Ava DuVernay's '14th' to Open Doc Stories' 12th Edition in SF

Ava DuVernay's "14th" will open the 12th edition of Doc Stories, San Francisco's documentary film festival, on Nov. 5 at the Vogue Theatre. The Netflix film premiered at the New York Film Festival earlier this month and examines the enduring promises of the 14th Amendment through a chorus of voices. DuVernay will attend in person.

The four-day festival, presented by SFFILM and running Nov. 5-8, includes 10 Oscar-contending feature documentaries. Among them: J.M. Harper's "Soul Patrol," Sam Pollard's "Tutu" and James Marcus Haney's "Black Sunflowers," executive produced by Sean Penn.

Pollard's "Tutu," a portrait of the South African archbishop Desmond Tutu, closes the festival on Nov. 8 at 7:30 p.m. PT.

What does Doc Stories mean for the Oscar race?

The festival is considered the key Oscar season campaign stop in Northern California. Over two dozen Doc Stories selections have earned Academy Award nominations, and several — including "No Other Land" and "Summer of Soul" — have won.

This year's attendees include DuVernay, Pollard, Oscar winner Laura Poitras, Luke Lorentzen and two-time Academy Award winner Ben Proudfoot.

SFFILM's executive director Anne Lai framed the festival's role in blunt terms. "For over a decade, Doc Stories has embodied the best of what SFFILM and the San Francisco Bay Area champion and celebrate in new documentary work," Lai said. "Each film is a wonderful portal into better understanding the world we live in. When daily life can feel quite bruising and fractious, documentaries skillfully encourage us to let our guard down and connect with real-life stories and people… sometimes challenging, often invigorating, and always meaningful."

The lineup beyond the headliners

Eleven short documentaries round out the program, including Joshua Oppenheimer's "The Revolution Against Death," about an aging community's eccentric efforts to achieve immortality, and Poitras and Rachel Lauren Mueller's "They're Here," about ICE agents' descent on Minneapolis and the neighbors who mobilize to track officer movements.

The feature slate also includes:

• "Citizen Osama" — Ahmed Hassouna's film about a photographer turned war reporter documenting life in Gaza while raising his newborn son (Nov. 8, 11:30 a.m.)
• "Darlene Love: I Know Where I've Been" — Barry Avrich's portrait featuring Cher, David Letterman, Bruce Springsteen and Dionne Warwick (Nov. 6, 8:30 p.m.)
• "Boatbuilders" — Luke Lorentzen's profile of Maine's Brooklin Boat Yard, building custom wooden yachts since 1960 (Nov. 8, 4:30 p.m.)
• "Sumo: Spirit Weighs Nothing" — Erik Shirai's look inside professional sumo's secrecy (Nov. 8, 1:30 p.m.)
• "All Rivers Spill Their Stories to the Sea" — Jeanie Finlay's film about a fisherman turned activist after a sea life die-off (Nov. 7, 5 p.m.)

SFFILM's director of programming Jessie Fairbanks said the selection criteria came down to a specific sensibility. "This year, I found myself drawn to filmmakers who are looking closely at the forces shaping our lives, while also revealing the humor, beauty, resilience, and contradictions within them," Fairbanks said. "These are documentaries I believe deserve to be seen, talked about, and experienced together — and I'm thrilled to share them with our audiences."

Doc Talks and the industry program

Three Doc Talks anchor the public program. The first, on Nov. 7 at 1:30 p.m., is a 60-minute conversation with Poitras and Mueller on the challenges they faced embedding in a Minneapolis community during a wave of ICE raids. Later sessions pair Jeanie Finlay, Lorentzen and Shirai on observational storytelling, and Pollard with Harper on excavating history, culture and politics in documentary work.

Behind the scenes, SFFILM's artist development team will convene Doc Congress, a day of dialogue for filmmakers, funders and industry professionals. One session addresses AI use in documentaries, featuring Srđan Keča, director of Stanford's MFA in Documentary Film, and Rachel Antell, co-founder of the Archival Producers Alliance. The team will also host an inaugural Pitch Forum for three local filmmakers.

From Nov. 2-10, SFFILM's Education team runs Schools at Doc Stories: free screenings at SFMOMA, online classroom programs and filmmaker Q&As, plus a Berkeley High School student showcase and a teen filmmaking workshop led by Proudfoot.

One screening remains unannounced: a free community screening on Nov. 5 at 3:30 p.m. of a documentary by a local Bay Area filmmaker going behind the scenes of a major film production. The title will be revealed in late October, with RSVP required at sffilm.org.

For documentary filmmakers chasing an Oscar nomination, a festival that has helped launch more than two dozen nominees remains one of the season's fixed points — and this year it opens with a filmmaker who has already proven she can command that stage.