Doc­u­men­taries to dis­cov­er at the BFI Lon­don Film Fes­ti­val 2020

The pan­dem­ic has seen many fes­ti­vals around the world scale back their under­stand­ing of what a fes­ti­val is or should be. The BFI Lon­don Film Fes­ti­val has pro­grammed few­er films this year, but with films avail­able not just in the cap­i­tal but across the whole of the UK, will share them more widely.

It is pleas­ing to see that among this slim­mer selec­tion remains a healthy num­ber of non-fic­tion films, bring­ing sto­ries from around the world to cin­e­ma and com­put­er screens across the coun­try. Here are eight of the best, split into pair­ings that show the vari­ety of sub­ject and sit­u­a­tion on offer.

For his film of the same title, pro­lif­ic doc­u­men­tar­i­an Jer­ry Roth­well takes on ​‘The Rea­son I Jump’, a book writ­ten by Japan­ese teenag­er Nao­ki Higashi­da about his expe­ri­ences as a non­ver­bal autis­tic per­son. Offer­ing insight into some­thing con­stant­ly mis­un­der­stood, the book finds new lan­guage to express some­thing often con­sid­ered untranslatable.

For his adap­ta­tion, Roth­well looks to do some­thing sim­i­lar, pair­ing extracts from the book with fan­tas­ti­cal sequences fea­tur­ing the lived expe­ri­ences of young non­ver­bal autis­tic peo­ple world­wide. Using evoca­tive sound design and soft-lensed pho­tog­ra­phy, the film priv­i­leges the sens­es, look­ing to do its own act of trans­la­tion by find­ing images to rep­re­sent the words that bring inte­ri­or worlds alive.

Tak­ing a sim­i­lar approach is Eliz­a­beth Lo’s Stray, a film about stray dogs in Istan­bul, a city with more than 130,000 of them. Drop­ping down to dog’s‑eye-level, Lo scrab­bles around with a steady-cam, run­ning beside the dogs or strap­ping cam­eras to their shoul­ders. Aim­ing to cap­ture the city as its ani­mal inhab­i­tants see it, through inter­ac­tions the dogs have with home­less peo­ple and refugees, she also draws a pic­ture of the expe­ri­ence of a city from the per­spec­tive of its itin­er­ant human population.

Sump­tu­ous­ly shot, with sound design by Ernst Karel (known for his work with Harvard’s Sen­so­ry Ethnog­ra­phy Lab), while pol­i­tics is present, the empha­sis on Lo’s film is on sen­so­ry expe­ri­ence: what it feels like to be a pup run­ning free.

“I have told sto­ries of vio­lence many times before. This film is a mem­o­ry for those that can­not for­get, and a warn­ing for those that refuse to see.” These are the words that open Ultra­vi­o­lence, a video-let­ter that British rad­i­cal film­mak­er Ken Fero has penned to his son, speak­ing from the recent past. Cycling between police footage, protest imagery, and to-cam­era tes­ti­mo­ny, this anger­ing, inci­sive, if some­what old-fash­ioned film resur­faces three of the 2000-plus deaths that have occurred in police cus­tody in the last 50 years, argu­ing that by keep­ing the sto­ries of these men alive, their fam­i­lies, robbed of jus­tice, might find some degree of peace.

More sweep­ing in scale, with Not­turno, vet­er­an doc­u­men­tar­i­an Gian­fran­co Rosi takes on his broad­est can­vas yet: attempt­ing to paint a pic­ture of the entire Mid­dle East through a series of images cap­tured over three years in Syr­ia, Iraq, Kur­dis­tan and Lebanon. Shot most­ly in war zones, the focus is cit­i­zens attempt to car­ry on their ordi­nary lives despite dan­ger or uncertainty.

