WORLD PREMIERE For the five families that control NYC’s Christmas tree trade, the most wonderful time of the year starts months before the first fir tree displays hit busy sidewalks in the five boroughs. There is the competition for sources and locations—not to mention strategizing to stretch the proceeds of five scant weeks into a […]
WORLD PREMIERE NYC experimental documentary filmmaker Benita Raphan died by suicide during the loneliness of the COVID-19 shutdowns. DOC NYC 2024 Lifetime Achievement filmmaker Alan Berliner, who was her friend and creative advisor, creates a kind of posthumous collaboration with Benita on her final project, using as many of her images, sounds, and words as […]
NORTH AMERICAN PREMIERE For archivists, the world of avant-garde theater and cinema in early 1970s NYC is a rich cauldron of no-safety-net experimentation and creativity—the time of legends such as Jack Smith, Jonas Mekas, and David Johansen—and Theater of the Ridiculous. The latter was particularly well-documented by the Argentine photographer Leandro Katz. Now very late […]
NYC PREMIERE While preparing to play Hamlet in an intense NYC production, actor Oscar Isaac learns that his mother has fallen ill with an aggressive cancer—at the same time he and partner, filmmaker Elvira Lind, are imminently expecting their firstborn. As Elvira’s camera quietly captures Oscar at rehearsal, at home, and with extended family, her […]
US PREMIERE Visiting a Chechen community that escaped the unrelenting wars of their homeland and settled in nearby Georgia, filmmaker Déni Oumar Pitsaev ponders pressure from his divorced parents about returning to live among his own people and raise a family. While the pull of roots is undeniable, Déni wonders whether his Muslim family and […]
WORLD PREMIERE The Sunset Marquis is the legendary go-to for rock ’n’ roll royalty to cool their heels in Los Angeles, especially in the sex, drugs, and bad behavior heyday of the 1970s and ’80s. Pure gold is mined out of recollections from Ringo Starr, Slash, Cyndi Lauper, Sharon Osbourne, Sheryl Crow, Dave Grohl, Bruce […]
US PREMIERE This year’s opening night film invites us into a world where sensitive, passionate people gather not just to participate in a public competition but to be seen, to connect, and to honor a shared craft. At the Masters of Musical Whistling festival in Hollywood, founder and force-of-nature Carole Anne Kaufman (aka the Whistling […]
NYC PREMIERE Amy Goodman “believes that journalism put to its highest use can be the greatest force for good that the world has ever seen,” says her former colleague Dave Isay in Steal This Story, Please! It’s the reason that Goodman and her signature show Democracy Now! (celebrating its 30th year in 2026) are revered […]
NORTH AMERICAN PREMIERE For years, the great dancer Farruquito and his family—grandfather, uncle, mother, brothers, and children—have elevated the art of flamenco with staggering operatic passion. Santi Aguado and Reuben Atlas engagingly portray the arc of blood ties, loves, and tragedies that have shaped decades of international triumphs—including a special affinity for NYC, where Farruquito […]
Twenty years after it first charmed its way into audiences’ hearts, DOC NYC presents a retrospective screening of Marilyn Agrelo and Amy Sewell’s classic about NYC public school fifth-graders competing in the extracurricular world of ballroom dancing. The filmmakers followed students from a school in each of Bensonhurst, Tribeca, and Washington Heights as they learned […]