While the most-discussed title of significant length at this year’s 62nd edition of the New York Film Festival is almost certainly Brady Corbet’s three-and-a-half-hour historical epic, The Brutalist, the longest films in the program remain documentaries. That is, it’s hardly the first time that the programming team behind every New Yorker’s favorite annual period of cinematic discovery has populated its three new-release sections – Main Slate, Spotlight, and Currents; Revivals, obviously, is made up of remastered and/or restored works from the past – with documentaries running multiple hours. At last year’s fest, the first installment in Wang Bing’s Youth trilogy, subtitled Spring, was a Main Slate selection that ran 215 minutes. In that edition’s Spotlight section were Frederick Wiseman’s Menus-Plaisirs Les Troisgros, a four-hour vérité tour of a three-star Michelin restaurant in central France, and Steve McQueen’s Occupied City, a magnificent four-and-a-half-hour film that examined the horrifying realities Nazi-occupied Amsterdam during World War II. Other recent selections include Wiseman’s City Hall (NYFF58, 272 minutes), Lynn Novack’s College Behind Bars (NYFF57, 222 minutes), Charles Ferguson’s Watergate (NYFF56, 260 minutes), and Wiseman’s At Berkeley (NYFF51, 244 minutes). Okay, so not only do they like expansive non-fiction, but they have a soft spot for the genre’s foremost nonagenarian; then again, who doesn’t?
This lineup, though, is different. I’ve been attending the festival since its 55th edition in 2017, and I’ve never seen a crop of docs like the one attendees have had at their disposal this year. In terms of length, NYFF62’s documentaries are close to unparalleled; in terms of the number of length projects, there’s almost certainly no past competition to look to as references for what this grouping has to offer. From filmmakers who have frequented the festival before to two first-time selectees, the following five documentaries surely aren’t for the unambitious viewer. But should you have the time (and patience) for each work of varying mammoth proportions, the dividends will pay handsomely.
DIRECT ACTION | Ben Russell & Guillaume Cailleau
Shot entirely on Super 16mm and made up of five-minute long shots, stacked one after the other, DIRECT ACTION may sound more like a meditative exercise than a documentary. In a way, that’s not untrue, as the three-and-a-half-hour experience certainly has a calming quality to its events, even as they unfold with intensity thanks to the impassioned subjects at the film’s center. Ben Russell and Guillaume Cailleau’s daring documentary is in direct conversation with the people and community it paints a portrait of, a refreshing approach that most filmmakers would eschew in hopes of quickly hypnotizing their viewers, forcing investment in the story upon them without doing the leg-work that is required to achieve such an accomplishment naturally. Set in the Notre-Dame-des-Landes commune in western France, DIRECT ACTION chronicles the efforts of a group of people upholding a ZAD (Zone to Defend); they work to dissuade state officials and large corporations from destroying invaluable land for the sake of new revenue streams for the government, in simple terms. Over the course of the film, we see them play chess, feed animals, plan protests, and more. It could be boiled down to a “slice of life” film if not for its urgency and authenticity, as Russell and Cailleau refuse to mine action nor mayhem from their characters in order to make something “more interesting.” DIRECT ACTION need not be any more enthralling than it already is; any other approach, frankly, would likely lessen its impact. | B+
exergue – on documenta 14 | Dimitris Athiridis
At a whopping 14 hours, Dimitris Athiridis’ comprehensive look at what made the controversial 2017 edition of documenta – a quinquennial art exhibition held in the German city of Kassel, a possibility, let alone a reality – is easily the longest film on NYFF’s 62nd program, yet consuming it is hardly as much of a trial in patience as it seems on paper. Focusing primarily on the exhibition’s artistic director, Adam Szymczyk, and his team of curators, Athiridis’ film feels rather Wisemanian in nature, as not only is as vérité as any film at the festival this year, but is also hardly a one-subject study. The 2017 edition divided equally between Kassel and Athens, an ambitious swing for the project, and its contents examined colonialism and neoliberalism in equal measure. That’s just one piece of the documentary. It also dives into the rampant presence of racism and imbalances of power in the contemporary art world, how this exhibition somehow went over budget by 6 million euros, and how all of these complicated obstacles collide in the making of a revelatory work of art. Fitting, then, that exergue deserves a similar distinction, as it maintains its comprehension and care for its subjects – people and artwork – while also managing to be a genuinely thrilling piece of cinema. When previewing NYFF62 on the Film at Lincoln Center Podcast back in September, the festival’s long-time artistic director, Dennis Lim, acknowledged exergue’s length, encouraging audiences to give it a try even if they have to dip in and out over the course of 14 hours. He caveated the thought, however, by noting that he wouldn’t recommend that strategy; neither would I. In totality, the exergue experience is certainly overwhelming, but exhilaratingly so. It warrants your consideration. | A-
My Undesirable Friends: Part I — Last Air in Moscow | Julia Loktev
“When you’re fighting one head of a dragon, he grows another head,” says one of the many characters who appear throughout Julia Loktev’s masterful five-and-a-half-hour documentary, My Undesirable Friends: Part I — Last Air in Moscow. “But your time isn’t wasted. You’ve gained experience [and] visibility.” While that sentiment comes in the film’s first chapter, it surges throughout Loktev’s expansive, urgent film, a vérité look at the lives of young Russian journalists at work in a nation that silences its only truth-tellers. For despite their best efforts at (metaphorically) decapitating the snake that has led their oppressive state for the last decade and change, Russia’s top officials need not acknowledge nor practice the art of honesty. Whatever sets their agenda in motion the easiest and fastest, the better.
