Two 2011 Tribeca Film Festival titles have been chosen to participate in the 15th edition of DocuWeeks! Check the website for upcoming films and screening times.

How does the Academy cull from the wealth of documentary films each year to find those stories that shine the brightest come time for Oscar voting? For the 15th year in a row, the International Documentary Association has made that process just a little bit easier with the DocuWeeks Theatrical Documentary Showcase, presented by Current and AT&T U-Verse and sponsored by HBO Documentary Films.


This year, over 20 documentaries looking to get recognition have been awarded week-long theatrical runs, helping to qualify them for Oscar consideration. Screening from now until September 1 in New York at the IFC Center, and on the West Coast at the Laemmle Sunset 5, the 15th Annual DocuWeeks program gives documentary fans a chance to catch some of the best docs of the year well before all the Oscar hoopla.

Nestled in a stellar 24-film line-up are three familiar faces from TFF 2011. Both The Carrier and Semper Fi: Always Faithful have found a place on the DocuWeeks feature slate, and David Darg's Sun City Picture House is one of the four chosen for the Los Angeles shorts program. We're so happy to see such excellent films getting the attention they deserve.


Told through the eyes of an increasingly empowered heroine, The Carrier is a powerful and moving portrait of an unconventional family, set against the backdrop of the growing HIV/AIDS epidemic in Zambia. This lyrical film follows Mutinta Mweemba, a 28-year-old subsistence farmer living in a polygamous marriage. After learning she is HIV positive and pregnant, Mutinta sets out to keep her unborn child virus-free and break the cycle of transmission.


As a devoted Marine for nearly 25 years, Master Sgt. Jerry Ensminger lived and breathed the “Corps.” When his 9-year-old daughter dies from a rare type of leukemia, Jerry wants to know why. His search for answers leads him to a shocking discovery: a Marine Corps cover-up of one of the worst water contamination incidents in US history. With relentless determination, he spearheads a decades-long battle to make this information public and hold the Marine Corps accountable. Semper Fi: Always Faithful is a searing look at the military’s betrayal of its soldiers and an emotional story of one man’s transformation into the activist he never imagined he’d become.


Sun City Picture House

Both cities can proudly boast three weeks of outstanding documentary storytelling, along with many opportunities for audiences to hear directly from the filmmakers during Q&As after the film. Movies about the man behind Elmo stand beside harsh realities of the media’s objectification of women, and shorts on the art of “sand dancing” butt up against the construction of a movie theater in a post-disaster Haiti. The DocuWeeks program may have some heavy-hitting material, but there's just enough lightness to raise your faith in humanity.

Check out the full DocuWeeks schedule for both New York and Los Angeles, and find out when you can catch filmmaker Q&As after screenings. 

Like DocuWeeks on Facebook and follow them on Twitter @DocuWeeks for up-to-date details and announcements.