One of the joys of film festivals is finding a new or new-to-you filmmaker whose film you just love. One of the realities of film festivals is that you will see a lot of…other films that won’t quite make that impression. Saturday at True/False was one of those days.

Joonam (2023, Sierra Urich): This film, which played in competition at Sundance this year, is about a young woman exploring her connection to her Iranian heritage through the experiences of her mother, Mitra, and grandmother, Behjat. Mitra escapes Iran around the time of the Islamic Revolution, but Behjat and her husband were stuck there longer. When the film centers Behjat and her experiences, it’s a delight. When it centers Mitra, it’s still compelling. When it centers Sierra, it is not all that interesting. But the biggest problem is it doesn’t center any of these, but just jumps around and lightly touches on all of these instead of giving us one solid narrative. It’s the biggest missed opportunity of the fest so far.

How to Have an American Baby (2023, Leslie Tai): This was one of my most anticipated docs of the fest, promising an exploration of Southern California “maternity hotels.” Chinese citizens surreptitiously come to the U.S. to have babies who can freely return as U.S. citizens to pursue education and opportunity. They stay in houses and apartments set up by Chinese companies to give them a place to stay and some services (the barest operations give food, shelter, and some transportation; the nicer ones include days out). The director’s choice to include way too many people (a “boss lady” of one operation, another young mother who’s trying to run a smaller operation, several of the mothers, and, too late in the movie, some of the salesmen for the companies in China) made the film nearly impossible to follow, let alone to connect to. Another choice—to stick to a fly-on-the-wall approach without directly interviewing anybody—left us without a framework for fully understanding what we were seeing. Disappointing.

Dogwatch (2022, Gergoris Rentis): The description that made me really want to see the movie? Soldiers-for-hire serve as security for ships traversing the dangerous waters overrun with Somali pirates. The reality? It’s a tone poem on boredom. So it turns out that there really aren’t that many Somali pirates trying to hijack ships anymore. So we follow three men in three different parts of their journey in this career trying to fill their days. It’s got some visual panache, but the lack of narrative hurts a bit.

(Photo credit: Visions du Reel)