Posts by Neely Swanson

Director Luke Holland worked on his documentary “Final Account” for ten years and during that time he accumulated 500 hours of interviews. That he even got one is incredible because this is a story of the ordinary Germans who facilitated the “Final Solution” and without whom there would have been no Holocaust. Getting them to…

On the 40th anniversary of its original broadcast on German television and PBS, “New Deal for Artists,” written and directed by Wieland Schulz-Keil. is being rereleased in a new digitally remastered version. Studs Terkel himself, in classic finger-wagging mode, opens this Orson Welles-narrated film exhorting the viewer to absorb the information presented. You will be…

“Tomorrow’s Hope” is a bright spot within the blight that is poverty, not just on the South Side of Chicago, but anywhere opportunities are as lacking as faith in a broken system. Subtitled “The Promise of Early Childhood Education,” director Thomas Morgan gives us an intimate view of Educare, a novel early education intervention program.…

“There is No Evil,” is a profound and uncomfortable exploration of the blurry lines between personal morality and right and wrong, by Iranian filmmaker Mohammad Rasulof. It is almost impossible to summarize each distinct chapter without revealing an important story point acting as a spoiler. Rasulof, who has, himself, been jailed by the Iranian regime…

“The Perfect Candidate,” written by Haifaa Al Mansour and Brad Niemann and directed by Mansour, is a film with as many ambitions as the lead character. This German/Saudi Arabian co-production was primarily filmed in Saudi Arabia, in itself a major accomplishment. That the director is a Saudi woman making her second film in that country…

“RK/RKAY” by writer/director Rajat Kapoor is a self-referential movie about film that stars…Rajat Kapoor. RK (played not coincidentally by Rajat Kapoor) is in the final editing stages of his latest film which he wrote, directed, and starred in. As one of his crew comments, “Your last film was s**t. This one wasn’t that bad.” It…

“What Lies West,” written and directed by Jessica Ellis in her feature directing debut, is a sweet and engaging dual coming of age film. Shot on a shoestring, a very thin shoestring, against odds that couldn’t be foreseen, it’s a real life example of Robert Burns’ “The best laid schemes o’ mice an’ men gang…

“Emily at the Edge of Chaos” is the personal journey of the brilliant mind of Emily Levine. First conceived as a one-woman play for the Ensemble Studio Theatre in New York in 2009, Levine continued to hone and sharpen her theme, never straying far from her initial thesis–life is a never-ending paradigm shift. What brought…

“Unmarked,” a well-intentioned short documentary that seeks to shine a light on heritage lost and heritage found, focuses primarily on the unmarked and abandoned graves of African Americans in Virginia. The discovery of unmarked slave graves on the property of a preserved plantation, prompted a more in depth look at where other similar graves might…

“Street Gang: How We Got to Sesame Street,” directed by Marilyn Agrelo based on the book by Michael Davis entitled Street Gang, answers so many of those questions that you didn’t know you should have asked. Like, whose brilliant idea was this and how did they get it off the ground? At a fateful dinner…

“My Wonderful Wanda,” written by Bettina Oberli and Cooky Ziesche and directed by Oberli, is an absurdist comedy about class, family, and respect. We meet the Wanda of the title as she alights from a bus that has brought her from Poland to a picturesque village in the Swiss mountains. Wanda has been working three…