Benita

BENITA is Alan Berliner's intimate portrait of New York City filmmaker, Benita Raphan, who took her life by suicide in the middle of the Covid pandemic. Benita made several beautiful short films over the years -- including portraits of Emily Dickinson, John Nash, and Buckminster Fuller --exploring the relationship between mental health, innovation, and creativity.

Benita may not have left behind a suicide note, but Berliner patiently explored her personal archive, filled with films, out-takes, notebooks, drawings, photographs, home movies, and more than 40 hard drives, eventually making a surprising discovery that changed his understanding of Benita's life, her work, and her death.

Part anatomy of a suicide and part personal history of a life thrown off-balance by the extreme isolation of Covid, BENITA is the portrait of a filmmaker by a filmmaker that's also a film about filmmaking.

https://www.benitafilm.info

Alan Berliner

Emmy Award-winning filmmaker Alan Berliner is a virtuoso of essayistic documentary. His films are characterized by a first person perspective, playful use of archive materials, and inventive editing and sound design. His works include Letter to the Editor, an eclectic meditation on newspaper photography that played at DOC NYC; First Cousin, Once Removed, on a poet’s experience with Alzheimer’s disease, that was on the DOC NYC and Oscar short lists; Wide Awake about the director’s experiences with insomnia; The Sweetest Sound interviewing other people with the name Alan Berliner; Nobody’s Business profiling his father; Intimate Stranger profiling his maternal grandfather; and Family Album, a cinematic collage drawn from home movies.

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Derek vs Derek

n the idyllic English countryside lives an intensive dairy farmer called Derek. One day his neighbour, also called Derek, forsakes farming tradition and starts turning his land over to wild nature. How does the community react when one of its own turns his back on their way of life?

Renouncing the damage conventional farming is doing, Derek Gow unleashes a whirlwind of change: wild boar turf-up fields and over a hundred ponds are being dug up. Gow turns sheds and barns into breeding pens for a host of nearly extinctnative wildlife to repopulate his revived land: storks, wildcats, mole crickets, egrets, water voles, glow worms. And he has beavers creating lagoons.

His neighbour Derek Banbury peers over his hedge in disbelief. ‘I don’t know what he’s doing. It’s not farming, it’s just a bloody mess!’ Derek vs Derek is a funny story about a serious subject. Set against the backdrop of the growing crisis of biodiversity loss and climate change, this observational film, shot over three years, charts the relationship of the two Dereks, and the impact this momentous decision has on the local community. Meanwhile tempers fray, wild animals escape, and the land is transformed.

A very experienced, award-winning, documentary director (Secret Millionaire’ won Rose-D’or and BAFTA, won BAFTAs for ‘Wife Swap’; and BAFTA and Grierson for C4’s series ‘The Trust’ about QMC in Nottingham). Moving from making films for terrestrial tv broadcasters to his own feature docs. James’ first independent feature documentary started in 2018 was ‘Organ Stops: Saving the King of Instruments’, about a group of eccentric pipe organ enthusiasts saving instruments from closing churches. Shown at film and music festivals in US and UK, was bought and screened by BBC Christmas Eve 2023.

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All Rivers Spill Their Stories To The Sea

A wave of poisoned crabs, like a biblical plague has washed ashore on the coast of North East England, where fishermen, coastal communities and politicians are fighting for different futures after Brexit. A highly topical tale with a strong local accent.

The times are not what they used to be. Fisherman Stan Rennie and his family have been fishing in the waters of North East England for centuries. But now a wave of poisoned crabs has hit the small communities on the East coast far from London, where people for generations were either fishermen or factory workers. The fishermen think the crabs have been poisoned and it is virtually impossible to make a living from fishing. Brexit has not exactly made things better, and while the fishermen are sounding the alarm and throwing themselves into defending the sea, enterprising local politicians are nurturing visionary plans for a new industrial golden age. Jeanie Finlay (‘Your Fat Friend’, CPH:DOX 2024) approaches this complex issue with sober clarity, but also with a keen empathy for a community that has not been accustomed to having a public voice. The camaraderie is strong, however, and the locals grab a pint at the pub while planning their next move – and make sure it won’t be their last.

Jeanie Finlay

Jeanie Finlay is a British documentary filmmaker and artist known for intimate, award-winning work that resonates globally. In 2026 she premiered her tenth feature film All Rivers Spill Their Stories to the Sea at CPH:DOX where it was nominated for the F:ACT AWARD. Her 2023 film Your Fat Friend had its world premiere at Tribeca Film Festival, followed by its international premiere at Sheffield Doc Fest, where it won the audience award, followed by a pioneering, creative distribution path to audiences around the world.

She has made films for HBO, BBC, and IFC, including four for the acclaimed BBC Storyville strand including Bifa & Grierson nominated The Great Hip Hop Hoax and Bifa winning Orion: The Man Who Would Be King.

Whether inviting audiences to share the (extra)ordinary journey of a British transgender man, pregnant with his child (BIFA nominated Seahorse), behind the scenes of Teesside’s last record shop in her home town (SOUND IT OUT), or onto the set of Game Of Thrones: in her Emmy nominated The Last Watch, her work is known for its emotional intimacy, pathos and humour and has garnered Emmy, BIFA, Grierson wins and nominations.

A champion of creative distribution, she’s a Chicken & Egg Awardee with retrospectives at Criterion, BFI, and MOMI NYC, True Story and Big Sky Documentary Film Festival. The recipient of an honorary Doctorate of arts in recognition of her contribution to documentary, Jeanie is a member of AMPAS, BAFTA, and FWD-Doc.

She is founder of the production company Glimmer Films and co-founder of its creative distribution arm Glimmerama with creative producer and head of business affairs, Suzanne Alizart.

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