The 27th annual Full Frame Documentary Film Festival wrapped up last night in downtown Durham, but my processing of what I took in over the last four days is still going on in my overwhelmed noggin. It’s always a heady experience to see so many fine docs, each one entertainingly expanding my knowledge on their subjects, and what I saw of this year’s roster really got my mind racing. I saw more documentary shorts than at previous Full Frames so I’ll start with the four that kicked off Saturday morning:
YOUR OPINION, PLEASE (Dir. Marshall Granger, 2025)
This pleasantly amusing 15-minute doc short concerns comments from folks who called in to Yellowstone Public Radio in Montana to talk about, well, whatever they wanted to talk about between 1997 and 2007. The callers’ voices are heard talking to Ken Siebert, and the short’s director, Marvin Granger, while tranquil shots of small-town life, and prairie terrains grace the screen. Politics, religion, and a thread about the meaning of poetry are among the topics discussed, with one of my favorite remarks being, “I’m not a member of any organized party; I’m a democrat.”
MAMA MICRA (Dirs. Rebecca Blöcher, Frédéric Schuld, 2025)
In this odd animated short, filmmaker Blöcher’s prickly relationship with her mother is depicted via stop motion imagery involving characters and landscapes fashioned out of wool. Blöcher’s recorded conversation (in German with subtitles), with her mother, Verena, about her life, the last ten years of which she lived in her car, appears as voice-over for the surreal symbolism that’s heavily dominated by a figure of a black crow. The 25-minute film mixes in some black and white photos of its subject, which adds to its haunting, and very personal feel.
MAIL MYSELF TO YOU (Dir. Imogen Pranger, 2024)
Something I didn’t know before is that Oberlin College in Ohio houses an enormous collection of mail art made up of the vast archives by artists Harley Francis, and Reid Wood. This fun 16-minute film is filled with many colorful examples of mail art, which is defined by Wood, as “a system or a process where artworks are exchanged using the postal system; it’s also a lot about collaboration, and about gift giving.” Other correspondence artists relay their mail art memories as scores of illustrated postcards, letters, and envelopes are shown as Pranger’s short zips along merrily, bookended by a cover of its title song, originally composed by Woody Guthrie, performed by Jace Mason. I also wasn’t aware that there’s an international mail art network, but now consider me to be in the know.
CONFESSIONS OF UNDECIDED WOMEN
(Dir. Milja Härkönen, 2025)
My last doc short of the day was this Finnish film, which is making its North American premiere at the festival. It's another animated offering, but flat unlike MAMA MICRA, and switches styles throughout. The voices of women in their thirties struggling with whether or not to be mothers are heard as the imagery - sometimes smooth, sometimes crude - enhances their words. The dilemma these biological clock watchers are facing is mostly suited by the animation, but at times the sketchiness of the art is creepy. But maybe that's the point as these ladies are navigating through unsettling stuff especially with the societal expectations. The 20-minute movie is not without its insights, but I'm so not the target audience for this.
PREDATORS (Dir. David Osit, 2025)
If you’ve seen the show, To Catch a Predator (2004-2007), which Jimmy Kimmel called “Punked for Pedophiles,” you know the drill. The producers of the program working with the police would set up a sting operation in a house with multiple hidden cameras where they’d lure abusers under the guise of meeting the child they thought they’d been messaging online or speaking to on the phone.
Then host Chris Hansen would appear to confront the offender, they’d have an awkward AF talk after which the abuser would leave the house to be met by police waiting outside to be taken into custody. While this might make for compelling TV, director Osit wants to explore the ethics of the controversial series here, hoping to find an answer for what the show's host Hansen asks the men after they're captured, “What was going on in your mind?”
Osit posits this because he was sexually abused as a child, but he doesn’t think that the show really cares about the answer. An episode in which one of the offenders commits suicide (not on camera, or at least shown) is thought to be why the program was cancelled, but Hansen has gone on to do similar themed shows, and there are many copy cats, one of which, Skeeter Jean with his Predatorial Investigator Unit, gets a little too much attention here.
Hansen appears late in the film for an interview, but his take on the show doesn’t appear to satisfy Osit, or at least the filmmaker's intense final close-up of himself doesn’t look satisfied. PREDATORS is uneven, and not as deep a dive as its subject deserves, but it is still has cutting effect as a thesis questioning the exploitation of such a sickness.
WE WANT THE FUNK
(Dirs. Stanley Nelson, Nicole London, 2025)
As at previous Full Frames, Saturday night is the perfect time for a music documentary to be slotted, and this year’s selection, about the history of the funk genre, joyously fits the bill. Director Nelson (FREEDOM RIDERS, THE BLACK PANTHERS: VANGUARD OF THE REVOLUTION), MILES DAVIS , who specializes in docs about African American history, has had many of his films screened over the years at the festival, and was in attendance for the film that he told the audience at Fletcher Hall in the Q&A afterwards was just finished three weeks ago.
Nelson, and co-director Nicole gather together such luminaries as Parliament/Funkadelic’s George Clinton, Kool & the Gang’s Robert Kool Bell, the Talking Heads’ David Byrne, the J.B.s’ Fred Wesley, and, of course, Questlove, who one doesn't make a music doc these days without, to talk about the evolution of funk that undeniably began with James Brown, got psychedelic with Sly and the Family Stone, and went on to be sampled by every hip hop artist ever. The doc is wall-to-wall music, and especially smokes when the interviewees have their instruments, and give us examples of the funky form.
With wonderfully edited, and exciting footage from TV, and concert appearances, and archival decorates the doc, which does a great job of getting down with what defines the style from educating its audience on the “one” - the first beat of the measure to the genre’s influence on white rockers like Elton John, David Bowie, and Byrne, who based the Talking Heads’ “Burning Down the House” on a chant from a P-Funk show. WE WANT THE FUNK is a fantastic funking doc that with hope will get a wide release later this year. The standing ovation it got at Full Frame makes a good case that people definitely desire the groove this film is laying down.
Coming soon, day four of Full Frame.
More later...
