25/03/2026
The IFS is delighted to welcome Executive Producer Al Hicks for a special Q&A following our Sunday, 29 March screening of PORCELAIN WAR (2024, USA) Directed by Brendan Bellomo & Slava Leontyev. M. 88 minutes.
Amidst the Russian invasion of Ukraine, three artists find inspiration and beauty as they defend their culture and their country. In a war waged by professional soldiers against ordinary civilians, Slava, Anya and Andrey choose to stay behind, armed with their art, their cameras, and, for the first time in their lives, their guns.
Al Hicks is a Grammy Award-Winning filmmaker based in Sydney and Los Angeles. After working as a musician in and around New York, Hicks' first feature documentary KEEP ON KEEPIN’ ON, won both the Audience Award and Best New Director honours at the 2014 Tribeca Film Festival. The film also won awards from the IDFA, AFI, Cinema Eye, Seattle Film Festival, Palm Springs, Hamptons Summer Docs and was shortlisted for the Academy Awards Best Documentary Feature in 2015. Hicks co-directed the documentary feature film QUINCY, following music legend and icon Quincy Jones. QUINCY premiered at TIFF in 2018, before a global premiere on Netflix. The film received the Critics’ Choice Honor for Best Music Documentary, the African American Film Critics Award for Best Documentary. QUINCY was included in the Doc NYC Short List, the Hollywood Reporter’s Top Ten Films of 2018, was honoured as a New York Times Critics’ Pick and won the Grammy for Best Music Film. In 2022 Hicks directed the feature documentary MY SISTER LIV which premiered at Karlovy Vary and Doc NYC. Most recently he was a Writer / Producer on WHISTLE (TIFF 50) and Executive Produced PORCELAIN WAR which was nominated for an Oscar at the 97th Academy Awards and won the 2024 Sundance U.S Documentary Grand Jury Prize.
