Sheffield DocFest 2020

The festival is running a June and autumn schedule, indicated in italics below.

View other Sheffield DocFest Films by strand: Exchange, Ghosts And Apparitions, Rebellions, Retrospective: Reimagining the Land, Rhyme & Rhythm

Breadline Breadline
Breadline and Film About A Father Who
Aswang (Country: Philippines, France, Norway, Qatar, Germany; Year: 2019; Director: Alyx Ayn G Arumpac)
Documentary tracking the human fallout of Rodrigo Duterte's policy of executing suspected drug dealers in the Philippines.
Screening in June
Bitter Bread (Country: Lebanon, Iraq, France; Year: 2019; Director: Abbas Fahdel)
Documentary about a community of refugees living in a tent camp in Lebanon’s Beqaa Valley.
Screening in June
Breadline (Country: UK; Year: 2020; Director: Carol Slater)
The day-to-day workings of a food bank.
Screening in June
Film About A Father Who (Country: US; Year: 2020; Director: Lynne Sachs; Writer: Lynne Sachs; Stars: Julia Buchwald-Sachs, Ira Sachs Sr., Adam Sachs, Dana Sachs, Evan Sachs, Ira Sachs)
The director turns her camera on her father, as she and her siblings find out an increasing number of family secrets.
Screening in autumn 2020
Flint (Country: UK; Year: 2020; Director: Anthony Baxter; Writer: Richard Phinney; Stars: Alec Baldwin)
A documentary about the pollution crisis that has poisoned the people of Flint, Michigan for over six years.
Screening in June
The Story Of Plastic The Story Of Plastic
The Story Of Plastic and The Viewing Booth
Galena (Country: Iran; Year: 2019; Director: Ezzatollah Parvazeh)
A snapshot of the life of an elderly woman in a largely empty village near a lead mine.
Screening in June
Influence (Year: 2020; Director: Diana Neille, Richard Poplak; Writer: South Africa, Canada)
Charting the recent advancements in weaponised communication by investigating the rise and fall of the world's most notorious public relations and reputation management firm: the British multinational Bell Pottinger.
Screening in June
Isle Of Us (Country: UK; Year: 2020; Director: Laura Wadha)
Portrait of a Syrian barber and his family who now live on the Isle of Bute.
Screening in June
The Kiosk (Country: France; Year: 2020; Director: Alexandra Pianelli)
The filmmaker goes to help her mother, a newspaper saleswoman, in a kiosk located in a wealthy area of Paris.
Screening in autumn 2020
Memory Is Our Homeland (Country: Canada; Year: 2019; Director: Jonathan Kolodziej Durand; Writer: Jonathan Kolodziej Durand)
Charting the lost story of Polish refugees in Africa from 1942 to 1952 - a journey that brought a group of children through Siberia, Iran, India, and East Africa, to new lives in Montreal, Sheffield, and across the global Polish diaspora.
Screening in autumn 2020
Bitter Bread Bitter Bread
Bitter Bread and Stolen Fish
Oeconomia (Country: Germany; Year: 2020; Director: Carmen Losmann; Writer: Carmen Losmann; Stars: Carmen Losmann, Angela Merkel, Carmen Losmann, Angela Merkel)
Revealing the rules of the game of capitalism, this film makes visible the essential paradox that the economy only grows, and profits are only possible, when we are in debt.
Screening in June
Please Hold The Line (Country: Austria; Year: 2020; Director: Pavel Cuzuioc; Stars: Oleg Chumak, Ionut Fotin, Marius Marcovici, Ghenadie Mardari, Deyan Minchev, Vasil Petrov, Georgi Tcholakov)
This film follows cable technicians in Moldavia, Romania, Ukraine and Bulgaria as they visit their customers.
Screening in June
Remnants Of A Revolution (Country: Philippines; Year: 2019; Director: Cha Escala)
A founding member of the Communist Party of the Philippines is in the final days of his life when his son discovers his role in the dark period of the Party’s history.
Screening in autumn 2020
The Secret Of Doctor Grinberg (El secreto del doctor Grinberg) (Country: Spain; Year: 2020; Director: Ida Cuéllar; Writer: Ida Cuéllar, Miguel León, Juan Muñoz-Tébar, Fernanda Rossi)
In 1994, and at the height of his career, Jacobo Grinberg mysteriously disappeared. The strange circumstances of his disappearance have given rise to multiple hypotheses and this investigative documentary takes up the story.
Screening in June
Seekers (Country: France; Year: 2019; Director: Aurore Vullierme)
Documentary about the uncertain future of the Jicarilla tribe, seen through the microcosm of two brothers who were raised off their ancestral land.
Screening in June
Galena Galena
Galena and Aswang
Space Journey (El Viaje Espacial) (Country: Chile; Year: 2019; Director: Carlos Araya Díaz)
Observational documentary captures snapshots of bus stops across Chile and the people who wait there.
Screening in June
Stolen Fish (Country: Spain, UK, Poland; Year: 2020; Director: Gosia Juszczak)
How the impact of a fishmeal factory in The Gambia stretches far further than the country's shores.
Screening in June
The Story Of Plastic (Country: US, Belgium, China, India, Indonesia, Philippines; Year: 2019; Director: Deia Schlosberg; Writer: Tony Hale, Deia Schlosberg, Brian Wilson, Stiv Wilson)
Considering the cost of the plastics industry.
Screening in June
Swimming Out Till The Sea Turns Blue (Yi zhi you dao hai shui bian lan) (Country: China; Year: 2020; Director: Jia Zhang-Ke; Writer: Jia Zhang-Ke, Wan Jiahuan)
Prominent Chinese writers and scholars gather in a village in Shanxi, a province of China and the hometown of Jia Zhang-Ke. This starts an eighteen-chapter symphony about Chinese people since 1949.
Screening in autumn 2020
To See You Again (Volverte a Ver) (Country: Mexico; Year: 2020; Director: Carolina Corral)
In 2016, the Mexican District Attorney secretly buried more than 100 murdered bodies during the war against drug trafficking. They kept it hidden until a group of women, mothers, discovered it - this documentary charts the discoveries as the bodies are exhumed.
Screening in June
Isle Of Us Isle Of Us
Isle Of Us and Space Journey
Us Kids (Country: US; Year: 2020; Director: Kim A Snyder)
Determined to turn unfathomable tragedy into action, the teenage survivors of Parkland, Florida catalyse a powerful, unprecedented youth movement that spreads with lightning speed across the country, as a generation of mobilised youth take back democracy in this powerful coming-of-age story.
Screening in June
The Viewing Booth (Country: US, Israel; Year: 2019; Director: Ra'anan Alexandrowicz; Writer: Ra'anan Alexandrowicz; Stars: Maia Levi)
The filmmaker chooses an American student - an enthusiastic supporter of Israel - to comment on a range of films made about the Occupied Territories.
Screening in June
Vulnerable Beauty (Vulnerabile Bellezza) (Country: Italy; Year: 2019; Director: Manuele Mandolesi; Writer: Manuele Mandolesi)
After the earthquake of 2016, a young family of animal breeders maintain their way of life in an Italian village as demolition and reconstruction are happening.
Screening in June
You Think The Earth Is A Dead Thing (Tu Crois Que La Terre Est Chose Morte) (Country: France; Year: 2019; Director: Florence Lazar; Writer: Jean Breschand, Florence Lazar)
Documentary about Martinique farmers reclaiming cultivated land as they fight for biodiversity.
Screening in June
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