Two SDFF 2021 films, Sophie and the Baron (Alexandria Baron, 2020) and When We Were Bullies (Jay Rosenblatt, 2021) and a short film from multi-year SDFF alumni filmmaker Ben Proudfoot, Queen Of Basketball (2021), have all made the Oscar® short list for documentary shorts. Nominees will be announced Feb. 8, and the awards show will take place on March 27. All of these films have made recent news.
Sophie and the Baron Baron is an uplifting rendering of the creative collaboration and unlikely friendship between Rolling Stone photographer Baron Wolman, at the end of his prolific career, and up-and-coming artist Sophie Kipner, at the beginning of hers. The film was recently acquired by Disney to announce the formation of Disney Original Documentary, which will produce and provide content for their streaming platform Disney+.
When We Were Bullies is an autobiographical doc about a filmmaker who is spurred to investigate a 50 year-old bullying event in which he was complicit after a chance encounter with an old classmate. The short recently won the Audience Award for Documentary Short at the 34th annual Virginia Film Festival.
Queen Of Basketball is about Lucy Harris, the first woman ever drafted by an NBA team, the New Orleans Jazz (now Utah Jazz) in the late 70s. 2021. Though she didn’t ultimately make the team, she left the sport with having won three national championships and an Olympic silver medal. The film recently won a Critics Choice Award and is available as part of Proudfoot’s Almost Famous series of shorts by New York Times Op-Docs.Proudfoot’s films have shown at SDFF numerous times, including 2019’s That’s My Jazz and 2017’s Montage: Great Film Composers and the Piano.
SDFF is an Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences Qualifying Festival for the Documentary Short Subject category.