, a young meek Latina woman trying to break away from her overprotective family, unexpectedly finds a home at a punk venue that also happens to be a club for the deaf.

The South is my Sister’s Skin

Screenwriting
Zenzele Ojore, Director/Screenwriter

In the belly of the American South, we watch two Black sisters grow towards and away from each other over several decades. As one struggles to reconcile with their shared past, the other attempts to forget.

Take Me Home

Screenwriting
Liz Sargent, Director/Screenwriter; Minos Papas, Producer

Anna, a cognitively disabled adult, and her aging parents struggle to find a fragile balance in sharing a home and meeting each others’ needs. When this balance is shattered, they must find new ways to care for each other and to define their own independence.

Buffalo Stone

Development
Lily Gladstone, Screenwriter/Executive Producer; Ivy Macdonald, Director; Ivan Macdonald, Producer; Daniel Glick, Director/Writer/Producer; Sarah Clarke, Screenwriter

Buffalo Stone tells the story of two estranged Blackfeet sisters who, after their mother’s death, reunite and are drawn into a bold effort to return buffalo to their ancestral lands in the face of hostile and violent cattle ranchers

Starfuckers

Development
Antonio Marziale, Screenwriter/DirectorEli Raskin, Producer

A high-end rentboy living an insular life in the Hollywood Hills becomes obsessed with a mysterious star of the underground drag scene. His identity is called into question and life begins to unravel as he discovers the true objective of his new friend.

Earthquake

Post Production
Neo Sora, Screenwriter/Director; Albert Tholen, Producer; Aiko Masubuchi, Producer; Eric Nyari, Producer; Alex C. Lo, Producer

A fictional coming-of-age story set in near-future Tokyo, EARTHQUAKE follows a group of friends nearing the end of high school whose teenage antics collide with the anxiety of growing up in an uncertain world. As frequent tremors foreshadow a looming catastrophic earthquake, one of the rabble-rousing teens must decide between continuing a life of youthful abandon or losing one of his best friends, whose blossoming political consciousness has made him increasingly distant.

Wishes Sink in Man Made Lakes

Screenwriting
Faye Ruiz, Screenwriter/Director

Mayari and Angel, two trans teens, have run away together and taken refuge in an old cheap seat theater during its final summer before closing. Aided by an online forum for trans women, the two girls spend a seemingly endless summer trying anything and everything to start hormone replacement therapy while navigating the realities of living life as trans women for the first time.

Burning Well

Development
M.G. Evangelista, Screenwriter/Director/Producer; Simone Ling, Producer

In a re-imagining of the Prodigal Son story, on receiving news of their mother’s illness, a daughter-turned-son returns home to mend complicated relationships and rediscover what family and love really mean.

Electric Homies

Screenwriting
Roberto Fatal, Screenwriter/Director /Producer

A group of friends in near future Oakland try to fix an old lowrider as thousands in their barrio leave behind their bodies and upload to a mysterious new digital utopia.

Afronauts

Screenwriting
Nuotama Bodomo, Screenwriter/Director; Monique Walton, Producer

It’s 1964. Northern Rhodesia has just become Zambia. With a job well done, former freedom fighter Mukuka Nkoloso decides to take on his next big feat: the Space Race. Nkoloso leads his unlikely followers to a camp to set up an astronaut-training program and announces that he will send teenage girl Matha Mwamba to the moon in a homemade rocket. Nkoloso has led many “impossible” projects before, but has he gone too far this time?

Piratas

Screenwriting
Gabriela Ortega, Screenwriter/ Director

A struggling Dominican artist returns to the island to fulfill her late grandfather’s dying wish but to do so, she will have to embark on an off-the-grid road trip with her estranged father.

Mosswood Park

Development
Nijla Mu’min, Director/Screenwriter/Producer; Avril Speaks, Producer; Gabrielle Glore, Producer

Two gifted artists meet as children at Oakland’s Mosswood Park summer camp and form a relationship that leads them back to each other in unexpected ways through their lives. A sweeping and classic love story in the style of “Love & Basketball” meets “The Notebook” (with a bit of “Normal People”), this Bay Area epic explores the complex and rocky terrain of young love that never fades away, amidst an ever-changing city backdrop.

A Real One

Development
McKenzie Chinn, Screenwriter/ Director

Through a lens that’s sometimes realistic and other times surreal, a bright teenager learns the power and persistence of true friendship when a closely-held secret is discovered amid the final weeks of her senior year in high school.

