Sheffield DocFest
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Sheffield DocFest 2019: For Sama review
★★★★★ Waad al-Kateab moved to Aleppo, Syria, at the age of 18 to go to university. She fell in love with a doctor, they had a child and moved into a house they lovingly made their own. The house today is barely left standing, as the devastating airstrikes on her city have forced al-Kateab and…
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Sheffield DocFest 2019: Property review
★★☆☆☆ For six years, director Matthias Lintner lived in one of Berlin’s last squatter communities with a handful of absurd and colourful characters for neighbours. Clinging onto the last remnants of a bygone way of life, his film Property is as much a lament as it is a musing on what it truly means to live somewhere.…
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Sheffield DocFest 2019: Don’t Be A Dick About It review
★★★★★ Brotherhood takes a lot of patience. Such is the nature of masculinity as a collective construct that fraternity can be at once one of the most powerful and fragile of bonds. Autistic 23-year-old Peter and his teen brother Matthew live a relatively comfortable life in an affluent Maryland suburb, but the turbulence that defines…
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Sheffield DocFest 2019: Our picks of the programme
This Thursday (6 June) the seven hills of Sheffield will once again open up to the innovators and icons of documentary cinema as UK festival season gem Doc/Fest returns for 2019. From the sweeping to the specific, highlights among this year’s programme promise to open the lens on the world we live in and how…
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Sheffield DocFest 2018: Our picks of the programme
This week sees the return of one of the highlights of the UK’s festival calendar in the form of Sheffield Doc/Fest, which runs from 7-12 June for its 2018 edition. As ever, the programme of over 200 documentary shorts and features boasts an array of non-fiction from thrilling crowd-pleasers and thought-provoking journalism to virtual realities…
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Sheffield DocFest 2016: Unlocking the Cage review
★★★☆☆ A pioneering and hugely unlikely legal case might seem like an ideal focus for legendary filmmaking duo Chris Hegedus and D.A. Pennebaker, whose partnership is perhaps best known for the apex in political campaign docs, The War Room. However, that film was more about illuminating the mechanics of a dark art, which is a…
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Sheffield DocFest 2016: Lobanovskiy Forever review
★★☆☆☆ Valeriy Lobanovskiy enjoyed a great deal of success during his 30-year career as a football manager, particularly for his time at the helm of Dynamo Kiev as the USSR and Ukrainian national teams. He was renowned for introducing scientific methodology to his work and as an authoritarian personality driven to succeed. Regrettably, the new…
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Sheffield DocFest 2016: Our picks of the programme
One of the annual highlights of the documentary calendar, Sheffield Doc/Fest returns this June (10-15) with another reassuringly full programme that’s true testament to the current health of factual filmmaking. Opening this year’s festival is the UK premiere of the wildly entertaining Where to Invade Next, Oscar-winning director Michael Moore’s valiant return to form as…
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Sheffield DocFest 2015: Our picks of the programme
One of the annual highlights of the documentary calender, Sheffield Doc/Fest returns today (5-10 June) with another reassuringly full programme that’s true testament to the current health of factual filmmaking. Opening this year’s festival is the UK premiere of The Look of Silence, director Joshua Oppenheimer’s acclaimed companion piece to the Bafta-winning The Act of…
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Sheffield DocFest 2014: Life Itself review
★★★☆☆ The outpouring of emotion following the death of beloved American film critic Roger Ebert last year remains unparalleled in the modern day; few cultural commentators, on either side of the Atlantic, could lay claim to such a fervent and loyal fanbase. Charged with the task of commemorating an extraordinary career – and, indeed, Ebert’s…