The Arab Spring has heralded in themes both political and personal in works at Qatar’s recent Doha Tribeca Film Festival, which awarded prizes to films about Arab hip-hop, revolution, and a Qatari boy’s discovery of poetry as he struggles to find his identity.

Who’ll shape the next decade of film? J. Hoberman notes 10 mid-career directors—including Kelly Reichardt (subject of our 2010 Regis program) and Apichatpong Weerasethakul—who make films out of an existential, not commercial, urge.

A.O. Scott says of Chris Sullivan’s hand-animated film Consuming Spirits, which took 15 years to make and screens Feb. 8 at the Walker: “[T]he blend of narrative quasi-realism and wild, somber visual invention […] is entirely original.”

When it makes its Canadian debut in Toronto, Jem Cohen’s newest film, We Have an Anchor, will include a live score performed by musicians including frequent collaborator Guy Picciotto (Fugazi) and members of Godspeed You! Black Emperor and Dirty Three.

For her 2011 book It Chooses You, Miranda July interviewed people she met through LA’s Penny Saver, and some of these exchanges inspired scenes in her film The Future. The interactions were better than fiction: “It’s like you’re jealous of real life; it’s so good.”

Sundance has just announced films in its 2013 program of shorts. Of note: Sirocco by the University of Minnesota’s Hisham Bizri and MCAD professor Tom Schroeder’s Marcel, King of Tervure, which will be screened in our Best Buy Film/Video Bay starting January 2.

The Academy Awards’ just-released shortlist of documentaries eligible for Oscars includes two recently screened at the Walker, Alison Klayman’s Ai Weiwei: Never Sorry and Iranian filmmaker Jafar Panahi’s This Is Not a Film.

Results are in for Sight & Sound’s Best of 2012 film poll, which includes films familiar to Walker audiences: Beasts of the Southern Wild (#5), This Is Not a Film (#8), and Miguel Gomes’ Tabu, which screens here Jan. 11–19, 2013.

The first film documentarian and 2012 MacArthur “genius” Laura Poitras saw in art school was avant-garde artist Ernie Gehr’s Serene Velocity (1970). Included in our Renegades exhibition, the experimental work “blew holes in my mind” and shaped her future work.