Documentaries have the power to move audiences, to tears, to laughter — even to action. They can inform viewers, educate and inspire them by exposing them to a reality they might not otherwise ever encounter personally, good or bad.
A powerful documentary can offer the viewer the closest thing to walking a mile in someone else’s shoes.
This year’s first two installments in the HamptonsFilm SummerDocs series do just that and then some, starting with a June 16 screening of director Maite Alberdi’s “The Eternal Memory,” which follows a prominent Chilean couple coping with the progression of Alzheimer’s disease. The second installment, happening July 8, features “The Deepest Breath,” director Laura McGann’s film about the unlikely Italian champion freediver Alessia Zecchini.
The third film in the summer series, which will screen on July 22, has yet to be announced.
“Our selections this year are very, very different films in many ways, but similar in that they explore deeply personal stories of love and struggle and humanity,” HamptonsFilm Artistic Director David Nugent said during a recent interview.
“The Eternal Memory” tells the story of Latin American journalist Augusto Góngora and his wife, Paulina Urritia, a well-known actress and former Chilean minister of culture. The couple shares a 25-year love story and a more than eight-year struggle with Góngora’s Alzheimer’s diagnosis.
Throughout the film, director Alberdi lets the audience in on the complicated personal journey Góngora and Urritia take, together and separately, in trying to hold on to the past, reconcile the present and prepare for an uncertain future.
Góngora, who died of complications from the disease on May 19, worked as a journalist in Chile for most of his life, in newspapers and television, covering some of the country’s darkest periods. His career and dedication to the tenants of journalism — reporting the truth in the face of resistance — are featured heavily in the documentary. After working in newspapers, Góngora joined a television news group that reported on General Augusto Pinochet and the many crimes his regime committed while in power in the 1970s and 1980s.
“The paradox is that he worked hard to unearth the atrocities of Pinochet, to chronicle them and make sure they would not be forgotten, and the sad irony is that he himself throughout the film is starting to forget,” Nugent said. “A man committed to making sure important things would not be forgotten is now forgetting important things, like who his wife is, some mornings in the film.
“Those are very poignant moments.”
“The Eternal Memory” was awarded the World Cinema Grand Jury Prize: Documentary at Sundance in January and is under distribution by MTV Documentary Films. Its director, Alberdi, was nominated for an Academy Award in 2021 for her previous film, “The Mole Agent.”
Nugent said one of the reasons he was drawn to “The Eternal Memory” was that he thought it was the kind of film “that could fly under the radar until you get a chance to see it and be swept up into its magic,” and he thought the SummerDocs audience should get that chance.
“To witness a type of love story that is rarely captured on screen in the intimate way it is in this film is really special,” he said.
The second film in the SummerDocs series, “The Deepest Breath,” follows Zecchini to emotional and physical depths as she pursues the dream of competitive freediving and what seems like a fated relationship with a fellow freediver. Director McGann guides the film, full of lush, ethereal underwater footage, from the perspective of someone who is both completely fascinated by her subjects and who feels a level of kinship with their motivations.
Born in Rome, Zecchini began freediving at the age of 13 after learning to swim on holidays with her family on the Mediterranean Sea. Her raw talent, natural gifts and dedication captured the attention of her coaches long before she was finally allowed to compete at age 18. Two years later, she became a world champion in the sport, considered by many to be one of the most dangerous in the world.
Since then, she has set numerous world records for depth.
Meanwhile, safety and rescue diver Stephen Keenan grew up near the sea in Ireland, but turned away from the water for several years while adventuring throughout Africa before finding his way to Dahab, Egypt, where he established a freediving school with two other experts.
Keenan and Zecchini eventually met and developed a personal and professional relationship highlighted in “The Deepest Dive.”
McGann said she first read about Zecchini and Keenan, then discovered “some incredible footage” of them freediving and was enthralled by it.
“This couple has such a beautiful curiosity about life and … followed these dreams they’d had since they were young and it was an emotional journey, I suppose. That is what the film is,” the director said in a recent interview.
More than that, “Alessia had a dream to be a freediver when she was a kid and you couldn’t even be a freediver, that wasn’t even a thing, but she was just obsessed, and I suppose I was a little bit like that when I was a kid.”
McGann said she grew up in Ireland wanting to make films from about the age of 13 and doing so in her back garden.
“I got it. I got her story. Alessia spoke to me,” McGann said. “Even her setbacks resonated with me.”
In Keenan’s story, McGann said what hit home was his adventurous spirit and the courage to “decide to go off and do something completely different from what you have been to that point in your life and going into the unknown.”
“I think maybe I would love to do that, but I never have done it, so going on that journey with him was exhilarating,” McGann explained.
