Whenever I’m feeling indecisive at a film festival, I tend to default to documentaries. The highs may not be as high as with a surprisingly revelatory narrative feature, but the lows are rarely as low as a complete indie disaster. And, as much as it would pain my Before Times “theaters or bust” ethos, the only way that spending a few days at home watching SXSW was like spending a few days in Austin for SXSW was that my SXSWeek was riddled with many competing distractions for my attention. As such, I perused the documentary programming, which was way more forgiving for an end-of-the-night watch and a format that was a bit more amenable to interruptions. Some short reviews of a few highlights, below:
Kid Candidate (2021 | USA | 67 minutes | Jasmine Stodel)
When Hayden Pedigo, an 24-year old experimental musician from Amarillo, Texas appeared in his friend’s spoof video wearing a thrift store suit and carrying a tape measure to see how his city “measured up”, the clip went viral for its Harmony Korine aesthetic and racked up comments saying that he should actually run for office. The surprise is not so much that he listened to these random people on the internet and filed paperwork to run for city council, but that his campaign hinged more on a love for the city than on an excuse to propagate more dank memes. Sure, there were plenty more weird videos in his entirely self-funded run, but Jasmine Stodel’s slim documentary minimizes them in favor of getting to know the earnest candidate (who exudes a vaguely Mayor Pete vibe, except less conventionally accomplished and more openly weird) and the city that he loves. It’s a loving portrait of Amarillo and all of its 200,000 people, but particularly to the artists, large Somali immigrant populations, and residents of the dilapidated Heights (“self employed” rappers and children’s advocates who spread the good word from beloved BBQ shops, alike) whose needs are too often ignored by a homogenous political class funded by deep-pocketed special interests. Like Pedigo himself, the campaign is perhaps a little too simultaneously awkward, self-defeating, overreaching, and terrified of failure for its own good, but it’s also a warm embrace of personal transition and the ripple effects of the community engagement that occurs when you step out of your comfort zone and run for something you believe in.
Kid Candidate premiered at SXSW in the Documentary Feature competition. It will be distributed by Gunpowder and Sky in association with XTR. (Header image photo credit: Homero Salinas)
United States vs. Reality Winner (2021 | USA | 94 minutes | Sonia Kennebeck)
A somber documentary about the eighth government whistleblower to be tried and imprisoned under the Espionage Act, Sonia Kennebck tells the story of 25-year-old Air Force veteran and NSA contractor Reality Winner (her real name, thanks to a quirky dad) who is still in jail for disclosing a single document about Russian interference in the 2016 election. With little drama in terms of the outcome of the Trump administration’s zealous campaign against her, the documentary instead is built around the structure of a recently obtained recording of the FBI interview (deemed to be “non-custodial” and exempted from Miranda protections) that was key to the court case against her. Between snippets of the re-enacted questioning that took place in her home, the policy angles are filled out by lawyers and former whistleblowers (Edward Snowden even makes an impassioned appearance from Moscow!) and personal details are offered by family members who have devoted years to making a case for her freedom via social and national media campaigns. Working in a dreary gray color palette and unfolding at a measured pace, the film exposes the extreme legal constraints placed on espionage cases and the degree to which words from journals, private messenger conversations, and phone calls can be taken out of context to warp a real person’s image in a courtroom and in the public eye. While chastising the government, the film also raises questions about the commitment of the commitment of The Intercept (the outlet that published the papers) to protecting the anonymity of their sources and highlights the degree to which Winner’s post-conviction public statements needed to be delicately tailored to appease the ego of the president. Conveyed at a measured pace in cool gray tones, the documentary stokes indignation at a slow-burn, capturing the personal toll of revealing knowledge about a government to its people as well as the absurdity of remaining incarcerated long after that knowledge has been a matter of public record. It’s a tough watch, but one that deserves witness.
United States vs. Reality Winner premiered at SXSW in the Documentary Features Competition.
The Oxy Kingpins (2021 | USA | 80 minutes | Brendan FitzGerald)
There’s been no shortage of films about the ravages of the opioid epidemic, but most of them tend to be searing exposes of the drug manufacturers or tragic stories of the individual people whose lives were destroyed by addiction. Brendan FitzGerald takes another angle with his new documentary, putting the spotlight on the corporate middlemen who distributed vast quantities of prescription Oxycontin, flooding community pharmacies and spilling the products into the illicit drug trade. Framed in a series of phone calls between a lawyer and a former drug dealer who got rich moving pills from Miami to Boston, the film collects perspectives from consumers and underground dealers who populated the supply chain, while following the impressive steps necessary to build a series of class-action lawsuits against extremely profitable licit drug distribution companies. The lead counsel, Mike Papantonio, and his firm specialize in mass torts and are no strangers to extracting millions of dollars from evil companies; so its entertaining to see their hard work set to slick production values and a propulsive electronic score composed by Nick Zinner (of the Yeah Yeah Yeahs). As his dogged investigators scour tens of thousands of pages of documents for smoking guns and Papantonio convincingly connects the theory board yarn linking manufacturers, distributors, pharmacies, doctors, and a cottage industry of clinics in a scheme to turn a blind eye toward the consequences of their multi-billion dollar profits, it seems almost certain that they’ll be a righteous payoff. But instead, despite it’s introduction to these interesting characters and stoking outrage over greed and malfeasance, this highly-polished documentary ends on something of a cliffhanger. The first big trial isn’t scheduled to begin until April 2021; so audiences will have to pay attention to the news or stay tuned for a sequel.
The Oxy Kingpins premiered at SXSW in the Documentary Features Competition.
WeWork: or the Making and Breaking of a $47 Billion Unicorn (2021 | USA | 104 minutes | Jed Rothstein)
Jed Rothestein’s retrospective on the collapse of WeWork opens with footage of founder Adam Neumann repeatedly trying (and failing) to record a pitch to investors on the eve of his company’s planned filing for an initial public offering. Structuring the film this way is a clever set-up: anyone with passing familiarity with the tech or financial world (or who can read the film’s title) knows that the charismatic CEO was on the verge of a massive downfall and this hubristic refusal to rely on cue cards while keeping a film crew late into the night is cutely emblematic of the flaws at the dark heart of his hollow company. From there, it skips back to the beginning, relying on available footage and dishy interviews from aggrieved former employees, hornswoggled true believers, and the financial journalists who covered the co-working company’s dramatic rise and fall. Together, they establish the story of a hippie-messianic leader whose spun the simple idea of sub-leasing tastefully-appointed office spaces into a lifestyle brand that attracted startup company tenants and billions of dollars from investors hungry for the next big thing. Along the way, they capture the company’s astronomical rise, complete with footage from legendary annual multi-day retreats that mixed alcohol-fueled bacchanalia with tech talks and motivational speeches, as examples of the way WeWork came to function as a low-level cult of true believers. Details of foreign financing schemes, evidence of accumulation of massive debt amid unsustainable expansion, and tales of WeWork’s outsized ambitions to re-imagine the likes of congregate living (WeLive’s high-priced dorm rooms) and even education (WeLearn) serve as the many signposts of impending doom in contrast to the founder’s excessive lifestyle. Like the manipulative scams at the heart of WeWork, the documentary is a glossy production and an highly entertaining watch that plays to a natural impulse for schadenfreude (albeit for someone whose golden parachute keeps him comfortably in the “three comma club”). Thus, also like its subject, by the time the fun’s over, you realize there’s not much depth beneath the admittedly alluring shiny surfaces.
WeWork: or the Making and Breaking of a $47 Billion Unicorn premiered at SXSW in the Documentary Spotlight section; it will be released on Hulu on April 2nd.