DOC LA To Premiere Cate Blanchett Doc Stuart X

2019 DOC LA will host with the international premiere of Thibault Upton's Australian doc Stuart X, narrated by Cate Blanchett, and open with the West Coast Premiere of What's Eating Ralphie May by Catherine Rhinehart.

Rhinehart's documentary is a raw and intimate portrait of comedian Ralphie May and his family dealing with his addiction during one of the last years of his life. The West Coast premiere of this remarkable film will open the 2019 DOC LA on Wednesday, October 16 at 7:30pm, together with Cate Blanchett-narrated doc about Stuart Iredale, who was misdiagnosed with mental illness and spent 40 years of his life in psychiatric hospitals where he was misunderstood, drugged, and abused. At 60 years old, Stuart was diagnosed correctly with Fragile X and began an inspiration journey towards recovery though music therapy.

Erin McGoff's This Little Land of Mines, which reveals incredible stories of the resilience of the Lao people as they live among and work to destroy 80 million unexploded American bombs, will have its LA Premiere at DOC LA.

Selling Lies by Academy Award nominated director Leslie Iwerks, about fake news epidemic, offers a rare glimpse inside the secret network in Macedonia and reveals its dramatic impact on America and the U.S. presidential election. LA Premiere of this powerful film will take place on the closing night of DOC LA together with the LA Premiere of Mark Titus' environmental documentary The Wild, featuring Mark Harmon, about Alaska's Bristol Bay, where the world's last and largest wild salmon runs face devastation, if a massive copper mine is constructed.

Lovemobil, by Elke Lehrenkrauss, about the dark highway roads of rural Germany, where foreign prostitutes work in old VW-Buses in the forest, will have its West Coast Premiere at DOC LA Film Festival on Sunday, October 20.

Public Enemy Number One, a documentary about the United States's war on drugs, focuses on major shifts in policy from Nixon to today, incarceration, racial biases, and solutions for the future. Directed by Robert Rippberger and produced by Chris Chiari, the film will have its World Premiere at DOC LA.

The Ringmaster by Molly Dworsky and Dave Newberg is about an aging chef from Minnesota who has his life turned upside down, when a relentless filmmaker from Las Vegas tries to make the chefs onion rings world famous. This documentary, which features the rock band KISS, will have its LA Premiere at DOC LA on October 18.

DOC LA will also present the World Premiere of Alice is Still Dead, an intimate and unflinching documentary by Edwin Stevens, about the murder of his sister Alice Stevens.

Buratino, by Sacha Slobodyanik (Homeland, The Americans), about Russian actress Masha Mashkova's staging of a remake of her grandmother's hit show with eight special needs children in her Siberian hometown, will World Premiere at DOC LA. The documentary features Vladimir Mashkov (of Academy Award nominated Russian film The Thief).

A Song of an Unknown Actress, directed by Peter Goeltenboth, Florian Giefer and Tom Weissferdt, which will have its US Premiere at the festival, dives into the every day lives of five aspiring Los Angeles actresses, and presents an experience of the emotional rollercoaster of this line of work to show what it really means to follow your dreams.

Let the Bell Ring, a feature length student documentary from Germany by Christin Freitag, is a classical story of a Los Angeles boxer whose dream becomes a generation's tale about first and last hopes. The film will have its LA Premiere at DOC LA together with John Duarte's short Swim Up Hill, about the Paralympic swimmer Jamal Hill, and the World Premiere of Corrado Caretto's Last Will and Testament about the famed power lifter C. T. Fletcher who was suddenly toppled by a heart attack, but found strength to make a miraculous recovery.

Other standouts include Hector Saldago's African Drivers (Kenya/Mexico), Mark Allen Davis' Helen, Clare He's Can Dolls Be My Neighbor (Japan), Adam Hersko-RonaTas' Scaling Iceland, animated documentaries Yemen: The Silent War by Sufian Abulohom (Yemen), and Shadow Life: Shining Through Colorism and Depression by Miranda Kahn, 52% by Wren Gardiner, Dream Job by Katie Burrell and Colleen Gentemann (Canada), Jack by Stacey Stone, Uncaged: A Stand-in Story by Blake Johnston and Kelso Steinhoff, Pandemia by Yiannis Biliris (Hong Kong), Detransitioned by Nic Pollock, Kaxa Marca by Mariel Sosa (Peru), The Optician by Jonty Fine, as well as the Storytella sidebar featuring Romuald Boulanger's Talk (France), starring William Baldwin, Ari Papargyropoulos' Few Hour in Athens, starring Danae Vasilopoulos (Greece), Bruised by Rok won Hwang & Samantha Tu, Butterflies Fly in Winter by Yana Alekperova (Russia), Life! by Ramesh Jai (Ghana) and Virgil Widrich's Nena & Dave Stewart: Be My Rebel.

DOC LA, Los Angeles Documentary Film Festival, presented by the Parajanov-Vartanov Institute, runs 16-20 October 2019 in Hollywood. www.docla.org

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