San Francisco Documentary Festival 2009

Philosopher Kings is a great idea of a documentary. The characters in the film are inspiring. The problem with the film is that the interviews could go much further. I believe the director still needs to refine his skills in interviewing, to really extract the wisdom he was looking for, for these characters certainly didn't lack wisdom. But the biggest flaw of the film is a constant ping-pong game between trying to extract wisdom out of the characters, and their actual real life. The film definitely lacks coherence in that regard. One story about an Haitian man goes out of proportion in the film taking us off track showing his courage and engagement in important issues that Haiti has to deal with, but forgetting the main purpose of the film. All in all, the film lacks coherence and logic, sometimes takes us off track, the director definitely had too many stories to tell. But the characters definitely have something interesting to share with the audience, I just hope that this is only still a work-in-progress, and that the crew will return to the editing table, as it is much required.