AFI Docs Announces Initial Screenings For 2021 Event; Anthony Bourdain Project To Screen As Centerpiece

AFI Docs will go forward this year with limited in-person screenings as well as a virtual edition, and planners of the event announced an initial three screenings.

The festival will open on June 22 with the world premiere of Naomi Osaka, from Garrett Bradley. and will close with Cusp, directed by Parker Hill and Isabel Bethencourt. The event’s centerpiece screening will be Roadrunner: A Film About Anthony Bourdain, directed by Morgan Neville.

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The festival runs from June 22-27, with in-person screenings at the AFI Silver Theatre and Cultural Center in Silver Spring, MD. The event is the American Film Institute’s annual documentary festival, and has been held in recent years in Silver Spring and Washington, D.C. Last year, it was a virtual event because of the Covid-19 pandemic.

Naomi Osaka focuses on the tennis star over a period of two years. Bradley will be present for a Q&A afterward. Cusp follows three teenage girls in a small Texas town, in what is described as a coming of age story. The screening of Roadrunner will take place on June 25, on what would have been Bourdain’s 65th birthday. The project traces his life as he reinvented the travel show and authored Kitchen Confidential.

Tickets for in-person screenings and virtual showings will be available June 8, with passes available now at docs.afi.com.

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