#Documentary
Weekly Update for November 20: Women Centric, Directed, and Written Films Opening
FILMS ABOUT WOMEN OPENING AND COMING TO STREAMING/VOD Run Mommie Dearest does her best impression of Marmee in “Run.” Picture-perfect, warm, and loving on the surface, Diane (Sarah Paulson) is a...
Trailer Watch: “Audrey” Pays Tribute to Audrey Hepburn
A new trailer for “Audrey” suggests that there was a “real” side to the Audrey Hepburn “that people didn’t know.” Described as both...
Pick of the Day: “Born to Be”
Although it covers a very different topic, “Born to Be” reminds me of another doc that came out this year, “Aggie.” Like the latter’s protagonist, Agnes Gund,...
DOC NYC Names Loira Limbal, Iyabo Boyd, and More as Documentary New Leaders
Sixteen up-and-comers in the documentary field — all of whom are women, nonbinary, and/or people of color — are being honored by DOC NYC. The festival announced the honorees for its...
Trailer Watch: “Through the Night” Goes Inside a 24-Hour Daycare Center
A trailer has arrived for “Thorough the Night,” Loira Limbal’s cinema verité portrait of a 24-hour daycare center. “I see a lot of parents come in and break down. They...
Kirsten Johnson’s “Dick Johnson Is Dead” Wins Big at Critics Choice Doc Awards
“Dick Johnson Is Dead’s” Oscars chances are very much alive. The documentary just won big at the Critics Choice Documentary Awards, which are considered among the most accurate...
DOC NYC 2020 Women Directors: Meet Katrine Philp – “Beautiful Something Left Behind”
Katrine Philp’s first film, “Book of Miri,” was awarded the President’s Award at the Full Frame Documentary Film Festival, nominated at IDFA, and won the European Young CIVIS...
Weekly Update for November 13: Women Centric, Directed, and Written Films Opening
FILMS ABOUT WOMEN OPENING AND COMING TO STREAMING/VOD Dirty God – Directed by Sacha Polak; Written by Sacha Polak and Susanne Farrell “Dirty God” takes on the nexus of gendered...
Deborah Shaffer on Honoring a Trailblazing Artist in “Queen of Hearts: Audrey Flack”
Academy Award-winning filmmaker Deborah Shaffer began making social issue documentaries as a member of the Newsreel collective in the ‘70s. She co-founded Pandora Films, one of the first woman’s...
Pick of the Day: “I Am Greta”
Greta Thunberg never expected to become a household name helping to lead the charge on climate activism. Her life, she explains in “I Am Greta,” now seems like a movie or dream,...
DOC NYC 2020 Women Directors: Meet Rosalynde LeBlanc – “Can You Bring It: Bill T. Jones and D-Man in the Waters”
Rosalynde LeBlanc has spent over 20 years in dance as a performer, choreographer, and educator. She was a member of the Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Dance Company, Mikhail Baryshnikov’s White Oak Dance...
DOC NYC 2020 Women Directors: Meet Lauren DeFilippo and Katherine Gorringe – “Red Heaven”
Katherine Gorringe is a documentary director and editor whose work has been featured at numerous festivals including SXSW, CPH:DOX, and Lunafest. Her most recent editing work includes the...
Trailer Watch: “Assassins” Investigates the Women Behind Kim Jong-nam’s Murder
“Assassins” revisits a stranger-than-fiction crime that galvanized the world in 2017. The Sundance doc investigates the shocking story behind Kim Jong-nam’s assassination in broad...
DOC NYC 2020 Women Directors: Meet Cheryl Dunn – “Moments Like This Never Last”
Cheryl Dunn is a New York City-based documentary filmmaker and photographer. Since the late 1980s she has spent a large part of her career documenting city streets and the people who strive to leave...
Gotham Awards Nominations: All Five Best Feature Nods Go to Women-Directed Pics
All too often awards shows forget that women directors exist. The 2020 IFP Gotham Awards is putting them front and center. Nominations for the 30th annual installment of the ceremony have been...
DOC NYC 2020 Women Directors: Meet Petra Epperlein – “The Meaning of Hitler”
Petra Epperlein makes documentaries with her husband Michael Tucker. Epperlein was born in Karl Marx City, GDR, and began her professional life as an architect. Her credits include “The Last...
Pick of the Day: “Coded Bias”
With “Coded Bias,” Shalini Kantayya wanted to explore “the dark underbelly of big tech.” She was following the lead of Joy Buolamwini, an MIT media lab researcher who...