Amoeba

Screenwriting
Siyou Tan, Screenwriter/Director

In a repressive city-state, a schoolgirl persuades three classmates at a conservative all-girls school to rebel by forming a triad gang.

The Binding of Itzik

Development
Anika Benkov, Screenwriter/Director; Lili Rosen, Producer

A middle aged Hasidic bookbinder stumbles across a craigslist ad offering “binding lessons for submissive women,” and becomes tied up in a passionate BDSM affair with a stranger who threatens to change his quiet life forever, in this unexpectedly touching, late-in-life trans coming out story.

Stay In Touch With SFFILM

SFFILM is a nonprofit organization whose mission ensures independent voices in film are welcomed, heard, and given the resources to thrive. SFFILM works hard to bring the most exciting films and filmmakers to Bay Area movie lovers, to support emerging filmmakers, and to educate youth through cinema. To be the first to know what’s coming, sign up for our email alerts and watch your inbox.

Meet the 2023 SFFILM Rainin Grant Finalists

Celebrate these 2023 SFFILM Rainin Finalists with us.

Supporting feature filmmakers since 2009

SFFILM is thrilled to announce the finalists for the 2023 SFFILM Rainin Grant, the flagship artist development program offered by SFFILM Makers in partnership with the Kenneth Rainin Foundation. Twenty-eight filmmaking teams have been shortlisted as contenders to receive funding and professional support for their narrative projects at different stages of production.

The SFFILM Rainin Grant program is the largest granting body for independent narrative feature films in the US, and supports films that address social justice issues—the distribution of wealth, opportunities, and privileges—in a positive and meaningful way through plot, character, theme, or setting. Awards are made to multiple projects once a year, for screenwriting, development, and post production. Recipients are offered a cash grant up to $25,000 for screenwriting and development, up to $50,000 for post production as well as a two-month residency at FilmHouse, SFFILM’s premier artist residency space.

The program is open to filmmakers from anywhere in the world who can commit to spending time developing the film in San Francisco. Applications for 2024 will reopen in late fall.

2023 SFFILM Rainin Finalists

Blue Veil

Screenwriting
Shireen Alihaji, Director/Screenwriter; Jaime Ballesteros, Producer

In the wake of 9/11, a First-Gen Muslim teenager discovers her mother’s cassette tapes. As music unlocks memories, she discovers who she is.

Scruples

Screenwriting
Ifeyinwa Arinze, Director/Screenwriter/Producer

Set against the volatile backdrop of a Nigerian all-girls boarding school, a troubled twelve-year old girl seeks refuge under the wing of the school’s beguiling senior prefect and embraces darker parts of herself until she is faced with an unexpected cost.

To Kill a Mongolian Horse

Screenwriting
Xiaoxuan Jiang, Director/Screenwriter

In a small mining town bordering Mongolia and China, Sayna, a Mongolian horseman and ex-horse racer, tends his family ranch while working as a background performer in a horse show at the local tourist site. But, contrary to the majestic Mongolian cavalryman he performs at night for the tourists, Sayna finds his real life as a herder on the verge of disintegration.

What God Meant to Be Free

Screenwriting
Amy Campione, Director/Screenwriter/Producer

After missing for weeks, a young woman mysteriously returns home pregnant, claiming she was abducted by aliens, only to find herself fighting for her life when she is kidnapped by a fanatical religious group that believes she is carrying a religious savior.

In Case of Apocalypse

Screenwriting
Olivia Peace, Director/co-screenwriter/Producer; Imani Mixon co-screenwriter

After a mysterious toxic algal bloom leaves them stranded on an island off the coast of Detroit, a DJ and local scam queen must find their way to shore before the island, and their romantic relationship, crumbles around them. Whether they survive has everything to do with what they decide to keep… and what they have the courage to leave behind.

The Deaf Club

Screenwriting
Jessica Flores, Director/Screenwriter

San Francisco Mission District 1979; MILA MARTINEZ, a young meek Latina woman trying to break away from her overprotective family, unexpectedly finds a home at a punk venue that also happens to be a club for the deaf.

The South is my Sister’s Skin

Screenwriting
Zenzele Ojore, Director/Screenwriter

In the belly of the American South, we watch two Black sisters grow towards and away from each other over several decades. As one struggles to reconcile with their shared past, the other attempts to forget.

