News

Lebanese-Canadian director Amber Fares’ Coexistence, My Ass!, about how Israeli comedian Noam Shuster Eliassi uses humour to illuminate the shared humanity of both Israelis and Palestinians, won the top prize at the Thessaloniki International Documentary Festival (Tidf), which closed on March 16.

Coexistence, My Ass! was awarded the €12,000 Golden Alexander-Dimitri Eipides prize hot on the heels of picking up the special jury award in the World Cinema Documentary section of the Sundance Film Festival in January.

At Tidf, it also won the Council of Europe €5,000 Human Rights in Motion award and secured a place in the pre-selection shortlist for the best documentary Oscar.

Israeli comedian Noam Shuster-Eliassi and director Amber Fares took home the Golden Alexander at the 27th Thessaloniki International Documentary Festival for “Coexistence, My Ass!,” a film that follows Shuster-Eliassi’s sharp, satirical approach to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The win secures the film’s eligibility for Academy Award consideration in the Best Documentary Feature category.

The Thessaloniki jury praised the documentary’s construction, calling it a “fearless challenge to every taboo in the region,” noting how Shuster-Eliassi’s humor allows audiences to confront deep-seated biases. The comedian, whose one-woman show serves as the foundation for the film, uses her multilingual fluency in Arabic and Hebrew to highlight the contradictions of the conflict and the limits of coexistence in Israel. During her acceptance speech, she reflected on her family’s activist background, acknowledging her father, who was imprisoned for refusing military service in the occupied Palestinian territories.

Shuster-Eliassi also referenced the recent...

Coexistence, My Ass!, a film about Israeli comedian Noam Shuster-Eliassi who dares to advocate for peaceful coexistence between Israelis and Palestinians, won the Golden Alexander Sunday at the Thessaloniki International Documentary Festival, TiDF’s top award.

Shuster-Eliassi attended the awards ceremony in the Greek port city, along with director Amber Fares and fellow members of the production. The comedian, whose one-woman show became the basis for the documentary, acknowledged her parents who were on hand for the event.

“My first political teacher, my father, is up there [in the balcony]. The first memory I have of my father is him going in and out of Israeli military prison for refusing to serve in the occupied Palestinian Territories,” Shuster-Eliassi noted. “Our activism and how we demonstrate equality, and freedom, and liberation is not just in one protest or one activity or one thing or one joke. It’s demonstrating what we envision the alternative is with your body,...

Amber Fares’ “Coexistence, My Ass!,” which centers on Israeli comedian Noam Shuster-Eliassi, won the Golden Alexander in the International Competition section of the 27th Thessaloniki Intl. Documentary Festival Sunday.

The International Competition jury, which is composed of director and photographer Dimitris Athiridis, filmmaker Lauren Greenfield and producer Signe Byrge Sørensen, said: “With a compellingly constructed narrative and a fearless challenge to every taboo in the [Middle East] region, Noam’s disarming voice and humor invite the audience to a deeper understanding as we laugh and cry with her, and reconsider our biases with open minds and hearts.”

The film, which was described by Variety‘s reviewer as “urgent, eye-opening and enormously compassionate,” won the World Cinema Documentary Special Jury Award for Freedom of Expression at the Sundance Film Festival.

The Thessaloniki win makes the film eligible for the documentary category of the next Academy Awards.

The Silver Alexander in the International Competition went to “Free Leonard Peltier,...

Exclusive: Ten films including seven world premieres are set to screen as part of the Newcomers Competition at this year’s Thessaloniki International Documentary Festival. Scroll down for the full list of projects.

The competition features films over 50 minutes in length created by young filmmakers. The films compete for the Golden Alexander “Dimitri Eipides” and the Silver Alexander Award. The Golden Alexander “Dimitri Eipides” award comes with a €10,000 cash prize. The Silver Alexander Award is accompanied by a €4,000 cash prize.

The features include Maia Lekow and Christopher King’s How to Build a Library, which debuted at this year’s Sundance Film Festival. The Kenyan-shot film follows two intrepid Nairobi women who decide to transform what used to be a whites-only library until 1958 into a vibrant cultural hub. Along the way, they must navigate local politics, raise millions for the rebuild, and confront the lingering ghosts of Kenya’s colonial past.

