After 21 editions, the True/False Film Fest — or simply T/F — needs no introduction to cinephiles, especially to that savvy subset of moviegoers devoted to nonfiction filmmaking. Unfolding over four days in late winter, T/F annually takes over the college town of Columbia, Missouri, briefly transforming mid-Missouri into the center of the documentary universe. Despite its unlikely locale, T/F has long ranked among the finest doc fests in the world: Filmmakers adore the festival for its large, receptive audiences, and filmgoers appreciate not just its well-curated selection of nonfiction work but also its convivial atmosphere, walkable venue footprint and affordable price.
The recently concluded T/F, which ran from February 29 through March 3, featured the fest’s usual bifurcated mix of high-flying offerings that will eventually appear on streaming platforms and under-the-radar films whose rarefied subjects and/or formally challenging aesthetics will likely limit their reach to the festival circuit. The beauty of T/F is that the fest’s broad-minded audiences embrace both kinds of work with equal ardor: As the Tide Rolls In, a contemplative portrait of the residents of the tiny Danish island of Mandø, is just as capable of filling the cavernous Jesse Auditorium as the world premiere of FX/Hulu’s provocative Spermworld.
Despite T/F’s undeniable programming acuity, you’ll certainly not love every film at the fest: Outright clunkers are rare – this year, of the 17 docs I saw, only the maddeningly discursive sr qualified as irredeemable – but T/F’s willingness to confront audiences with “difficult” works guarantees that not every film will have wide appeal. This was my 14th T/F, and although this edition featured fewer transcendent jaw-droppers than past fests – I’d classify most of the docs I encountered as more good than great – even the films that left me largely indifferent (23 Mile, Boyz, Flying Lessons, Magic Mountain) offered their share of beauty, insight and surprise.
Let’s start this selective survey of the 2024 T/F with a few films to which you’re certain to have access.
Amanda McBaine and Jesse Moss’ Girls State, which debuts on Apple TV+ on April 5, serves as a fine companion piece to the directors’ Boys State (2020), with both films examining American Legion-backed programs designed to teach U.S. government to high schoolers by requiring them to build their own executive, legislative and judicial branches, and compete for office. The film documents the 2022 Missouri gatherings of both boys and girls – the first time the events were jointly held – at Lindenwood University in St. Charles. Although the two programs occur simultaneously, they remain strictly separate, and the film makes clear that the retrograde and feminized Girls State lacks some of the real-world engagement that characterizes Boys State. The participants quickly recognize the inequity – they want to discuss abortion rights, not decorate cupcakes – and that undercurrent of tension flows through and energizes the film.
Lana Wilson’s Look Into My Eyes, which will appear in theaters via distributor A24, takes an unexpectedly respectful and affecting look at a half-dozen New York-based psychics. Although there are occasional moments of humor, the film never turns its subjects into figures of fun, as skeptical viewers might initially expect. Wilson neither validates nor debunks the featured psychics’ supernatural abilities, but those who consult with them appear to derive real psychotherapeutic benefit from the often riveting sessions the director captures. (The catharsis that many of the clients experience is reminiscent of the acute emotional reactions that Marina Abramovic elicited in The Artist Is Present.) The readings in the film form its core, but the personal stories of the psychics often prove just as compelling.
Angela Patton and Natalie Rae’s Daughters, which will stream on Netflix, provides a unique perspective on the U.S. prison system by focusing on an innovative program called Date with Dad, in which inmates are allowed to host their daughters at a dance after completing 12 weeks of group therapy that requires them to grapple with their previous failings as fathers. The impact of incarceration is seen most acutely in the four daughters that the film features, and the doc adroitly toggles between their stories and their fathers’ therapy sessions. Like the program, Daughters culminates in the dance: a largely joyous affair that nonetheless combines equal measures of tenderness and resentment, elation and sorrow. Although it extols the success of the Date with Dad program – 95 percent of participants avoid a return to prison – Daughters bravely ends with a realistically painful coda: The most open-hearted and adorable of the daughters, now seen years after the dance, has grown distant and uncommunicative in the face of her father’s long sentence.
Inevitably, a few of T/F’s high-profile films proved mild disappointments. Jazmin Jones’ Seeking Mavis Beacon, which will be distributed theatrically by Neon, chronicles the filmmakers’ long pursuit of the woman whose image was used as the basis for the fictional character featured in the educational software program Mavis Beacon Teaches Typing. Mavis, though not a real person, oddly evolved into something a Black icon, and Jones (with collaborator Olivia McKayla Ross) wants to find and honor Renée L’Espérance, the real-life woman whose face was originally featured on the program’s box (and eventually within the program). Because Jones and Ross, who remain front and center throughout the film, are undeniably funny, intelligent and hyper-articulate – not to mention outlandishly costumed – the film manages to entertain, and its imagery often dazzles. But the legitimate grievance Seeking Mavis Beacon explores – the uncompensated exploitation of the model’s image in the software program – is a slender thread on which to hang a feature film, and Jones never manages to persuade me that L’Espérance merits all of this attention.
Union, co-directed by a documentary dream team of Stephen Maing (Crime + Punishment) and Brett Story (The Prison in Twelve Landscapes), similarly underwhelms, despite the considerable talent of its filmmakers and the importance of its subject. A vérité look at the efforts of Amazon workers to unionize at one of the company’s Staten Island facilities, the film concentrates too much on process and never gives us sufficient insight into the people organizing the union, which is led by the charismatic if impolitic Chris Smalls. Just as problematically, the conclusion of the film seems rushed, and a welter of explanatory titles vainly attempts to tie up loose ends.
Union remains without a U.S. distributor at present, but given the filmmakers’ reputations and the pressing labor issues it addresses, the doc will inevitably find a home – just not on Amazon Prime. The fate of other T/F features is harder to predict, but I’d encourage you to seek out this quartet of currently unattached films:
Ralph Arlyck’s I Like It Here: My favorite film at the fest, this lovely personal doc contemplates the intimidatingly serious topics of aging and mortality, but the narration is wryly funny, and the old friends and neighbors with whom the filmmaker visits confront the imminence of death with humor and equanimity.
Rachel Elizabeth Seed’s A Photographic Memory: Another intensely personal documentary, the film – which is formally impressive – explores the life and career of the filmmaker’s mother, Sheila Turner-Seed, a photographer, journalist and audio storyteller who died when her daughter was only 18 months old.
Jennifer Wickham, Brenda Michell and Michael Toledano’s Yintah: This unapologetically inspiring advocacy doc recounts the decade-long Sisyphean struggle of activists in the Wet’suwet’en tribe to prevent a pipeline from crossing its never-ceded territory in British Columbia.
Thomas Charles Hyland’s This Is Going to Be Big: Putting-on-a-show docs are legion, but this irresistible charmer movingly recounts the story behind a theatrical production at an Australian high school for teens with physical and developmental challenges.
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