AFI Docs 2016
Posted on June 20, 2016 at 3:42 pm
AFI Docs is the best documentary festival in the US, and the schedule for 2016 is filled with outstanding selections. I am most excited for the films about television icon Norman Lear, and the always-fascinating Werner Herzog’s new film about the internet, “Lo and Behold: Reveries of the Connected World,” followed by a conversation between Herzog and filmmaker Ramin Bahrani (“99 Homes”). “Gleason” is the story of former football player Steve Gleason, who discovered he had ALS as he was about to become a father. “Life, Animated” is the story of a wonderfully generous and devoted family, and the son with autism who taught himself to communicate and understand through Disney animated films, and “The Lovers and the Despot,” the crazy story of the kidnapping of South Korea’s greatest movie star and movie director (who were formerly married to each other) by North Korean dictator Kim Jong-il, who forced them to make movies for him.
Operation Iraqi Freedom was filmed by three soldiers on the front lines in 2006.
This documentary tells the story of the deployment of a platoon of U.S. soldiers in Afghanistan’s Korengal Valley. The movie focuses on a remote 15-man outpost, “Restrepo,” named after a platoon medic who was killed in action.
This film shows us the lives of soldiers from the 2/3 Field Artillery in a bombed-out former pleasure palace once belonging to Uday Hussein.
The US Army’s 23rd Engineer Company is are charged with clearing routes in southern Afghanistan and disarming the military’s number one threat: IEDs.
Military dog teams are on the front lines of war in Iraq and Afghanistan. “Always Faithful” follows five young Marines and their four-legged partners.
Like a real-life update on the kinds of facilities portrayed in “MASH,” this film looks at life and death at the 86th Combat Support Hospital, the U.S. Army’s premier medical facility in Iraq.