NEW YORK, NY (SMI-GLOBAL-ENTERTAINMENT OCT 13-NOV. 21, 2024)-DOC NYC, America’s largest documentary festival — celebrating its 15th anniversary in-person November 13-21 at IFC Center, SVA Theatre and Village East by Angelika and continuing online through December 1 — announced its main slate lineup today.

The 2024 festival presents more than 110 feature-length documentaries (including yet-to-be-announced Short List and Winner’s Circle titles) among over 200 films and dozens of events, with filmmakers expected in person at most screenings.

Opening the festival on Nov. 13 at SVA Theater will be the U.S. premiere of Sinead O’Shea’s inspiring portrait Blue Road - The Edna O’Brien Story, a breakout hit from the recent Toronto International Film Festival that honors the legendary Irish writer, just passed away few months ago at the age of 93.

​

Closing the festival on Nov. 21, also at SVA Theatre, will be the World premiere of Peter Yost and Michael Rohatyn’s Drop Dead City - New York on the Brink in 1975, a look back at the circumstances and players involved in NYC’s mid-70s financial crisis. The festival’s Centerpiece screening on Nov. 14 at Village East is the World premiere of Ondi Timoner’s All God’s Children (also part of the festival’s U.S. Competition), a chronicle of a Brooklyn rabbi and Baptist pastor who join forces to create greater unity between their two communities, against all odds.

 

Included are 31 World Premieres and 24 U.S. premieres, with eight of those presented in the U.S. Competition, for new American-produced nonfiction films, and another eight featured in International Competition, for work from around the globe. The Kaleidoscope Competition for new essayistic and formally adventurous documentaries continues, while the festival’s long-standing Metropolis Competition, showcasing New York stories and personalities, also
returns. In addition, the festival includes thematically organized sections that spotlight new films on music, sports, activism, and more.

​

Among films making their World premieres are stories of survivors from some of the most
heavily war-scarred regions of our world. Miriam Guttmann’s Front Row, executive produced
by Sarah Jessica Parker, features a group of Ukrainian ballet dancers in exile who embrace a
front-line soldier into a new ballet. Joel ‘Kachi Benson’s Mothers of Chibok presents us with
a community of women in Nigeria who struggle to persevere while grieving for daughters
kidnapped by Boko Haram. In Yalla Parkour, filmmaker Areeb Zuaiter explores memories of
her childhood in Gaza through a video connection with a young man practicing parkour in Gaza,
and Sarah McCarthy’s After the Rain: Putin’s Stolen Children Come Home focuses on a
group of Ukrainian children who had been abducted by the Russian army.
The Special Presentations section of the festival includes the World premiere of
Reiner Holzemer’s Thom Browne: The Man Who Tailors Dreams, a definitive look at the American superstar designer (who is expected to attend the screening in person), known for his reconceptualization of the classic men’s suit and dramatic runway presentations.
Domestic stories from New York City and the U.S. make up many of this year’s World premieres. Dawn Porter will present two episodes of her forthcoming series The Sing Sing Chronicles, a jaw-dropping look at an epidemic of wrongful imprisonment cases.

 

DOC NYC’s 2015 Audience Award-winning filmmaker Justin Schien, co-directing with Robert Edwards, returns to the festival with Death & Taxes, about economic inequality issues. Wendy Lobel’s Anxiety Club looks at anxiety through the lens of contemporary stand-up comedians, and Molly Bernstein and Philip Dolin’s Art Spiegelman: Disaster is My Muse profiles the legendary Queens-raised artist. Ricki Stern and Jesse Sweet examine the nuances of our parole system in Nature of the Crime, and in the “What Comes After Hope?” episode of Eyes on the Prize III: We Who Believe in Freedom Cannot Rest, the forthcoming second sequel to Henry Hampton’s legendary series,

​

SPECIAL EVENTS:

Opening Night
BLUE ROAD - THE EDNA O'BRIEN STORY (US Premiere)
Director: Sinead O'Shea
Producers: Claire McCabe, Katie Holly, Barbara Broccoli
Feminist writer Edna O'Brien’s diaries are brought to life, revealing her extraordinary writing and experiences in Ireland, London, and New York, and gifting us with her final testimony.

Closing Night
DROP DEAD CITY - NEW YORK ON THE BRINK IN 1975 (World Premiere)
Directors/Producers: Peter Yost, Michael Rohatyn
Set in 1970s NYC, this gripping documentary reveals the city's fall from working-class haven to fiscal disaster, featuring firsthand accounts and vivid archival footage of a city on the brink.

Centerpiece Screening
ALL GOD'S CHILDREN (World Premiere)
Director: Ondi Timoner
Producers: Ondi Timoner, David Turner, Anthony Ervolino
In Brooklyn, a rabbi and a Baptist pastor seek common ground – and mutual understanding –while working to combat conflicts they see escalating in their communities. (Also part of the U.S. Competition.)

 

 

​

 

​

 

​