Right in the middle of last January’s Sundance Film Festival, I wrote that Christopher Quinn‘s God Grew Tired of Us “is the reigning ‘heart’ movie of the Sundance Film Festival.
“It’s a lusciously photographed, exquisitely edited documentary about John, Daniel and Panther — three young Sudanese men, all refugees from their country’s ongoing, utterly devastating civil war — who escape to America to start new lives only to encounter profound longings for home and family, and no small measure of guilt.
“[It stirred] feelings of humanitarian compassion and admiration for these three Sudanese men…indeed, for the indominability of the human spirit. There’s no distributor on board yet, but it can be safely assumed if and when it opens later this year that God Grew Tired of Us will nab a Best Feature Documentary nomination.”
Nope! The Academy’s documentary committee will tomorrow issue a short list for the Best Feature Documentaries, and the word I’m getting about God is “forget it.” Apparently some felt it was too similar to Lost Boys of Sudan, and that Sudan is a better film.
On top of which Sydney Pollack‘s Sketches of Frank Gehry — a wise, unpretentious joy-of-creation doc about a genius architect — may not be on the short list. (A Sony Pictures Classic source hadn’t heard definitively one way or the other, and I wasn’t able to reach Sydney) And The US vs. John Lennon is kaput.
The list isn’t finalized so nobody knows but so far Wordplay isn’t on it either.
The short-listers so far are said to be An Inconvenient Truth, Blindsight, Iraq In Fragments, Deliver Us from Evill, Jesus Camp, Shut Up & Sing (the pretty good Dixie Chicks doc…fine but no great shakes), The War Tapes, The Ground Truth, An Unreasonable Man (the Ralph Nader that was said to be too long, so they cut it down and made it betters) and The War Tapes.