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2022 was, in my opinion, the year of Black women in music. Beyoncé, Lizzo, Tems and Nicki Minaj all topped the Billboard Hot 100, and the first three of those are among the top nominees at the current Grammy Awards. Sza’s long-awaited sophomore album “Sos” was one of the top stories of the year and broke streaming records. And other Black women like Sudan Archives, GloRilla and Latto were celebrated new artists. Amid all that, one Black woman achieved perhaps the hardest feat: Egot. Jennifer Hudson completed her Egot when she took home a Tony for producing the acclaimed Broadway show “A Strange Loop.” She isn’t the first Black woman to achieve Egot status — that would be Whoopi Goldberg — but she is the first Black female musician to do so and the second Black musician overall, after John Legend. Much has been said about Hudson’s first Egot award — her...

This year at the Sundance Film Festival, three feature documentaries — Paula Eiselt and Tonya Lewis Lee’s “Aftershock,” Reid Davenport’s “I Didn’t See You There” and Isabel Castro’s “Mija” — share in common a $10,000 grant provided by the Points North Institute and CNN Films’ American Stories Documentary Fund.

Launched in 2020, the fund underwritten by CNN has dispensed a total of $100,000 in grants to emerging U.S. filmmakers working on 10 documentary projects that highlight pivotal moments in America. Eiselt and Lewis Lee’s “Aftershock,” and Davenport’s “I Didn’t See You There” are two of nine films in the Sundance U.S. Documentary Competition program, while Castro’s “Mija” is featured in the festival’s Next program. “Aftershock” addresses the U.S. maternal health crisis, “I Didn’t See You There” examines the discrimination people with disabilities face throughout the country, and “Mija” explores America’s immigration issues via music manager Doris Muñoz.

The Sundance Institute announced the jury members of this year’s Sundance Film Festival, taking place in hybrid format from Jan. 20 to 30.

Comprising six juries awarding prizes for artistic and cinematic achievement, the jurors include Marielle Heller (“A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood”), Andrew Haigh (“Looking”), Payman Maadi (“A Separation”) and more.

Chelsea Barnard, a producer on “C’mon C’mon” and “Booksmart,” serves alongside Heller and Maadi on the jury for U.S. dramatic competition. U.S. documentary competition jurors include Garrett Bradley (“Time”), Peter Nicks (“The Force”) and veteran documentary cinematographer Joan Churchill.

Haigh joins Mohamed Hefzy (“The Walls of the Moon”) and film curator La Frances Hui on the world cinema dramatic competition jury, while Cannes artistic adviser Emilie Bujès, former U.S. ambassador Patrick Gaspard and Dawn Porter (“The Way I See It”) will judge the world cinema documentary competition.

Joey Soloway, the creator, writer, director and executive producer of “Transparent,...

Exclusive: Sugar23 and Ace Content have come aboard Jared Drake & Steven Siig’s award-winning documentary Buried as executive producers, with Rocket Science signing on to handle domestic and international sales.

The film follows a California community’s effort to heal, after being confronted with a shared trauma on March 31st, 1982, when a large avalanche hit the ski resort Alpine Meadows and killed seven. Academy Award-winning producer Evan Hayes of Ace Content (Free Solo) joined Oscar winner Michael Sugar (Spotlight) and eight-time Emmy nominee David Hillman (The Tipping Point) of Sugar23 in screening the film prior to its premiere on the festival circuit and immediately signed on to spearhead its sale and release.

The producers have spent the last four months working with Jared and Siig to lock picture, and are looking to release it next year—timed to the 40th anniversary of the Alpine Meadows tragedy. Additional exec producers on...

MSNBC is giving cable news rival CNN increased competition in the exploding documentary arena through ramped up acquisitions by a revived arm devoted to non-fiction programming.

