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Concluding its 20th year, the Zurich Film Festival has named the winners this year’s Golden Eye.

As the festival wrapped up this weekend in Switzerland, On Becoming a Guinea Fowl and Black Box Diaries took home the Zff’s Golden Eye awards in the Feature Film and Documentary Competitions.

On Becoming a Guinea Fowl was selected by jury president Lee Daniels and members Souheila Yacoub, Jo Willems, Ewa Puszczyńska and Sophie Deraspe, with Jianjie Lin’s Brief History of a Family earning special mention.

Black Box Diaries was chosen by jury president Kevin Macdonald and members Franziska Sonder, Vincent Kelner, Anna Hints and Ben Bernhard, with Sandi DuBowski’s Sabbath Queen and Kinshuk Surjan’s Marching in the Dark recieving special mention.

Other winners include Les Courageux, Leeuwin and Die Heinzels 2: Neue Mützen, Neue Mission, with the latter two competing in Zff for Kids. Also honored at the festival were Kate Winslet,...

“On Becoming a Guinea Fowl” has been awarded the Golden Eye at Zurich Film Festival.

Jury president Lee Daniels – joined by Souheila Yacoub, Jo Willems, Sophie Deraspe and Ewa Puszczyńska – praised director Rungano Nyoni and her “miraculous” second film about past traumas finally coming to the surface when a family prepares for a funeral of an uncle: “We believe she’ll take over Hollywood,” he said.

“From the first shot of this film, we are thrust into a world that is spectacularly shot, filled with incredible music, exquisite sound design and acting that left us all breathless,” he added, calling it a surreal, dramatic comedy full of surprises about the lies we tell ourselves.”

Following the film’s Cannes premiere, Variety’s Guy Lodge called Nyoni’s film “darkly transfixing” and “at once intrepidly daring and rigorously poised.”

Festival director Christian Jungen told Variety: “It’s a very original and...

Walker said: “This is for all the women that win this award after me.”

Elvis cinematographer Mandy Walker became the first woman to win the feature competition at the American Society of Cinematographers Awards on Sunday (March 5).

Accepting her award, Walker said: “This is for all the women that win this award after me.”

Walker is the third woman to be nominated in the ASC feature competition, following Rachel Morrison in 2018 for Mudbound and Ari Wegner in 2022 for The Power Of The Dog; and is also nominated for the Academy Awards this Sunday.

The other feature nominees were Greig Fraser...

“Elvis” director of photography Mandy Walker won Feature Film at the ASC Awards March 5, when the American Society of Cinematographers handed out its honors at the 37th annual awards at the Beverly Hilton Hotel.

Walker’s win in the feature film category could prove prescient; 17 out of the last 36 years found the ASC film winner winning the Academy Award. But it’s worth noting that Oscar nominees “Tár” and “All Quiet on the Western Front” were not among the ASC nominees.

In the TV categories, “The Old Man” took awards for Motion Picture, Limited Series, or Pilot Made for Television and Episode of a One-Hour Television Series – Commercial, while “Barry” won Episode of a Half-Hour Television Series for its Season 3 finale and “The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel” won Episode of a One-Hour Television Series – Non-Commercial for its Season 4 finale.

In addition, several honorary awards were handed out. Egot winner Viola Davis...

Elvis cinematographer Mandy Walker cracked a glass ceiling on Sunday, becoming the first woman to win the American Society of Cinematographers Award in the feature competition during the 37th ASC Awards.

The crowd at the Beverly Hilton’s International Ballroom erupted with applause and gave Walker a lengthy standing ovation as her name was called.

“This is for all the women that win this award after me,” she said to enthusiastic applause, and she looked for to more women breaking more glass ceilings. “Thijs is an inclusive, representative community,” she said, adding, “I didn’t cry, I thought I was going to cry.”

She thanked Elvis director Baz Luhrmann for allowing her to “create magic with him;” Catherine Martin for her “support and inspiration; and her crew for “dancing with the camera and flying with the camera” during Austin Butler’s performance as Elvis.

