SXSW Movie Competition 2025: Ghost Boy, The Secret of Me, Take No Prisoners | Festivals & Awards
The doc program at SXSW displays the left-of-center tone of each the competition and town of Austin. The place else would you discover documentaries about The Butthole Surfers and Carl Lewis in the identical program? With such a comparatively quick competition, it may be arduous to get to the non-fiction picks. Nonetheless, I used to be fortunate sufficient to take a look at a trio that premiered on opening weekend, and so they’re all testaments to human resilience, profiles of people that survived unimaginable situations to change into the folks they’re right now.
The perfect of the trio is Rodney Ascher’s “Ghost Boy,” the story of Martin Pistorius, a person who overcame an unimaginable nightmare. Ascher’s movies (“Room 237,” “The Nightmare,” “A Glitch in the Matrix”) usually spiral in on themselves as they inform tales of introverted obsession. I’ve usually discovered Ascher’s work a little bit relentless, however that strategy completely matches the story right here as Ascher isn’t simply profiling folks whose life selections or beliefs have made them a bit uncommon however somebody who was locked in his personal physique by way of no alternative of his personal. Pistorius is a forthcoming interview topic, telling his life story as Ascher cuts to fascinatingly staged recreations. They’re not conventional true-crime variations of what we’re listening to over narration—they’re sequences filmed very clearly on levels, full with cameras and crew folks seen in pictures. This strategy to “cinematic autobiography” provides one other layer of advanced non-fiction storytelling to a film that tells a narrative you received’t quickly neglect.
When he was 12, Martin Pistorius developed a neurological situation that trapped him in his personal physique, unable to maneuver. He might nonetheless assume, really feel, and dream, however he was in a vegetative state from which most individuals round him presumed he would by no means emerge. For years, he was fed and cared for by individuals who would go about their lives round him with little consciousness of what was occurring in Martin’s thoughts. Ascher makes use of new interviews with Martin and passages from his memoir to convey his unimaginable situation, however he admits he doesn’t have vibrant reminiscences of plenty of this time and nothing earlier than he descended into his nightmare. He’s needed to piece collectively rather a lot from different stories, and one feels a way of collaboration between Pistorius and Ascher to inform this story as precisely and emotionally as doable.
As a result of it’s a hell of a narrative. Considered one of Martin’s caretakers turned satisfied that extra was happening behind Martin’s eyes than anybody believed. She spoke to him and sensed a response. Evidently, she’s a real hero, somebody who helped Martin specific himself by utilizing his eyes to take a look at phrases and talk with the skin world for the primary time in years. From there, Martin educated himself again to actuality. At the moment, he can sort his responses to questions for the movie and even has a household of his personal. Considered one of Ascher’s finest choices is to not minimize away from Pistorius when he sorts out a solution to a query, usually taking many seconds to faucet out a response earlier than we hear it. It’s a reminder of how tough it’s for Martin to speak.
And but he does. Usually by way of his eyes and his smile. Ascher loves Martin’s face, lingering on it as we hear his reply over his visage or a passage from his e-book. Among the recreations really feel a bit overdone, particularly a compelled feeding one which performs out like a horror movie. Nonetheless, Ascher persistently comes again to present-day Pistorius each time the assemble of the movie threatens to get away from him. It’s all there in that unforgettable face. Because it at all times was, even when everybody had given up on him, it’s in these eyes.
One other unusual story of human resilience unfolds in Grace Hughes-Hallett’s “The Secret of Me,” a well timed movie in an period when our administration is staging an all-out conflict on everybody that doesn’t match into their neat packing containers of women and men. And but its topic, Jim Ambrose, makes clear that this isn’t a standard trans story. It’s concerning the advanced spectrum of gender and the way makes an attempt to simplify that complexity have led to unimaginable ache and trauma.
Jim Ambrose grew up as Kristi, at all times uncomfortable in her physique in a approach that made her dad and mom uneasy. In her teenagers, Kristi realized the reality—she was born intersex, and an inexperienced physician named Richard Carter assigned her feminine at beginning, conducting an operation that will have altered a bodily being however didn’t “repair” what was inside. The constant message of “The Secret of Me” is a crucial one in 2025: Nobody ought to resolve the gender presentation of another person. Ever. Particularly not a rookie physician with no expertise within the area.
Hughes-Hallett spends most of her time with the courageous and transferring Ambrose, however she additionally successfully profiles another key figures within the intersex motion, together with Tiger Devore and Bo Laurent, together with the Rolling Stone journalist who broke one of many largest tales on this timeline in 1997 when he wrote about David Reimer, somebody who was destroyed by the false reporting of a health care provider named John Cash. The Reimer story is really tragic, proof of how harmful it’s for folks like Cash to revenue off uninformed beliefs.
Hughes-Hallett generally falls victims to tropes of the style like over-use of re-creations—we don’t have to see an actor enjoying a villainous Cash in his workplace, for instance. Her best asset is her deep empathy for folks like Jim. That’s what all of us want to search out proper now for these underneath assault. “The Secret of Me” might assist.
One other well timed documentary from SXSW this 12 months facilities the elevated variety of worldwide arrests and the folks making an attempt to assist family members convey their relations residence. The world heard the story of Brittney Griner, however she was removed from alone as governments like these in Russia and Venezuela usually imprison high-profile topics as a method to an finish, utilizing them as pawns in a political sport whereas they topic these harmless folks to torture.
“Take No Prisoners” profiles Roger Carstens, the highest U.S. hostage negotiator, as he works to acquire the discharge of Eyvin Hernandez, an L.A. public defender being held in a notoriously brutal Venezuelan jail. Carstens explains how they’ve shifted to a mindset that elevates the households of hostages, visiting with them, holding them knowledgeable, and listening to their considerations. Among the Carstens & Hernandez household materials feels a little bit compelled right here—Carstens usually performs to the digital camera—and administrators Adam Ciralsky and Subrata De generally really feel like they’re keen on however fearful of considered one of their most fascinating concepts: How Carstens has change into comparatively well-known by way of the ache of others. There’s a riveting sequence whereby Carstens is being feted by lots of people in high-priced fits whereas Eyvin’s relations query how a lot is basically being finished to convey him residence. Nobody goes so far as to counsel that Carstens isn’t doing all the things he can—it’s a hero profile movie, for certain—however the dichotomy of a person who travels within the highest, richest circles of presidency combating to launch one other man who’s not even being fed might have been dug right into a bit deeper.
The important thing to the success of “Take No Prisoners” is the entry granted Ciralsky & De, and the way they use it. Going behind the scenes of worldwide negotiations has an immediacy that we haven’t usually seen. I’m undecided the movie succeeds on a big-picture stage relating to how regimes are utilizing folks for political capital, nevertheless it undoubtedly works as a profile piece for each Carstens and the individuals who prayed for Eyvin Hernandez day by day.
Pushing all its political avoidances apart, the factor I’ll bear in mind most about “Take No Prisoners” is the unflagging hope of Eyvin’s father. He wakened day by day assured that it was the one through which he’d see his son once more. Subsequent time an individual like Eyvin Hernandez is being held prisoner, I’ll take into consideration his father. And if extra folks in energy do the identical, “Take No Prisoners” can have finished some good too.