MSNBC Films showed the seriousness of its intent in June, when it won an intense bidding war for “Paper & Glue,” by the visual artist and prior Oscar nominee Jr, ahead of its Tribeca Film Festival premiere. “Paper & Glue” has since qualified for Academy Award consideration, and is competing against documentaries including “Julia,” backed by CNN Films and Sony Pictures Classics. MSNBC also has qualified two short documentaries – Emily L. Harrold’s “Meltdown at Dixie” and Seth Freed Wessler’s “The Facility” — for Oscar consideration

“We’re cherry-picking projects that exist in the ecosystem, whether it’s content from studios, or from an independent filmmaker, or a production company,” explains MSNBC president Rashida Jones, who brought in veteran docu producer Amanda Spain as...

Documentary filmmaker Dawn Porter considers Title IX, anti-gender discrimination legislation passed by Congress in 1972, as “one of the most misunderstood civil rights laws” and is setting out to change that with “Fifty/50,” a four-part ESPN docuseries that she is executive producing and co-directing.

On Oct. 19, she is slated to unveil a first look at “Fifty/50” during a conversation with fellow executive producer Allison Glock and Hannah Storm at the espnW: Women + Sports Summit in La Jolla, Calif.

“Fifty/50,” which she is co-directing with Nicole Newnham (“Crip Camp), celebrates the 50th anniversary of Title IX while also exploring the current struggle to maintain and evolve the 1972 law that forbids discrimination based on gender.

Prior to 1972, gender discrimination was commonplace in education and athletics. Physical activity for girls and women was cast as unfeminine, and while schools poured money and other resources into programs for male students, budding female athletes were left to fend for themselves.

It’s never too early to relive one of the few comical moments from the final, chaotic months of the Trump presidency.

“Four Seasons Total Documentary,” a film centering around Rudy Giuliani’s botched attempt to contest the 2020 election results, is airing on MSNBC on Nov. 7 — exactly one year after the infamous debacle.

The documentary is less about the then-president’s lawyer accidentally booking a press conference outside a local landscaping company instead of the lavish Four Seasons Hotel, and instead focuses on a small business in Philadelphia that was unexpectedly thrust into the national spotlight when it agreed to host a political event in the middle of the presidential election.

MSNBC Films acquired rights to “Four Seasons Total Documentary” as part of the cable news channel’s attempt to bolster its presence in the documentary space. MSNBC Films is a new unit from the NBCUniversal-backed outlet that will...

A fight for answers as to why their children were battling rare cancers forms the crux of “In the Dark of the Valley,” the newest acquisition by MSNBC Films, a nascent unit that hopes to build the cable-news network’s pipeline of longform projects.

The documentary tells the story of a mother in southern California who finds that an abandoned rocket-testing facility, called the Santa Susana Field Laboratory, near her home was the site of one of the largest nuclear accidents in the U.S. She examines the possibility that the site may have exposed the surrounding community to cancer-causing radioactive and chemical waste. “When our team was first introduced to the Santa Susana Field Laboratory, we were astounded by the difference a group of broken, but unwavering mothers could make,” director Nicholas Mihm said in a prepared statement. “MSNBC gives these mothers a voice, a voice that has too...

NBC News is an enterprise built on 30-minute and 60-minute increments of TV journalism. Executives are starting to think about longer blocks of time.

As the Toronto International Film Festival continues into this weekend, Noah Oppenheim, president of NBC News, and Liz Cole, president of the still-young NBC News Studios, will be there. “Memory Box: Echoes of 9/11,” a documentary co-presented by the Studios unit that features dozens of recollections by people of that fateful day, will get a special screening on the tragedy’s 20th anniversary.

“We are really honored by the TIFF screening,” says Cole. “We’d like to have more like it in the future.”

NBC News’ presence at TIFF signals its growing ambitions in the documentary space after forming the Studios in early 2020. The co-production, “The Way I See It,” about White House photographer Pete Souza, “was the most watched non-news program on MSNBC in history,” says Oppenheim,...

The inaugural Truth Seekers Summit brought together some of the brightest minds in filmmaking, music, and current events to speak on topics ranging from the impact of misinformation in media to the evolving language of documentary filmmaking. Co-hosted by Rolling Stone and Variety in partnership with Showtime, the summit featured panels, Q&a’s, and keynote discussions from marquee names in the world of documentary filmmaking. Check out 10 of the most thought-provoking moments from this week’s event.

