What does home mean to you?

That’s the question Flee director Jonas Poher Rasmussen poses to Amin Nawabi, an Afghan refugee on the eve of marrying his boyfriend. Amin has a story from his past to tell. And until he does, there is little hope for a healthy future.

Flee is a knockout, an animated documentary that provides just enough visual distance from the details to elicit genuine empathy while protecting the real people involved—even the name “Amin” is a pseudonym. It won the Grand Jury Prize in the World Cinema Documentary category at January’s Sundance Film Festival. Now it comes to the Front Range, thanks to the Denver Film Festival.

Flee is one of the 230-plus features and shorts, narratives and documentaries, music videos, and series set to screen in-person and virtually November 3-14 at the 44th Denver Film Festival. The festivities kick off Wednesday, November 3, with a red carpet presentation of Spencer at Ellie Caulkins Opera House in downtown Denver. Spencer, the latest from Chilean filmmaker Pablo Larraín, stars Kristen Stewart as Diana Frances Spencer, known to the world as Diana, Princess of Wales. If you’re looking for the big movie of the season, look no further.

In addition to Spencer, DFF will host four red carpet screenings at Ellie Caulkins: C’mon C’mon from director Mike Mills and actor Joaquin Phoenix; Torn from documentarian Max Lowe about the death of his father, climber Alex Lowe; King Richard, starring Will Smith as Richard Williams, father of Venus and Serena Williams (among others); and Jockey, from director Clint Bentley and actor Clifton Collins Jr.

Go ahead and skip King Richard, but don’t miss Jockey on the big screen. It’s a beautiful piece of filmmaking that tackles obsoletion in sports—specifically horse racing—in a manner that is both poetic and dramatic. Collins gives one of the best performances of his career, fitting considering DFF will bestow him with the 2021 John Cassavetes Award.

Other must-sees include The Pink Cloud, a Brazilian sci-fi flick written in 2016 and filmed in 2019 that no longer feels sci-fi in 2021; Petit Maman, a short and sweet French fairy tale from Céline Sciamma that is as accessible as it is mysterious; and Procession, a documentary following a group of sexual assault survivors using theatrical reenactment to confront their trauma.

Closer to home, DFF’s Colorado Spotlight features two collections of short subjects and nine features, including the documentary Anonymous Sister from former CU-Boulder student and Emmy-winner Jamie Boyle and The Sleeping Negro from CU-Boulder’s newest member to the Cinema Studies faculty, Skinner Myers.

“What I’m trying to do is theorize a way to create a brand new Black cinema,” Skinner Myers says. “Like a new Black cinematic language that does not adhere to anything that’s Eurocentric or Hollywood.”

And Myers’ feature film, The Sleeping Negro, is Exhibit A. You’ll find touches of the L.A. Rebellion, Third World Cinema, and Slow Cinema—particularly, as the header image shows, Andrei Tarkovsky—but they are jumping off points; acknowledgment of the voices that came before, and a chance to begin again.

“There’s a few African filmmakers who attempted to make their own cinematic language for their people and their culture,” Myers continues, citing Djibril Diop Mambéty and Haile Gerima, “but, what happened was, they’d make a couple of films, and then they get shut out from any means of production or ways to make money or to make films. So, I’m trying to reignite that path and start where they left off—from a theoretical aspect. So that, from a film philosophy perspective, people who come way after me maybe will have a groundwork on how to build upon this theory.”

Myers is having a heck of a year. This summer, the 41-year-old actor, filmmaker, novelist, photographer, and professor relocated to the Centennial State and joined CU-Boulder’s Cinema Studies & Moving Image Arts department. Back in January, The Sleeping Negro debuted at the Slamdance Film Festival and caught the attention of programmers around the world. It was picked up for distribution, played First Person Cinema in October, and before The Sleeping Negro hits theaters in December, it’ll screen at the Denver Film Festival on November 6 and 7 at the newly built AMC 9+CO 10.

The Sleeping Negro is one of nine features playing DFF’s Colorado Spotlight sidebar. Some of the entries are from local artists. Some, like Jamie Boyle’s Anonymous Sister (Nov. 12 and 13), tackle local issues. Originally from Golden, Boyle’s doc is a portrait of two family members falling into opioid use disorder and coming out the other side.

More from Boyle and Anonymous Sister in next week’s paper, but grab your tickets now at denverfilm.org/denverfilmfestival/dff44/ because they’re going fast. And that’s where you’ll find the other 230-plus features and shorts, narratives and documentaries, music videos and virtual reality experiences screening now until Nov. 14. Some are big titles with big names attached to them; others are small gems that remind you of the power of leaving your home and seeing something on the big screen. 

Take Memoria (Nov. 6) from Thai filmmaker Apichatpong Weerasethakul: Tilda Swinton stars as a wandering Scottish woman encountering strangers on her way to clarity. Why is it a must-see? Because Neon, Memoria’s distributor, has announced that Memoria will only play theaters—never home video or streaming. Talk about staking your claim on the theatrical experience.

