• Nazi Town, USA: Welcome to Leith’s Desperate, Unending Relevance

    July 13, 2018 - By 

    What would you do if Hitler moved in next door? Two years ago the Foyle Film Festival screened Michael Beach Nichols and Christopher K. Walker’s documentary Welcome to Leith, a harrowing, stranger-than-fiction tale of Neo-Nazis trying to take over a tiny North Dakota town. I used to think about it about once a month. Now I think about it every day. Leith, Grant County is three square miles in size. You can fit the whole population in one train carriage. Its mayor is also the school bus driver. In 2012 it gets a new resident: a quiet, scraggy-haired older man…

  • Belfast Film Fest: Golden Dawn Girls

    April 19, 2018 - By 

    Ourania Michaloliakou, a dumpy Greek twenty-something, loves Disney movies. She has a bookcase full of them. She loves board games with her friends and cute cats and doggies, using her position on the Athens city council to support stray animal causes. She also wants to liquidate her political rivals. Ourania is the daughter and only child of Nikolaos Michaloliakos, founder and leader of the far-right, ultra-nationalist political party Golden Dawn, a previously obscure movement rocketed into national prominence in the fallout of the financial and European refugee crises. In the chilling but limited Golden Dawn Girls, Norwegian director Håvard Bustnes probes…

  • Dublin Film Fest: Pre-Crime

    March 2, 2018 - By 

    Artificial intelligence, drones and self-driving cars have moved from science fiction stories into the real world. In The Minority Report, Philip K. Dick imagined a cop who used the pre-cognitive abilities of mutant siblings to solve serious crimes before they happened. Real cops predict crime too, except they turn to big data for help. Showing at the Dublin International Film Festival, Pre-Crime examines how police departments and private businesses use public and private information to work out who is likely to carry out illegal acts. The idea of proactive policing to stop crime isn’t new, but it has been transformed…

  • Dublin Film Fest: Yasuni Man

    March 1, 2018 - By 

    The Yasuni National Park and Biosphere Reserve in Ecuador is considered one of the most biodiverse regions on the planet. Its Amazonian rainforest is home to amphibians, mammals, birds and plants. The frogs, tapirs, jaguars and monkeys alone would have provided ample material for a stunning wildlife documentary. But, film-maker Ryan Killackey sets out to do more with Yasuni Man by including an intimate study of a remote forest community under siege from big business. The rainforest may have been designated an UNESCO Man and Biosphere Reserve but that does not protect its lucrative natural resources from exploitation. Yasuni sits…

  • The Final Year

    January 18, 2018 - By 

    ‘I keep saying we should get a countdown clock, with the weeks and days left’, suggests Samantha Power, the Obama administration’s representative to the United Nations, in Greg Barker’s up-close HBO documentary The Final Year. The appropriately named Power, an Irish child immigrant and former law professor bewitched by the promise of Senator Obama, is talking about instilling urgency in the President’s foreign policy team, who have twelve months left in his second term to wrap up their agendas and make them watertight for whoever comes next. The ticking clock — 10 months left, now 4, now 1 — is meant to cast their…

  • Conor McGregor: Notorious

    November 7, 2017 - By 

    Part of the fascination surrounding Conor McGregor is that so many people who claim not to care about the Dubliner spend so much time talking about him. The persona; the cars; the suits; the bravado – all gets discussed routinely around pub tables and all of it gets minutely dissected. Is he bringing shame on the nation or representing a sea change in what it means to be Irish? Is he a highly skilled sportsman or a street brawler participating in thinly-veiled barbarism? Is he a showman or a bigot? Is he both? Notorious offers little answers on the above.…

  • The Work

    September 27, 2017 - By 

    The Work, an intimate observational documentary from Jairus McLeary and Gethin Aldous, features the closest thing to real-life exorcisms you might ever see. In a grey cinder block room in California’s Folsom State Prison, a maximum security jailhouse made famous by Johnny Cash’s blues, small pockets of men sit on fold-up chairs, unspooling their deepest, most complicated feelings. One convict is desperate to let down his guard and mourn his sister. His group form a circle and coach him on breathing and posture, as he stands silent, tense, diving inside to retrieve the pain. Something rumbles up his chest and…

  • The Farthest

    September 7, 2017 - By 

    Whether or not space exploration is your thing, The Farthest is an essential documentary that tells the amazing story of the Voyager mission that was launched in August 1977, with the aim of exploring the outer regions of our solar system and beyond. But what is every bit as interesting as the scientific aspect of the mission is the gold vinyl cargo containing various messages and media – even encoded pictures – from earth for any would-be extraterrestrials that might come into contact with the two space crafts. An interstellar message in a bottle, you might say. Director Emer Reynolds…

  • David Lynch: The Art Life

    August 31, 2017 - By 

    After five years in the making that started off with a Kickstarter campaign, directors Jon Nyugen (Lynch), Rick Barnes and Olivia Neergaard-Holm’s (Victoria) biopic documentary The Art Life is the quintessential homage and insight into the extraordinary career of David Lynch (Twin Peaks, Mulholland Drive). And while the focus is directed on his painting and influences from his childhood onwards, the insights into his work processes and day-to-day life are remarkably honest and enlightening, making for an essential watch for any fans of his films, music or art. Initially, we are introduced to Lynch as he works on a painting in his…