Walker’s bold lensing of Elvis...

The American Society of Cinematographers handed out its best visual storytelling in feature film award to “Elvis” on Sunday night, and in doing so, Mandy Walker has become the first woman to win the top prize in the society’s history.

Walker triumphed over Greig Fraser (“The Batman”), Darius Khondji, Claudio Miranda (“Top Gun: Maverick” and Roger Deakins (“Empire of Light”) in a very competitive race.

During her speech, she dedicated her win to “all the women who will win the award after me,” and was met with rapturous applause. She hoped for more women to break glass ceilings and continued, “This is an inclusive representative community. Let us all strive for success and show our mission and create art.”

Walker‘s triumph comes as Oscar voting ends on March 7, where she is also nominated. She became only the third woman ever nominated for cinematography for her work on “Elvis.

Mandy Walker has won the American Society of Cinematographers feature-film award for “Elvis,” making her the first woman ever to win that award. She is only the third female nominee in the category, after Rachel Morrison for “Mudbound” in 2018 and Ari Wegner for “The Power of the Dog” last year.

Walker now has the chance to become the first woman to win the Oscar for cinematography, where she is also the third female nominee in the gender-neutral Oscars category that took the longest to nominate a woman. Her competitors at the Oscars include two who were also nominated by the ASC, Roger Deakins for “Empire of Light” and Darius Khondji for “Bardo, False Chronicle of a Handful of Truth,” along with James Friend for “All Quiet on the Western Front” and Florian Hoffmeister for “Tar.”

“This is for all the women who will win the award after me, and for...

The American Society of Cinematographers is handing out its 37th annual ASC Awards tonight at the Beverly Hilton, and Deadline is posting the winners as they’re announced. See the list below.

The night’s first prize went to Carl Herse for HBO’s Barry, which won for Episode of a Half-Hour Series.

The society’s nominees for its marquee Theatrical Feature Film prize are Roger Deakins for Empire of Light, Greig Fraser for The Batman, Darius Khondji for Bardo, Claudio Miranda for Top Gun: Maverick and Mandy Walker for Elvis. Fraser won the ASC’s top prize last year for Dune, en route to winning the Cinematography Oscar.

The ASC film winner has won the Academy Award nearly half of the time — 17 times in its 36 years. Bardo, Elvis and Empire of Light will vie for the Best Cinematography Oscar on March 12 against All Quiet on the Western Front (James Friend...

Riz Ahmed, Dev Patel, Judd Apatow, Mira Nair, and Mark Duplass are among the many admirers of the Oscar-nominated documentary All That Breathes, directed by Shaunak Sen. Now you can add the people at Criterion to the movie’s legion of fans.

The film about brothers in Delhi, India who rescue injured birds of prey, especially the black kite, will be added to Criterion’s library, according to an announcement from Sideshow and Submarine Deluxe. “[Criterion] has acquired Tvod rights and will announce details for a future home video release at a later date,” a release stated, noting that the film will be available for purchase or rental on iTunes, Apple, Amazon, and Vudu. All That Breathes is currently available for viewing on HBO and HBO Max.

A black kite receives care in ‘All That Breathes’

“Amid environmental toxicity and social unrest, the ‘kite brothers’ spend day and night caring for...

Updated with full winners’ list and more details, including a leading three awards for Fire of Love: All That Breathes and All the Beauty and the Bloodshed — the two frontrunners for best documentary at the Oscars — split the top awards at the 16th annual Cinema Eye Honors in New York tonight.

Filmmaker Laura Poitras won Outstanding Direction for her work on All the Beauty and the Bloodshed. But it was All That Breathes, directed by Shaunak Sen, that earned Outstanding Nonfiction Feature, the Cinema Eye Honors’ equivalent to the Oscars’ Best Documentary Feature (see full list of winners below).

Sen’s film examines the work of Nadeem and Saud – two brothers in Delhi, India – who have devoted their energies to rehabilitating birds of prey like the black kite, which suffer in the polluted air of the metropolis.

