2020-01-23 The Hollywood Reporter

“It may be the most

unnerving 40 minutes

of your year.”

THE DAILY BEAST

BOUND BY LOVE, NOT BY BORDERS

ACADEMY AWARD

®

NOMINEE

BEST DOCUMENTARY

SHORT SUBJECT

The other four contenders in the category take viewers to Syria, North Macedonia,

China and even Ohio while exploring global issues By Katie Campione

AROUND THE WORLD WITH NOMINATED DOCS

AMERICAN FACTORY

Produced by the Obamas, American Factory checks

in on the General Motors plant that directors Julia

Reichert and Steven Bognar explored in their 2009

short The Last Truck: Closing of a GM Plant, which

was also nominated for an Academy Award.

THE CAVE

For The Cave, director Feras Fayyad returns to his

native Syria, this time to document a team of female

doctors working in an underground hospital.

Fayyad was previously nominated for his 2017 film,

the Syrian war documentary Last Men in Aleppo.

FOR SAMA

For Sama documents the Syrian war from a personal

perspective. Directors Waad al-Kateab and

Edward Watts drew from more than 500 hours of

footage recorded by al-Kateab, starting as a student

in Aleppo through the birth of her first daughter.

HONEYLAND

Shot with a skeleton crew over three years,

Honeyland intimately follows one of the last female

wild beekeepers in Europe as her livelihood is

threatened by a wayfaring family that joins her tiny

Macedonian village deep in the Balkans.

fine-tuning the narration until the
very last day of mixing.

What are your hopes for the future
of the film and for Brazil?
I hope the film will raise people’s
awareness about the frailty of
democracy. Many other coun-
tries around the world should be
declaring a state of emergency, or
a kind of state of alert. Political
parties are willing to destroy
democracy to be able to win or
to stay in power. And that is
happening in Brazil and the U.S.
and in many other places. It’s
catastrophic not just for human
rights, but also for the climate.
And it might be too late if we
wait to protect the rule of law and
democracy, acquired through so
many centuries of hard work. It’s
alarming what is happening in
Brazil; we’re really at the edge of
becoming an authoritarian gov-
ernment. Or past that edge.

Interview edited for length
and clarity.