The Projection Booth

The Joe Louis Fist is among Detroit's best-known monuments, yet plenty of people have forgotten whose fist it is. Etched in Pavement (2026), a festival documentary from Detroit photographer-turned-filmmaker John Sippel, brings that legacy back through two young fighters from Southwest Detroit. Sippel spent four years inside the grassroots Guns Down, Gloves Up movement, where boxing becomes an answer to gun violence, addiction, and loss. After Woods Hole and a packed Detroit homecoming, the film is now on digital and VOD.

Mike talks with Sippel about two and a half years of shooting, screening the first rough cut for his subjects in his living room, an $80,000 post-production budget raised through boxing gyms and Kickstarter, and Joe Louis's children speaking on film about their father for the first time.

Visit the film's official website for more details.

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What does it cost to believe everything? Gimme Truth (2026), which had its world premiere at Hot Docs and went on to Fantastic Fest, follows UFO contactees, starseeds, anti-vaccine crusaders, and other seekers of hidden knowledge without sneering and without sharing their beliefs. Co-directors Simon Ennis, who made The Hobby: Tales from the Tabletop (2024), and Brad Abrahams care less about what these believers believe than why.

Mike talks with both filmmakers about earning trust from wary subjects, including anti-vaccine filmmaker Mikki Willis, who took two years to say yes; shooting at the Red Pill Expo in Des Moines with no crew but each other; and a stash of footage that could become a film of its own. 

Follow Brad Abrahams on Instagram and see where Gimme Truth is screening, including Windsor and DOC NYC in November.

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Mike talks with the two stars of Little Doors (2026) — married couple Anthony Oberbeck and Megan Koester — about a deadpan comedy in which a lonely woman, quietly living through the end of the world, discovers a small wooden door has grown into the side of her body and has to decide whether to open it.

It’s the feature directorial debut of Oberbeck (Dad & Stepdad, the Reveries trilogy), who wrote, directed, edited, and co-stars in the film opposite his real-life wife, shooting almost entirely inside producer Eric Cotten’s mostly empty Baltimore house because emptying a room, Oberbeck found, was cheaper than dressing one. The same logic put both leads in identical blue jumpsuits for the whole shoot — sourced from a used-workwear tent in the City of Industry — so nobody had to track continuity or hire a wardrobe department. First-time film composer Lars Finberg, of garage-punk mainstays The Intelligence and Thee Oh Sees, scored the film from demos of his own next album, handing them over with “use whatever inspires you.” Oberbeck cut the whole thing from his bed, having no desk, while directing his own wife forced an early, blunt conversation about where “lead actress” ended and “spouse” began.

Little Doors had its world premiere at the Calgary Underground Film Festival before playing its US premiere at Fantastic Fest.

Follow Anthony Oberbeck and Megan Koester on Instagram for screening updates.

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Mike talks with Jake Allyn, writer-director of Clean Hands (2026), a true-crime drama about a celebrated Hagerstown, Maryland narcotics sergeant fighting the opioid pipeline he polices by day while his own daughter is consumed by it at home.

Allyn found the story on YouTube during COVID and became close enough with the real Kevin and Dana Simmers that he calls them second parents; they and the police officers who served with Kevin were on set throughout the 20-day Atlanta and Hagerstown shoot, alongside Brooke’s actual drug counselor, who appears in the film herself. Zach Braff, taking his first dramatic lead as a real person and a cop, reportedly came to need Kevin’s presence on set by the second week after initially asking for space; Esther McGregor carried the weight of standing in for every woman who’s passed through the recovery home the real story inspired. Allyn structured the film’s financing so that a third of its profits go directly to Brooke’s House, the real nonprofit recovery residence Kevin founded after his daughter’s story played out.

The film is Allyn’s second directing credit, made with his brother Conor, following their earlier border drama Ride; it opens Friday, October 16th, after premiering at this year’s Tribeca Festival.

Follow the film on Instagram, and visit Brooke’s House to support the recovery program.

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Become a supporter of The Projection Booth at http://www.patreon.com/projectionbooth

Mike talks with Danish writer-director Kasper Kalle about his sophomore feature No Rest for the Wicked (2026), a queer gothic romance shot on the Faroe Islands that slides from love story into vampire tale into body horror without the audience noticing the ground shifting under them.

Kalle built the film from an 1885 short story by Karl Heinrich Ulrichs — one of the earliest unapologetic accounts of gay love in print — and expanded its fifteen pages using the islands themselves: constant, unschedulable fog (created on set and in post), a 300-year-old stone village the crew stumbled on mid-scout, and composers from the Faroes so the score wouldn’t feel imported. Leads Egor Venned, a Faroese former model making his acting debut, and Danish star Pilou Asbæk (Game of Thrones) anchor the romance at the film’s center.

After premiering at Fantasia and playing its US premiere at Fantastic Fest, the film is headed to US theaters, with Kalle already writing his next two projects.

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Become a supporter of The Projection Booth at http://www.patreon.com/projectionbooth