Cartel Land Shows Why the War on Drugs May Be Unwinnable

Released last week, Matthew Heineman’s documentary Cartel Land has been roundly lauded for its harrowing, on-the-ground chronicle of the Mexican drug war. Heineman trains his lens on two vigilante groups. One is the Arizona Border Recon (ABR), a small militia-like force that patrols the Arizona/Mexico border led by veteran Tim “Nailer” Foley. The other is a […]

Watch a Young Amy Winehouse Sing Happy Birthday

After receiving rave reviews in May at the Cannes Film Festival, Amy remains one of the most highly anticipated films of 2015. Directed by Asif Kapadia, the film is featuring never-before-seen footage and interviews with her closest friends, ex-lovers, and collaborators, illuminating the Grammy winner’s early struggles with depression and bulimia en route to her surge as an artist. […]

[Tribeca Review] Democrats

Knowing that dictator Robert Mugabe is still the leader of Zimbabwe doesn’t detract from the drama of Camilla Nielsson’s documentary Democrats. The film covers the drafting of the country’s new constitution, and while recent history is technically a spoiler, the intrigue comes from watching the struggle of ideologies embodied by two opposing individuals. Our primary […]

[Tribeca Review] (T)ERROR

In Lyric R. Cabral and David Felix Sutcliffe’s documentary (T)ERROR, good counterterrorism intelligence seems to be a secondary worry for Shariff. He’s 63 years old, he’s an ex-con, he’s been an FBI informant for decades, and, most importantly, he has bills to pay. That’s always in the back of his mind—he does this because he […]

[Tribeca Review] Live From New York!

It’s not easy to render 40 years of history into a feature-length documentary. To do that, it’s often important to provide an underlying path through history, one that can guide the viewer and the material in a purposeful way. With a path established, it’s possible to diverge and return so that even the tangents along […]

[Tribeca] GORED’s Reckless Bravery Offers Lessons for Creatives

Ido Mizhary’s GORED provokes an innate morbidity. We’re told that Antonio Barrera is not the most graceful of bullfighters. He’s been gored a staggering 23 times. The documentary is framed by Barrera’s final bullfight before retirement. Given all the cliches about death during a last job, it’s unclear if he’ll make it out unscathed. We’re also told […]

[Tribeca Review] Palio

The Palio is a horse race that’s been held in the Italian city of Siena since 1656. Twice each year in the summer, the 14 districts of the city pick horses and hire jockeys to represent them. The riders dash around the square for 90 mad seconds while the crowds watching from the ground and […]