Errol Morris on Breaking Rules

The dean of American documentary filmmaking Errol...

PBS led all networks in nominations for the 42nd annual News and Documentary Emmy Awards, landing 52 overall — thanks to the strength of signature series “Frontline,” “Independent Lens,” “Pov,” “Nova,” “PBS News Hour” and “Nature.”

The National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences announced this year’s nominees on Tuesday morning, noting that more than 2,200 submissions were entered, from content that premiered in calendar year 2020. CNN was next with 41 nods, including five each for “AC360,” CNN Films and “The Situation Room with Wolf Blitzer.” CNN Films docs earning nominations included three for “John Lewis: Good Trouble.”

When combined with various partnerships, “Frontline” landed the most nominations overall, with 19. Next in line, with 16 each, were CBS’ “60 Minutes” and Vice’s “Vice News Tonight.”

Best documentary nominations included three for PBS: Frontline’s “Once Upon A Time In Iraq,” Independent Lens’ “Belly of the Beast” and Pov’s “Advocate.” They’re up against Netflix’s “Athlete A,...

“Rise Again: Tulsa and the Red Summer” begins with workers marking off patches of green grass with orange paint. The beeps of a bulldozer sounded as excavation at the Oaklawn cemetery in Tulsa, Oklahoma, got underway last summer. Forensic anthropologist had turned up data that suggested there might be a mass grave at the site. Director Dawn Porter’s insightful, chilling, often elegant documentary about the Tulsa Race Massacre of 1921 and the other virulent outbursts of anti-Black violence that preceded it — making 1919 one of the deadliest for Black Americans at the hands of white mobs — premieres June 18 on National Geographic and Hulu.

“Rise Again” is a hard but welcome addition to a growing collection of movies and television series — fiction and nonfiction — that insists viewers reckon with the nation’s violent, anti-Black past, a past that has carried over into our present. That it begins streaming on Juneteenth — a complicated,...

Dawn Porter’s Trilogy Films, the company behind feature docs including John Lewis: Good Trouble and The Way I See It, has partnered with Industrial Media.

Porter has struck an overall deal with the Eli Holzman and Aaron Saidman-run firm, which is the umbrella group behind The Intellectual Property Corporation, Sharp Entertainment, B17 Entertainment, and 19 Entertainment.

It is similar to the deal that Industrial Media did last year with R.J. Cutler’s This Machine, which is behind Apple TV+’s Billie Eilish: The World’s A Little Blurry and Showtime’s Belushi.

Porter will continue to develop and produce non-scripted projects for film and television with Industrial Media’s backing. Trilogy Film’s upcoming slate includes an untitled mental health series for Apple TV+, which is executive-produced by Oprah Winfrey and Prince Harry.

The two-time Sundance film festival director (left) got her start with her feature directorial debut in 2013 with Gideon’s Army,...

Dawn Porter’s Trilogy Films has inked an exclusive overall deal with Industrial Media. Trilogy, the production company behind the critically acclaimed documentary “John Lewis: Good Trouble,” is the sixth company to partner with the independent production group. Industrial Media’s leading unscripted content production roster includes Sharp Entertainment, Ipc, B17 Entertainment, 19 Entertainment and This Machine.

Porter, the non-fiction series filmmaker that directed “Gideon’s Army” and “The Way I See It,” among others, will continue to focus on developing and producing non-scripted projects for film and television with Industrial Media’s support.

“After years of admiring the quality and character of her work, we are honored to officially partner with Dawn Porter,” Industrial’s CEO Eli Holzman and President Aaron Saidman said in a statement on Wednesday. “She is a gifted filmmaker and a prolific producer with a passion for stories that are as engaging as they are meaningful.

