Hello Reader,

Treat yourself to one of the best documentaries of 2024....which you might not be able to see again!

That film is the remarkable I'm Not Everything I Want to Be, a film about a photographer coming into her own, a portrait of a queer female artist, her search for identity amidst oppression, and life under European totalitarian regimes throughout the latter half of 20th century.

It was one of the best films at the Berlinale this year, and I've been disappointed by how few festivals it's played, despite being a queer film (which would usually get more play!).

If you're in the US, get your virtual ticket this week only (details below).

This may be your only chance to see the film EVER. So many great films from festivals around the world vanish, or vanish for many years.

About I'm Not Everything I Want to Be:

Here's an excerpt from my review:

At the heart of Klára Tasovská’s decades-spanning documentary portrait of Czech photographer Libuše Jarcovjáková, I’m Not Everything I Want to Be, is a simple but elusive existential question: How do you become “everything [you] want to be” amidst political and capitalistic oppression? It isn’t easy, but bit by bit, Jarcovjáková finds herself in this thoughtful, heartrending film. Her work as a photographer has only recently been recognized internationally. Tasovská’s film is formally ambitious and accomplished — creative nonfiction at its best. She crafts a dynamic narrative through clever sound and pacing despite being built solely on still photographs.

Told through a montage of still photographs from Jarcovjáková’s archive set to narration pulled from Jarcovjáková’s diaries, the film recounts Jarcovjáková’s personal and political struggles of being an artist and a queer woman in 1960s normalization-era Czechoslovakia, in Tokyo in the 1970s and 1980s, and in West Berlin before and after the fall of the Berlin Wall, from the 1980s to 1990s. The film’s use of sound and montage is similar to how animated documentaries (I delved deep into animated documentaries in our ebook Subjective Realities), wherein Tasovská effectively animates the photographs from Jarcovjáková’s archives in how she paces the montage and by adding an immersive sound design to the narration.

​Read the full review​

How to watch I'm Not Everything I Want to Be

Camden International Film Festival in the US is screening the film online (along with several other creative nonfiction films on my To Watch list).

The screening is geo-locked to the US.

Tickets are $15 USD.

​Book your ticket here. ​

Not in the US?

Watch this space for updates on future screenings of the film.

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