Steve James: Last News

Addie Morfoot Contributor The Telluride Film Festival’s emphasis on documentary has not wavered in recent years. But the prominence of nonfiction fare at the 49th edition has arguably made this year’s Telluride the autumn Sundance, where some of the biggest buzz is for docs. The lineup, kept under wraps until the eve of the fest’s opening on Sept. 2, includes 16 docs from novice and veteran documentarians, including Steve James (“A Compassionate Spy”), Matthew Heineman (“Retrograde”), Chris Smith (“Sr.”) Ondi Timoner (“Last Flight Home”) and Ryan White (“Good Night Oppy”). (Additional “secret” screenings have yet to be announced.) The rising level of documentaries at the Colorado fest is largely due to the influence of Telluride executive director Julie Huntsinger.

Guy Lodge Film Critic Just before director Christopher Nolan’s upcoming “Oppenheimer” plants a fixed image of Ted Hall in the popular imagination, along comes Steve James’s sensitive, studious documentary “A Compassionate Spy” to preemptively set any records straight. Unpacking the life and work of the prodigious teenage Manhattan Project physicist who passed key information about the endeavor to the Soviet Union — cuing an adulthood dogged by suspicion and secrecy — the film demonstrates its director’s characteristic nose for strong material and knack for gripping, straightforward storytelling. If the filmmaking is more televisual than in James’s best work, with its flourishes limited to some unnecessary dramatized passages, that should be no impediment to “A Compassionate Spy” commanding a sizable audience on multiple platforms. 

As a child growing up in the United States, you’re taught that betraying the country is a terrible act, punishable by death. Every morning, in most public schools, you’re forced to recite the Pledge of Allegiance, which overtly puts your patriotism at the forefront of the day’s events.

Given the fragile state of world peace at the moment, it seems like a good time for the latest film from Hoop Dreams director Steve James, a piece of little-known history from the cold war that could potentially have devastating consequences today. Sadly, James’ Venice Film Festival out of competition title A Compassionate Spy just doesn’t deliver the drama and tension you might expect from the high-stakes story of a mild-mannered American scientist who passed sensitive nuclear secrets to the Russians out of a mixture of idealism and naivety.

Manori Ravindran International Editor High-profile espionage cases in the post-war period often invoke the grisly fate of the Rosenbergs, the first U.S. citizens to be convicted and executed by electric chair for sharing atomic secrets with the Soviet Union in peace time. But in the new documentary “A Compassionate Spy,” filmmaker Steve James tells the incredible story of Manhattan Project scientist Ted Hall, who shared classified nuclear secrets with Russia — and got away with it. The Participant and Kartemquin Films-produced documentary, which has its world premiere in Venice on Sept. 2, is one of a number of films at this year’s festival that tackle the topic of nuclear disaster: Projects from Noah Baumbach’s feature adaptation of Don DeLillo’s “White Noise” through to Oliver Stone’s on-the-nose documentary “Nuclear” all contemplate some aspect of our nuclear past and future.

Addie Morfoot Contributor Laura Poitras’ “All the Beauty and the Bloodshed,” Steve James’ “A Compassionate Spy” and Evgeny Afineevsky’s “Freedom on Fire: Ukraine’s Fight for Freedom” are among 11 documentaries making their world premieres at the Venice Film Festival this year, with Poitras’ competition title vying for a Golden Lion — a rare feat for a doc at a major international film festival. The growing number of high-profile non-fiction films in and out of competition at Venice suggests that major European film festivals have finally accepted documentaries as viable, cinematic art.While docs at the Toronto International Film Festival and major U.S. fests, including Sundance, Telluride and South by Southwest, have long been the belles of the ball, the most prominent international festivals, including Venice, Cannes and Berlin, have been slow to embrace non-fiction content, especially in competition.  

Addie Morfoot ContributorThe 18th edition of the Camden Intl. Film Festival, kicking off Sept. 15, will feature a handful of award-contending documentaries fresh off showings at Telluride and the Toronto film festivals.

Kanye West has become possibly the world’s most famous and revered rap star, dominating headlines with his music and his personal life. But there was a time – hard as it is to imagine – when he was pegged as “just” a great record producer, and not a performer in his own right.

Director Steve James has been making films for more than 30 years now, earning two Oscar nominations along the way: Best Editing for his landmark 1994 documentary Hoop Dreams, and Best Documentary Feature for the 2016 film Abacus: Small Enough to Jail.