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It’s early April, the weather is mostly overcast and a bit dreary, so that means it’s time to watch a bunch of documentaries inside at the Full Frame Documentary Film Festival, going on right now in downtown Durham, N.C. Every year (well, except during the pandemic) since 2009, I’ve been attending and babbling about the great event that offers four days of non-fiction infotainment so I’m pleased to be back to take in a handful of the 49 docs from 30 countries that are on the schedule from April 3-6 for the 27th Annual year for the festival.
I’ve just attended the first two days of Full Frame 2025, and am ready to report on what I’ve seen so let’s get right to it.
MISTRESS DISPELLER (Dir. Elizabeth Lo, 2024)
Sometimes the best documentary experience is when it explores a subject that you didn’t even know existed, and the first film I saw at the fest really hit that spot as it was about Chinese professionals who are hired to break up affairs and save marriages. Here we meet a married couple living in Luoyang identified as Mr. and Mrs. Li, and witness the wife suspecting her husband is being unfaithful. Mrs. Li enlists mistress dispeller Wang Zhenxi to go undercover to befriend her spouse, and his lover to discourage their infidelity.
PRIME MINISTER (Dirs. Lindsay Utz, Michelle Walshe, 2025)
The Opening Night Film at the fest was a this well chosen portrait of Jacinda Ardern, who was the 40th prime minister of New Zealand and leader of the Labour Party from 2017 to 2023. The story of Ardern, who is the world’s second elected head of government to give birth while in office, is told through videos shot by her husband, Clarke Gayford, news footage, and previously classified audio diaries all deftly edited into a very entertaining narrative.
The former Labour Party leader’s struggles with such severe issues as the pandemic, and shootings at Christchurch mosques are handled with care and finesse by the filmmakers, who also give us a lot of examples of Ardern’s humor and warmth, especially towards her newly born daughter, Neve. The crowd pleasing doc tells what it is a very necessary story for our current times, that is one of a progressive leader that stuck to her guns, and successfully mixed compassion into her politics. I knew next to nothing about the woman before, and now am a fan. Nice what docs can do.
MR. NOBODY AGAINST PUTIN (Dirs. David Borenstein, Pavel Ilyich Talankin, 2025)
Pavel Ilyich Talankin is a teacher and school videographer in the small industrial town of Karabash in Russia, which he tells us in his voice-over narration is the “most toxic city in the world.” After the invasion of Ukraine in February of 2022, Talankin secretly documented the propaganda his school is spreading through scripts the educators have to go by for their students who are, as Pavel puts it, are being groomed to be future dead soldiers.
As Talankin decries the militarization of his former place of learning, we see his students getting drafted into war, and how demeaning the indoctrination into forced patriotism can be on a daily basis. The doc is shot and presented in a casual manner that makes us feel like we’re in the hallways and classrooms with these people, which sometimes can be unsettling, especially when it comes to one stern Putin-supporting teacher, who considers.
BLUE ROAD: THE EDNA O’BRIEN STORY
(Dir. Sinéad O’Shea, 2024)
Having worked in bookstores, I was aware of the Irish novelist, Edna O’Brien, but had no knowledge of her work. This superb biodoc lays out her controversial career which began with her 1960 debut, The Country Girls, which angered her less successful writer husband, Ernest Gébler, who made her sign her royalty checks over to him. After their divorce in 1964, O’Brien, flourished through her sexually frank writing in dozens of novels, and short stories, and held lavish parties attended by the likes of Sean Connery, Richard Burton, and Michael Caine.
Stay tuned for coverage of days three and four of Full Frame.
More later…