The 22nd edition of the True/False Film Fest, kicking off Feb. 27, will feature a lineup of 30 feature documentaries and 24 short docs. The Columbia, Missouri-based four-day doc film festival will showcase eight Sundance 2025 films, including U.S. documentary prize winner “Seeds,” “Predators,” and “The Dating Game.”

The fest’s lineup includes seven world premieres, one international premiere, and three North American premieres. Fourteen of the True/False feature docus were made by first-time feature directors.

“This year’s films run the gamut when it comes to form, tone, and perspective, but the thing that unites them is their unwavering commitments to their artistic visions,” said True/False artistic director Chloé Trayner. “The lineup is a kaleidoscope of reflections on our modern world, embracing past, present, and future in beautiful, devastating, and hopeful ways. We can’t wait to share these films with our audience soon.”

Since launching in 2004, True/False...

Sundance is a place for discovery, where new stars are minted because of the fresh, invigorating images they bring to the screen. It was where Steven Soderbergh helped kick off the indie film revolution in 1989 with “sex, lies, and videotape” and Quentin Tarantino launched “Reservoir Dogs” in 1992. They showed that, at Sundance, if you have something to say, you can have a seat at the table.

This year, that daring new voice belongs to Eva Victor, whose comedic character study “Sorry, Baby,” about a young professor reeling from a trauma, sold to A24 for $8 million. “Sorry, Baby” also has the distinction of placing first in many of the categories in IndieWire’s 2025 Sundance Critics Survey, including Best Performance (for Victor herself), Best Director, Best Screenplay, Best First Film, and Best Film itself.

Though “Sorry, Baby” was the undeniable favorite across the board at Sundance 2025, our critics survey shared the love...

Six documentaries that have premiered in competition at this year’s Sundance Film Festival are among the 46 recipients of The Ford Foundation’s $4.2 million donation as part of the organization’s commitment to social justice stories, Variety has exclusively learned.

The Sundance documentaries chosen include “Free Leonard Peltier,” “Heightened Scrutiny,” “How to Build a Library,” “Seeds,” “Life After” and “Marlee Matlin: Not Alone Anymore.” Collectively, these films cover topics such as Native American rights, media reporting on transgender issues, decolonization, disabled communities and navigating Hollywood as a deaf actor.

The Ford Foundation’s JustFilms program provides production grants as well as deepens the organization’s commitment to supporting historically marginalized voices and adjusting to distribution challenges in the industry.

In a statement to Variety, program officer of JustFilms’ Creativity and Free Expression programs Paulina Suárez said that “we are committed to supporting independent filmmakers as central agents of narrative power.

How can one tackle the effects of colonialism on indigenous African people more than half a century after most nations on the continent got their independence? In “How to Build a Library,” directors Maia Lekow and Christopher King choose a straightforward, methodical route. Their doc follows two Kenyan women as they try to transform a colonial era derelict library in downtown Nairobi. This humongous task demands patience, tenacity and a willingness to confront the past. Lekow and King bring the same skills to their film, but their task remains too vast and complicated for easy answers.

Shiro (a writer) and Wachuka (a publisher) are first seen in 2018, taking on the project of caring for the McMillian Library, a historical institution privately built by British settlers and currently owned by the government. It’s in horrific shape. Shiro and Wachuka seek to modernize it into something contemporary Kenyans can benefit from.

Shiro and Wachuka are two Nairobi women who attempt to transform the McMillan Memorial Library, a whites-only library until 1958, into a modern and vibrant cultural hub. Their attempts to navigate local politics and Kenya’s colonial history is tracked in How to Build a Library, husband-and-wife duo Christopher King and Maia Lekow’s follow-up to The Letter. King, besides co-directing, also served as the film’s cinematographer. Below, he explains the importance of capturing a Kenyan point of view and why working as a two-person crew helps build trust with their subjects. See all responses to our annual Sundance cinematographer interviews here. Filmmaker: How and […]

The post “Capturing a Kenyan Point of View as a Central Theme”: Dp Christopher King on How to Build a Library first appeared on Filmmaker Magazine.