“I was just asking Nadeem today how many birds he thinks they would have saved so far,...

“All That Breathes,” a documentary about two brothers who run a refuge for birds that have been injured by the pollution in New Dehli, has been named the best nonfiction film of 2022 at the 16th annual Cinema Eye Honors ceremony, which took place on Thursday night at the Museum of the Moving Image in Astoria, Queens, New York.

“All That Breathes” previously won the top award at the International Documentary Association’s IDA Documentary Awards, the other major award devoted to nonfiction film. It is also on the 15-film shortlist for the Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature.

Laura Poitras won the award for directing for “All the Beauty and the Bloodshed,” while “Navalny” won the award for production.

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‘All That Breathes’ Director Shaunak Sen on Breaking Nature Doc Clichés While Filming Hospitalized Birds

In the craft categories, a distinctive feature of the Cinema Eye Honors, the immersive...

The American Society of Cinematographers has unveiled the nominations for its 37th annual ASC Awards, honoring the year’s best in feature film, documentary and television cinematography.

The society’s marquee Theatrical Feature Film nominees are Roger Deakins for Empire of Light, Greig Fraser for The Batman , Darius Khondji for Bardo, Claudio Miranda for Top Gun: Maverick and Mandy Walker for Elvis.

Fraser won the ASC’s top prize last year for Dune, en route to winning the Cinematography Oscar. The ASC film winner has won the Academy Award nearly half of the time — 17 times in its 36 years.

On the small-screen front, the only program that made a return trip to the nominations was Hacks, which again is up for Episode of a Half-Hour Television Series.

Here are the nominees for the 2023 ASC Awards:

Theatrical Feature Film Nominees

Roger Deakins, Empire of Light (Searchlight Pictures)

Greig Fraser, The Batman (Warner Bros.)

Darius Khondji,...

The cinematographers of “The Batman,” “Bardo, False Chronicle of a Handful of Truths,” “Elvis,” “Empire of Light” and “Top Gun: Maverick” have received nominations from the American Society of Cinematographers, the ASC announced on Monday.

Last year’s winner, “Dune” cinematographer Greig Fraser, was nominated again for “The Batman.” Darius Khondji received the nomination for “Bardo,” Claudio Miranda for “Top Gun,” Mandy Walker for “Elvis” and cinematography legend Roger Deakins received his record 17th ASC nomination for “Empire of Light.”

The nomination makes “Elvis” cinematographer Mandy Walker only the third woman to be nominated in the top feature-film category by the ASC, after Rachel Morrison for “Black Panther” and Ari Wegner for “The Power of the Dog.” No female cinematographer has ever won in the category.

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Cinematographer Roger Deakins Fears That Moviegoing Has ‘Changed Beyond Repair’

The nominations bypassed “Avatar: The Way of Water,” “The Fabelmans,” “Tar” and “Everything Everywhere All at Once,...

Roger Deakins (“Empire of Light”), Greig Fraser (“The Batman”), Darius Khondji, Claudio Miranda (“Top Gun: Maverick”), and Mandy Walker (“Elvis”) were nominated Monday for the 37th annual ASC Awards (to be held March 5 at the Beverly Hilton and live streamed).

For the legendary Deakins, who finds himself in the underdog position for exquisitely lensing Sam Mendes’ underappreciated ode to cinema, this marks his ASC-leading 17th nomination. The two-time Oscar winner (“1917” and “Blade Runner 2049”) has won five times, tied with Emmanuel “Chivo” Lubezki, the three-time Oscar winner, who didn’t make the cut for “Amsterdam,” which never got any critical traction. Fraser, last year’s Oscar and ASC winner for “Dune,” has two wins and three noms. For Matt Reeves’ “The Batman,” he provided a gritty noir look. Miranda, an Oscar winner for “Life of Pi,” has three nominations, and is considered the frontrunner for taking us into...

