The Full Frame Documentary Film Festival is pleased to announce the complete lineup for the 26th annual festival, April 4–7, 2024. Full Frame will exhibit documentary features and shorts from around the world in a premier showcase of film screenings, discussions, and panels held in historic downtown Durham, N.C. This year’s festival will include 50 titles, 35 features and 15 short films from 22 countries.
NEW DOCS
1489 / Armenia (Director: Shoghakat Vardanyan; Producer: Shoghakat Vardanyan)
Over two years, filmmaker Shoghakat Vardanyan documented her parents and herself, waiting to hear about the fate of her twenty-one-year-old brother Soghomon, a musician, who disappeared in the front line of the brutal 2020 Artsakh (Nagorno-Karabakh) War. Filming with her phone, Vardanyan turns her family’s grief into a film as an act of escape.
Agent of Happiness / Bhutan, Hungary (Directors: Arun Bhattarai, Dorottya Zurbó; Producers: Noémi Veronika Szakonyi, Máté Artur Vincze, Arun Bhattarai)
Amber is one of the many agents working for the Bhutanese government to measure people’s happiness levels among the remote Himalayan mountains. But will he find his own along the way?
All We Carry (Lo que llevamos) / United States (Director: Cady Voge; Producers: Laura Pilloni, Laura Tatham, Cady Voge)
All We Carry follows a young Honduran family as they flee persecution—migrating in cargo trains across Mexico, claiming asylum at the US border, and enduring separation in detention before being released in Seattle. There, a local synagogue sponsors the family for two years while they await the final decision on their asylum case. As the family tries to settle into their new home, we witness their everyday moments—both sorrowful and joyful—along the way.
American Seams / United States (Director: Carly Jakins; Producer: Carly Jakins)
The stories of three quilters combine to reveal an intimate portrait of rural women in the American West. World Premiere
Anyuka / United States (Director: Maya Erdelyi; Producer: Maya Erdelyi)
Interweaving super 8 family films, archival material, and experimental animation, a granddaughter takes a deep dive into the remarkable life of her indomitable grandmother— a writer, WWII refugee and Holocaust survivor. Anyuka (Hungarian for mother) explores intergenerational trauma, the Jewish diaspora, immigration, motherhood, and religious identity, to tell the story of a tragic and marvelous life across continents.
Ashima / United States, Spain, France, South Africa, United Kingdom (Director: Kenji Tsukamoto; Producers: Minji Chang, Dave Boyle, Roy Choi, Kenji Tsukamoto)
Ashima is an intimate portrait of elite rock climber Ashima Shiraishi as she travels to South Africa to try to become the youngest person in the world to climb a v14 graded boulder problem. Accompanying Ashima is Poppo, an eccentric, hermit-like, retired avant-garde dancer, who also happens to be her father. Emotional and rooted in character, Ashima is a love letter not only to climbing, but to immigrant parents and the realization of the American Dream.
The Bus (El bus) / Spain (Director: Sandra Reina; Producer: Valérie Delpierre, Jaume Fargas Coll)
This round-trip bus ride takes passengers on Friday mornings towards the weekend and picks them up on Sunday afternoons to take them back to the place where they came from.
The Bitter Pill / United States (Director: Clay Tweel; Producers: Tim Grant, Shannon E. Riggs, Mary Rohlich)
With his hometown ravaged by the opioid epidemic,