We know D.C. Get our free newsletter to stay in the know.
Washington City Paper‘s 2015 critic’s pick for D.C.’s best film festival, AFI DOCS, announced this year’s slate this morning. The documentary festival formerly known as Silverdocs will run from June 17-21 and feature 81 films from 25 countries.
Continuing its tradition of opening and closing the festival with person-centered biographies and histories, AFI DOCS will be bookended by Best of Enemies, Robert Gordon and Morgan Neville‘s look at the 1968 debates between William F. Buckley Jr. and Gore Vidal, and Mavis!, a profile of R&B and gospel superstar Mavis Staples directed by Jessica Edwards. The latter, which will screen at the National Portrait Gallery, is an especially welcome choice, as last year’s opening and closing films—Holbrook/Twain and Life Itself—celebrated two (or three, depending on how you’re counting) old white men. (They were worthy celebrations, but still.)
The festival also includes world premieres of Rise: The Promise of My Brother’s Keeper, a Discovery Channel film about Barack Obama‘s new support program for young men of color, and Salam Neighbor, a gonzo film by two American dudes (one a self-dubbed “disruptive storyteller,” which pinged the cynic in me) who lived in a refugee camp in Jordan for a month.
Other premieres at the festival: First and 17, about Da’Shawn Hand, 2013’s most-desired high school football recruit, and The Three Hikers, an account of the trio of Americans who were held in an Iranian prison on charges of espionage after accidentally hiking across the border in 2009. Screenings will take place in both Silver Spring and downtown D.C.
Read the full slate of films after the jump.
- 3 1/2 MINUTES, TEN BULLETS
- ALL THINGS MUST PASS
- ALTHEA
- AMONG THE BELIEVERS
- THE ARMOR OF LIGHT
- ATTACKING THE DEVIL: HAROLD EVANS AND THE LAST NAZI WAR CRIME
- BEST OF ENEMIES
- THE BLACK PANTHERS: VANGUARD OF THE REVOLUTION
- CARTEL LAND
- THE CHINESE MAYOR
- CITY OF GOLD
- CODE: DEBUGGING THE GENDER GAP
- THE DIPLOMAT
- DRONE
- DRUNK STONED BRILLIANT DEAD: THE STORY OF THE NATIONAL LAMPOON
- FIRST AND 17
- FRAME BY FRAME
- FRESH DRESSED
- FROM THIS DAY FORWARD
- HOT TYPE: 150 YEARS OF THE NATION
- HOW TO DANCE IN OHIO
- INDIA’S DAUGHTER
- IN TRANSIT
- I WANT TO BE A KING
- KING GEORGES
- LARRY KRAMER IN LOVE & ANGER
- LISTEN TO ME MARLON
- THE LOOK OF SILENCE
- LOVE MARRIAGE IN KABUL
- MAVIS!
- MOST LIKELY TO SUCCEED
- OF MEN AND WAR
- OUT TO WIN
- PEACE OFFICER
- PEGGY GUGGENHEIM: ART ADDICT
- A POEM IS A NAKED PERSON
- PROPHET’S PREY
- RADICAL GRACE
- REQUIEM FOR THE AMERICAN DREAM
- REQUIEM FOR THE DEAD: AMERICAN SPRING 2014
- RIDE, RISE, ROAR
- RISE: THE PROMISE OF MY BROTHER’S KEEPER
- THE RUSSIAN WOODPECKER
- SALAM NEIGHBOR
- Shorts Program 1: Too Much Time
- Shorts Program 2: What Remains
- Shorts Program 3: Parental Guidance
- Shorts Program 4: Under Water
- STEVE JOBS: THE MAN IN THE MACHINE
- THE STORM MAKERS
- THE THREE HIKERS
- TYKE ELEPHANT OUTLAW
- UNCERTAIN
- VERY SEMI-SERIOUS
- WELCOME TO LEITH
- WHAT HAPPENED, MISS SIMONE?
- THE WOLFPACK
- THE YES MEN ARE REVOLTING