Take Me Home

Screenwriting
Liz Sargent, Director/Screenwriter; Minos Papas, Producer

Anna, a cognitively disabled adult, and her aging parents struggle to find a fragile balance in sharing a home and meeting each others’ needs. When this balance is shattered, they must find new ways to care for each other and to define their own independence.

In the Summers

Post Production

Alessandra Lacorazza, Director/Screenwriter; Daniel Tantalean, Producer; Alexander Dinelaris, Producer; Rob Quadrino, Producer
Culminating over four summer vignettes, Latine sisters, Violeta and Eva, visit their father in an expansive story exploring the growing pains of childhood to the reflections of adulthood.

Buffalo Stone

Development
Lily Gladstone, Screenwriter/Executive Producer; Ivy Macdonald, Director; Ivan Macdonald, Producer; Daniel Glick, Director/Writer/Producer; Sarah Clarke, Screenwriter

Buffalo Stone tells the story of two estranged Blackfeet sisters who, after their mother’s death, reunite and are drawn into a bold effort to return buffalo to their ancestral lands in the face of hostile and violent cattle ranchers

Starfuckers

Development
Eli Raskin, Producer

A high-end rentboy living an insular life in the Hollywood Hills becomes obsessed with a mysterious star of the underground drag scene. His identity is called into question and life begins to unravel as he discovers the true objective of his new friend.

Earthquake

Post Production
Neo Sora, Screenwriter/Director; Albert Tholen, Producer; Aiko Masubuchi, Producer; Eric Nyari, Producer; Alex C. Lo, Producer

A fictional coming-of-age story set in near-future Tokyo, EARTHQUAKE follows a group of friends nearing the end of high school whose teenage antics collide with the anxiety of growing up in an uncertain world. As frequent tremors foreshadow a looming catastrophic earthquake, one of the rabble-rousing teens must decide between continuing a life of youthful abandon or losing one of his best friends, whose blossoming political consciousness has made him increasingly distant.

Wishes Sink in Man Made Lakes

Screenwriting
Faye Ruiz, Screenwriter/Director

Mayari and Angel, two trans teens, have run away together and taken refuge in an old cheap seat theater during its final summer before closing. Aided by an online forum for trans women, the two girls spend a seemingly endless summer trying anything and everything to start hormone replacement therapy while navigating the realities of living life as trans women for the first time.

Encore

Screenwriting
Stefanos Tai, Screenwriter/ Director/ Producer

A young man visits his grandma with dementia, but she mistakes him for an ex-lover. He plays along to fill her last days with joy, but as he goes deeper into his new “role”, he must fight to retain his true self.

Anita

Development
Sushma Khadepaun, Screenwriter/Director; Monique Walton, Producer; Andrea Kuehnel, Producer; Valerie Castillo-Martinez, Producer

Desperate for a better life, an ambitious woman escapes her conservative, small-town life in India by orchestrating her own arranged marriage to a man visiting from the US. But when her fierce pursuit of the American Dream begins to threaten her marriage, she realizes that in order to achieve true independence she must confront the very life she escaped.

Burning Well

Development
M.G. Evangelista, Screenwriter/Director/Producer; Simone Ling, Producer

In a re-imagining of the Prodigal Son story, on receiving news of their mother’s illness, a daughter-turned-son returns home to mend complicated relationships and rediscover what family and love really mean.

Electric Homies

Screenwriting
Roberto Fatal, Screenwriter/Director /Producer

A group of friends in near future Oakland try to fix an old lowrider as thousands in their barrio leave behind their bodies and upload to a mysterious new digital utopia.

Afronauts

Screenwriting
Nuotama Bodomo, Screenwriter/Director; Monique Walton, Producer

It’s 1964. Northern Rhodesia has just become Zambia. With a job well done, former freedom fighter Mukuka Nkoloso decides to take on his next big feat: the Space Race. Nkoloso leads his unlikely followers to a camp to set up an astronaut-training program and announces that he will send teenage girl Matha Mwamba to the moon in a homemade rocket. Nkoloso has led many “impossible” projects before, but has he gone too far this time?

Piratas

Screenwriting
Gabriela Ortega, Screenwriter/ Director

A struggling Dominican artist returns to the island to fulfill her late grandfather’s dying wish but to do so, she will have to embark on an off-the-grid road trip with her estranged father.

