EXCLUSIVE: The Lighthouse International Film Festival has announced the documentary lineup for its upcoming 18th edition, a slate boasting some of the most talked about nonfiction films of the year.
The cinematic event running June 10-14 on Long Beach Island, NJ will feature My NDA, directed by Juliane Dressner and Miriam Shor, which recently premiered at SXSW. “Bound by non-disclosure agreements that forbid them from even acknowledging they signed one,” notes a description, “three individuals risk everything by breaking their silence to expose how NDAs have been weaponized to conceal rape, racial discrimination, corporate crimes, and other unlawful activity – reclaiming their voices from the institutions that tried to bury them.”
‘Public Access’ directed by David Shadrack Smith
LIFF
My NDA is screening in Documentary Competition, as is Public Access, the feature directed by David Shadrack Smith that bowed at Sundance. “Before the internet and social media, Public Access television gave ordinary people something radical: their own channel,” reads a synopsis. “Public Access explores New York City’s radical experiment in open media, drawing on rare archival footage and firsthand accounts that chart how Public Access TV became a space for marginalized voices and fierce public debate. The result was chaotic, raw, and ephemeral.”
‘Seized’ directed by Sharon Liese
LIFF
Seized, directed by Sharon Liese, also is set for Documentary Competition. The Sundance premiere examines a shocking incident in Kansas where police raided the Marion County Record, a small town newspaper. “The film unfolds in real time through police body-cam and surveillance footage, revealing the raid’s chaos, the bombshells that followed, and the devastating personal toll on the newsroom, including the tragic death of its 98-year-old co-owner.”
‘Our Colors Never Fade‘ directed by Jim McSherry
LIFF
The festival’s Special Screenings section features two world premieres, including Our Colors Never Fade, directed by Jim McSherry.
“Amid Russia’s invasion of Ukraine,” notes the film’s description, “Our Colors Never Fade follows LGBTQIA+ civilians who leave behind their everyday lives to defend their country. Told through intimate, gradually unfolding portraits, the film resists easy labels, revealing its characters first as people, then as soldiers, and ultimately as individuals navigating identity, duty, and survival under extraordinary circumstances. With a restrained observational style and a soundscape shaped by the rhythms of daily life in a war zone, the film invites audiences across perspectives into a deeply human story.”
RELATED: ‘Our Colors Never Fade’ To Document Wartime Experience Of Ukrainian LGBTQ Soldiers And Civilians
‘Celluloid W-W-Wars’ directed by Allan Holzman
LIFF
Also slated for the Special Screenings section is the world premiere of Celluloid W-W-Wars, a deeply personal story from director Allan Holzman.
“Molested by his uncle the night his brother was born, Allan was unable to speak,” reads the description. “His mother declared that he was so overwhelmed with joy that he didn’t know what to say, so his vocal cords became paralyzed for two weeks, and when he started speaking again, he stuttered. His lack of fluency in communication through speech began with a career path in math, then acting (you don’t stutter when you act), and as the school projectionsist in college, discovering fluency through film editing.”
The description continues, “From the first time he asked low budget kingpin Roger Corman to direct and said, ‘Roger, can I d-d-d…,’ to winning a Peabody and 2 Emmys, Allan’s fearless penchant for taking risks led to an endless and an often unintended humorous array of twists and turns, while trying to make it as a stuttering director in Hollywood.”
Holzman is also scheduled to lead a masterclass about the low-budget genre cinema of the chaotic film industry in the 80s. He is serving as a juror for the Documentary Competition, along with filmmaker Rachel Mason, and Lisa Hoen, director of the Tromso International Film Festival in Norway.
‘My Brother’s Killer’ directed by Rachel Mason
LIFF
Mason’s new documentary, My Brother’s Killer, will screen in Lighthouse’s Spotlight Section. Description: “In 1990, the severed head of Bill Newton, also known as Billy London, a gay adult film performer, was discovered in a dumpster in West Hollywood. After three decades, this documentary ignited an investigation which ultimately led to a resolution to the murder. The answers to this gruesome crime shed new light on one of the most violent chapters in gay history.”
(Mason and Holzman’s films are not screening in competition, so they won’t be presiding as jurors over their own documentaries).
‘Andy Kaufman Is Me’ directed by Clay Tweel
LIFF
Among other films programmed in Special Screenings is Clay Tweel’s Andy Kaufman Is Me, a film about the famed comedian. “Through personal audio diaries and puppet animations, an intimate portrait emerges of the complex comedian Andy Kaufman, while those closest to him reveal the man behind his famous performances.”
Moviegoers attended a screening at Lighthouse International Film Festival.
LIFF
LIFF has become “renowned for showcasing a diverse lineup of independent films,” notes a release, “fostering emerging talent, and creating meaningful connections between filmmakers and audiences.”
