We’re excited to be bringing six UK premieres to the 2025 edition of Sheffield DocFest. Read more about the titles below.
MARLEE MATLIN: NOT ALONE ANYMORE
The film explores Matlin’s life as a groundbreaking performer, whose meteoric and tumultuous rise to fame started in 1987 when she became the first Deaf actor to win an Academy Award for her role in ‘Children of a Lesser God.’ At the age of 21, Matlin was thrust into the national spotlight, becoming for many Americans the first Deaf person they saw on TV and overnight becoming the de-facto representative of the Deaf community.
The film boasts never-before-seen home video filmed over the course of Matlin’s 37-year career by her longtime interpreter and producing partner Jack Jason – including footage of Matlin behind the scenes on the sets of some of her most iconic roles, including ‘Children of a Lesser God,’ ‘The West Wing’ and ‘Seinfeld.’ For the first time in her own language, Matlin reflects on her relationship with actor William Hurt, her place in the Deaf community, her fight for roles and accessibility in Hollywood and what it means to be ”the first.” Featuring interviews with Henry Winkler, Aaron Sorkin and Troy Kotsur.
2000 METERS TO ANDRIIVKA
2000 METERS TO ANDRIIVKA is the second feature film from the Oscar®-winning team behind 20 DAYS IN MARIUPOL — Ukrainian filmmaker and Pulitzer Prize-winning AP journalist Mstyslav Chernov, producer and editor Michelle Mizner and producer Raney Aronson-Rath. The film will be featured in the world-renowned festival’s World Cinema Documentary Competition.
Amid a failing counteroffensive in 2023, Chernov and his AP colleague Alex Babenko follow a Ukrainian platoon traversing through one mile of a heavily fortified forest on their mission to liberate the small, Russian-occupied village of Andriivka. But as 2000 METERS TO ANDRIIVKA reveals with haunting intimacy, the farther the soldiers advance through their destroyed homeland, the more they realize that, for them, this war may never end.
Weaving together intensive Ukrainian Army bodycam footage and powerful moments of reflection, Chernov captures the war in his own country from a personal and devastating vantage point. 2000 METERS TO ANDRIIVKA documents a battle emblematic of the broader Russian-Ukraine war — the largest military operation in Europe since World War II — and presents a view of modern warfare reminiscent of battles fought nearly a century ago.
ANDRE IS AN IDIOT
Unexpected, irreverent, and absurdly funny, ANDRÉ IS AN IDIOT is a wildly life-affirming film about death. When André, a brilliant idiot, learns he's dying from a disease he could have detected with a colonoscopy, he decides to document his final journey. As an iconoclastic ad man, he had defied convention throughout his life. True to form, André approaches mortality with his trademark humor and curiosity, determined to learn how to die both happily and ridiculously.
In a unique collaboration with director Tony Benna, André's stories and musings are brought to life with imaginative stop-motion animation, capturing his unique approach to life's challenges and joys. ANDRÉ IS AN IDIOT is a celebration of resilience, inappropriate humor, and the beauty of fully embracing the human experience - even at its end.
THE LIBRARIANS
n October 2021, Texas House Representative Matt Krause issued a list of 850 books for schools to review for obscene and race-related content, urging officials to develop standards to ensure “pornography” and anything that may make students feel “discomfort, guilt or anguish” be removed. The majority of content flagged had racial or LGBTQia+ themes. Parental Rights groups like Moms for Liberty dug in nationwide and book challenges escalated exponentially and became more coordinated. Vulnerable librarians were, and continue to be, targeted.
In a dystopian saga akin to a real-life Fahrenheit 451 sequel, director Kim A. Synder’s gripping documentary THE LIBRARIANS traverses small-town U.S.A. with riveting interviews and troves of archival material to reveal the story of the country’s heroic librarians, everyday Americans who have become unlikely defenders of democracy, risking everything to uphold our most fundamental of rights.
NORTH SOUTH MAN WOMAN
From the director of LIBERATION DAY comes a surprising and deeply human story of love, longing, and the personal cost of a frozen conflict.
An old Korean proverb — nam nam, buk nyo — says the most beautiful women are in the North, and the most handsome men in the South. But what happens when you try to bring them together?
Filmmakers Morten Traavik and Sun Kim journey across the Korean divide to follow Yujin Han, a sharp, charismatic entrepreneur born in North Korea and now founder of Lovestorya — a matchmaking agency with a radical mission: pairing North Korean refugee women with South Korean men. Filmed over five years, with rare access and powerful archival footage, NORTH SOUTH MAN WOMAN is a raw, layered, and unexpectedly playful look at love in the shadow of history — where personal and political borders collide in the most intimate of ways
The Secret of Me
Baton Rouge, 1995. During a feminist studies class, college student Kristi opens her textbook to discover something that turns her world upside down. For as long as she can remember, she has felt different - now she knows why.
Demanding her medical records, Kristi is finally confronted with a devastating truth: she has been lied to all her life by those she trusted most. What begins as a personal reckoning soon unearths something far bigger, rooted in a discredited 1970s psychology experiment that falsely claimed gender can be imposed on children at birth. Once hailed as a revolutionary success, the study justified the widespread practice of unnecessary surgical interventions imposed on children without consent - procedures that still persist today.
Combining archival materials, firsthand testimony, and expert insights educating the viewer about the widely misunderstood intersex community, THE SECRET OF ME lays bare a shocking lie affecting thousands worldwide, while spotlighting the resilience of those fighting for truth, autonomy and lasting change. This is more timely than ever as right-wing attacks on gender autonomy are gaining momentum.