DOC NYC 2020 Women Directors: Meet Raquel Cepeda – “La Madrina: The [Savage] Life of Lorine Padilla”
Raquel Cepeda’s features include “Bling: A Planet Rock,” about American hip-hop’s obsession with blinging and how that intersected itself into the decade-long blood...
Garrett Bradley, Regina K. Scully, and Maria Ressa to Be Honored at IDA Documentary Awards
Filmmaker Garrett Bradley, producer Regina K. Scully, and intrepid journalist and “A Thousand Cuts” subject Maria Ressa are set to be recognized by the International Documentary...
Oge Egbuonu’s “(In)Visible Portraits” Lands at OWN
“(In)Visible Portraits” is coming to OWN. The Oprah Winfrey Network has acquired rights to Oge Egbuonu’s celebration of Black women “sharing their stories of struggle,...
DOC NYC 2020 Women Directors: Meet Marianne Hougen-Moraga – “Songs of Repression”
Marianne Hougen-Moraga has directed a number of short documentaries including “Returned” (2011), which premiered at CPH:DOX, and “Sea of Sorrow – Sea of Hope” (2017), which...
DOC NYC 2020 Women Directors: Meet Abigail Child – “Origin of the Species”
Abigail Child has been at the forefront of experimental writing and media since the 1980s, having completed more than 50 film/video works and installations, and written six books. Her most recent...
DOC NYC 2020 Women Directors: Meet Elizabeth Lo – “Stray”
Elizabeth Lo is an award-winning filmmaker who was named one of the 25 New Faces of Independent Film by Filmmaker Magazine. Her shorts include “Hotel 22,” “Bisonhead,” and...
DOC NYC 2020 Women Directors: Meet Loira Limbal – “Through the Night”
Loira Limbal is an Afro-Dominican filmmaker and DJ based in the Bronx. She is the Senior Vice President of Programs at Firelight Media, an organization that provides mentorship, funding, and industry...
Weekly Update for November 6: Women Centric, Directed, and Written Films Opening
FILMS ABOUT WOMEN OPENING AND COMING TO STREAMING/VOD Proxima – Directed by Alice Winocour; Written by Alice Winocour and Jean-Stéphane Bron “Proxima” charts a different kind of...
Join the Girls Club for a Conversation with Alexandra Pelosi & Sheila Nevins About “American Selfie”
Alexandra Pelosi and Sheila Nevins will discuss their Showtime documentary “American Selfie: One Nation Shoots Itself” at the next Girls Club event. The conversation will take place...
Hurricane Maria Doc “Landfall” Acquired by PBS’ “POV,” Gets a Trailer
“Landfall” is coming to PBS. A press release announced that “POV” snagged U.S. broadcast rights to Cecilia Aldarondo’s documentary tracing the aftermath of Hurricane...
Trailer Watch: “Transhood” Follows Four Transgender Kids’ Coming-of-Age Stories
“What I really hope is that people realize we’re human. We’re not, like, some exotic species. We have human emotions — that’s what matters,” says one of the...
Weekly Update for October 30: Women Centric, Directed, and Written Films Opening
FILMS ABOUT WOMEN OPENING AND COMING TO STREAMING/VOD Kaali Khuhi – Directed by Terrie Samundra; Written by Terrie Samundra and David Walter Lech “Kaali Khuhi” Shivangi (Riva...
Pick of the Day: “The Donut King”
With “The Donut King,” director Alice Gu hopes to “challenge any preconceived notions of what a refugee is, or looks like, and that the film helps put a human face on refugees and...
Alice Gu Sees Her Doc “The Donut King” as the “Quintessential American Dream Story”
Alice Gu launched her career as a still photographer/cinematographer. Shooting docs has taken her from the favelas of Rio de Janeiro, to touring with rock bands throughout Europe, to following the...
IDA Doc Awards Announce Shortlists for Best Feature and Best Short: “Time,” “Boys State,” & More
The International Documentary Association (IDA) has announced shortlists for the Best Feature and Best Short categories at the 36th Annual IDA Documentary Awards, which will be presented at a...
Trailer Watch: “Dear Santa” Goes Behind the Scenes of the Postal Service’s Operation Santa Program
Volunteers join forces with the United States Postal Service to help kids’ Christmas dreams come true in “Dear Santa,” a look inside the USPS’s 100-year-old Operation Santa...
Sara Wolitzky on Exploring “Reawakened Feminist Energy and Organizing” in “Not Done: Women Remaking America”
Sara Wolitzky is a documentary filmmaker. In 2012, she helped launch the multi-platform documentary series MAKERS, which chronicles the U.S. and global women’s movement and the stories of hundreds...