Oscar ballots will be in the hands of AMPAS voters on March 5, and they’ll have until March 10 to turn them in. All the predicting, theorizing and prognosticating have led to this crucial six-day period when the nearly 10,000 Academy members make their choices among the year’s achievements. As we head into this critical period, in a year defined by a global pandemic that has changed the way we look at cinema, we’re still reminded that movies are well worth celebrating.

Streamers provided access to some of the best films of 2020. This year, no matter what AMPAS ends up selecting as its nominees for the 93rd Academy Awards, most films will be widely available for consumers to watch before the ceremony. Cinema continues to evolve, and we can’t stop what’s coming. As with any true cinephile, my choices for what touched me from this extended eligibility are personally mine.

The Telluride Film Festival is optimistic that by September, it will be able to safely hold an in-person event in the Colorado mountain town, including an extra day of programming. The fest is set for Sept. 2 to Sept. 6, organizers announced Friday.

Executive director Julie Huntsinger said in a statement, “We are beyond excited to announce our dates. Our position within the festival calendar gives us hope that we will be able to hold the festival this year. We are guided by science and are continuously evaluating the global pandemic in relation to health, travel and live events. Time will tell, but in the meantime, we are busy planning for and putting together an incredible program.”

The festival is not making new passes available, since most passholders rolled over their 2020 passes to this year. “Without knowing theater capacity restrictions, the small number of passes left are being held back out of an abundance of caution,...

Exclusive: The Black Reel Awards (BRAs), an annual event that recognizes the excellence of African-Americans, as well as the cinematic achievements of the African diaspora in the global film industry, has unveiled the nominees for its 21st annual awards ceremony. The event, hosted by the Foundation for the Augmentation of African-Americans in Film (Faaaf), will take place on April 11 virtually across several media platforms.

Leading the pack with 15 nominations is Amazon’s One Night in Miami, the directorial debut from Oscar and past Black Reel Award winner, Regina King, who also received a nom for Outstanding Director. The pic also picked up nominations for Outstanding Picture, Outstanding Actor (Kingsley Ben-Adir), Outstanding Supporting Actor, and Outstanding Screenplay (Kemp Powers).

Warner Bros’ Judas and the Messiah is not too far behind with 12 nominations including Outstanding Picture, Outstanding Actor (Lakeith Stanfield), Outstanding Supporting Actor (Daniel Kaluuya), Outstanding...

⊗ Film is supposed to be inclusive. But if you can’t see yourself on-screen, do you feel as if you even exist? One-third of our lives is spent at work, and the artists who express their creativity through cinema deserve to have their work seen, and not just because of the color of their skin or their gender but because when you are exposed to an experience different from your own, your creativity grows. Take a moment to review this list of eligible films, putting a check mark on the ones you have seen from this year. Ideally, that will leave you with a clearer picture of how you are contributing to cinema’s evolution with your votes.

Your goal should be to watch all of these films, but let’s be realistic. Try seeing at least 60% of them. All meet the Academy’s diversity requirements — in front of or...

The largest field of documentaries in Oscar history has been narrowed down to 15 semifinalists, with almost all of the films that were expected to advance to the shortlist doing so.

Kirsten Johnson’s “Dick Johnson Is Dead,” Garrett Bradley’s “Time,” Alexander Nanau’s “Collective,” Viktor Kosakovskiy’s “Gunda,” James Lebrecht and Nicole Newnham’s “Crip Camp” and David France’s “Welcome to Chechnya,” which led all of the year’s nonfiction films in previous nominations and wins, were among the films that advanced from the record field of 238 qualifying docs. That number shattered the previous record of 170 eligible documentaries, which was set in 2017.

Other films that made the shortlist included “All In: The Fight for Democracy,” “Boys State,” “MLK/FBI,” “My Octopus Teacher,” “The Painter and the Thief,” “76 Days” and “The Truffle Hunters.” Two documentaries that were also entered in the Oscars’ international race, Chile’s “The Mole Agent” and Italy’s “Notturno,...

The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences has announced the shortlists for nine categories for the upcoming Oscars. The categories and number of films include documentary feature (15), documentary short subject (10), international feature (15), makeup and hairstyling (10), original score (15), original song (15), animated short film (10), live action short film (10) and visual effects (10).

