On Wednesday, the AFI Docs film festival announced its full slate of 84 films, screening June 18 through 22 at AFI Silver Theatre and various locations around DC. The selection includes four world premieres (including the opening-night film Holbrook/Twain: An American Odyssey), as well as four Catalyst Screenings, featuring post-film panel discussions with filmmakers, experts, and policymakers.
Several of this year’s films have local connections. The world premiere How I Got Over tells the story of 15 formerly homeless women from DC’s N Street Village center for addiction recovery who together create an original play based on their stories to be performed onstage at the Kennedy Center. Bronx Obama follows Louis Ortiz, an unemployed single father from the Bronx who began to get noticed in 2008 for his resemblance to then-presidential hopeful Barack Obama and launched a career as a professional look-alike. Art and Craft looks at the case of Norfolk, Virginia, native and diagnosed schizophrenic Mark Landis, who is one of the most skilled and prolific art forgers in American history—but doesn’t do it for the money. Marshall Curry’s Point and Shoot, which took home the award for Best Documentary Feature from this year’s Tribeca Film Festival, tells the story of a young man from a Baltimore suburb whose quest for adventure leads him to join the 2011 revolutionary efforts in Libya. And What’s an Epi is a short film by 18-year-old Shelly Ortiz about the troubled upbringing of her father, Epi Ortiz, that appeared alongside that of 15 other young artists in the first White House Student Film Festival, held this April.
Featured as Catalyst Screenings are The Internet’s Own Boy (in its East Coast premiere), the story of internet wunderkind Aaron Swartz; Ivory Tower, which explores the mounting cost and burden of student loan debt; The Homestretch, a look at three homeless teens’ journeys through the Chicago public school system; and The Newburgh Sting, which delves into FBI anti-terror investigations and post-9/11 mistrust of the government. Other films cover topics ranging from a look at the trial of infamous Boston mobster Whitey Bulger ( Whitey: United States V. James J. Bulger); to Cary Bell’s Butterfly Girl, about a teenage girl dealing with an incurable skin disease; to Dinosaur 13, about the struggle between landowners and the federal government for custody of “Sue,” the largest and most complete T. rex skeleton ever found.
For the complete list of films, showtimes, and events, visit the AFI Docs website, and check back in with us for more coverage.
