4 Best Releases From Chicken & Egg Pictures Studio

Nausheen Dadabhoy explores a wide array of Muslim-American experiences in this overstuffed, but impactful documentary. (This review is part of our coverage of the 2022 Tribeca Film Festival.) The documentary An Act of Worship opens with a group of Muslim women gathered in a small room. The space may be cramped, but this environment still seems freeing, since it’s being used for a meeting where everywhere can be open about their lives. Here, they can speak freely on the ways in which Islamophobia impacts their lives. Instructions come for the women to write down one specific way intolerance has adversely impacted their lives in America. Continue Reading →

Across the rugged state of Uttar Pradesh in Northern India, a team of women journalists is bustling. Khabar Lahariya (‘Waves of News’), India’s only women-run newspaper, takes its responsibility to the community very seriously. These dynamic women are out amongst the people, documenting their stories, sharing them, and seeking answers on their behalf, often at great personal risk. Continue Reading →

From depictions of Black beauty to the ethics of whistleblowing, two female-focused docs out of SXSW struggle to hammer home a central message.  (This dispatch is part of our coverage of the 2021 SXSW Film Festival.) Subjects of Desire, from director Jennifer Holmes, looks at the way Black beauty has changed over the last century. Holmes examines the boxes that Black women have been forced into through the lens of the Miss Black America beauty pageant. Interviewing a range of contestants, coupled with small group sessions of Black women of varying ages, Holmes’ film forces you to reckon with the sexualization of this unrespected and often disregarded group of people.  Continue Reading →

Anabel Rodríguez Ríos's documentary about tension in the small village of Congo Mirador is both singular and specific. (This review is part of our coverage of the 2020 Sundance Film Festival.) As the night sky shines a modicum of light over the Venezuelan village of Congo Mirador, the heat lighting begins. It’s a regular phenomenon too: a constant cycle of near darkness blinded by strobing curlicues that weave in and out of the clouds. Thus comes our first decent sight of the location. Mirador, located in the country’s northwest Zulian Region, bleeds from Colombia on its west to the Caribbean Sea on its northeast. The community, however, stands above Lake Maracaibo, which, ranks as one of the planet's oldest lakes at anywhere from 20 to 36 million years. It’s just recently that citizens have made it work economically and environmentally, but the once-thriving locale has begun to sink. At least, not according to Mrs. Tamara, whose allegiance to the Venezuelan government precludes any real worry about the area’s wellbeing. She sports posters Hugo Chávez on her wall; she collects dolls of the former president and displays them with pride. Continue Reading →