The shortlist voting concluded on Feb. 5, and the remaining will move on to the official phase one voting, which will take place on March 5-9. The Oscar nominations will be announced on March 15, with the show scheduled to take place on April 25.

The full lists are below with snubs and surprises:

Documentary Feature

Fifteen films will advance in the documentary feature category out of 238 films eligible films. Members of the documentary branch vote to determine the shortlist and the nominees.

“76 Days” (MTV Documentary Films) – directed by Weixi Chen, Hao Wu, Anonymous “All In: The Fight for Democracy” (Amazon Studios) – directed by Lisa Cortes,...

283 films were submitted for the Academy Award’s Documentary Feature Oscar and now just 15 remain. AMPAS revealed the shortlist for both the Documentary Feature and Documentary Short with the former category featuring few upsets. Acclaimed titles such as “Boys State,” “Time,” “Dick Johnson is Dead,” “Collective” and “Time” are still in the running for the eventual five Oscar nominations.

Read More: “Minari” and “The Crown” rule 2021 SAG Awards nominations

Snubbed contenders in a very competitive field include “The Dissident,” “A Thousand Cuts,” “The Way I See It,” “Totally Under Control” and “John Lewis: Good Trouble,” among others.

Continue reading ‘Time,’ ‘Collective’ Make 2021 Best Documentary Oscars Shortlist at The Playlist.

Focus Features has elevated Kiska Higgs to president of production and acquisitions.

In her new role, she will oversee the studio’s films and team across development, production and acquisition for domestic and international titles. Higgs will continue to work from the Focus Features headquarters in Los Angeles.

Higgs, who previously served as executive VP of production and acquisitions at Focus, has worked at Universal for 15 years. She began as a production executive in Los Angeles at Universal Pictures and at the studio’s London office before joining Focus in 2016.

“I’ve had the good fortune of working with Kiska for 10 years, during which time her great taste, strong relationships, and insights into the marketplace and the culture have been a not-so-secret weapon for Universal and then Focus,” Focus Features chairman Peter Kujawski said. “We are extremely fortunate to now have her leading our creative team where she will grow our slate in scope,...

Focus Features has elevated Kiska Higgs to President of Production and Acquisitions.

In her new post, she will oversee the studio’s films and team across development, production and acquisitions for the classic label’s domestic and foreign slate. Higgs will continue to work from the Focus Features headquarters in Los Angeles.

She recently served as EVP of Production & Acquisitions and is a 15-year vet of Universal, having been a production executive in the Los Angles and London offices before transitioning to Focus in 2016.

At Focus she has been involved in such pick-ups as Emerald Fennell’s Promising Young Woman, which recently picked up four Golden Globe nominations including Best Drama Feature, Director, Actress Drama Carey Mulligan and screenplay. Other projects include Robin Wright’s Land which debuted at Sundance, Carnival Films and Julian Fellowes’ Downton Abbey and Working Title and Edgar Wright’s upcoming Last Night In Soho. Higgs...

NBC News announced that its NBCU Academy and NBC News Studios would launch a fellowship program to award six filmmakers $270,000 in grants each year to create feature length documentaries.

The program, Original Voices, will allocate $45,000 each to fund the documentary projects, in all stages of production, that will highlight social issues and identities. The fellows will get access to NBC News Studios and expertise in areas like story and editing, marketing and festival distribution. They also will be able to consult and partner with journalists and executives at NBC News, MSNBC, CNBC and Telemundo.

NBC News Studios said that it identified 50 filmmakers to apply for the fellowships, with an emphasis on diversity, including Latino, Asian American and Pacific Islander, Black, Indigenous and tribal populations, LGBTQ+, women or people with disabilities. No distribution rights are attached for NBC.

Winners will be announced at the end of February 2021. Three documentary filmmakers will...

Monday is the start of five days of voting to determine shortlists in the nine Oscar categories that narrow down the field before the start of nomination balloting. In the Best Documentary Feature and Best International Feature Film categories, 238 and 93 films, respectively, will be reduced to 15 semifinalists.

