This April marks the first in-person Full Frame Documentary Festival in five years. It’s also the first without Nancy Buirski, the Emmy and Peabody Award-winning filmmaker who founded the festival in 1998. Buirski, who directed the festival for a decade, died on August 29 at age 78. 

On Thursday, the downtown Durham festival released its full slate of programming for the sprawling April 4-7 event. It includes 50 titles, 35 features, and 15 short films from 22 countries. “In Process: Documenting Creativity,” the festival’s annual thematic program, is curated by filmmakers Jessica Edwards and Gary Hustwit, who were originally tapped to curate the 2020 program, which was canceled due to the onset of COVID-19. Subsequent festivals in 2021 and 2022 were held virtually, while the 2023 festival was paused amid institutional uncertainty at Duke’s Center for Documentary Studies. The center has organized the event since its inception. 

The festival will hold a tribute for Buirski alongside filmmaker D. A. (Penny) Pennebaker, a Full Frame board member who died in 2019. 

“Remembering Nancy and Penny, I cannot think of two people who are more responsible for shaping Full Frame as a cultural institution,” co-festival director and artistic director Sadie Tillery wrote in a press release. “Full Frame would not be Full Frame without them, and it means the world to me to highlight their invaluable contributions this year.” 

The tribute showcases three of Buirski’s films, including The Loving Story, a documentary about the interracial couple behind the history-making Supreme Court case Loving v. Virginia. The tribute will also feature four documentaries by Pennebaker, who often trained his camera on mid-century icons like Bob Dylan, Duke Ellington, and Norman Mailer. 

A still from Eno directed by Gary Hustwit and produced by Hustwit and Jessica Edwards. Photo courtesy of the filmmakers.
A still from Eno directed by Gary Hustwit and produced by Hustwit and Jessica Edwards. Photo courtesy of the filmmakers.

Music icons emerge as a theme elsewhere in the festival with the screening of Eno, directed by Hustwit, and produced by Hustwit and Edwards, following the creative process of musician Brian Eno. 

“Full Frame is enormously proud of this year’s NEW DOCS and Invited Programs,” said Tillery. “These selections come from around the world and illuminate a stirring array of ideas and lived experiences. They also exemplify the craft of documentary filmmaking—its extraordinary range of form and approach.”

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Sarah Edwards is culture editor of the INDY, covering cultural institutions and the arts in the Triangle. She joined the staff in 2019 and assumed her current role in 2020.