SFFILM Unveils the Complete Lineup for The 10th Anniversary of Doc Stories, A Milestone Celebration of Documentary Storytelling
The upcoming documentary festival promises an exciting lineup featuring Kevin Macdonald’s ONE TO ONE: JOHN & YOKO as the opening night showcase and Robinson Devore’s SUBURBAN FURY set to close the four-day event
San Francisco, CA – September 25, 2024 – Today, SFFILM announced the full lineup for Doc Stories celebrating its 10th anniversary of bringing the year’s most compelling nonfiction films and filmmakers to the Bay Area. The four-day program takes place October 17–20 and includes 10 features, two shorts blocks, two filmmaking and industry talks, and a documentary filmmaking workshop for teens. SFFILM will welcome new and returning filmmakers to Doc Stories including Kevin Macdonald, Robinson Devor, Yuval Abraham and Basel Adra, Elizabeth Lo, Ben Proudfoot, Brett Story andStephen Maing, Amy Berg, and Bonni Cohen, Pedro Kos, and Jon Shenk and many more. Doc Stories Talks will feature onstage conversations with film industry veterans including Laura Kim, Carrie Lozano, Justine Nagan, and Keri Putnam. SFFILM is also proud to announce that over 40 Members of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences (AMPAS) will be the co-hosts of the Doc Stories Brunch sponsored by Netflix, and will be joined by Deadline journalist Matt Carey and filmmaker John Ridley who will be on the ground to record a future episode of their podcast, Doc Talk: A Deadline and Nō Studios Podcast.
SFFILM’s Director of Programming Jessie Fairbanks is thrilled to celebrate the 10 year milestone with a program that features established and emerging filmmakers debuting their latest work to the discerning, documentary-loving audiences of the Bay Area. “Documentaries offer a critical lens through which audiences can contemplate challenging world issues and core ideological beliefs. Now more than ever we rely on this genre of filmmaking to help lead public discourse,” she said. “Doc Stories is such a special program because there is time to digest and discuss each film. This festival fosters storytelling, networking, and community, as we collectively reflect and interrogate the art form and its impact.”
The 2024 Doc Stories program is sure to confront and captivate audiences, while it connects the cycles of political and cultural change from the past to the tension and opportunity of our current times. The Doc Stories weekend will start with a welcome back for director Amy Berg with a free, retrospective screening of Janis: Little Girl Blue. The film was part of the inaugural Doc Stories program in 2015.
Opening Night is One to One: John & Yoko from Kevin Macdonald and co-director Sam Rice-Edwards which chronicles John and Yoko’s musical, personal, artistic, social, and political world set against the backdrop of a turbulent era in American history, and deeply explores the state of pop culture during their first 18 months living in the US in the early 1970s.
Closing Night is Suburban Fury from Robinson Devor who received an SFFILM Rainin Grant in 2012 in support of the early development of this project. It tells the story of Sara Jane Moore, who attempted to shoot President Gerald Ford on a crowded sidewalk in San Francisco’s Union Square in September of 1975. Moore holds the center of this nonfiction drama which Devor has created with the feel of a 1970s thriller.
Other feature-length titles include Architecton from Victor Kossakovsky; Ernest Cole: Lost and Found from Raoul Peck; Mistress Dispeller from Elizabeth Lo; No Other Land from Yuval Abraham, Basel Adra, Hamdan Ballal, and Rachel Szor; The Remarkable Life of Ibelin from Benjamin Ree; Union from Brett Story andStephen Maing; and The White House Effect from Bonni Cohen, Pedro Kos, and Jon Shenk.
Doc Stories shorts blocks include the 10 year anniversary collaboration with New York Times Op-Docs as well as curated selections called Shorts Block: The Persistence of Dreams.
In addition to the main program, SFFILM’s Doc Congress will be convened, connecting filmmakers, industry professionals, and film funders, and a full program of Schools at Doc Stories designed for students and teachers will run concurrently. Classes from across the Bay Area will attend weekday in-person and online matinees of curated Doc Stories film programs at no cost to students or educators. Filmmaker guests from around the world will also visit local classrooms in person and online to discuss their films with students. Finally, SFFILM’s College Days program will bring Doc Stories filmmakers to four Bay Area universities for in-class visits and discussion.