Loca­tions are not labelled; each sit­u­a­tion remains unex­plained. Instead, Rosi prefers to let the images speak for them­selves – a slow cas­cade of stark, stun­ning, elab­o­rate tableaux that col­lec­tive­ly depict the desta­bil­is­ing effects of the var­i­ous con­flicts unfold­ing across the region, albeit from a some­what trou­bling remove.

More than 35 years after Jonathan Demme’s sem­i­nal Stop Mak­ing Sense, Spike Lee has his chance to re-envi­sion the con­cert doc, putting David Byrne back in front of cam­era in Amer­i­can Utopia. His Talk­ing Heads band mem­bers have gone, replaced by an instru­men­tal ensem­ble and sev­er­al sup­port­ing singer-dancers, and, where Demme played up the sur­re­al, stagey qual­i­ties of Byrne’s musi­cal act, Lee’s vision strips things back even fur­ther, focus­ing on the peo­ple and the per­form­ers while also bring­ing a per­ti­nent polit­i­cal edge to pro­ceed­ings. Sim­ple yet smart and dynam­ic, the show inspires joy, sad­ness and rage in equal mea­sure, dis­play­ing the vital­i­ty and the humil­i­ty of a per­former unlike most others.

Also rein­ter­pret­ing a stage show, Patric Chiha’s If It Were Love – which looks behind the scenes of chore­o­g­ra­ph­er Gisèle Vienne’s pro­duc­tion of ​’90s-rave-scene-focused con­tem­po­rary dance piece Crowd – was a hit at Berlin ear­li­er this year, where it won a Ted­dy Award for Best Doc­u­men­tary. As well as show­cas­ing the inge­nu­ity of the chore­og­ra­phy, which repli­cates the inten­si­ty of elec­tron­ic music through exag­ger­at­ed move­ment, throb­bing tech­no and bru­tal strob­ing, the film gives vital insight into the off-stage dynam­ics that inform the on-stage con­nec­tions: the inter­per­son­al sparks that make it all feel so charged and real.

Some were incensed by the inclu­sion of Bill and Turn­er Ross’ Bloody Nose, Emp­ty Pock­ets in Sundance’s US Doc­u­men­tary com­pe­ti­tion, giv­en that it fea­tures a cast of actors, play­ing pre­con­ceived roles, with­in an arranged envi­ron­ment. These same peo­ple might be sur­prised to learn about the con­di­tions of the cre­ation of some of the oth­er films that have played in that strand.

Cat­e­gor­i­cal com­pli­ca­tions aside, the film is won­der­ful. Cat­a­logu­ing the dive bar com­ing togeth­er of a group of all-Amer­i­can mis­fits over the dura­tion of one extend­ed, alco­hol-soaked evening, it is a charm­ing con­tin­u­a­tion of the film­mak­ing broth­er-film­mak­er pair’s exper­i­ments in non-fic­tion hybridi­s­a­tion that is indica­tive of their ever-grow­ing com­mand of the form.

One of the finest films of the year from one of the most excit­ing film­mak­ers in the world, the praise for Gar­rett Bradley’s Time has been – from the moment Ama­zon acquired the film for $5 mil­lion out of Sun­dance at the start the of year – unan­i­mous, and deserved­ly so. Fol­low­ing Sibil Fox Richardson’s fight for the release of her hus­band, Rob, who is serv­ing a vast­ly inflat­ed prison sen­tence, the film con­veys the human costs of an unjust carcer­al sys­tem with an imme­di­a­cy that is both mes­meris­ing and intense­ly moving.

Com­press­ing the couple’s mul­ti-decade strug­gle into a engross­ing nar­ra­tive through mas­ter­ful edit­ing that col­laps­es space and time through a seam­less mix­ing of archival and new­ly-record­ed mate­r­i­al, Bradley takes some­thing expan­sive and com­plex, and makes the task of effec­tive­ly ren­der­ing it as cin­e­ma look entire­ly effortless.

The 64^th BFI Lon­don Film Fes­ti­val runs 7 – 18 Octo­ber. Explore the full pro­gramme here.