Mandy Walker’s bold lensing of Baz Luhrmann’s Elvis made her the third woman to ever be nominated in the feature category of the American Society of Cinematographers’ ASC Awards, which announced it nominations on Monday.

The feature nominees in the competitive 37th ASC Awards race are Walker; Roger Deakins for Empire of Light; Greig Fraser for The Batman; Darius Khondji for Bardo, False Chronicle of a Handful of Truths; and Claudio Miranda for Top Gun: Maverick.

Walker is now in a select group of just three women who have been nominated in the ASC feature competition. Rachel Morrison was nominated in 2018 for Mudbound, followed by Ari Wegner, who was nominated in 2022 for The Power of the Dog. Morrison and Wegner both went on to earn historic Oscar nominations.

With his work on Sam Mendes’ drama Empire of Light, Deakins extends his record number of ASC feature nominations to a remarkable 17 noms.

It was only after a year of filming Nadeem and Saud — two brothers who had dedicated their lives to rescuing the black kite birds of New Delhi — that director Shaunak Sen started to get a clearer picture of the film he was making.

Sen hadn’t set out to make an environmental film, although the pollution and subsequent destruction of the Indian city’s ecosystem was at the heart of why the black kites were falling from the toxic skies. He’d also never even contemplated making a political film, yet mounting protests and unrest in New Delhi were becoming the undeniable backdrop of the story he was filming. Sen knew leaning into the political and environmental issues would be a trap. “The truth is I’ve always actually found a lot of environmental discourse genuinely unappealing because a lot of it is either gloom and doom, or it’s...

The Cinema Eye Honors has announced the full slate of nominees for its 16th Annual Awards Ceremony meant to recognize outstanding artistry and craft in nonfiction filmmaking.

Two National Geographic films — Sara Dosa’s “Fire of Love” and Alex Pritz’s “The Territory”— not only led all nominees with seven nominations (including Outstanding Nonfiction Feature for both), but tied the record for most nominations in a single year. Next in line is the Cannes-winning feature, “All That Breathes,” directed by Shaunak Sen, which got six nominations. The Laura Poitras-directed documentary “All the Beauty and the Bloodshed” and Payal Kapadia’s “A Night of Knowing Nothing” followed with four nominations.

This year’s awards mark the first time in Cinema Eye history that five women were nominated for Outstanding Direction, with “Beba” director Rebeca Huntt and “Descendant” filmmaker Margaret Brown joining Sara Dosa, Payal Kapadia, Laura Poitras, and Shaunak Sen in the category.

“Fire of Love” and “The Territory” led all films in nominations for the 16th annual Cinema Eye Honors, awards that were established in 2007 to honor all aspects of nonfiction filmmaking.

“Fire of Love” is a documentary from Sara Dosa about scientists Katia and Maurice Krafft, set against the volcanoes they spent much of their lives studying; “The Territory” is director Alex Pritz’s look at an indigenous Brazilian tribe threatened by deforestation. Both films received seven nominations, tying the record for the most Cinema Eye noms in a single year.

Shaunak Sen’s “All That Breathes” received six nominations, while Laura Poitras’ “All the Beauty and the Bloodshed” and Payal Kapadia’s “A Night of Knowing Nothing” each received four.

In the Outstanding Nonfiction Feature category, those five films were joined by Daniel Roher’s “Navalny.”

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‘Fire of Love,’ ‘Good Night Oppy’ Lead Critics Choice Documentary Awards Nominations...

The Oscar prospects for Fire of Love, The Territory, and All That Breathes got a significant boost today with the announcement of the nominations for the 16th Annual Cinema Eye Honors.

Sara Dosa’s Fire of Love and Alex Pritz’s The Territory tied with a leading seven nominations apiece, while All That Breathes, from director Shaunak Sen, was recognized in half a dozen categories. Fellow Oscar contenders All the Beauty and the Bloodshed — the Venice Golden Lion winner directed by Laura Poitras — and Payal Kapadia’s A Night of Knowing Nothing earned four nominations apiece.

