Sandbox Films Execs on New Docs Premiering at SXSW and Seeking Science Non-Fiction Stories That Pack an Emotional Punch

variety.com:

Jazz Tangcay Artisans Editor After launching less than three years ago, production company Sandbox films celebrated Oscars weekend this year with a nominated documentary, “Fire of Love.” The company will also premiere two new documentary films, “Confessions of a Good Samaritan” from Penny Lane and “The Arc of Oblivion” from Ian Cheney.

Founding director Greg Boustead tells Variety that the boutique company seeks to share stories that pack an emotional punch, as he felt that element was often missing when it came to the science non-fiction genre. “One of the motivations for founding a company is to find those stories of where science and technology intersect with society in interesting and unexpected ways,” Boustead says.

Cheney’s film is executive produced by Werner Herzog. Set against the backdrop of the filmmaker’s quixotic quest to build an ark in Maine, the doc heads far afield — to salt mines in the Alps, fjords in the Arctic and ancient libraries in the Sahara — to illuminate the strange world of archives, record-keeping and memory.

Similarly, Lane’s film follows her quest to donate a kidney to a stranger. Described as a provocative inquiry into the science, history and the ethics of organ transplantation, the film asks an ancient question in a whole new way: Who is your neighbor, and what do you owe them? “Both the films are human, character-driven and emotional, but grapple with these big questions that we’re trying to answer as a society,” Jessica Harrop, head of development and production, says. “One explores this idea of what do we owe each other as people, to an exploration of altruism.