SXSW’s eclectic festival has gone virtual for this year and it could be amongst the last all-digital versions of the major film festivals as a promising global vaccine rollout suggests a healthy return to physical editions after the summer. The programmers at SXSW 2021 have wonderfully fulfilled their remit of showcasing high-quality, unique and innovative work from across the globe across all mediums and not just stories about the coronavirus era, though there are several of those on the bill. For me, the most intriguing selections have been the documentary features, beginning with the story of a Harmony Korine-inspired political candidate, the sharp rise and sharp fall of a real estate startup, and the saga of a man who was kidnapped at birth. But do they live up to their intriguing premises? Here’s my first report.
Kid Candidate (Jasmine Stodel)
Hayden Pedigo may be Harmony Korine’s biggest fan. In a grand attempt to contact the eccentric auteur in 2019, Pedigo put up billboards around his hometown Amarillo, asking Korine to come and visit the Texan city, stating that the bizarre characters and interesting landscape would be perfect for something in the vein of The Beach Bum or Gummo. Prior to that, he created his own Korine-inspired videos, imbued with the same general weirdness and lo-fi aesthetics of the filmmaker’s 90’s output, as part of a campaign to run for City Council in his hometown.
To his luck, his eccentric videos caught on and established a viable position for him to run for City Council. Luck is what happens when hard work meets preparation, though, and the young man’s acute knowledge of his city’s distribution of finances backs up his arguments on why the people deserve better than the politicians funded by the Amarillo Matters PAC, a dominating force who apparently only has select interests at heart.
As a guy in his early twenties, Pedigo sticks out as a sore thumb in the council meetings. Jasmine Stodel’s interest in exploring his appeal takes her camera to lawmakers, media figures, shop owners and other key voices who express the frustrations and realities in the town and we understand how Pedigo’s mission aligns with the community values. His wife L’Hannah’s one piece of advice for him is “Don’t be an asshole” and he sticks out in this asshole-filled world for being a politcian who’s actually in touch with the working class.
In addition to the filmmaker’s panoramic series of interviews, she sits down with her subject’s opposition Ginger Nelson, the heavily-funded mayor of Amarillo. Ms. Nelson’s interview is interesting if not sympathetic, especially when we get to know other candidates who target her for misusing funds. Pedigo, meanwhile, shows unparalleled compassion when he visits the South Sudanese community and begins by saying he has nothing to say but rather everything to listen to – a Sudanese leader testifies that this level of empathy is refreshing.
Whilst it could afford to be as visually creative as its subject, this film is a tidy summation of an ambitious young man wanting to change his town for the better. In just 68 minutes, Kid Candidate is an effective microcosm of small-town American politics. Though it’s just about one election race, it speaks to a wider issue affecting the US on a political level – the power of the dollar.
Kid Candidate is currently seeking US distribution.
WeWork: Or the Making and Breaking of a $47 Billion Unicorn (Jed Rothstein)
WeWork is a fascinating conundrum of a documentary. It’s as thorough and straightforward as a documentary can get in regards to storytelling, yet its subject remains an unsolvable mystery by the end.
Directed by Oscar-nominated filmmaker Jed Rothstein (Killing in the Name), this film centres on entrepreneur Adam Neumann who co-founded the real estate company WeWork. His ambitions overreached his grasp. Looking like the love child of Antonio Banderas and Billy Crudup – and carrying the same uncertain aura of the latter’s Morning Show character – the Israeli-American businessman is almost abstruse to the point of boring when he describes the mission of his company.
New office space, real estate, what is it exactly he envisioned for WeWork? He sells it as “physical social media” and of the dozens and dozens of interviewees for this documentary, very few seem to understand Neumann’s endgame, especially when watching the company rapidly grow in valuation – it went from 16 million to 16 billion in just a few years.
