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Sheffield Doc/Fest Announces Programme Highlights

Fresh from its sellout premiere at the Toronto Film Festival, Joy Division is more than a music documentary – it’s a film about the city of Manchester. The culture, the era and how all that came together to produce the genius that was Ian Curtis and Joy Division.

The music doc details the backgrounds of the group and its members, as well as the cultural context from which they emerged. Featuring interviews with most of the key figures: the three surviving band members, Bernard Sumner, Stephen Morris and Peter Hook; the recently deceased Tony Wilson, who founded Factory Records; Martin Hannett, their producer; and Annik Honoré, Curtis’s Belgian lover, the film weaves a personal portrait of Ian Curtis’ life from which hangs the bigger story of the band and the city.

The Doc/Fest has released details of selected highlights of this year’s film programme, which includes award-winning documentaries from around the world. The 14th festival will screen over 100 films over five days, including 22 World, 8 international, 7 European, and 23 UK premieres.

Doc/Fest has introduced themed film strands. Each night in the festival there will be a music doc, sports doc and a controversial film in the aptly-named strand, Anti-Doc. Running throughout the festival there is also green docs, a strand focusing on the environment and bent docs, which will showcase queer gay/lesbian and transgender documentaries.

Programme highlights include Kim Longinotto's latest film Hold Me Tight, Let Me Go, an astonishing and often heart-breaking look at life inside the boarding school which caters for children suffering severe emotional trauma; the UK Premiere of Forbidden Lie$, Anna Broinowski's examination of the story behind Norma Khouri, author of the controversial best selling novel "Forbidden Love" and A Jihad for Love, the world's first documentary film on the coexistence of Islam and homosexuality, receiving its international premiere.

Kim Longinotto will also be attending the festival to take part in the keynote Channel 4 interview, with Peter Dale of More 4. The BBC Interview invites Adam Curtis onstage to talk about his compelling body of work and his gloomy predictions for the future of intelligent documentary on television.

The Sports Docs Strand, includes the World Premiere of The Fighting Spirit, (dir. George Amponsah): the little-known shantytown of Bukom in Ghana is a factory for the toughest, most skilled boxers in the world. This courageous doc witnesses the triumphs and defeats of three boxers aiming for the glittering rings of Europe and America, as they fight for respect, their tribe and the biggest prizes in the business. To The Limit is the UK Premiere of director Pepe Danquart's film about two of the world's best rock climbers, Alexander and Thomas Huber. The brothers have set out to break the speed record climbing at the wall of all walls, El Capitan in Yosemite Valley, California. Climbing through the world's most breathtaking scenery, the film charts the pressures of competitiveness that forces the brothers apart just as it drives them to win.

In the Anti-Docs strand, films screening include Sophie Fiennes' VSPRS Show and Tell, which delves into the heart of Alain Platel’s VSPRS, dubbed by one critic "possibly the weirdest, most shocking and provocative dance performance you will ever see." Filmed live at performances in the Festival D'Avingnon, the dimensions of ecstasy and trauma that form the core of the performance are masterfully captured, as well as the effect their work has on others - and the dancers themselves.

Garbage Warriors, Oliver Hodge's acclaimed film telling the epic story of maverick architect Michael Reynolds, his crew of renegade house builders and their fight to introduce radically different ways of living, gets an outing in the Green Docs strand.

On top of all this, the festival celebrates ten years of BBC Storyville and the best of television documentary, with Louis Theroux and Ross Kemp both in appearance.

More highlights will be announced as the festival approaches, and will be outlined here - watch this space.

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