Fantastic Fest isn’t thought of as a showcase for documentaries, so it’s exciting to see a doc pick up two big awards at the event. Last night, Jodorowsky’s Dune was named the jury’s pick for Best Documentary, impressive enough given that Errol Morris’s The Unknown Known was also there, and then also the audience’s pick for Best Film. Of the whole festival.
Perhaps a little of the love was meant for the never-produced movie that the doc is about? The audience fell in love not just with Frank Pavich’s Jodorowsky’s Dune but also Jodorowsky’s Dune, which is the latest unfinished film to get one of these docs about projects that slipped away (see Lost in La Mancha and Persistence of Vision and others on the way). I can’t speak to the doc itself, but it’s increasingly one of my most anticipated to see in 2014, when Sony Pictures Classics will release it theatrically.
Also picking up an award last night was Shaul Schwarz, who won the Best Director award in the documentary category for Narco Cultura.
Other docs at Fantastic Fest this year include Mirage Men and the David Cronenberg-narrated Tales From the Organ Trade. Short film winner Beasts in the Real World is also described as being partly documentary in a hybrid that also includes animation and fantasy.
Narrative features from documentary filmmakers included new works by Ari Folman (of Waltz with Bashir), Jeong Byeong Gil (of Action Boys), Mark Hartley (of Machete Maidens Unleashed and Not Quite Hollywood) and Denis Cote (of Bestiare).
