Sheffield Doc/Fest announces 2017 line-up
Films on Julian Assange and MP Jo Cox feature, as well as onstage talks including Nick Broomfield in conversation with Louis Theroux
The line-up for the 24th edition of Sheffield Doc/Fest was revealed today, and it includes 182 documentaries and short docs as well as talks, panels and special events spread over six days.
One of the most moving films to feature is likely to be Toby Paton’s Jo Cox: Death of an MP, which closes the festival. The documentary, which is due to be screened on the BBC later in the year, focuses on the investigation of the politician’s murder in 2016. The screening will be followed by a discussion about Cox’s legacy.
The opening film, meanwhile, is Daisy Asquith’s documentary Queerama. Created from archive material, it explores the relationships, desires, fears and expressions of gay men and women since 1919 against a backdrop of lyrics and music by John Grant, Goldfrapp and Hercules & Love Affair. John Grant will be at Doc/Fest for this world premiere and will perform a short gig following the screening.
Other eye-catching titles in the programme include Risk, a study of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange from Laura Poitras, who made the extraordinary Edward Snowden doc Citizenfour; David Byrne concert documentary Contemporary Color; The Death and Life of Marsha P Johnson, which tells the story of the beginning of the modern transgender movement, from David France, director of How to Survive a Plague; and Nick Broomfield's latest, Whitney “Can I Be Me”, which explores the career and complicated life of singer Whitney Houston.
As well as attending with his film, Broomfield will also be put to work for an onstage interview with fellow documentarian Louis Theroux. Other onstage highlights include career overviews with the legendary film editor and sound designer Walter Murch, comedian and actor Lenny Henry, and boundary-pushing British filmmaker Peter Greenaway. Meanwhile Ian Hislop, editor of satirical news magazine Private Eye and team captain on Have I Got News for You, comes to Doc/Fest to muse on the role of satire in our post-truth political landscape.
Virtual Reality filmmaking features again in a big way with the free Alternate Realities programme, which allows audiences to touch, swipe and play their way through ground-breaking sensory story-worlds, experiencing the latest innovations.
“We want to take you on a journey through your world with storytelling that will hypnotize, rouse and inspire your soul, both now and in the future, from urgent to slow journalism, from journeys of absurdity to tales of mirth,” says Doc/Fest’s director of film programming Luke Moody. “In a media climate of fake news, post-truths and murky political agendas, these films are our navigators between information and perspective, evidence and opinion, proof and wild possibility.”