(during all of this week, Screen Comment's Eric Althoff gives readers his take on the choicest films from the 2020 crop of AFI Docs, the world's premier documentary film festival which took place online this year due to the coronavirus)

A more timely documentary there might not be the rest of this year, as director Daniel Lombroso trails some prominent figures of the alt-right as they travel the world, make speeches

As Hollywood-backed horror films get dumber and more predictable, independent and foreign horror filmmakers continue to give genre fans unique and finely crafted cinematic experiences.

Harold Holscher’s debut feature film was well received at the 2019 Fantasia film festival and with good reason. “The Soul Collector” (originally titled “8”) is a smart and well-made horror tale that is quite effective and light years ahead of most of today’s

These are the words spoken by a priest in “For They Know Not What They Do,” a powerful documentary that speaks to a very real and dangerous problem happening in this country, the religious right’s pushback against equality and acceptance of the LGTBQ community.

The film examines four different families and the ways in which they handle the coming out

“A fictional biography” is a phrase that usually doesn’t work when it comes to films. Of course, when telling the story of a real person or event, some dramatic license is necessary and sometimes warranted. The new film, “Shirley,” tells the story of horror writer Shirley Jackson that features events that never took place. And that is just fine. Jackson is best known for her 1960 horror novel

With the current style of Hollywood thrillers that tend more toward flashy camerawork and preposterous chase scenes and situations, one feels appreciative when a film comes along that creates the proper atmosphere to fit its subject matter. Director George Popov’s latest UK-set film is a mood piece with a supernatural motif that is one of the more aesthetically-pleasing thrillers I’ve seen in quite a while.

It is rare in today’s filmmaking world that inspiring films about youth have something profound to say. Most films that claim to speak to today’s kids tend to condescend to their audience and crowd their screenplays with clichés, ofttimes rendering their content superficial and phony.

Fernando Grostein Andrade’s “Abe” is the special film that takes care to get to the heart of its subject.

The culture of money, positions of power and white privilege has never been more prominent. With a little power (be it in the corporate world, Hollywood, or any place where the suits rule) one can twist and bend the rules for their own personal gain. Many times, this is done with great hypocrisy, as those in power will judge and advise others while secretly committing acts of fraud, theft, and other illegal and amoral crimes.

Every mobster’s life is filled with the ghosts of the past and the nightmares of the dead that come back to haunt them. It is a dangerous life ruled by guns and muscle and stained in blood. Men like Al Capone were monsters and far from the sometimes-glamorous portrayals that we have seen countless times before. Gangsters are murderers who, we can only imagine, are ultimately haunted by their deeds when their

Elegiac and elusive from start to finish, Brian Levin's directorial debut "Union Bridge" certainly scores points for drumming up a foreboding atmosphere. Cinematographer Sebastian Slayter vividly captures the film's frosty, autumnal Western Maryland setting, with long, wide, repeating shots of lush hillsides, barren trees, rusty factories and shimmering moons. Each establishing shot sequence tells us a smidgen more

2020 America is not the time or the place for the intellectual. We are living in a time that is aggressively pushing back against science and rational thinking. Extremely important environmental issues are being sidelined and/or dismissed by too many people in positions of power.

But there was a time, a time when idealists would come together to collectively find ways