Weekly Update for October 23: Women Centric, Directed, and Written Films Opening
FILMS ABOUT WOMEN OPENING AND COMING TO STREAMING/VOD The Craft: Legacy – Written and Directed by Zoe Lister-Jones In Blumhouse’s continuation of the cult hit “The Craft,” an eclectic...
Trailer Watch: “Us Kids” Fight to End Gun Violence
Kim A. Snyder is back with another documentary about gun violence. She’s following up 2016’s “Newtown,” a portrait of Newtown, Connecticut, one year after the shooting at...
Trailer Watch: “The Donut King” Explores the Power of the American Dream
A trailer has dropped for “The Donut King,” Alice Gu’s portrait of Ted Ngoy, AKA the Donut King, a Cambodian refugee who arrived in America in 1975 with nothing and built a donut...
Pick of the Day: “Surge”
One of the few good things to come out of the 2016 election was the subsequent onslaught of women running for office, organizing political campaigns, and participating in grassroots activism —...
Sabrina Van Tassel on Uncovering Flaws in the System in “The State of Texas vs. Melissa”
Sabrina Van Tassel is a French-American film director and journalist. As an investigative reporter, Van Tassel has directed more than 45 documentary films over the last 15 years for major television...
Weekly Update for October 16: Women Centric, Directed, and Written Films Opening
FILMS ABOUT WOMEN OPENING AND COMING TO STREAMING/VOD What the Constitution Means to Me (Filmed Stage Production) – Directed by Marielle Heller; Written by Heidi Schreck As Amy Coney...
Pick of the Day: “Belly of the Beast”
Though it’s most closely associated with Nazi Germany, eugenics has a history stateside as well. And it’s not just a thing of the past. “Belly of the Beast” tells the story of...
Rubika Shah on Exploring the Power of Grassroots Activism in the Punk Scene in “White Riot”
Rubika Shah is a writer-director and Screen International Star of Tomorrow. Her films have screened at Sundance, Berlin, Tribeca, and Hot Docs. Her mini-doc about David Bowie, “Let’s...
DOC NYC’s 2020 Lineup Announced, 52 Percent of Features in Competition Are Directed by Women
DOC NYC has announced the lineup for its eleventh edition. “Fifty-seven features (53% of the lineup) are directed or co-directed by women and 36 by BIPOC directors (34% of the feature...
Pick of the Day: “Time”
Even as it turns an unwavering eye on the criminal justice system, “Time” is an extremely hopeful film. Garrett Bradley’s documentary feature debut is the story of Fox Rich, a woman...
Trailer Watch: A Political Outsider Challenges the Democratic Party in “How to Fix a Primary”
In 2018, Abdul El-Sayed set out to be the Democratic candidate in Michigan’s gubernatorial race. As a young Muslim man and a political outsider — he is a doctor who ran Detroit’s...
NYWIFT Announces 2020 Creative Workforce Summit: Documentary Makers, Industry, & Funders in Conversation
New York Women in Film & Television (NYWIFT) has announced the dates and theme for the second annual New York Women in Film & Television Creative Workforce Summit. Set to take place virtually...
Nina Menkes to Investigate Sexist Cinema Techniques with Doc “Brainwashed”
Nina Menkes is taking on the male gaze. The “Queen of Diamonds” director is working on “Brainwashed,” a documentary outlining the omnipresent cinematic techniques that...
Weekly Update for October 9: Women Centric, Directed, and Written Films Opening
FILMS ABOUT WOMEN OPENING AND COMING TO STREAMING/VOD The Forty-Year-Old Version – Written and Directed by Radha Blank A struggling playwright decides to reinvent herself as a rapper in...
Trailer Watch: Alexandra Pelosi Takes a Bleak “American Selfie”
“America’s trying to find itself but it’s too late,” we’re told in Alexandra Pelosi’s new documentary. “It’s over, baby.” A trailer has arrived...
Pick of the Day: “Aggie”
Before “Aggie” was selected for Sundance 2020, I had never heard of Agnes Gund. Unless you’re very tuned into the worlds of art and social justice, you probably haven’t...
Trailer Watch: Blackpink Revisit Their Meteoric Rise and Plan Their Next Move in “Light Up the Sky”
Netflix is paying tribute to a global pop sensation. The streamer just released a trailer for “Blackpink: Light Up the Sky,” a doc charting the meteoric rise of the chart-topping K-pop...