Almost from its first frames, director Talal Derki’s (The Return to Homs) latest, Of Fathers and Sons, feels like a movie that shouldn’t exist. The filmmaker spent two years pretending to be an Al-Qaeda […]
True crime stories are big business. Since the success of the blockbuster podcast Serial, seemingly every producer, writer and director in any medium is looking for the next big crime story to […]
What I thought might be a documentary companion piece to last year’s thought-provoking Boy Erased, about the abhorrent practice of teen gay conversion therapy, turns out to be a wholly different but not […]
From January 4 through 31, the Gene Siskel Film Center celebrates the art of the documentary with its annual series Stranger Than Fiction: Documentary Premieres. This year, the theme of identity in […]
One musician featured in the documentary Horn from the Heart: The Paul Butterfield Story jokingly bemoans the fact that it almost isn’t fair that Butterfield was such a talented blues harmonica player […]
Cinematic blindspots, those gaps in our film viewing history that mean we have to sheepishly admit to having not seen a certain classic or a hot new release, are a reality. Especially […]
At age 88, master documentarian Frederick Wiseman (In Jackson Heights, La Danse, Public Housing) continues his breakneck pace of putting out a new, epic-length documentary film about every year or two. Following […]
It would seem almost impossible to tell the story of world’s most successful living artist and the top-selling female artist in history in roughly 80 minutes, but the new documentary Kusama: Infinity […]
In a time when the importance and benefits of science are questioned and denied at an alarming pace, the superb documentary Science Fair reminds us that each new generation of would-be scientists […]
It’s easy to be impressed by someone who completes, or even runs, a traditional marathon. Now try to imagine running one that is 3,100 miles long and takes more than 50 days […]
On Saturday, August 4, downtown’s Gene Siskel Film Center launches the 24th Annual Black Harvest Film Festival, “a month-long celebration of the stories, dreams, history, and legacy of African Americans and the […]
Finally August. Summer is winding down and we’re one month closer to the best time of year: Fall Movie Season. As we await the awards bait and end-of-year blockbusters, there’s plenty still […]
