Films Featuring Jeff Bridges, Jamie Lee Curtis, Liam Neeson & More Set for 2021 DOC LA

2021 DOC LA will open with the LA premiere of a humorous Christoph Waltz-narrated true story Little Berlin by Kate McMullen, about a German bull separated from his thirty six cows by the Iron Curtain, and Allegra Pacheco's tragicomic exploration of Tokyo's fascinating work culture, Salaryman, scored by James Iha of Smashing Pumpkins.

The Hunger by Ruan Magan, narrated by Liam Neeson, about the great Irish famine of the 1840s, will have its LA premiere at DOC LA along with Russia From Above, narrated by John Malkovich, and directed by Freddie Röckenhaus and Petra Höfer who filmed the largest country on earth and its spectacular locations thanks to film permits granted for the very first time in cinematic history.

DOC LA will also host the North American premiere of Roy T. Anderson's African Redemption, narrated by Keith David, about the life and legacy of Marcus Garvey, the LA premiere of the environmental film The Beast of Our Time, Maaike Middleton's fifty-years-in-the-making inquiry into the relationship between climate change and grizzly bears, narrated by Jeff Bridges, as well as Josh and Rebecca Tickell's The Revolution Generation, starring Michelle Rodriguez, a manifesto for today's youth on the societal forces that have shaped and held back their generation, and David Henry Gerson's The Story Won't Die, about a Syrian rapper, tortured by Bashar Al-Assad for his lyrics, who uses his music to survive one of the deadliest wars of our century.

The international premiere of Anton: Circling Home, by Morgan Schmidt-Feng, Katy Swailes and Dennis Mohr, about the 80 year old artist and pigeon-keeper Anton van Dalen, will be DOC LA's centerpiece of Friday, and the world premiere of Unraveling by Jeff Swimmer and Stacey Ravel Abarbanel, about Pancho Villa's mysterious 1916 raid of the border town of Columbus, New Mexico, will close the festival on Sunday.

Other standouts at this year's DOC LA include Tony Driver, by Ascanio Petrini, short films John's Ultimate Illusion, featuring Jamie Lee Curtis, an inspiring story about her friend John Kippen, Simon Gabioud's Who is Afraid of the Black Man, featuring rare footage and interviews with James Baldwin in Switzerland, Mariah: A Boxer's Dream by Nina Meredith, Ipseity by Nicholas Stachurski, Aguilas/Eagles by Kristy Guevara-Flanagan & Maite Zubiaurre, Near Miss by Olivia Rosenbloom, as well as the animated films The Conversation by Kurt Sensenbrenner, The Chemical Factory by Drew Leung, Sombras by Marc Sanchez, and the fiction StorytelLA section featuring the LA premieres of Everything in the End by Mylissa Fitzsimmons, Hello Mother by Natalie Shirinian, Strange Hearts by Fran Olmedo Longeri, Suicide: Mondo Boys by Christine Kilmer and Mondo Boys, and Dark Passage by Roshni "Rush" Bhatia.

DOC LA, Los Angeles Documentary Film Festival, presented by the Parajanov-Vartanov Institute, runs 20-24 October 2021 in Hollywood. www.docla.org

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