Mosswood Park

Development
Nijla Mu’min, Director/Screenwriter/Producer; Avril Speaks, Producer; Gabrielle Glore, Producer

Two gifted artists meet as children at Oakland’s Mosswood Park summer camp and form a relationship that leads them back to each other in unexpected ways through their lives. A sweeping and classic love story in the style of “Love & Basketball” meets “The Notebook” (with a bit of “Normal People”), this Bay Area epic explores the complex and rocky terrain of young love that never fades away, amidst an ever-changing city backdrop.

A Real One

Development
McKenzie Chinn, Screenwriter/ Director

Through a lens that’s sometimes realistic and other times surreal, a bright teenager learns the power and persistence of true friendship when a closely-held secret is discovered amid the final weeks of her senior year in high school.

White Rabbits

Screenwriting
Nesaru Tchaas, Screenwriter/ Director

The saga of two families hinging on a racist murder. An investigation ensues as the families of perpetrator and victim create the existential meaning of this hate crime.

Last Harvest

Screenwriting
Justin Omori, Screenwriter

Amidst the increasingly complicated challenges of modern agriculture, an aging Kona coffee farmer must confront the reality that family dreams and traditions that spanned generations may come to an end after her son mysteriously disappears.

Dope Queens

Post Production
Grafton Reyes Doyle, Screenwriter/Director; John Reyes Doyle, Producer; Julio Lopez Velasquez, Producer

Three remarkable friends navigate San Francisco’s fluorescent Tenderloin District and quickly find themselves trapped in a prison of their own making.

Movie House

Screenwriting
Minh Nguyen-Vo, Director/Screenwriter; Khai Thu Nguyen, Producer

In 1960s Vietnam, amid the Cold War, a family-run movie house becomes a haven for an eight-year-old boy who leans on the loving care of his mother and the magic of cinema to find father figures and discover the world. Through adolescence, he learns about love, sex, and his tragic family history, all while struggling to make sense of a world being undone by war.

Amoeba

Screenwriting
Siyou Tan, Screenwriter/Director

In a repressive city-state, a schoolgirl persuades three classmates at a conservative all-girls school to rebel by forming a triad gang.

Requiem for a Glacier

Screenwriting
Stephanie Falkeis, Screenwriter/ Director

A young glaciologist reluctantly returns to her estranged home in the remote Alps, tasked with assessing the local glacier for its development potential as a ski resort. She is forced to confront the origins of her estrangement from her own activist roots when challenged by her charismatic vigilante-activist mother, who’s on the last legs of a long fight defending the glacier from destruction. A feminist anti-western set in a dying landscape.

The Binding of Itzik

Development
Anika Benkov, Screenwriter/Director; Lili Rosen, Producer

A middle aged Hasidic bookbinder stumbles across a craigslist ad offering “binding lessons for submissive women,” and becomes tied up in a passionate BDSM affair with a stranger who threatens to change his quiet life forever, in this unexpectedly touching, late-in-life trans coming out story.

Stay In Touch With SFFILM

SFFILM is a nonprofit organization whose mission ensures independent voices in film are welcomed, heard, and given the resources to thrive. SFFILM works hard to bring the most exciting films and filmmakers to Bay Area movie lovers, to support emerging filmmakers, and to educate youth through cinema. To be the first to know what’s coming, sign up for our email alerts and watch your inbox.

Welcome to SFFILM’s Ninth Annual Doc Stories

Since 2014, Doc Stories has become a must-attend event for documentary lovers and filmmakers alike, a celebration of the year’s most vital nonfiction filmmaking. SFFILM’s Director of Programming Jessie Fairbanks shares some thoughts about this year’s stellar program and why she loves documentary films. Doc Stories runs November 2–5 in-person and streaming and tickets are on sale now.

2023 Doc Stories Program

From a Programmer: Q&A with Jessie Fairbanks

Q: Tell us about the 2023 Doc Stories program.

I am so proud to share this year’s program! We start with a jubilant Opening Night screening of Matthew Heineman’s new film American Symphony which profiles a year in the life of a creative polyglot: songwriter, singer, and performer Jon Batiste. Our Centerpiece program is Copa 71, a rousing and illuminating archival excavation of the first womens’ World Cup in Mexico in 1971. For Closing Night, we welcome back the prestigious Wim Wenders with his latest documentary Anselm, featuring life work of prolific multi-faceted artist, Anselm Kiefer, and it is presented in glorious 3-D.

