Technically, in its second year, the local documentary film festival DC/DOX fills the hole left by the shuttering of the American Film Institute’s SilverDocs and AFI Docs. In fact, DC/DOX’s co-creator Sky Sitney ran the latter festival from 2005 until 2014. Although the name is different, Sitney brings the same careful curation to her new endeavor, highlighting a mix of innovative documentaries and more mainstream fare that might capture the public imagination. 

If this year’s slate has a common theme, it’s the ongoing fight for basic human dignity. Many of this year’s film subjects come from marginalized communities, whether they are Native American journalists, Black trans sex workers, or elderly people looking for dignity and meaning in more personal ways. And while many films from the 2023 slate previously premiered appeared in festivals, such as this year’s Sundance Film Festival or Columbia, Missouri’s innovative True/False Film Festival, DC/DOX does have some world premieres up its sleeve.

City Paper has rounded up a brief guide to some of the festival’s offerings. DC/DOX takes place June 15 through 18 at various theaters across the city, including Suns Cinema, the Oprah Winfrey Theater at the National Museum of African American History and Culture, Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial Library, and the Edlavitch Jewish Community Center. Individual tickets and festival passes can still be purchased on the website.

Bad Press

What does it look like when parts of America do not have the freedom of the press? Bad Press answers that question on a small scale, depicting a lengthy legal battle between tribal leadership in the federally recognized Muscogee Nation and the journalists who report on them.

For years, a law was in place that gave Muscogee journalists the independence they needed, but after a spate of negative stories—including a tribal leader being accused of sexual harassment—the tribe unceremoniously rescinded the law. Angel Ellis, the dedicated reporter who leads the fight in restoring this essential freedom, effectively forces the issue to become a major part of the tribe’s next election. With a sense of immediacy and frustration, directors Rebecca Landsberry–Baker and Joe Peeler create a familiar David vs. Goliath arc, a series of triumphs and setbacks that culminate with an enshrined constitutional amendment.

Ellis is a sympathetic figure, a tough-talking woman that internalizes the myriad frustrations her tribe must endure. The most involving parts of the film involve the immediate aftermath of the rescinded press: Ellis’ paper becomes a husk of itself, full of puff pieces where politicians get final editorial control. But once the reporters see hope in the election, Bad Press turns into more of a straightforward political drama. Unfortunately, the directors do not have the same access to the politicians as they do to Ellis, and with crucial developments happening off-camera, the film’s second half is nowhere near as gripping as the first. Still, there is an urgency to the film because, with another election looming, more powerful leaders in the United States may soon try to follow in the Muscogee Nation’s example.

Bad Press screens on Friday, June 16, at 5 p.m. at the Edlavitch Jewish Community Center.

Kokomo City

When you watch enough documentaries, you start to notice they often look the same. The compositions are flat or blandly framed, and too many directors opt for drone footage to establish an ominous sense of mood. D. Smith, the cinematographer and director of Kokomo City, goes in a refreshingly different direction. Her film is a series of interviews, focusing primarily on four Black transgender sex workers in New York and Atlanta, and all her imagery is striking. The high-contrast black and white photography creates a lurid quality that matches the subject, and the interviewees are captivating for their charisma and candidness.

Kokomo City mixes lighthearted and darker interviews. Many of the interviewees can be funny, even when they tell stories about how a client nearly killed them. They’re also quite frank about rampant transphobia in the Black community. Although there is some common ground, the film is at its most fascinating when the subjects disagree, whether it is about the nature of masculinity or how they feel about their vocation. While some of the interviewees speak with a resigned desperation regarding their work, others are more comfortable with their station. Even among this group, there are fault lines defined by poverty and success.

Smith, who is a Black trans woman, previously worked as a successful hip-hop producer. Her interest in masculinity among Black men is not an idle curiosity, and her experience clearly helped inform her stylized approach to the material. It is bracing to hear sex workers speak in their own words like this, in an unapologetic, fierce film that highlights their attitudes on their work—as well their beauty—in equal measure. (Perhaps making Kokomo City even more important and timely is murder of interviewee Koko Da Doll, who was shot and killed in April.) 

Kokomo City screens Friday, June 16. at 5:15 p.m. at Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial Library.

I Like It Here

The unfocused nature of I Like It Here, a documentary about aging directed by Ralph Arlyck, is its greatest strength and weakness. Almost immediately, Arlyck admits he didn’t know what he was doing at first with this film. He decided to film his neighbor, an elderly Hungarian man who lives off the grid, as his advanced age undermines his fierce independence. Arlyck also narrates the film with a mix of resignation, poignance, and occasional humor. As he surveys the elderly people in his life, accidental moments of wisdom are his only solace.

