Latest in Documentary

For Sama, Waad al-Kateab’s striking documentary about the start of the protests against the Assad regime in Syria, won the Best Feature prize at the International Documentary Association’s IDA Awards. Al-Kateab shot hundreds of hours of footage over a course of the five-year siege that offered an unflinching view of…

In his early 20s Michael Apted began assisting on a film called Seven Up!, little realizing it would turn into the most ambitious documentary project ever undertaken. It focused on a group of seven-year-old British schoolchildren from diverse socioeconomic backgrounds, and became such a sensation on British television…

EXCLUSIVE: Oliver Sacks: His Own Life, the Ric Burns documentary about the famed neurologist and author that the premiered this fall at the Telluride Film Festival, has been acquired by Zeitgeist Films in association with Kino Lorber. As part of the U.S. rights deal, the pic will open theatrically in May 2020 at Film…

Controversial Israeli human rights lawyer Lea Tsemel is "a big chutzpahdik," in the words of filmmaker Rachel Leah Jones. "In Yiddish that means somebody ballsy, somebody gutsy," Jones explains. "Chutzpah, she has a lot of chutzpah." Tsemel has been demonstrating that chutzpah in a legal career that stretches back 50…

Robert Redford may have declared this year that he's stepping back from the Sundance Film Festival, but it turns out the semi-retired Oscar winner will be back on screen at the Utah jamboree kicking off next month. In a jam-packed lineup of 118 films, Redford’s Omniboat: A Fast Boat Fantasia star joins Riley Keough…

Filmmaker Kirby Dick and producer Amy Ziering, the team behind the Oscar-nominated college campus rape doc expose The Hunting Ground and The Invisible War, are working on their next untitled doc with Apple, Oprah Winfrey and Impact Partners to debut next year. Produced and co-directed by Dick and Ziering, the new…

EXCLUSIVE: We’ve learned that Oscar-winning filmmaker Vanessa Roth (Freeheld) is currently in production on an untitled documentary about two-time Oscar nominee and nine-time Grammy winner Mary J. Blige. Twenty-five years ago, the Bronx and Yonkers, NY native released her seminal and sophomore album "My Life". Now…

The late Marion Stokes, the enigmatic woman at the center of the new documentary Recorder: The Marion Stokes Project, lived a series of contradictions. Her nurse described Stokes as "a giving and loving person," yet she did not suffer fools gladly and for years was estranged from her only son. She believed in bridging…

EXCLUSIVE: Netflix and Pulse Films have been served with a legal letter about a breach of copyright on Bikram: Yogi, Guru, Predator, their documentary on the downfall of hot yoga founder Bikram Choudhury. Martha Engel, a trademark attorney at law firm Marjen, has written to the companies on behalf of Ghosh's Yoga…

Nightline producers Jake Lefferman and Emily Taguchi keep a bag packed at all times, ready to respond to breaking news. This being the United States, where mass shootings occur with alarming frequency, their destination is often a major crime scene. Like Pittsburgh in October 2018, site of a shooting at the Tree of…

Back in early 2017 filmmaker Rachel Lears came up with an idea for a documentary that wound up changing her life. "Rachel was looking for a subject to follow right after the 2016 presidential election," her husband and filmmaking collaborator Robin Blotnick explains. "She read an article about a group called Brand New…

The Sundance Institute has named its Documentary Fund Grantees which includes specialized grants administered by The Kendeda Fund and the Stories of Change Fund. The 47 projects come from 27 countries and are set to receive over $1.5 million in grants. The grant support will be extended to independent nonfiction films…