In the marquee category of Outstanding Nonfiction Feature, six films will go head to head at the Cinema Eye Honors: All That Breathes; All the Beauty and the Bloodshed; Fire of Love; Navalny — Daniel Roher’s documentary on Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny; A Night of Knowing Nothing, and The Territory [see the full list of nominees below].

Pritz, making his...

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Fire of Love and The Territory landed a field-leading seven mentions, including best feature, in the Cinema Eye Honors nominations, which were announced Thursday.

The Ceh organization, which celebrates nonfiction work on screens big and small, also nominated All That Breathes (six noms), All the Beauty and the Bloodshed (four noms), Navalny (three noms) and A Night of Knowing Nothing (four noms) for its top honor.

Meanwhile, in the directing category, an unprecedented five of the six nominees are women: Laura Poitras (All the Beauty and the Bloodshed), Rebecca Huntt (Beba), Margaret Brown (Descendant), Sara Dosa (Fire of Love) and Payal Kapadia (A Night of Knowing Nothing). The sixth nominee is Shaunak Sen (All That Breathes).

Poitras, with her noms for feature and direction, ties Steve James for the most Ceh noms of all time, with 13.

Alex Pritz has the most individual noms this year,...

One of the top contenders for Best Documentary at the Oscars this year ranges from the skies above Delhi, India to a basement below the city’s north end.

In All That Breathes, brothers Nadeem and Saud operate a subterranean workshop-cum-makeshift animal hospital where they aid injured and ailing black kites, a bird of prey increasingly vulnerable to Delhi’s intense air pollution.

“I was really gripped by this figure of the black dot in the sky, which is the black kite,” recalls filmmaker Shaunak Sen, “the lazy gliding dots that you see — one of the them starts falling down. And I remember seeing this vaguely while driving my car one day and I was truly gripped with this figure. So, I started researching what happens to birds when they fall down. And that’s when I came upon the work of the brothers. The minute that you walked into that tiny,...

Filmmaker Shaunak Sen loves to look at his filthy polluted home, Delhi, through different prisms. His graduate school feature “City of Sleep” (2016) chronicled multiple sleep journeys, from soft beds to hard pavements. With his next, “All That Breathes,” he took his cameras from Delhi’s garbage-strewn streets to the murky skies, where hawk-like black kites circle slowly, and all too often, plummet to the earth. “That film was about looking at the city on a horizontal axis,” he said over Zoom. “This was looking at the city through a vertical axis.”

The reason that “All That Breathes” was picked up by HBO Documentary Films at Sundance 2022 (where it won the World Cinema Grand Jury Prize) and included in all the top documentary awards groups’ early voting is that the filmmaker and his cinematographers embraced the tools of big-budget filmmaking: rack focus, pans, dollies, crane shots and long single takes. In short,...

IndieWire reached out to the cinematographers behind the nonfiction features premiering at the 2022 Sundance Film Festival, and asked which cameras, lenses, and formats they used, and why they chose them to create the looks and meet the production demands of their films. Here are their responses.

Films appear in alphabetical order by title.

“All That Breathes“

Section: World Cinema Documentary Competition

Dir: Shaunak Sen, DoP: Ben Bernhard

Format: 4K Canon Log/ V-Log

Camera: Canon Eos C500MkII, Panasonic S1H

Lens: Leica R Primes and Zooms, Angenieux 45-90mm, Canon 500mm and Macro

Bernhard: In “All That Breathes,“ our approach was always “to render the scientific into the poetic,“ as Shaunak puts it. We were intrigued by how the organic matter of the earth shifts and changes because of human intervention, and how new natural habitats are formed. That’s why we chose a cinematic language that would keep the...

There’s no scarcity of documentaries on climate change; at the most recent Cannes Film Festival there was even a new program strand entitled “Cinema for the Climate” just to keep up with this ever-expanding genre. It was there Rahul Jain unveiled Invisible Demons, which took viewers into the air polluted streets of Delhi, where heatwaves and rapid floods have become commonplace. It largely focused on a journalist’s attempts to get local politicians to address the crisis and make changes. Her attempts were, depressingly and unsurprisingly, futile.

