By Peter Keough

The spirit of Frederick Wiseman lives on at the IFFBoston.

The Independent Film Festival of Boston. Through April 29 at the Somerville Theatre.

Frederick Wiseman’s recent death reminds us that the Boston area has long been home to some of the world’s greatest non-fiction filmmakers. A number of them feature prominently in the latest edition of the Independent Film Festival of Boston.

Continuing Wiseman’s tradition of investigating public institutions, Andrew Kukura’s Leaving Angola (2026; screening April 24 at 7:30 p.m., Somerville Theatre) offers a wrenching tale of despair and redemption at the notorious Louisiana prison. In 2003, 22-year-old Justin Singleton dropped a friend off at a local store to run an errand. When the friend returned, Singleton had no idea that he had just robbed the place and murdered the cashier. Despite Singleton’s insistence on his innocence, both he and his friend were convicted of murder and sentenced to life without parole.

Initially bitter and despondent, Singleton made the most of the situation, becoming an inmate pastor and a mentor in the prison’s groundbreaking early reentry program. Among his most promising mentees was Derek Moss, with whom the two formed a strong bond. But Moss’s return to life outside did not go well, and Singleton’s own hopes that he might not die behind bars grew dim. Filmed over the course of seven years, the filmmakers gained intimate access to their subjects and deliver a compelling narrative with dramatic twists and turns that demonstrates the need for enlightened criminal justice policies and reveals the resilience and strength of the human spirit.

Mainstream media is the institution investigated in veteran local filmmakers Bestor Cram and Michael Streissguth’s Tiananmen Tonight (2025; screening April 27 at 7:45 p.m. at the Somerville Theatre) — a film I previously wrote about when it screened at last year’s Newburyport Film Festival. In 1989, CBS was losing badly in the ratings, but by luck, they had a crew on hand in Beijing when the Tiananmen Square demonstrations began. They sent in a news team headed by Dan Rather and reported the story from its initial hopes to its bitter, bloody end. The coverage proved a boon for CBS but not so much for the demonstrators and their cause. They faced draconian punishment, and to this day, any mention of the brief rebellion or its dream of democracy can result in imprisonment.

Boston University alumna Sara Robin confronts the monolith of social media and its deleterious impact on its users — children especially — in Your Attention Please (2026; screening April 25 at 4:30 p.m. at the Somerville Theatre). Remember how back in the 1990s, the internet seemed like a brave new world that would grant access to knowledge for everyone and bring us all together in a worldwide community? So much for that — now it’s a cesspool of misinformation, a forum for sociopaths, and a goldmine for ruthless entrepreneurs exploiting the worst in human nature.

Among its victims was Carson Bride, a 16-year-old who died by suicide after being tormented by anonymous bullies on Snapchat. Devastated, his mother Kristin fought back with a class-action lawsuit and by forming the advocacy group Parents Rise, which helped push the Kids Online Safety Act. That groundbreaking legislation passed the Senate by an astounding 91-to-3 bipartisan vote in 2024 before being swallowed up by the black hole of House Speaker Mike Johnson’s House of Representatives.

Kristin Bride is just one of the passionate activists featured in Robin’s film, which uses a jazzy assortment of multi-screens, animation, and other devices to rival the attention-grabbing tactics of the medium it critiques. Other subjects include members of the international “Offline Club” that entreats members to unplug and enjoy real life; Brockton High School principal Kevin McCaskill, who has instituted a successful policy of banning phones from classrooms; and Trisha Prabhu, a 25-year-old idealistic entrepreneur who has come up with ways to undo some of the evil in social media if only those who control it were interested in anything other than profits. As it stands now, though, and especially with the threat of unconstrained AI on the horizon, today’s tech cartel is worse than Big Tobacco, poisoning not bodies but minds and laying waste to our communities and culture.

[The screening of Your Attention Please will be followed by a panel discussion with director Sara Robin, subjects Kristin Bride and Kevin McCaskill, executive producers Winston MacDonald and Joni Siani, and editor Jack LeMay.]

Mary Dague in a scene from Tim O’Donnell and Sam Oldmeadow’s The Last Yztari. Photo: IFFBoston

A more benevolent manifestation of AI can be found in Somerville filmmakers Tim O’Donnell and Sam Oldmeadow’s The Last Yztari (screening April 23 at 8:30 p.m. at the Somerville Theatre). It’s the story of Mary Dague, who was a kind of superhero in real life as she and her team of Army Explosive Ordnance Disposal Technicians defused bombs and IEDs in Iraq and saved hundreds of lives — until one exploded and took off both her arms.

Eighteen years later, she’s confronting that trauma in a fantasy universe of her own creation, narrated by DANI, an artificial consciousness, and brought to life by state-of-the-art AI in dazzling, otherworldly landscapes. It’s the world of the Yztari, a sisterhood of warriors fighting to preserve the human race — a complex, layered embodiment of the world of comradeship and warfare she left behind.

This computer-augmented epic fiction brought her more healing than therapy or playing video games. That, and the non-judgmental acceptance, support, and empathy of her husband, a fellow EOD tech still in uniform. Her recovery progressed so well that when her husband returned from a tour of duty in Syria, she was able to help him confront his own PTSD. O’Donnell and Oldmeadow’s harrowing and triumphant film brings to mind other fusions of nonfiction and video games such as Knit’s Island (2023) and Grand Theft Hamlet (2024), flights of fantasy that The Last Yztari combines with an observational realism reminiscent of the recent Ukraine War documentary Cuba & Alaska (2025).

A scene from Sara Joe Wolansky ‘sThe Big Cheese. Photo: IFFBoston

One institution that Frederick Wiseman never got around to covering was that of cheesemongers, who have been described as “like a sommelier, but with cheese.” Luckily, Harvard alum Sara Joe Wolansky has filled that gap with the delightful, daffy, and inspiring The Big Cheese (2025; screening April 26 at 7 p.m. at the Somerville Theatre), which follows the progress of an American team vying for the top prize at the Mondial du Fromage in France, “the Olympics of Cheese.”

Following the template of competition-countdown documentaries going back to at least Spellbound (2002), the film introduces the semi-diverse collection of contenders, joins them as they compete in events reminiscent of the reality TV shows Top Chef and Hell’s Kitchen, and narrows the field down to the endearing but at times difficult finalists. Then it’s off to the town of Tours in the Loire Valley, where Americans have never won before, and they must face snobby French judges, cheese-melting heat, and the challenge of putting together an appealing plug for their favorite fromage using such olfactory descriptors as “fecal” and “baby vomit.” The outcome is unexpected and downright suspenseful, all overshadowed by the manic, magnetic, occasionally obnoxious organizer of the American team, Adam Moskowitz, a third-generation cheese importer who fought addiction and erratic career choices to become the biggest cheese of them all.

Peter Keough writes about film and other topics and has contributed to numerous publications. He was the film editor of the Boston Phoenix from 1989 to its demise in 2013 and has edited three books on film, including Kathryn Bigelow: Interviews (University Press of Mississippi, 2013) and For Kids of All Ages: The National Society of Film Critics on Children’s Movies (Rowman & Littlefield, 2019).