We're celebrating a year of Sheffield DocFest Spotlights, monthly screenings - jointly curated by Bertha DocHouse and Sheffield DocFest - that invite audiences to discover the gems, highlights and new voices in non-fiction cinema which premiered in the past festival edition.
The year-round programme has embraced a variety of filmmaking styles and subject matters, from both the UK and internationally. Each event included a post-screening discussion with the filmmakers, and we’re proud to have created space for audiences in London to come and discuss such a wide range of films with established and emerging filmmakers.
A British Sign Language interpreter made each Q&A accessible to Hard of Hearing audiences, and the conversations have been recorded to make them available to all. As we head into our second year of monthly screenings, we remember these great doc discussion and the films that inspired them.
We kicked off our partnership with Andy Mundy-Castle’s White Nanny, Black Child. After selling out several screenings in Sheffield, we were delighted to host the London Premiere of this deeply moving film, followed by a Q&A with Andy, hosted by journalist Jimi Famurewa.
From the personal to the political, The Price of Truth is a gripping portrait of Novaya Gazeta editor Dmitry Muratov, as he fights to defend democracy as Russia’s last independent newspaper. Here, DocFest Managing Director Annabel Grundy spoke to the director, Patrick Forbes, about his friend and protagonist Dmitry (Dima) Muratov.
In September, co-directors George Varsimashvilli and Jeanne Nouchi flew in for the DocFest Spotlights screening of Hotel Metalurg, a poetic portrait of life in a crumbling, disused luxury hotel where a group of survivors of the Abkhaz-Georgian war have lived for more than 30 years.
Tish is a moving portrait of social documentary photographer and trailblazer Tish Murtha, who dedicated her life to documenting the lives of working-class communities in North East England. In this Preview Q&A ahead of the film’s UK release, director Paul Sng spoke powerfully about Tish Murtha’s legacy, class barriers to becoming an artist and valuing your participants as people not subjects.
In the Rearview came to Bertha DocHouse having won the Grand Jury Prize in the International Competition at Sheffield DocFest 2023 – as well as a slew of other international awards. Director Maciek Hamela flew from his home in Warsaw for this special screening, presented in collaboration with London Migration Film Festival.
Made over 6 years, acclaimed director Jeanie Finlay charts the rise of writer and activist Aubrey Gordon from anonymous blogger to NYTimes bestselling author and beloved podcaster. Your Fat Friend sold out the Renoir, our biggest screen.
Diagnosed with an incurable brain tumour, director Kit Vincent enlists his family for an intimate and darkly humorous journey to help them come to terms with his illness. Red Herring traverses the fine line between humour and grief, detailing his family’s acceptance of his fate, and celebrating the relationships that keep us going, particularly in life’s darker moments.