Featuring a conversation with Alexander Abaturov about his film Paradise (2022), which premiered at IDFA in the International Competition section.

The film is set in the small village of Shologon in Northern Siberia, documenting the local inhabitants battling severe and extreme wildfires during the summer months.

Alexander Abaturov is a filmmaker based in Paris. He was born in Siberia. Paradise (2022) is his second feature documentary film. His first film, The Son (2018), premiered at the Berlinale Forum and documented the Russian Military training of young soldiers in Siberia.

Facilitating the conversation is Eka Tsotsoria, a filmmaker and editor from Tbilisi, Georgia, with a background in art history, creative documentary, and film criticism.

Paradise with Alexander Abaturov

In this episode, we turn our attention to First Look, an annual showcase of new and innovative international cinema at the Museum of the Moving Image in New York. 

This year’s event will mark the 13th edition of the festival, which will take place March 15 - 19th. Over the course of those five days, more than 30 works from all over the world will be exhibited for the first time in New York at the museum - this includes features, short films, fiction, and non-fiction, as well as forms that fall outside the boundaries of traditional theatrical distribution. 

Earlier this week, I had the pleasure to sit with Eric Hynes, the Curator of Film at the Museum of the Moving Image in New York, where he heads up year-round programming as well as the annual First Look Festival, to learn more about the program.

Eric Hynes is Curator of Film at the Museum of the Moving Image in New York, where he heads up year-round programming as well as the annual First Look Festival. He is also a longtime critic and journalist, with outlets that have included the New York Times, the Washington Post, Film Comment, Rolling Stone, Slate, New York magazine, Sight & Sound, the Village Voice, and Reverse Shot, where he has been a staff writer since 2003 and writes a column on the art of nonfiction. 

Films discussed include: Silent Love by Marek Kozakiewicz, Fremont by Babak Jalali, Away by Ruslan Fedotov, The Taste of Mango by Chloe Abrahams, The River Is Not a Border by Alassane Diago, and Jill, Uncredited (2022) by Anthony Ing.

Other relevant links: https://www.docsinorbit.com/firstlook

Museum of the Moving Image with Eric Hynes

Spring has arrived, and for the past three years, we’ve spent the beginnings of the new season by the luminous shores of Lake Geneva in the small town of Nyon, Switzerland, surrounded by vineyards, crisp air, and the fresh crop of films at Visions du Reel.

To prepare for the festival, we sat (virtually) with Emilie Bujès, the festival's artistic director, to hear about how this year’s program came together. And in true podcast style, we recorded the conversation to share with you. So, if you are headed to Nyon and need something to listen to while you pack your socks or wait in a line, here you go!

Visions du Réel 2023: A Conversation with Emilie Bujès

The festival may have come to a close, but many of the films have continued to stir something inside us. And so, with a bit of nostalgia for the time we spent together @visionsdureel, we started collecting voice memos from a cross-section of attendees at the festival, sharing their responses to a film they encountered.

Visions du Réel 2023 - Festival Recap

To kick off our collaboration with Cannes Docs this year, we sat with Pierre-Alexis Chevit, the head of Cannes Docs, and Babette Dieu, the coordinator for the event, to hear about this year’s thoughtfully designed program. They also share their personal experiences that shaped their interest in documentaries and the importance of creating physical and symbolic spaces in the industry for the independent filmmaking community to feel supported.

Cannes Docs with Pierre-Alexis Chevit and Babette Dieu

Conversations with independent documentary filmmakers from around the world about their projects with insight into their filmmaking lives.

Docs in Orbit Podcast

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