Sundance winner “American Factory” is slated to open the 22nd annual edition of the Full Frame Documentary Film Festival. A look inside what happened when a Chinese billionaire opened a factory in a shuttered General Motors plant in Dayton, Ohio in 2014, Julia Reichert and Steven Bognar’s doc received The Directing Award: U.S. Documentary at Sundance in January.
Among the other titles set to screen at Full Frame is Jacqueline Olive’s “Always in Season,” which won a U.S. Documentary Special Jury Award for Moral Urgency at Sundance. The film investigates the history of lynching in the United States. “Connecting to the anger, shame, fear, and pain that can come when you explore lynching doesn’t have to be crippling,” Olive told us. “We have the ability to cope with those emotions and transform that energy into inspiring acts of justice when they are faced rather than pushed down.”
Also playing at the fest is Nanfu Wang and Jialing Zhang’s “One Child Nation,” an exploration of the untold history behind China’s controversial one-child policy that scored Sundance’s Grand Jury Prize U.S. documentary award. “Becoming a mother affected the way I see things. Growing up in China, I didn’t question the one-child policy because it had become part of normal life,” Wang explained in an interview with us. “But after I had my first child, I felt empathy towards mothers and children whose lives were affected by the policy. It motivated me to explore what the policy meant to people, and then each of the people I spoke to revealed information and emotions that affected my perspective and propelled me to talk to the next person.”
Other features screening at Full Frame include Tania Hernández Velasco’s “Titixe,” a montage of a family’s last harvest in Mexico, and “Where We Belong,” Jacqueline Zünd’s portrait of five children sharing their feelings about their parents’ divorces. The former is making its U.S. premiere at the fest and the latter its North American premiere.
Full Frame Documentary Film Festival will take place April 4-7 in Durham, North Carolina. To check out the fest’s complete lineup, head over to Indiewire.
