Sawyer Avenue, Sunday Afternoon (in person: Bill Morrison

 

Bill Morrison: Sawyer Avenue, Sunday Afternoon (US 2026).

Telluride Film Festival (TFF) 2026

Viewed at Le Pierre, 6 Sep 2026

TFF 2026 Program Guide:

L/Sun 3:45PM Q&A

3 Stories of Resilience

TFF: "Three deeply intimate, human stories reveal the realities of authoritative state-control through history, and the enduring, integral resilience of family, neighbors, and community. Director Sarah Gavron’s A DANCE THROUGH TIME (U.K., 2026, 25m) brings her grandmother’s audio recordings—a memoir of her childhood—into a new focus, casting family members to enact, in shadow theater, a slow, painful family separation necessitated by the rise of Nazi Germany. In MAYBE TOMORROW, journalist and activist Wafa Mustafa refuses to let up her search for her father, one of more than 160,000 civilians disappeared during Assad’s regime (Wafa Mustafa and Waad Al-Kateab, U.K., 2026, 40m). With SAWYER AVENUE, SUNDAY AFTERNOON (U.S., 2026, 18m), Bill Morrison provides a startling composite of ICE body-cam footage and civilian cell phone recordings, creating a shocking account of an October 2025 incident in Chicago, in which a young man is detained in the street, prompting a neighborhood protest." –TFF In person: Sarah Gavron, David Katznelson, Waad Al-Kateab, [Wafa Mustafa was unable to come], Bill Morrison

AA: Bill Morrison in Sawyer Avenue, Sunday Afternoon documents fascism in action in the United States in 2026, based on legally accessed ICE body-cam footage and cell phone videos by six neighbours of the victims on Sawyer Avenue in Chicago. An electrifying reconstruction, often in four-way split screen, about paramilitary brutality in storm trooper mode, and, even more pointedly, about civil courage in a true American spirit. The one who fights has already won, at least his own dignity. The one who does not fight has already lost.

Screening the three films A Dance Through Time, Maybe Tomorrow and Sawyer Avenue Sunday Afternoon in a single show was an inspired piece of programming. Citizens rising against authoritarianism is an engrossing sight for today. The Q&A moderated by Mark Danner contributed to an understanding of how these films were made. All different, all united by a fighting spirit.