Ready to indulge in a film-watching frenzy? True/False Preview
The annual True/False Film Festival kicks off Feb. 28 for a four-day downtown whirlwind of parties, games, concerts and screenings of scores of documentary films from around the world. (For a full schedule, visit www.truefalse.org.)
A few film highlights:
American Teen
Directed by Nanette Burstein (On the Ropes, The Kid Stays in the Picture) and filmed at Warsaw Community High School in Warsaw, Ind., this film follows the lives of four teenagers through their senior year of high school. Using cinema vérité footage, interviews and animation, it presents a candid portrait of being 17 and all that goes with it. We see the insecurities, the cliques, the jealousies, the first loves and heartbreaks, the experimentation with sex and alcohol, the parental pressures, and the struggle to make profound decisions about the future.
Shake the Devil Off
As if the loss of their homes and the destruction of their city wasn’t enough, the parishioners at St. Augustine Church in New Orleans find themselves under siege once again. This time, the archdiocese has decided to close their parish, shuttering the 165-year-old church, the city’s first multiracial house of worship. Directed by Steve Entell and featuring an inspiring soundtrack, the film follows the growing resistance movement to keep the church open and retain the compassionate and beloved Father Jerome LeDoux in his position.
Forbidden Lies
After escaping the brutal misogyny she experienced in Jordan, Norma Khouri wrote the shocking story of her best friend, who was murdered by her Muslim father because of an affair with a Christian man. After Forbidden Love became an international bestseller, Khouri served as a spokesperson against the practice of “honor killings.” Then investigative reporters discovered glaring inconsistencies in the book, and Random House pulled it from circulation. In this documentary, Australian director Anna Broinowski takes us deeper into Khouri’s story, following her from Chicago to Sydney to Amman and uncovering a web of alternate realities and half-truths.
Stranded: I’ve Come From a Plane That Crashed in the Mountains
Three days before Christmas 1972, Uruguayan rugby players walked out of the Andes. “They smelled of the grave,” remembers one of the Chilean shepherds who greeted them. Two months earlier, their plane, carrying 45 players, coaches and friends, went down in a blinding snowstorm. Sixteen survived both the crash and the aftermath-by eating their dead. Directed by Gonzalo Arijon, Stranded not only interviews the survivors of Flight 571 but also follows the survivors and their loved ones on a journey back to the crash site more than 30 years later-and includes recreations of the flight and the struggles of the stranded youths.