“This year is about redefining,” says Courtney Pledger, director of the Hot Springs Documentary Film Festival. And while the 10-day event features plenty of undiscovered gems, “redefining” seems to encompass a roster of, to borrow a phrase from Pledger, “buzzy films,” awards in tow, Cheree Franco writes in Tuesday's Style section.
There’s The Act of Killing, in which the unrepentant perpetrators of a mid-’60s Indonesian genocide re-enact their crimes, gangster-movie style. Simultaneously humanizing and horrifying, it picked up best documentary at the Berlin International Film Festival, along with nearly 30 other awards worldwide.
Sundance winners American Promise and A River Changes Course offer intimate portraits of urban America and rural Cambodia.
Read about all the films being screened, including 22 sports documentaries, in tomorrow's Arkansas Democrat-Gazette.