Arlyck decides to speak to his oldest friends, including a former lover, some of whom he has not spoken to in decades. Their reflections are hard-earned but not particularly comforting, while Arlyck obsesses over his own mortality in a way that recalls the heroes from old Woody Allen films. But unlike those protagonists, Arlyck mostly stays behind the camera, almost becoming a kind of everyman whose thoughts invariably overlap with hours. His obsession with aging soon dovetails into something more ambitious: big questions about who we are, and the experiences that define us.

Parts of I Like It Here can be meandering and elliptical, and it’s unclear whether that is by design or merely inevitable. As a longtime filmmaker in a community of artists, many of whom are Jewish, there is a deep need to understand through expression because Arlyck represents part of a community that nearly went extinct. That sense of responsibility can be felt when Arlyck films his goofy grandchildren, and also a neighbor who struggles to find meaning upon losing his spouse. There are no easy answers; to be fair, these are the questions that have gnawed at millions of people for the history of civilization, though Arlyck finds some measure of comfort in the journey.

I Like It Here screens Saturday, June 17, at 2 p.m. at the Edlavitch Jewish Community Center.

Between Life & Death: Terri Schiavo’s Story

Produced by MSNBC and making its debut at DC/DOX, the title Between Life & Death: Terri Schiavo’s Story is a slight misnomer. Although Terri Schiavo was at the center of a complex political story in the mid-2000s, the film has little interest in exploring her life. It is more explicitly about the nature of political power, and how the extreme right-wing flank seized on a Florida family to wage a culture war.

In case you don’t remember, Schiavo was a Florida woman who fell into an extreme vegetative state in 1990. After caring for her for many years, Schiavo’s husband, Michael, decided to remove her feeding tube, which set off a protracted legal battle between himself and her other relatives. Jeb Bush, Florida’s governor at the time, got involved in the case and eventually it seized national attention. Schiavo finally died in 2005.

Director Nick Capote shoots Between Life & Death in a straightforward manner, sort of like a TV news segment stretched to feature length. Although you may remember the controversy over right to die laws and the case’s eventual resolution, Capote ably shows how a personal legal dispute snowballed into something so big that even the Pope spoke of Schiavo (the film declines to discuss John Paul II’s declining health during this period). The cumulative effect is involving, and Capote is not shy about drawing comparisons between this case and the current debates, whether they involve abortion or trans rights. In fact, Capote’s sympathies and withering gaze are kind of refreshing, a reminder of how the line between empathy and exploitation is narrower than we may normally think.

Between Life & Death: Terri Schiavo’s Story screens Saturday, June 17, at 2 p.m. at Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial Library.

The Eternal Memory

Released three years ago, the innovative Chilean documentary The Mole Agent cleverly explored the lives of the elderly. It follows an old man who “infiltrates” a retirement home, looking for any wrongdoing, and along the way he befriends the residents who charm him. That film was directed by Maite Alberdi, and her follow-up, The Eternal Memory, shows similar sensitivity with a similar subject, though the tone this time around is more elegiac than wistful.

She follows Augusto Góngora and Paulina Urrutia, a married couple who are both well-known figures in Chile in their own right. Góngora was a hard-hitting journalist during the Pinochet regime, while Urrutia was an actor and former cultural minister. Their careers both took a sideline when Góngora received an Alzheimer’s diagnosis and his memory started to fail. Alberdi mostly films the couple together, both through good days and bad, while Urrutia maintains a sunny disposition to guide her husband. Still, she cannot overcome bouts of panic and confusion.

Like Amour, another film that approached a similar subject, the scope of The Eternal Memory narrows alongside Góngora’s memory loss. Urrutia remains steadfast at his side—among other things, this film is a stirring portrayal of a devoted marriage—while even little things develop a tragic dimension. It will be hard to shake, for example, Góngora’s sobbing over his book collection, the kind of thing prized to a public intellectual but rendered meaningless by the disease. The indignities and cruel nature of memory loss is a frequent subject in movies, particularly in those that win Oscars. Thankfully, The Eternal Memory sidesteps any cliches through a persistent sensitivity, and Alberdi’s innate aversion to melodrama or histrionics. This is the rare film that could help families find solace, and perhaps heal.

The Eternal Memory screens Saturday, June 17, at 4:30 p.m. at the Edlavitch Jewish Community Center.