We are honored to welcome back local filmmakers Amanda McBaine and Jesse Moss with their incisive new documentary The Mission, which explores the intersection of colonialism, religion, and misguided curiosity. We also feature UC Santa Cruz professor Irene Lusztig, with her moving portrait Richland about two towns wrestling with their not-so-distant atomic past. We will have Joanna Rudnick with her heartwarming film about childrens’ stories, Story & Pictures By, and will have in-person appearances from the authors and artists! There will also be in-person presentations and screenings from Lisa Cortés, Rachel Ramsay, James Erskine, Caroline Suh, Cara Mones, Kaouther Ben Hania, dream hampton, Roger Ross Williams, and many more.

And, we are honored to host a special tribute to our late friend, Julia Reichert. We curated the tribute in collaboration with Reichert’s partner, Steven Bognar, and this celebration of her life and work offers space for collective remembrance of a beloved filmmaker. Reichert was a tireless advocate for womens’ rights, workers’ rights, and mentor to a legion of documentarians. Her influence and generosity of spirit cultivated a global network of social crusaders who continue to shape the documentary genre today.

Q: Why do you love documentaries?

For me, documentaries sit somewhere between oral history and journalism. There is a proximity to the subject matter with docs that is tactile and invigorating. I always learn something new when watching a documentary and often find myself evaluating the world around me: sometimes it is an exploration of beliefs and ideologies, sometimes it is a reflection of a sense of self or community, and sometimes it is a prophetic spark to mind the patterns of human history. And no matter the content, documentaries are almost always inspirational. It may not be readily obvious at the start, but the sheer creation of a documentary is an act of defiance and hope. These films are made by people who care deeply about the world we live in, who want to engage audiences in a quest to deepen our connections and understanding of one another. There is so much to love about documentaries.

Q: What are some common misconceptions about documentary film, and what is more accurate about the artform?

That they are either didactic and elitist, or mass made fodder for streaming platforms, but documentaries are both artful and exciting! We have been living in a golden era of documentaries for well over a decade now and the expansion of doc filmmaking has encouraged so many new storytellers to the forefront who are sharing their histories, communities, and experiences in ways that enriches people and human connection. Yes, the increased interest in documentaries has also resulted in prolific sub-genres of say, true crime entertainment and celebrity biopics that can veer into campy or manufactured aesthetics, but it also means there are more individuals and collectives making docs and more artists who are pushing the form and engaging new audiences. I think people also forget that non-fiction work can be as gorgeously shot as any fiction film, with incredible narrative architecture and immersive visual styles.

Documentary film expands the boundaries of all filmmaking, and we look forward to seeing you this year at Doc Stories! Get your tickets now, so you can say, “I Saw It At SFFILM.”

About Jessie Fairbanks

Jessie Fairbanks is the Director of Programming at SFFILM. She leads the artistic curations for both the annual San Francisco International Film Festival and Doc Stories, as well as the organization’s year-round offerings, bringing fresh and compelling work and artists from around the world to the Bay Area. Prior to SFFILM, Jessie was the Director of Programming for the Hot Springs Documentary Film Festival, the oldest documentary film festival in North America. She has over 20 years of experience in the independent film space, and her earlier programming work includes DOC NYC, Tribeca Film Festival, Brooklyn Academy of Music, Sundance, Chicago International Film Festival, Hamptons International Film Festival, MountainFilm, Nashville Film Festival, Rooftop Films, and Woods Hole Film Festival.

Stay In Touch With SFFILM

SFFILM is a nonprofit organization whose mission ensures independent voices in film are welcomed, heard, and given the resources to thrive. SFFILM works hard to bring the most exciting films and filmmakers to Bay Area movie lovers. To be the first to know what’s coming, sign up for our email alerts and watch your inbox.

An Interview with documentarian Penny Lane

Documentary filmmaker turns her lens on herself and finds a new challenge with ‘Confessions of a Good Samaritan’

Documentarian Penny Lane made her feature debut in 2013 with Our Nixon, an intimate peek into the disgraced president’s White House using home movies taken by his aides. Her features since include Nuts! (Festival 2016), about a radio personality and quack doctor of the early 20th century who sold an impotence “cure” involving goat testicles; The Pain of Others, a found footage documentary about Morgellons disease; Hail Satan?, focused on the Satanic Temple; and Listening to Kenny G, a look at the popular but polarizing smooth jazz saxophonist. It is a wide range of subjects that reflects Lane’s curious mind. Now that curiosity has led her to put herself in front of the camera in Confessions of a Good Samaritan, a look at kidney donation, a serious subject handled with Lane’s typical light touch and good humor, which screens at the Festival on Sunday, April 16, with Lane in attendance.