But Loktev’s film is hardly the sort to spend the majority of its time on recounting all of the reasons Vladimir Putin is a malicious totalitarian dictator. For that, she’d need a longer runtime, and it would be nowhere near as interesting as this follow-along doc, one that passes through the lives of foreign agents working for news networks and websites that attempt to strike the difficult balance between delivering the truth and risking the invasion of Russian militants in their offices due to press that speaks “negatively” of the state’s leaders. When the film begins in October of 2021, there is some leniency in regards to that practice; when Russia invades Ukraine four months later, any false move is met with detainment.
Largely filmed by Loktev on an iPhone, My Undesirable Friends has an evident lived-in quality to it, and not solely because the director and her characters – that’s what she calls them, as opposed to “subjects,” because they are the heart of the story – form a strong, somewhat unspoken bond over the course of many months working in the same orbit. Its primary strength, though there are a great many, is in Loktev’s ability to capture these journalists working tirelessly to fight a system that can’t be beaten. Not unlike another NYFF selection from this year, No Other Land, this first part in what Loktev has described as a multi-part project – the second, “Exile,” is currently in progress – is a vital work of activism that will almost certainly never reach nor mean anything to the audience that most desperately needs to see it. But the fact that it was made at all, and that those involved are not only still working while in exile, but alive, is the sort of miracle that the film’s primary subject, Anna Nemzer, says she will keep hoping for in its fourth chapter. In more ways than one, My Undesirable Friends is a miracle in and of itself. | A-
Youth (Hard Times) and Youth (Homecoming) | Wang Bing
When the festival’s Main Slate was announced in early August, jokes aplenty were made about a few familiar faces making reappearances at NYFF for the umpteenth time. The South Korean stalwart, Hong Sang-soo, returned to Lincoln Center with two new films – A Traveler’s Needs and By the Stream – for the fourth consecutive year, and that’s only because he managed a mere single film in 2020. Otherwise, his streak would be longer. He has yet to take Jean-Luc Godard’s throne as the most-screened director at the festival. The French master had a film play at this year’s edition despite having passed away two years ago; chalk it up to movie magic.
Yet if Wang Bing keeps apace with his sprawling body of work, they may have some company in the coming years. For just one year after Youth (Spring) held its U.S. Premiere at NYFF, Bing has returned with the final two installments in his Youth trilogy, respectively subtitled Hard Times and Homecoming. Where Spring introduced a community of rural migrant workers at textile factories in a town outside Shanghai and the growing pains they may be facing in the near future, Hard Times aptly examines the combative conditions that come with working long hours for low wages, and Homecoming portrays moments of respite for the laborers as they celebrate cultural festivities with their families. A few of them even get married. Screening the final two parts back-to-back would cost you seven hours of daylight; in many ways, it would be worth it.
The experience, while epic, is exacting, to put it bluntly. Bing’s filmmaking is observational and comprehensive in nature, so don’t expect to be lulled into the proceedings with emotional music swells and walk-and-talks focusing on difficult upbringings. Instead, we’re dropped back into the lives of Bing’s subjects with no warm-up – if you can manage it, revisiting Spring is worthwhile prior to the final two installments – and the films are better for it. The tension Bing mines out of menial grievances in Hard Times spills over into thematic examinations of police brutality, among other powerful and resonant topics for audiences from all walks of life. Homecoming, in short, is like a reward for your continued investment in the previous portions, as it’s both slighter and softer than its preceding entries. It still maintains the trilogy’s overarching style – a work of inspection, not introspection – yet as a coda, it places a perfect cap on Youth: The lives of the subjects we met 10 hours ago will continue, but leaving them at Homecoming’s conclusion leaves us feeling like we’ve watched them grow and move forward, one small step at a time. |B-
