It’s been an extraordinarily successful summer for docs Stateside with Three Identical Strangers, Won’t You Be My Neighbor and RBG grossing up to $45m between them. Add to this the success of Wild Wild Country on Netflix and the podcast boom and one feels somewhat heartened that there is a piqued curiosity for well-told tales.
The 16th edition of this doc-fest includes 15 features, the world premiere of Marcus Robinson’s The Man Who Dared To Dream and seven Irish premières, including the festival’s opening film, Minding the Gap, winner of the 2018 Sheffield Doc/Fest New Talent and Audience awards.
Other notables to keep an eye out for include Tom Burke’s Losing Alaska, which follows the inhabitants of Newtok, Alaska, as their homes become endangered by coastal erosion. Ross Whitaker’s Katie, a look at the notoriously private Olympic champion boxer Katie Taylor as she goes professional, and Lovers of the Night, a portrait of seven elderly Cistercian monks, residents of Bolton Abbey, Co Kildare, shot by German filmmaker Anna Frances Ewert.