Invisible Demons frequently came to mind throughout All That Breathes, Shaunak Sen’s powerful documentary looking at unspoken victims of Delhi’s crisis: the birds and other wildlife struggling to survive an increasingly hostile habitat. The twin issues of climate change and Delhi’s ensuing air pollution remain largely unspoken factors in Sen’s film, which in its best moments constructs elaborate...

“Apollo 11” was the big winner at the fourth annual Critics’ Choice Documentary Awards on Sunday in New York City.

The film took home the award for documentary feature, as well as editing for Todd Douglas Miller and score for Matt Morton. “Apollo 11” was also honored with archival documentary and science/nature documentary prizes.

There was a tie for director between Peter Jackson for “They Shall Not Grow Old,” and Julia Reichert and Steven Bognar for “American Factory.” “They Shall Not Grow Old” also brought home the award for innovative documentary. “American Factory” nabbed the prize for political documentary.

The inaugural D. A. Pennebaker Award, formerly known as the Critics’ Choice lifetime achievement award, was presented to Chris Hegedus, Pennebaker’s longtime collaborator and widow. Michael Apted received the landmark award in honor of his “Up” series.

The ceremony, hosted by “Property Brothers” star Jonathan Scott, was held at Bric in Brooklyn.

Last month, the Critics Choice Documentary Awards announced their nominations, beginning to suggest which documentaries could be the Academy Award favorites this year. Tomorrow, the awards show takes place. In case you weren’t aware, The Biggest Little Farm led the field, grabbing seven nominations, while Apollo 11, One Child Nation, and They Shall Not Grow Old scored five apiece. Other potential Oscar contenders sprinkled throughout this precursors include American Factory, The Cave, Knock Down The House, Western Stars, and more. Below you can see all the nominated works, though what really will be interesting to see is what takes home the top prize. A win here for either American Factory, Apollo 11, The Biggest Little Farm, The Cave, Honeyland, The Kingmaker, Knock Down the House, Leaving Neverland, Maiden, One Child Nation, or They Shall Not Grow Old could really be a feather in its awards season cap. Time will tell,...

John Chester‘s “The Biggest Little Farm” leads the fourth annual Critics’ Choice Documentary Awards with seven nominations, including Best Documentary Feature and Best Director. Right behind it with six bids apiece are Todd Douglas Miller‘s “Apollo 11” and Peter Jackson‘s “They Shall Not Grow Old.” The other eight films nominated for the top prize are “American Factory,” “The Cave,” “Honeyland,” “The Kingmaker,” “Knock Down the House,” “Leaving Neverland,” “Maiden,” and “One Child Nation.”

Chester’s newest documentary follows his family’s journey as they develop a sustainable farm outside of Los Angeles. As the Ccda nomination leader it follows in the footsteps of last year’s eventual Academy Awards winner “Free Solo” who led this group’s field with six nominations. “Free Solo” may have won at the Oscars and three Ccda awards, but it lost the main prize here to “Won’t You Be My Neighbor?...

“The Biggest Little Farm” leads nominees for the fourth annual Critics’ Choice Documentary Awards, with seven bids, followed by “Apollo 11” and “They Shall Not Grow Old.” “One Child Nation” received five nominations.

The winners will be presented their awards at a gala, hosted by Property Brothers’ Jonathan Scott, on Nov. 10 at Bric in Brooklyn.

The awards honor documentaries released in theaters, on TV and on major digital platforms, as determined by the voting of qualified Cca members.

A new honor, the D.A. Pennebaker Award, will be presented to Frederick Wiseman. Michael Apted will receive the landmark award for his work on the “Up” series of films, with “63 Up” opening this year.