The leader’s confounding nature is evident in the recollection of Derek Thompson, a staff writer at The Atlantic who once interviewed Neumann and couldn’t press harder on what the company was because it was difficult to understand the human at the centre. Speaking about the friends he knew who worked at WeWork, Thompson suspects many harboured the same doubts and were simply charmed by his charisma. If you think it sounds like a cult, former employees confirm you weren’t the first to suspect it could be. It’s honestly a miracle that none of them are even slightly deluded or sad in their reflections. That could be attributed to one of two things: either the director wasn’t interested in speaking with those who still believe in Neumann or no one ever truly bought his bullshit anyway.
It was a culture of work hard, play hard. The sheer visibility of this fast-rising star means there’s plenty of archive for Rothstein to work with. We see the gorgeous office spaces, the huge parties and the press junkets with the entrepreneur and his famous friend Ashton Kutcher. Though the focus was on collaboration, the filmmaker recognises that Neumann always wanted to be the centre of attention. Rothstein is sympathetic to the former WeWork staff, understanding that their only guilt is simply wanting the company to succeed but were undercut by the self-centred nature of their boss.
However, there’s not much drama to unveil besides the infamous botched IPO launch that caused the company’s valuation to dwindle after Japanese company Softbank invested $4 billion. Despite hints, there’s insufficient testimony of something truly toxic at its core. It feels a step away from being another Fyre saga or revealing Neumann as a Jordan Belfort-esque figure but the path abruptly ends. Ultimately, though, it’s a comprehensive and concise film, if not particularly dramatic, and perhaps that’s all it needs to be. We may never understand what WeWork was really supposed to be but this documentary is a pretty good attempt at helping us get there, exposing the selfishness of its leader.
WeWork: Or the Making and Breaking of a $47 Billion Unicorn will be released in the US by Hulu on April 2nd, 2021.
The Lost Sons (Ursula Macfarlane)
It’s going to be easy to sell The Lost Sons as a twisty biological mystery, appealing to the same emotions as Three Identical Strangers, the previous documentary feature from the same production company RAW TV. However, it would be more accurate to say this is a character study driven by the butterfly effect.
Back in 1964, Paul Fronczak was only a day old when he was kidnapped in the hospital room by a nurse who claimed to his parents that she was taking him to a doctor. The ugly reality of the scenario escalated fast but a world before CCTV’s slimmed the ability to track the woman who ran away with the baby. A swift police response put Chicago on notice and the FBI investigation continued for two years until they reunited an abandoned baby with the Fronczak’s, believing him to be Paul, bringing a sense of closure to the family.
But could it really be him? That’s the existential crisis for the subject at the centre, extensively interviewed for Ursula Macfarlane’s mostly riveting documentary, who entered the crawl space of his house as a child when his parents were away one time and discovered a news article that detailed his kidnapping and his parents’ public pleas. It’s the sort of information that could haunt a child forever.
As aforementioned, it is more about who Paul Fronczak became than how he became. Growing up in a loving household in New Jersey, his journey as an adult would be epic, crossing all the way through to the other side of the coast, marrying a wonderful woman, and trying his hand as both an actor and a rock star along the way. Emblematic of the counterculture re-interpretation of the American dream, it’s a beautiful story when you look at it with the glass half full, a lens that interests the film’s empathetic director, remembering that this baby could have been robbed from a decent life when he was abandoned in New Jersey.
The memories of the crawl space linger in Paul’s mind over the decades, prompting a self-directed investigation. Macfarlane tactfully takes major cues from fiction, utilising recreations to orient us when archive cannot and filming constructed meetings such as when Paul sits down with his young daughter over lunch in a restaurant and prompts a discussion about his complicated identity, including the multiple names that have been assigned to him.
Unfolding patiently, sensitively and with a handful of twists, The Lost Sons is intriguing and poignant. Even though it may not be nearly as shocking as other stories within the same realm, it feels like a breath of fresh air after watching the string of documentaries in recent years that haven’t afforded their subjects so much dignity, preferring to instead be in the service of theories and manufactured drama.
The Lost Sons will be distributed by CNN Films. A release date is yet to be announced.
What have you watched at SXSW 2021? Let us know in the comments below!
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