Hamptons Doc Fest, now in its 17th year, will show 32 films over seven days beginning next Thursday, with screenings at both the Sag Harbor Cinema and Bay Street Theater.
"Join us for a week of looking back at a film classic like Michael Moore's 'Roger & Me' and moving forward with a dynamic lineup of just-out documentary films," said Jacqui Lofaro, the festival's founder and executive director. "We are thrilled not only to showcase the extraordinary work of a diverse group of talented documentary filmmakers but also to recognize the people and organizations that make it all possible."
As previously announced, Mr. Moore will receive the festival's Pennebaker Career Achievement Award at a 6:30 p.m. reception at Bay Street Theater on Dec. 7. His award-winning first feature, "Roger & Me," will be shown after the presentation.
The opening night film will be "Merchant Ivory," Stephen Soucy's 2023 documentary about the illustrious team of Ismail Merchant, producer, and James Ivory, director, whose 44 films, made between 1961 and Merchant's death in 2005, earned 30 Academy Award nominations and six wins. It will be shown next Thursday evening at 8 at the Sag Harbor Cinema.
The closing night film, set for Dec. 11 at Bay Street, is "The Bones," a documentary by Jeremy Xido that follows paleontologists from the Gobi Desert in Mongolia to the Sahara in Morocco, racing to unearth dinosaur fossils before they disappear into the hands of fossil collectors, museums, and auction houses.
The festival has added a new honor this year, the Breakthrough Director Award. It will be presented to Angela Patton and Natalie Rae for their film "Daughters," which follows four young girls as they prepare for a Daddy-Daughter Dance with their fathers, who are incarcerated in Washington, D.C. The film won two awards at this year's Sundance Film Festival.
Maisie Crow and Abbie Perrault will receive this year's Human Rights Award for their film "Zurawski vs. Texas," which follows the court case filed by Amanda Zurawski and four other women against Texas and the state's attorney general in opposition to that state's abortion ban.
"Plastic People: The Hidden Crisis of Microplastics," a film by Ben Addelman, the director of four award-winning documentaries, and Ziya Tong, a science journalist, has won the festival's Environmental Award. The film is a groundbreaking investigation into the growing threat of microplastics to human health.
The festival's Impact Award will go to the Ford Foundation's JustFilms, which has funded social-impact films for 75 years. Two are included in this year's festival: "Union," which covers the efforts of Amazon employees to unionize their Staten Island warehouse, and "The Battle for Laikipia," whose focus is on the conflict in Laikipia, Kenya, a wildlife conservation haven, between Indigenous people and white landowners.
"Musica!", which follows four Cuban musicians who hope through music to find success and fulfillment, whether in Cuba or abroad, has won this year's Art and Inspiration Award. The film's directors, Rob Epstein and Jeffrey Friedman, have won Best Documentary Oscars for their films "Common Threads: Stories From the Quilt" and "The Times of Harvey Milk."
Jule Campbell, the founding editor of the Sports Illustrated Swimsuit issue, is the subject of "Beyond the Gaze: Jule Campbell's Swimsuit Issue." Directed by Jill Campbell, the subject's daughter-in-law, the film chronicles the 32-year reign of Jule Campbell, who helped transform a struggling magazine into a media empire. It also explores the changing view of beauty over the decades, from objectification to body positivity.
A year after the Supreme Court ended affirmative action, Antonio James's "Black Table," which premiered at this year's Tribeca Film Festival, focuses on the experiences of Black undergraduates at Yale during the 1990s, when large classes of Black students were being admitted. They pushed together tables in the dining hall to create the Black Table, which became a refuge as they navigated the Ivy League bastion.
In "A New Kind of Wilderness," which won the Grand Jury Prize this year at Sundance, Silje Evensmo Jacobsen, the director, illuminates the life of the Payne family as they seek a free new existence on a small farm in the Norwegian forest. Their idyllic life is upended when tragedy strikes and forces the family to forge a new path into modern society.
Family life figures in a very different way in "Mistress Dispeller," Elizabeth Lo's exploration of a new industry in China devoted to helping couples stay married in the face of infidelity. Determined to save her marriage, Mrs. Li hires a professional "mistress dispeller" to go undercover and break up her husband's affair with another woman.
Edna O'Brien, the Irish novelist who died in July at 93, made her debut in 1960 with a sexually charged novel, "The Country Girls," copies of which were burned and banned in that religious country. "Blue Road: The Edna O'Brien Story," directed by Sinead O'Shea, draws upon a wealth of material, including unpublished diaries, television appearances, and new interviews conducted when O'Brien was in her 90s.
Raoul Peck's "Ernest Cole: Lost and Found" tells the story of the Black South African photographer whose photographs and 1967 book "House of Bondage" exposed his country's apartheid system to the world and led to his lifelong exile. Cole died in 1990, and his work was only rediscovered in 2017, when more than 60,000 negatives turned up in a Swedish bank vault. The book was republished five years later. Mr. Peck's "I Am Not Your Negro," about the life of James Baldwin, was nominated for an Oscar in 2017.
Returning to the doc fest this year is "Shorts and Breakfast Bites," which pairs a program of short documentaries with coffee or tea and breakfast treats -- bagels, muffins, fruit. The two programs will start with breakfast at 9:30 on Dec. 7 and Dec. 8; screenings will begin at 10.
In all, the festival will include 24 features and eight shorts. Many of the filmmakers will participate in question-and-answer sessions after their films are shown.
Tickets are $17, $30 for the opening night and the Impact Award film, and $65 for the Pennebaker Award evening. A festival pass, which includes admission to all general films, receptions, opening night, the Impact Award screening of "Union," and the Pennebaker evening, is $350. The festival's website is the place to go for tickets and the complete schedule.