Lighthouse programs fiction and nonfiction films. As previously announced, actors Jason Alexander and Tony Shalhoub will be special guests of the festival and LIFF will showcase a special revival screening of Big Night, the 1996 comedy starring Tony Shalhoub and Stanley Tucci, directed by Tucci and Campbell Scott.
Below are the documentaries announced for the Lighthouse International Film Festival:
DOCUMENTARY COMPETITION
THE ART OF ADVENTURE
Alison Reid / Canada, 99 min
The Art of Adventure is an inspiring and deeply human documentary about the extraordinary lifelong friendship between world renowned wildlife artist Robert Bateman and spirited biologist Bristol Foster. Through their epic 1957 journey around the world – armed with a 16mm camera and an artist’s brush – the film opens a vivid window onto a planet once wild and unscarred and a bond formed though curiosity, courage and love of nature. At its heart the film weaves together nature, art, and activism, showing how two very different men fought to protect the natural world: one through art, the other through science. Now in their 90’s Bob and Bristol deliver a moving reflection on legacy, mortality and the wisdom of our elders – and a reminder that humanity and nature are inseparable.
East Coast Premiere
THE ASCENT
Edward Drake, Scott Veltri, Francis Cronin / US, 103 min
THE ASCENT tells the extraordinary true story of climber Mandy Horvath, a bilateral amputee attempting to crawl to the summit of Mt. Kilimanjaro on her hands and follows an investigation surrounding the night she tragically lost her legs. Years earlier, a night out with friends escalated into tensions at a local bar, and soon after Mandy’s world went black. Her next memory: waking in an ambulance surrounded by paramedics, both legs gone. What happened between the bar and the hospital remains a mystery – shattering her trust in the world around her. As Mandy pushes her body to its limits on Africa’s tallest mountain, she must reckon with her past and learn to trust again if she is to succeed.
* Premiered at SXSW, winner of the Audience Award.
East Coast Premiere
BLOOD AND GUTS
Carlye Rubin, Katie Green, Tina Grapenthin / US, 80 min
Through vérité footage, family archives, and excerpts from their own gloriously gory films, Blood & Guts follows the Adams family as parents John and Toby race to complete one final “D.I.Y. ’til you die” horror film before their youngest daughter leaves for college. For over a decade, filmmaking has been the glue holding this unconventional family together—but now Toby and John must confront what it means to let go, not just of their kid, but of a way of life. A love letter to indie horror and one tight-knit family who make them, Blood & Guts asks what it takes to keep creating when everything—money, time, the industry itself—seems stacked against you.
A DROP IN THE OCEAN
Holo Wang / Taiwan, 70 min
Competitive freedivers Hua Yang and Afa push the limits of skill and endurance as they prepare for the prestigious Blue Hole Vertical Blue Depth Competition, one aiming to break Asia’s deepest dive record, the other striving to become Taiwan’s top freediver. This documentary follows their journeys from land to the serene, mysterious blue depths, capturing their contrasting techniques, personalities, and ambitions. Through exquisite underwater cinematography, the film explores the fluidity of gender and the quiet unfolding of queer identity, revealing how courage, grace, and self-discovery intertwine beneath the surface. Each dive becomes both a physical feat and a meditation on connection—to the water, to oneself, and tothe unspoken currents of human desire.
US Premiere
ICE GRAVE
Robin Hunzinger / France/Finland/Sweden, 59 min
11 July, 1897. Three men set off from Spiztbergen in a hydrogen balloon towards the North Pole. They never came back. 33 years later, the remains of the expedition, bodies perfectly preserved, as well as notebooks and rolls of film, are discovered. What do these photographs tell us?
US Premiere
MY NDA
Juliane Dressner, Miriam Shor / US, 99 min
Bound by non-disclosure agreements that forbid them from even acknowledging they signed one, three individuals risk everything by breaking their silence to expose how NDAs have been weaponized to conceal rape, racial discrimination, corporate crimes, and other unlawful activity – reclaiming their voices from the institutions that tried to bury them.
* Premiered at SXSW
PUBLIC ACCESS
David Shadrack Smith / USA, 106
Before the internet and social media, Public Access television gave ordinary people something radical: their own channel. PUBLIC ACCESS explores New York City’s radical experiment in open media, drawing on rare archival footage and firsthand accounts that chart how Public Access TV became a space for marginalized voices and fierce public debate. The result was chaotic, raw, and ephemeral. Artists, activists, eccentrics, and provocateurs suddenly appeared on television screens across the city, creating an unpredictable portrait of New York itself and a new form of content. A mesmerizing rediscovery of a media revolution that tested the limits of expression, provoked legal battles, and revealed enduring tensions between freedom, power, and self-expression.