“As the film and television industry constantly evolves, documentaries remain a vibrant creative art form that entertains as well as informs,” said Cca CEO Joey Berlin. “We are proud that our awards event has become a...

Farm animals, the historic moon landing and World War I veterans back to vivid life top the nominations for the fourth annual Critics’ Choice Documentary Awards.

The Biggest Little Farm leads this year with seven nominations, including Best Documentary Feature, John Chester for Best Director and noms for Best Cinematography, Editing, Score, Narration and Science/Nature Documentary.

Recognized with six nominations each are Apollo 11 and They Shall Not Grow Old. The nominations for Apollo 11 are Best Documentary Feature, Todd Douglas Miller for Best Director, plus Editing, Score, Archival Documentary and Science/Nature Documentary, The nominations for They Shall Not Grow Old are Best Documentary Feature, Peter Jackson for Best Director, Editing, Score, Archival Documentary and Most Innovative Documentary.

One Child Nation received five nominations: Best Documentary Feature, Nanfu Wang and Jialing Zhang for Best Director, along with Editing, Narration, and Political Documentary.

The Cave, Honeyland, American Factor, Aquarela...

“Aquarela” begins with a car zipping straight across Siberia’s Lake Baikal, which usually remains frozen January through May. And then the car disappears, plunging through the thin ice. Russian filmmaker Victor Kossakovsky captures the moment at the world’s oldest, largest, and deepest freshwater lake in an astonishing feat of fast-frame-rate cinema that showcases the power of water all over the globe. It also placed its director and crew into terrible danger.

“It was obviously dangerous while shooting to suddenly see something like this,” said Kossakovsky. “Suddenly, the car appears in the shot and we see it just fall through the ice to the bottom of the lake. We realize it can happen to us. This was a moment. We were far away. We obviously wanted to help them. We start moving toward them. When we came close, we realized there was no ice around. It was like the ice was moving like waves,...

“Aquarela” begins with a car zipping straight across Siberia’s Lake Baikal, which usually remains frozen January through May. And then the car disappears, plunging through the thin ice. Russian filmmaker Victor Kossakovsky captures the moment at the world’s oldest, largest, and deepest freshwater lake in an astonishing feat of fast-frame-rate cinema that showcases the power of water all over the globe. It also placed its director and crew into terrible danger.

“It was obviously dangerous while shooting to suddenly see something like this,” said Kossakovsky. “Suddenly, the car appears in the shot and we see it just fall through the ice to the bottom of the lake. We realize it can happen to us. This was a moment. We were far away. We obviously wanted to help them. We start moving toward them. When we came close, we realized there was no ice around. It was like the ice was moving like waves,...

Shot in high definition at 96 frames per second — though most theaters will only be able to show it at 48 fps — this eyepopper from Russian director-writer-cinematographer-editor Victor Kossakovsky (¡Vivan Las Antípodas!) is like nothing you’ve ever seen. His free-form documentary on water opens by scaring us to death. The scene is on frozen Lake Baikal in Siberia, in which cars are shown cracking through the ice, while a rescue team labors to save a driver and passenger. It’s a showstopping sequence that reminds you how, when it comes to raging H2O,...

In titling “Aquarela,” his latest grandiose, sense-pummelling documentary ride, one has to wonder if iconoclastic Russian director Victor Kossakovsky was the tiniest bit annoyed that a certain awards juggernaut from last year’s Venice fest had already taken “The Shape of Water.” That would be the best way to describe what this globe-trotting, at-one-with-the-element enterprise is really about, as Kossakovsky offers a dazzling overview of simple H2O in its shifting array of forms, from the frozen-over Lake Baikal in Southern Siberia to the rains lashing Miami in the midst of Hurricane Irma to the intangible rainbow rising from the tumble of Venezuela’s Angel Falls. A feast of HD imagery so crisp as to be almost disorienting, this is immersive experiential cinema with no firm storytelling trajectory, though viewers can read what environmental warnings they may into its rushing spectacle.

Premiering out of competition at Venice, “Aquarela” may prove the...