Film Forum

For nearly fifty years, Robb Moss’s films have toggled between the topical and the personal. AFRICA REVISITED, SECRECY, and CONTAINMENT explore racial complexity, government secrecy and nuclear waste, while Riverdogs, The Tourist, THE SAME RIVER TWICE and THE BEND IN THE RIVER explore youthful extravagance, infertility and adoption, and the move from youth to middle age and beyond. His films have premiered at Sundance and Telluride, reviewed in the New York and Los Angeles Times, nominated for an Independent Spirit award. He has taught filmmaking at Harvard University, Department of Art, Film, and Visual Studies for the past five decades.

Since Barry Wasserman’s youth, he’s always been painfully interested in mortality, but even with his early awareness of the inevitable, Barry has never stopped living. He runs rivers, gets married, has children, becomes Mayor of Placerville, California, runs for office again, and loses. When he retires at 65—as the director of a mental health facility—Barry is toasted by his teary and grateful daughter for leaving his river-life and working a stable job to support her. Even when life deals him the blows of cancer and divorce, he faces them head on, refusing to harden. His openness to the tender vulnerability of life’s unexpected trials makes him a good person to talk to. Today, at 77 years-old, with a new wife, Barry’s driveway has become a regular stop for a man with Alzheimer’s who sometimes needs Barry’s help to find his way home again.

Lance Oppenheim is a director known for crafting candy-colored films that blend nonfiction storytelling with heightened, cinematic formalism. His films are layered with humanity, humor, and flourishes of the surreal. Inspired by the larger-than-life stories that unfolded around him in his native South Florida, Oppenheim has been making films since he was in his teens. His first feature documentary, SOME KIND OF HEAVEN premiered at the 2020 Sundance Film Festival and was released by Magnolia Pictures and Hulu in 2021 to critical acclaim. In 2024, Lance directed and produced the HBO hit series Ren Faire, and his sophomore feature documentary, SPERMWORLD, for FX. His upcoming A24 film PRIMETIME, starring Robert Pattinson, marks Oppenheim’s first scripted feature. It will world premiere in competition at the 83rd Venice International Film.

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