A selection of documentaries that premiered at this year’s SHEFFIELD DOCFEST are screening at Bertha Dochouse next weekend Good Girl, Containment and Drone. Exploring contemporary themes of mental health, nuclear containment and the ethics of drone technology these illuminating docs each examine questions and ideas that lie at the heart of scientific thinking and showcase creativity and innovation in filmmaking.
GOOD GIRL (Dir. Solveig Melkeraaen/Norway 2014) Friday 4th December / 18:30
An acclaimed portrait of one woman’s descent into the darkness of mental health, Norwegian director Solveig Melkeraaen’s film Good Girl is nevertheless an often humorous and poetic response to her own condition. Taking the worst aspect of her illness – a compulsive, controlling anxiety – and puts it to good use, Melkeraaen creates an extraordinarily stylised docu-drama both heart-breaking and hopeful in equal measure. With unprecedented access to her treatment process and her loving family, Melkeraaen takes the audience on a journey through the devastating consequences of depression. The results leave us with an extremely raw but stylish autobiographical tale as deftly executed as any Michel Gondry movie.
DRONE (Dir: Tonje Hessen Schei/Denmark 2014)
The ultimate exposé, Tonje Hessen Schei’s film Drone is as gripping as a blockbuster and as terrifying as any newsreel. In an age of increasing demand for virtual reality content an all-too-real kind of soldier has been born, the so-called ‘Drone Warrior’. Revealing the deadly consequences of the post- 9/11 war on terror extent and spookily topical in its subject matter, Drone uncovers the perpetrators and victims on both sides of this deadly phenomenon, and asks potent questions about the legality, technology and morality of this thoroughly modern warfare.
SHEFFIELD DOC FEST COMES TO LONDON | 4 -6 DECEMBER 2015 | www.dochouse.org |