Shiro and Wachuka are two Nairobi women who attempt to transform the McMillan Memorial Library, a whites-only library until 1958, into a modern and vibrant cultural hub. Their attempts to navigate local politics and Kenya’s colonial history is tracked in How to Build a Library, husband-and-wife duo Christopher King and Maia Lekow’s follow-up to The Letter. King, besides co-directing, also served as the film’s cinematographer. Below, he explains the importance of capturing a Kenyan point of view and why working as a two-person crew helps build trust with their subjects. See all responses to our annual Sundance cinematographer interviews here. Filmmaker: How and […]

The post “Capturing a Kenyan Point of View as a Central Theme”: Dp Christopher King on How to Build a Library first appeared on Filmmaker Magazine.

Films are made over many days, but some days are more memorable, and important, than others. Imagine yourself in ten years looking back on this production. What day from your film’s development, production or post do you think you’ll view as the most significant and why? One unforgettable day was following our subjects into the basement of the decaying McMillan Library and witnessing them unearth from a pile of junk a miniature photograph of the first hanging in Kenya, in 1907, conducted by the Imperial British East Africa Company. We all got chills and, in this tiny photograph, found a […]

The post “A Deeply Important Gap in Kenya’s History” | Maia Lekow & Christopher King, How to Build a Library first appeared on Filmmaker Magazine.

Films are made over many days, but some days are more memorable, and important, than others. Imagine yourself in ten years looking back on this production. What day from your film’s development, production or post do you think you’ll view as the most significant and why? One unforgettable day was following our subjects into the basement of the decaying McMillan Library and witnessing them unearth from a pile of junk a miniature photograph of the first hanging in Kenya, in 1907, conducted by the Imperial British East Africa Company. We all got chills and, in this tiny photograph, found a […]

The post “A Deeply Important Gap in Kenya’s History” | Maia Lekow & Christopher King, How to Build a Library first appeared on Filmmaker Magazine.

Maia Lekow and Christopher King’s “How to Build a Library” may be more aptly titled, “How to Game the System.” This is not meant as derisive, but simply the reality faced as the documentary’s central figures, Angela Wachuka and Wanjiru ‘Shiro’ Koinange, work to raise money, gladhand, and reshape traditional library practices in order to create a de-colonized space for Africans young and old to grow, learn, and connect. Noble as their pursuit may seem, after five years making inroads with politicians, many of the values they held at the beginning of the film don’t necessarily remain intact by its conclusion.

“How to Build a Library” begins in 2017. Shiro and Wachuka are a writer/publisher duo who team up to form Book Bunk, a “social impact firm” built on the mission of revitalizing the McMillan Library in the downtown area of Kenya’s capital city, Nairobi, as...

Two documentaries premiering at Sundance this weekend are set thousands of miles apart — in Nairobi, Kenya and Texas, respectively – but at the heart of their stories is the same thesis: the importance of libraries to any healthy democracy. And, in each of the film’s most compelling scenes, also a plea: to save them.

Kim Snyder’s “The Librarians” follows a group of librarians, dubbed FReadom Fighters, who have resisted book bans in Texas, Florida, Iowa and beyond. But the urgency of the Sarah Jessica Parker-produced doc is underscored by another film on the lineup: Maia Lekow and Christopher King’s “How to Build a Library,” which follows two Kenyan woman’s mission to restore a public library in the country’s capital, Nairobi.

Wachuka and Shiro are the stars of the 103-minute film, which trails the intrepid pair as they work to transform the city’s formerly whites-only library,...

Austria-based Autlook Filmsales has acquired international rights to Khartoum,theSundance World Documentary Competition contender directed by Anas Saeed, Rawia Alhag, Ibrahim Snoopy, Timeea M. Ahmed and Phil Cox.

The film, which will also screen in Berlinale Panorama, follows five very different citizens from Khartoum, Sudan: a civil servant, a tea lady, a resistance committee volunteer, and two street boys, all forced to leave their homes by war.

It is produced by Giovanna Stopponi and Talal Afifi.

The outfit has also taken sales rights to Amber Fares’ feature doc, Coexistence, My Ass!, also screening in Sundance’s World Cinema Documentary Competition.