The coming together of the two stories into what would be a moving love story only bolstered the director’s interest.
“Like our first film, ‘The Deepest Breath’ has a very emotional element, which is revealed as you watch it,” Nugent said.
Another captivating element of the film, though, is the diving footage, which has an even bigger impact when viewed on a movie screen.
“The things people do in this movie are so extraordinary to me, and I’ve been swimming my entire life, but … to the incredible depths she dives,” Nugent said. “Let me tell you, incredible.
“This will blow people away.”
To be sure, the shoots were challenging, McGann said. Parts of the film happened dozens of meters underwater, so the director gathered a crew of diving camera operators and shot footage around the world, including in Egypt, Mexico and the Bahamas.
“It was kind of like having a fleet of dolphins as your crew, these divers,” McGann said. “They were incredible… Meanwhile, I had to have a floatie anytime I was in the water. And I swim!”
The director lives in Greystones, County Wicklow, Ireland and said she actually does swim regularly in the Irish Sea.
“The Deepest Breath,” released by Netflix, aims to inspire audiences through the stories of Zecchini and Keenan separately and as a couple.
I want people to appreciate their never-ending curiosity about the world and their dreams,” McGann said. “If you follow your dreams, you never know where you’ll end up. That’s always been a strong throughline for me.
“You might end up somewhere wonderful.”
What sets the SummerDocs series apart from other documentary film screenings is the traditional Q&A that follows, which are led by Nugent. The discussions have been staple of the series throughout its 15-year run and Nugent says they help bring the films to life for the audiences in a way that gets him excited every year.
In fact, the commitment to having those conversations helps guide the selection of the films.
“My colleagues and I have gone to Sundance [Film Festival] in January for all of the 15 years we’ve been doing this now,” Nugent said, noting one of those colleagues is HamptonsFilm Board of Directors member and East End resident Alec Baldwin. “We watch these movies with an eye toward finding the ones that are not only the strongest, but that lend themselves best to a meaningful discussion afterwards.”
A film in contention might be incredible, Nugent explained, but “if it’s all there on the screen” and doesn’t leave an opening for exploration with an audience in conversation it doesn’t make the cut.
“We want to create an experience that is something more than you could have watching it at home by yourself,” Nugent said.
In previous years, the post screening conversations have generated dynamic exchanges with the directors, subjects and audience members.
“When we did ‘Searching for Sugarman’ we had the film’s subject, Rodriguez here. Before the screening he was just milling about the theater and no one was paying any attention to him,” Nugent recalled. “When the movie ended and we brought him out the people went absolutely bananas, big standing ovation.
“People get so incredibly moved and excited,” Nugent said. “I love that part of it.”
This time around, Paulina Urritia, one of the two main subjects of “The Eternal Memory,” will appear to discuss that film, while McGann will attend the screening of her film in July and talk about it afterward.
Nugent said he thinks “The Eternal Memory” is a good fit for a post-screening discussion because of the familiar themes the film deals with — love, loss of memory, care for an aging or ill loved one.
“We can have a discussion about the tender love story at the heart of this documentary and the caregiving aspect of it, especially as we will have (Góngora’s wife) Pauline there to speak about her experience and what it was like to have her life chronicled in that period,” he said.
As for “The Deepest Breath,” McGann is equally excited about coming to the East End — her first visit — and talking about her film.
In fact, she said, it’s more of a challenge to stop talking about it.
“It is such an honor. It’s what you dream of. When I was a kid, sometimes there would be more people on the stage or in the little film than in the audience,” she said. “Having your film go out to a wide audience is what you want and I love it.”
The film was created during the COVID-19 pandemic and much of the work was done remotely, “from our attics,” McGann said. So going out and talking to people in person and screening the film is an extra special pleasure.
“Believe me, I love talking about this film. You can hardly get me to stop talking about it,” she said.
The HamptonsFilm SummerDocs series kicks off at 7 p.m. on Friday, June 16, at the Regal UA on Main Street in East Hampton with “The Eternal Memory.” Tickets for the 2023 SummerDocs Series screenings are $35 at hamptonsfilmfest.org/summerdocs/. HamptonsFilm is the nonprofit organization that also hosts the annual Hamptons International Film Festival, which this year runs from October 6 to 15. Visit the website for more information on all the upcoming events.
Other programming ahead includes HamptonsFilm free outdoor screenings at sunset in Herrick Park and at Main Beach in East Hampton Village. This year’s films are “Goonies” on June 28; “Back to the Future” on July 19; “E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial” on July 26; “Splash” on August 2; and “Jaws” on August 16. In addition, HamptonsFilm offers camps for ages 8 to 15 from July 10 to 14 in East Hampton, and August 7 to 11 in Southampton in partnership with the Southampton Arts Center.
