Press — Luis Álvarez y Álvarez
VARIETY- Announcing the Oscars 2025: Documentary Short
Death by Numbers - Cuomo Cole Productions - Kim A. Snyder and Janique L. Robillard
I Am Ready, Warden - MTV Documentary Films - Smriti Mundhra and Maya Gnyp
The Only Girl in the Orchestra - Netflix - Molly O’Brien and Lisa Remington
Incident - The New Yorker - Bill Morrison and Jamie Kalven
Instruments of a Beating Heart - The New York Times OpDocs/Cineric Creative - Ema Ryan Yamazaki and Eric Nyari
FILMMAKER MAGAZINE
Julio César Chávez and Oscar de la Hoya were once two of the biggest names in boxing, and their 1996 bout dubbed “Ultimate Glory” was a flashpoint for the divide between Mexican-Americans and Mexican nationals. Mixing archival footage with interviews of the boxers themselves, La Guerra Civil examines the bout, the rivalry and its cultural dimension. Editor Luis Alvarez y Alvarez discusses his memories of the fight and how the filmmakers were able to recapture and illuminate one of the defining sports moments of the 1990s.
NEW YORK TIMES - CRITIC’S PICK
In the movie’s eye-catching opener, the directors riffle through a veritable catalog of timely snapshots, some obvious (a smoggy skyline), others less so (a human fetus).
Effectively blunt, this sequence provoked a colleague to invoke the name of the avant-garde giant Stan Brakhage, but the truer visual and structural model here is a film like “Koyaanisqatsi,” with its streaming global landscapes. The difference is that the images in “The 11th Hour” are pointedly horrifying, not reassuring, pacific or aestheticized.
MANOHLA DARGIS