Big Sky Documentary Film Festival debuts 2025 lineup

That’s just a swath of the terrain covered at the Big Sky Documentary Film Festival, which announced the lineup this week for its 22nd annual installment, running Feb. 14-23 in Missoula.

As a festival that’s exclusively focused on documentary, “we really take pride in accepting films of all different forms and backgrounds and styles,” said Julia Sherman, executive director of the nonprofit Big Sky Film Institute.

They keep in mind both the mountain college town audience and the visiting filmmakers, looking for movies that challenge the form through unconventional storytelling, along with biopics and exposés on important subjects, and films focused on underexposed communities and more, she said. It’s a balance between accessibility and the uncomfortable and unfamiliar.

There are a number of films about the natural world that are more meditative, others on “the power of the human spirit, and chosen families and relationships and Indigenous wisdom.”

One of the things documentary filmmaking does so well, she said, is to “bring you into someone’s world and force you to reflect on your own life.”

Big Sky’s the largest film festival in the state, featuring almost 150 movies with 12 world premiere feature films and 22 short-film premieres. Last year, attendance between in-person and virtual screenings totaled around 26,000.

The movies will screen at their usual venues: The Wilma, the Zootown Arts Community Center Show Room, the Roxy Theater and Missoula Children’s Theatre. As they’ve done since 2021, there will be virtual screening options that run from Feb. 17-27.

For filmmakers, the festival is a destination. It’s been included on Filmmaker Magazine’s list of festivals worth the entry fee for years. The movies that win in the competitions for Best Short (15 to 39 minutes) and Mini Doc (under 15 minutes) automatically qualify to compete for the Oscar in short-form documentary. The festival also includes the DocShop, a multi-day filmmaker workshop.

Navigating the lineup

Submissions reached around 2,000, all of which are vetted by a programming team. More than 90% of the lineup is pulled from the open call. While that’s a point of pride, it also means there’s no “theme.” To help find your way through the offerings, check out the strands, where they’re divided up into subjects like “Activism and Justice,” “Sports and Adventure,” “The Art of Aging” and more.

World premiere film “Butterfly in a Blizzard” tracks snowboarder Kimmy Fasani. It’s a “gorgeous biopic,” Sherman said, in which the athlete balances motherhood, reaching middle age in a demanding profession and treatment for breast cancer.

“Flamingo Camp,” another world premiere, takes viewers to Slab City, an encampment of young queer and transgender people that “spotlights these ideas around community and your chosen family,” Sherman said.

She pointed out a number of films that look at unconventional relationships, such as “Loving Bing,” about the crumbling five-decade marriage between a Chinese refugee and Danish immigrant, and “Mistress Dispeller,” which examines hired professionals in China who help break up affairs.

They’ve added few new categories: “Feathered Films” is dedicated to the aviary world, with movies like “The Birds,” about a man who’s studying the mesmerizing murmurations of starlings, and “Birdsong,” about an Irish ornithologist who’s set out to record the songs of every species on the island.

The “Stranger Than Fiction” category makes room for unexpected stories and subjects. They include “Stolen Kingdom,” a world-premiere feature about the theft of animatronic figures and memorabilia from Disney World. Another left-field summary arrives with “Recomposing Earth,” in which Scottish musician Erland Cooper records a new album and buries the only taped copy in the ground on the Orkney Islands, waiting to see if it will be found, and if so, what it sounds like.

“The Art of Aging,” includes a feature, “Helen and the Bear,” centered on a 70-year-old woman who’s contemplating her own sexuality while acting as caretaker to a 96-year-old husband, who’d once been a high-ranking California Republican.

The war in Ukraine is the subject of multiple films again this year. “Flowers of Ukraine” follows a 67-year-old anarchist whose attention had previously been focused on opposing development; “Songs of Slow Burning Earth” is billed as an “audiovisual diary” of the first two years of the war.

War is the subject of another documentary by Missoula native (and Big Sky programming team alumnus) Michael Workman. He’s premiering a new film related to protests for university divestment called “The Encampments.” He and co-director Kei Pritsker examine the leaders of the student opposition at Columbia University who are thrust into the national spotlight.

There are a number of homegrown films this year. Montana State University film professor Hugo Sindelar’s “One in Five Hundred” looks at the floods in and around Yellowstone National Park in 2022. Sherman said they look at the scientific reasons the disaster occurred, but also got onto the ground in the affected communities.

Other Treasure State films of note include a 15-minute short, “Your Opinion, Please,” by Billings native and Roxy Theater alum Marshall Granger, about a call-in show on Yellowstone Public Radio.

In the 11-minute short, “A Wayward Feeling,” director Kevin Richey visits with sculptor Patrick Doherty, who created the large-scale pieces out of woven sticks at the Tippet Rise Art Center outside of Fishtail.

The “Native Voices” and “Made in Montana” threads have a few crossover stories. Director-producers Joshua Benson and James Suter’s “Tiwahe” is a “slice-of-life portrait” among multiple generations of residents on the Fort Belknap Reservation, according to the festival website.

Director Taylor Hawkins’ “Two Medicine” follows Blackfeet Indian Relay racer Chazz Racine as he pursues his dream amidst difficulties and challenges he’s facing, as well as those of family and friends.

Filmmaker retrospectives

The festival often organizes retrospectives of filmmakers who’ve reached at least midpoint of their careers. Past subjects have included Jeff and Michael Zimbalist, Ondi Timoner and more.

This year, the retrospectives look at the work of two directors, both of whom have collected numerous awards, such as Guggenheim fellowships. Matt Wolf has created feature-length movies like “Wild Combination,” about Arthur Russell, an influential musician in the ‘70s and ‘80s who had an unexpected set of skills and interests as a cellist, songwriter and dance-music producer.

“Spaceship Earth” documented the failed “Biosphere 2” experiment, in which people were quarantined inside of a self-sufficient environment in the Arizona desert.

Brett Story’s features include “The Hottest August,” about climate change and its effects in the outer boroughs of New York over the course of a month in 2017; and “The Prison in Twelve Landscapes,” that examines the criminal justice system’s effects outside of the institutions themselves.

This year, the festival’s also revisiting a past honoree, the great Les Blank, with two films arranged through his estate and his son, Harrod Blank. They’ll screen an uncompleted movie, “Motorcycle Moment,” and a restoration of his 1982 classic, “Burden of Dreams.” In the latter, Blank went to South America to document the making of Werner Herzog’s movie, “Fitzcarraldo,” in which Klaus Kinski plays a megalomaniac who wants to build an opera house in the jungle. This requires at one point moving a steamship over a mountain to reach another river. Filming that without CGI, in natural Herzog fashion, meant moving a steamship over a mountain, among other crises the production endured.