Just as much an essential piece of historiography as it is a poetic, ruminative look at the effects of folklore on the Eastern European condition, Jessica Oreck’s eminently perceptive documentary The Vanquishing of the Witch Baba Yaga serves a narrative double-duty. As a visual introduction to the ways and means of those living in such countries as Ukraine, Romania, Hungary and Poland, Oreck’s film is a delicately shot marvel. We see lumberjacks felling trees, families hunting mushrooms, city folk wandering…
Few current documentaries seem as of-the-moment as Jesse Moss’s The Overnighters, a film shot through with pulsating clarity and startling ambition. It follows Jay Reinke, a Lutheran pastor in Williston, N.D., as he faces increasing hostility from townspeople toward his “Overnighter” program, which allows…
If you have any plans to see Bird People, Pascale Ferran’s whimsical study of mid-life dissatisfaction and the various methods we all use to abate its influence, try to go in as cold as possible. The film, as flawed as it is, becomes more…