The Sedona International Film Festival is proud to present the Northern Arizona premieres of the 2020 Oscar Documentary Shorts Programs Feb. 8-13 at the Mary D. Fisher Theatre. Now an annual film festival tradition, Sedona audiences will be able to see all of the short documentary films nominated for Academy Awards before the Oscar telecast on February 9.
OSCAR DOCUMENTARY SHORTS PROGRAM 2020:
• Learning to Skateboard in a Warzone (if You’re a Girl) (UK): In Afghanistan, there are limited athletic and recreational opportunities for women and girls. But there is a new generation of Afghan girls who believe they can do anything, as they start to learn how to read, write - and even skateboard - in Kabul.
• Life Overtakes Me (Sweden/USA): The story of two traumatized children of the refugee diaspora in Sweden, who are in such profound despair that they withdraw into life-threatening, coma-like state called Resignation Syndrome.
• In the Absence (South Korea): An unflinching look at the Sewol ferry disaster in South Korea. Employing extensive archival material and in-depth historical research, telling the story of the ferry that capsized and sank in the Yellow Sea on 16 April 2014, killing more than 300 people, mostly high school students on a field trip.
• St. Louis Superman (USA): Bruce Franks Jr., a Ferguson activist and battle rapper who was elected to the overwhelmingly white and Republican Missouri House of Representatives, must overcome both personal trauma and political obstacles to pass a bill critical for his community.
• Walk Run Cha-Cha (USA): Paul and Millie Cao fell in love as teenagers in Vietnam but were soon separated by the war. Six years later they reunited in California. Now, after decades of working hard to build new lives, they are making up for lost time – on the dance floor.