Ballad of a White Cow (Nov. 7 and 14), from Iranian directors Behtash Sanaeeha and Maryam Moghadam, is another best seen in a theater because this is a story you’ll want to be held by. In a way, Ballad is similar to The Sleeping Negro as it’s a movie based in theory, executed in dramatics. Here, the story revolves around Mina (Moghadam), a woman whose husband is sentenced to death. Justice is swift, too swift. A year later, another man admits to the crime Mina’s husband died for, and the police department must pay Mina blood money for their error. Money Mina’s father-in-law wants, so he sues Mina for custody of her daughter. If it weren’t for Reza (Alireza Sani Far), Mina wouldn’t have anyone to talk to. But Reza is hiding something from Mina, something that could shatter everything.

Ballad of a White Cow’s power is in its structure. It doesn’t unfold like a typical Hollywood story, but it still hits like an iron fist. But only if you hang with it, and nothing helps you hang with a movie like seeing it in a theater free of distractions.

“I don’t think we see the human at the center of it,” Jamie Boyle says, “what their life looks like now, how they fell into it, how they came out of it. I think that’s really been largely missing.”

Boyle is telling me about Anonymous Sister, her documentary about her sister and her mother’s opioid use disorder, but our conversation drifts to the implications and ramifications of documentary filmmaking—particularly when it comes to painting a complete portrait of the subject.

“You never really know what the camera is going to do, what its presence is going to do,” Boyle continues. “Some standards have been implemented since—in the doc community—where people are trying to require therapy after some of these lengthy interviews . . .  I’m a big advocate for that, and I wish I would have engaged in that more, and I wish I would have budgeted for it and demanded it because we ask a lot of doc subjects. And when it’s your family member, you see the repercussions.”

Like many first-person documentaries, Anonymous Sister draws its strength from emotional truth, from the human face. To watch Anonymous Sister is to live with the Boyle family, understand their struggles, and relive their trials and tribulations. It’s an excellent piece of work, one you don’t want to miss.

And you’ll have two chances this weekend, Nov. 12 and 13, as the 44th Denver Film Festival comes to a close.

You’ll also have two chances to catch Brandon Kramer’s doc The First Step (Nov. 13 and 14), with bestselling author and political commentator Van Jones as the human at the center. Jones is trying to get a criminal justice reform bill passed. And to do it, he aligns himself with Jared Kushner, son-in-law to then-President Donald Trump.

Alliances come at great costs these days, and even the mention of Trump causes Jones’ closest supporters to run for cover. The country is deeply divided along partisan lines, and it’s not what is done but who does it that counts. As one conversation in a documentary loaded with stalemate conversations asks: Are we our voting record? Or is our voting record just part of who we are?

Jones takes it from all sides. But the title, The First Step, isn’t just an allusion to the program Jones wants to see enacted; it’s a suggestion, an approach to healing hurt communities. To let them see you in pain and to share it with others. Many want an all-or-nothing approach, but Jones stumps for steps. They may not be perfect, and the work won’t be done tomorrow, but you’ve got to start somewhere.

But trying to find that somewhere can be equally frustrating, as Sarah Terry’s doc, A Decent Home (Nov. 11), can attest. The issue here: The vanishing affordability of affordable housing, specifically when it comes to mobile home parks.

According to A Decent Home, there are 46,500 mobile home parks across America, with a median household income of $30,000 per year. Or, “The sweet spot of the industry,” as Frank Rolfe says.

Rolfe is the co-owner of the sixth-largest mobile home parks business in the U.S. and the co-owner of Mobile Home University, a business class crash course in how to squeeze money out of mobile home park renters. As Rolfe tells his students, renters lack the leverage to argue or move. So if you raise the rent, they either have to pay up or vacate, at which point their trailer becomes abandoned property, and the owner of the mobile home park takes possession and rents it out to the next resident.

Rolfe’s practices are far from unique. And though A Decent Home focuses primarily on the Denver Meadows Mobile Home Park in Aurora, Terry travels around the country to find similar stories in Iowa, Nevada, and New Hampshire. Even California’s Silicon Valley, where a mobile home park butts up against the ever-expanding Google campus. 

Similar to Michael Moore’s Roger and Me, Terry juxtaposes the faces of those left out with those forcing the leaving, specifically Rolfe and Denver Meadows owner Shawn Lustigman. One has no qualms with Terry’s camera, the other does. There is always a human at the center, whether they want to be there or not.

The above articles first appeared in the pages of Boulder Weekly Vol. 29, No. 10, “The 44th Denver Film Festival returns with in-person and at home offerings“; Vol.. 29, No. 13, “Beyond Eurocentric and Hollywood cinema“; and Vol. 29, No. 14, “‘The human at the center of it.’“