Feature documentaries or films which are cinematic in ambition and scope but not necessarily limited to traditional cinema releases. They may be feature documentaries that rely on archival footage to drive the narrative or feature fiction that uses archival footage astutely to clarify or enhance the storytelling in an essential way.
Shortlisted
Strike: An Uncivil War
Director:
Daniel Gordon
Producer(s):
Fjolla Iberhysaj / Nick Taussig
Footage Archive Researcher:
Alex Wilson / Rhys Woodfield
Footage Archive Producer:
Stephen Slater
Archival Sources:
BBC / ITN / Fremantle / NUM / Yorkshire Film Archive
Production Company:
VeryMuchSo Productions / Embankment Films / Davy Films / Meadowlark Media
Country of Production:
United Kingdom / United States
Original Release:
2024
Synopsis
40 years on from the Battle of Orgreave, Strike: An Uncivil War tells the story of the most violent confrontation between miners and police during the 1984/85 Miners’ Strike.
The year-long Miners’ Strike was the most divisive and violent industrial dispute that Britain has ever witnessed. Using powerful personal testimony, previously hidden government documents and a treasure trove of never-before-seen archive material, Strike: An Uncivil War charts the lead up, the aftermath and the unprecedented events at Orgreave on 18th June 1984.
Witness at first hand the stories and recollections of the people on the front lines of Orgreave and the Strike, which split communities and the nation in two, and whose ripples still resonate to this very day.
One to One: John & Yoko
Director:
Kevin Macdonald
Producer(s):
Peter Worsley / Melissa Morton-Hicks / Lizzy Webster
Footage Archive Researcher:
Al Hopkins / Emma Dempsey / James McDonald for Shanakee
Footage Archive Producer:
Hannah Ratcliffe for Shanakee
Archival Sources:
Lennon / Ono Estate / Geraldo Rivera / NBC News Archive / Revoir / CBS News
Production Company:
Mercury Studios / KGB Films / Plan B / Shanakee
Country of Production:
United Kingdom / United States
Original Release:
2024
Synopsis
This documentary depicts the art and activism of John Lennon and Yoko Ono in 1972, specifically from their move to New York from England up to the benefit concert they put on in Madison Square Garden for children who had endured horrific conditions at Willowbrook School.
The film also includes important moments in their personal lives during this time and reconstructs what the couple would have been watching on TV, which informed their changing worldview. According to John, the TV served as his “window on the world”. From hard-hitting news reports to entertainment shows, commercials and televangelists, this documentary threads it all together showing how their interests and inspirations led them to create their art and inspire change.
The film is constructed through extensive montage, which is often fast-paced and deliberately jarring, illustrating the cultural and political tensions of the era. When John and Yoko see an uncensored report of the appalling conditions at Willowbrook School, an institution for children with additional needs, they are motivated to host a concert to raise money for their care. Using restored footage supplied by the Lennon Estate, the film ends on a riotously hopeful rendition of Give Peace a Chance.
Onomatopee Films / Warboys Films / BALDR Film / Zapomatik
Country of Production:
Belgium / France / Netherlands
Original Release:
2024
Synopsis
Jazz and decolonization are entwined in this historical rollercoaster that rewrites the Cold War episode that led musicians Abbey Lincoln and Max Roach to crash the UN Security Council in protest against the murder of Patrice Lumumba.
Riefenstahl
Director:
Andres Veiel
Producer(s):
Sandra Maischberger / Enzo Maass
Footage Archive Researcher:
Christiane Caemmerer
Footage Archive Producer:
Monika Preischl / Mona El Bira
Archival Sources:
Private Estate of Leni Riefenstahl / Deutsche Kinemathek – Museum Für Film und Fernsehen / Stiftung Preußischer Kulturbesitz (Ethnologisches Museum / Fotomuseum / Kunstbibliothek) / Bundesarchiv / Multiple private collections and TV archives (ARD, BBC, CBC, etc...)
Production Company:
Vincent Productions GmbH
Country of Production:
Germany
Original Release:
2024
Synopsis
Leni Riefenstahl is considered one of the most controversial women of the 20th century. Her iconographic imagery of “Triumph of the Will” and “Olympia” stands for perfectly staged body worship, for the celebration of the superior and victorious. The aesthetics of their images seem more present than ever – and with them their message?
The film pursues this question using new documents from Riefenstahl’s estate – private films and photos, an unpublished making-of shoot, drafts of her memoirs, recorded telephone conversations with close companions, personal letters. The materials are questioned as to what they tell and what they conceal and are thus placed in an expanded context of history and the present.
Sound and Vision / Eye Filmmuseum / City Archives Amsterdam / Jewish Museum, Amsterdam / United States Holocaust Memorial Museum
Production Company:
Family Affair Films
Country of Production:
Netherlands
Original Release:
2024
Synopsis
NESHOMA is set in Amsterdam between the two World Wars, when one in ten residents of the city was Jewish. Seventeen-year-old Rusha lives in the Jewish quarter with her family. Her older brother Max has emigrated to the Dutch East Indies. In her letters to Max, Rusha recounts daily life in the city, creating a vivid portrait of Amsterdam from the perspective of the Jewish community.
The film begins shortly after World War I, a period full of confidence in the future. The combination of Rusha’s letters and archival footage paints a colorful picture of proud diamond cutters, market traders, cabaret artists, and city officials committed to social housing, along with entrepreneurs behind the luxury Bijenkorf department store and Amstel Hotel.
The initial optimism is gradually tested by economic depression and the rise of fascism, leading to the occupation of the Netherlands. In these times of adversity, humor and zest for life, the “lechajim,” provide comfort to the Jewish community. Rusha matures from a young girl into an independent woman. The outbreak of World War II presents her with an impossible choice.
NESHOMA is not only about those who are no longer here, but also what they left behind: the