She made the decision to donate a kidney, not to a family member or friend but to a stranger, before she even imagined making a film on the subject. Lane had an “aha moment” shortly after learning altruistic kidney donation. She thought it sounded interesting and decided it was something she wanted to do. It was then that the research started and that is something she loves to do. From that sprung the idea to make a new film. Lane could have made the film about a donor other than herself. She admits putting herself front and center presented an extra layer of difficulty.

“I have no idea how actors direct themselves when they’re directing movies that they’re starring in,” Lane says during a recent Zoom call. “I have a whole newfound respect for that because it’s literally like how do you even know where to stand if you’re not looking at the monitor?”

But given what she was trying to achieve and the intimate nature of the project, Lane realized she was her only option for a subject if she was going to make this particular documentary.

“I did really want to interrogate the donor,” Lane says. “’Why are you doing this? No, really, why are you doing this? Are you a narcissist? Are you psychologically damaged?’ I never would have done that to any other donor. The other donors I met were so nice and I just never would have put another done through what I put myself through in making the film and so it had to be me. I was the only person I was willing to subject to that sort of torment.”

What is Confessions of a Good Samaritan about?

Confessions of a Good Samaritan expands on the history of kidney donation and why there is such a need for donors like Lane–there are simply far more people stuck on dialysis and dying of kidney disease than there are transplant organs to save them. The documentary follows Lane’s complete journey right up to the operating room door and then through her post-op experiences. Whatever vanity she may have, she had to push out of the way to capture an honest portrayal of her ordeal.

Confessions of a Good Samaritan Director Penny Lane. Photo by Tommy Lau.

“I knew I had to try to be honest and try to be vulnerable the way I would want someone to be for me if I was filming someone else,” she says. “In some ways, it’s easier because I find the act of filming other people pretty awkward, at best. It’s awkward to film another person, at best. At worst, it’s much worse. At least in putting myself through it, I didn’t have the added layer of being like, ‘Oh, I’m filming this person, post-op talking about the rash on their ass. Like, is that too invasive? Should I use that in the end?’ It’s so intimate, but at least it was me. The person I was exploiting was me.”

Lane discovered her biggest challenge in making the film once she went from post-op to post-production. It is in the editing room that Lane typically constructs her characters and their odysseys. Character development is one of her strengths as is determining what does and does not belong in a story and constructing an arc. Presented with herself as her main character she found her normal decisiveness eluding her.

“The irony is this is my most personal film but, because of that, I really had to lean on my collaborators to help me construct the persona of Penny that was relevant to the story,” she says. “I found myself really uncertain – like, is this detail about my schizophrenic grandmother a random detail or does that unlock something for the viewer? I didn’t usually know the answer. So, I had to ask my editor and my other editor and my producer what they thought. That was a really important part of it. It was super-hard to make myself into a character.”

What is next for Penny Lane?

Lane’s next film, Mrs. America, explores American womanhood through the lens of the titular beauty pageant. An introvert, Lane credits documentary filmmaking with forcing her out of her shell and prodding her to do things she maybe wouldn’t do without that particular career. When she started out, she gravitated toward working with archival and found footage because she loves editing and being alone at home. But as her portfolio expands, so, too, does her filmmaking as she constantly pushes herself to learn new ways to tell a story and grow her skills.

Confessions of a Good Samaritan Director Penny Lane. Photo by Tommy Lau.

“Considering a project, there’s a million good ideas, but what’s the new challenge?” she says. “What’s the new thing I’m going to have to learn to do that’s going to be challenging and difficult and for which there’s a strong possibility of failure? That aspect of it is what really makes me excited. Doing the same thing twice makes me not excited, but doesn’t make me feel comfortable… Half of the project should be pretty comfortable for me, and the other half should be something I’ve never done before that’s going to challenge me and make me super uncomfortable and lose sleep at night… Why do I always do these hard projects? But that’s actually the part that keeps me going.

“I’m not aiming for mastery. I’m aiming for whatever the opposite of that is, where I always feel like a beginner to some extent, because that’s the part that I like. If I ever feel like I really am not feeling like a beginner, I’ll probably just get a new career. But I do think it’s always going to be possible with documentary to feel like a beginner because there’s so many different kinds of stories you could tell, approaches you could take, and types of directing to engage in. I think I’ll probably stick with it for a while.”

About the Author

Pam Grady is a freelance writer, whose work appears in the San Francisco Chronicle, 48 Hills, and other publications. She also has her own web site.

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