Short-form documentaries have been booming in recent years thanks to major players such as Netflix, TIME Studios, Field of Vision, POV, MTV, The New Yorker, and The New York Times. DOC NYC’s Short List for Shorts, organized by Shorts Programmer Samah Ali, highlights 12 doc shorts that impress us as the year’s leading awards contenders. […]
This unflinching look at the human-caused famine in Yemen follows health care workers Dr. Aida Alsadeeq and Nurse Mekkia Mahdi as they work to save the lives of hunger-stricken children in two therapeutic feeding centers, against the backdrop of a forgotten war. (Courtesy of RYOT / Vulcan). This film has English language closed captioning available. […]
2020 SHORT LIST SHORTS: SPECIAL JURY RECOGNITION FOR COURAGE UNDER FIRE In the fall of 2019, a proposed bill allowing the Chinese government to extradite criminal suspects to mainland China escalates protests throughout Hong Kong. Unfolding across a year, this film captures the determination and sacrifices of the protesters, the government’s backlash, and the passage […]
2020 SHORT LIST SHORTS: DIRECTING AWARD The injustice surrounding the shooting death of 15-year-old Latasha Harlins at a South Central Los Angeles store became a flashpoint for the city’s 1992 civil uprising. As the Black community expressed its profound pain in the streets, Latasha’s friends and family privately mourned the loss of a vibrant child whose […]
In the lush pastoral hills of Eastern Bosnia, two old women share solitude. The care they have for each other is not composed of words, but rather their daily conduct. They are in a conversation with the land, welcoming the voices of nature, and the songs of a memory that is dying out. This […]
On the 50th anniversary of the first new totem pole raising on British Columbia’s Haida Gwaii in almost a century, Haida filmmaker Christopher Auchter steps through history to revisit the day that would signal the rebirth of the Haida spirit. (Courtesy of New York Times Op-Docs / POV / National Film Board of Canada) This […]
Filmmaker Carol Nguyen interviews her family to craft a portrait of love, grief, and intergenerational trauma. (Courtesy of Traveling Distribution) This film has English language closed captioning available. For more information about closed captions and accessibility at DOC NYC, please click here. Included with the screening ticket is an exclusive pre-recorded Q&A with Carol Nguyen (Director), […]
Japanese artist Azuma Makoto has sent his floral sculptures into space and sunk them to the bottom of the ocean, but, most of the time, he thinks about the life and death of flowers. (Courtesy of Conde Nast/New Yorker). This film has English language closed captioning available. For more information about closed captions and […]
A tale of migration and deportation, this film follows four characters as they struggle to make sense of their lives in Tijuana. Each with a different story, they’re linked by displacement and call center work in a country that’s unfamiliar and frightening, yet sometimes a ray of hope. (Courtesy of Topic Studios). This film has […]
Winfred Rembert, a survivor of an attempted lynching in 1967, a Star Wars fanatic, and leather artist, develops a friendship with Doctor Shirley Jackson Whitaker, who is on a mission to memorialize the forgotten 4,000 African Americans lynched during the Jim Crow era. (Courtesy of XTR). This film has English language closed captioning available. For […]