* Premiered at Sundance
SEIZED
Sharon Liese / USA, 94
Seized is a gripping, stranger-than-fiction investigative thriller that plunges audiences inside the troubling police raid on the Marion County Record. What begins as a shocking small-town incident quickly spirals into a national story, exposing how corruption, politics, and decades-long tensions turned a quaint Kansas community into a battleground over the First and Fourth Amendments. The film unfolds in real time through police body-cam and surveillance footage, revealing the raid’s chaos, the bombshells that followed, and the devastating personal toll on the newsroom, including the tragic death of its 98-year-old co-owner. Director Sharon Liese allows the story to unfold with nuance, surprises, eccentric characters, and humor. By letting each voice speak for itself, she crafts a rare documentary in which sympathies shift moment to moment, revealing how truth, ego, and fear collide in real time. Blending the juicy intrigue of a classic muckraking narrative with a clear-eyed exploration of power, politics, and the fragility of a free press, Seized transforms a headline-grabbing event into a deeply human story that is urgent, unsettling, and impossible to ignore.
* Premiered at Sundance
Documentary Competition Jury:
Lisa Hoen, director of the Tromso International Film Festival (Norway); Allan Holzman, Emmy-winning filmmaker; Rachel Mason, Emmy-nominated filmmaker
HEADLINERS
PHOENIX JONES: THE RISE AND FALL OF A REAL LIFE SUPERHERO
Bayan Joonam / US, 115 min
In 2010, reports began surfacing of a masked vigilante in a black-and-gold supersuit stopping crime on the streets of Seattle. His name is Phoenix Jones. Armed with pepper spray, a taser, and a team of costumed crime fighters, he quickly becomes an international media sensation. But when his true identity is exposed by the Seattle Police, the heroic image begins to unravel and his team abandons him. Ten years later, as protesters seize six blocks of Seattle and declare a no cop zone, Phoenix reemerges amid legal trouble and public skepticism.
* Premiered at SXSW
East Coast Premiere
SPECIAL SCREENINGS
ADMISSION POSSIBLE
Matthew Syrett, Bowie Alexander / US, 93 min
Admission Possible follows high-achieving, first-generation college applicants from a single NYC public high school as they navigate a fiercely competitive admissions process and strive to secure futures once unimaginable for their immigrant families. Set against a landscape reshaped by the pandemic, the Supreme Court’s rollback of affirmative action, rising college costs, and the broader challenges facing immigrants in the U.S., the film captures the pressure, promise, and emotional stakes of the college application journey. Co-directed by Matthew Syrett (producer of the Oscar-winning Freeheld, Oscar-nominated Mondays at Racine, and Emmy-nominated Grit) with Co-Director Bowie Alexander, Admission Possible is an urgent, deeply human portrait of resilience, ambition, and the fight for access and equity in higher education.
ANDY KAUFMAN IS ME
Clay Tweel / US, 101 min
Through personal audio diaries and puppet animations, an intimate portrait emerges of the complex comedian Andy Kaufman, while those closest to him reveal the man behind his famous performances.
CELLULOID W-W-WARS
Allan Holzman / US, 84
Molested by his uncle the night his brother was born, Allan was unable to speak. His mother declared that he was so overwhelmed with joy that he didn’t know what to say, so his vocal cords became paralyzed for two weeks, and when he started speaking again, he stuttered. His lack of fluency in communication through speech began with a career path in math, then acting (you don’t stutter when you act), and as the school projectionsist in college, discovering fluency through film editing.
From the first time he asked low budget kingpin Roger Corman to direct and said, “Roger, can I d-d-d….,” to winning a Peabody and 2 Emmys, Allan’s fearless penchant for taking risks led to an endless and an often unintended humorous array of twists and turns, while trying to make it as a stuttering director in Hollywood.
● Holzman will attend the festival as a juror and will lead a masterclass about the low-budget genre cinema of the chaotic film industry in the 80s.
World Premiere
OUR COLORS NEVER FADE
Jim McSherry / Germany/Ukraine, 83 mins
Amid Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Our Colors Never Fade follows LGBTQIA+ civilians who leave behind their everyday lives to defend their country. Told through intimate, gradually unfolding portraits, the film resists easy labels, revealing its characters first as people, then as soldiers, and ultimately as individuals navigating identity, duty, and survival under extraordinary circumstances. With a restrained observational style and a soundscape shaped by the rhythms of daily life in a war zone, the film invites audiences across perspectives into a deeply human story.
World Premiere
SPOTLIGHT
MY BROTHER’S KILLER
Rachel Mason / US, 95 min
In 1990, the severed head of Bill Newton, also known as Billy London, a gay adult film performer, was discovered in a dumpster in West Hollywood. After three decades, this documentary ignited an investigation which ultimately led to a resolution to the murder. The answers to this gruesome crime shed new light on one of the most violent chapters in gay history.