In each of those categories, voters must see a minimum number of entries, drawn from a “required viewing” list sent to each member, in order to vote. Documentary voters must see more than 30 films, international voters must see 12. Shortlists in all categories will be announced on Feb. 9.

Here are our thoughts on these contests; on Tuesday, we’ll look at the below-the-line categories that also use shortlists.

‘Time’ / Amazon Studios

Best Documentary Feature

Ever since the Documentary Branch rules were changed to do away with the small committees that previously viewed films in the preliminary round of voting, the documentary shortlists have invariably...

Pete Souza, chief official White House photographer under presidents Ronald Reagan and Barack Obama, was a reluctant star of Dawn Porter’s documentary The Way I See It. “Pete is very private,” Porter says during Deadline’s Contenders Documentary award-season event. “He said ‘no’ multiple times.”

Producers Laura Dern and Jayme Lemons eventually persuaded Souza to say yes, allowing for a cinematic portrait of a man who gained a unique vantage point on the corridors of presidential power.

“There’s such a curiosity about what happens in the White House. There’s a mythology about it, there’s a fantasy about what’s happening in those rooms,” Porter says. “I think what Pete’s showing is, yes, there’s pomp and circumstance and there’s grandiosity but there’s also something really basic that’s happening, which is people doing really hard work in service of others. And that’s...

The coronavirus pandemic pushed the release of a slew of narrative films into 2021, reducing the number of Best Picture contenders this Oscar season. But it’s a completely different story with documentary. Streaming platforms and other players didn’t hold back their nonfiction slate, and with the Academy relaxing qualification rules, the record for films in contention for Best Documentary is about to be shattered this year.

That makes this the perfect time to launch Deadline’s first Contenders Documentary, a virtual showcase of top nonfiction films this awards season. The event kicks off today at 8 a.m. Pt. Click here to register and join the livestream, and follow along for the day on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram via @Deadline and #DeadlineContenders. See the full schedule of panels below.

The Contenders Documentary program, featuring conversations with a raft of Oscar-winning and Oscar-nominated filmmakers including Alex Gibney, Liz Garbus, Ron Howard,...

Following the continuing success of its long-running Contenders events during Oscar and Emmy seasons, Deadline is making new additions to the franchise with Contenders Documentary, focusing on the year’s most noteworthy non-fiction films, and Contenders International, with its eye on a great lineup of foreign-language entries. Both of these events, designed to put the spotlight on worthy movies that don’t always get the attention they deserve, will be presented virtually due to the pandemic — as we did for the Emmys — in their inaugural year over the course of one weekend, with International taking place on Saturday, January 9, and Documentary on Sunday, January 10. Both will be starting their livestreams at 8 a.m. Pt.

Fifteen studios, streamers and distributors will be participating in the kickoff for Contenders International, with an impressive and varied presentation involving clips and filmmaker/talent Q&As from a total of 23 films from around the world...

The new documentary “Oliver Sacks: His Own Life” is an account of iconic neurologist Oliver Sacks‘ life from beginning to end. The film features footage of Sacks in the final months of his life as he recalls his turbulent life story, surrounded by friends and associates. What separates the film from other biographical docs is the infectious spirit Sacks has when telling his story. As we are introduced to him at the beginning, he is grappling with metastatic cancer, fully aware that he will die within a year. Sacks has a peaceful perspective of this fact, stating at one point, “It is the fate—the genetic and neural fate—of every human being to be a unique individual, to find his own path, to live his own life, to die his own death.”

See HBO’s ‘Bully. Coward. Victim.’ documentary on Roy Cohn gets key nominations — will Oscars be next?...

“The Way I See It,” the new documentary about White House photographer Pete Souza, is starting off award season with a pair of victories. The film just won the Critics’ Choice Documentary Award for Best Score, which was written by Marco Beltrami, Brandon Roberts and Buck Sanders, and the organization’s non-competitive Most Compelling Living Subjects of a Documentary award. It was also nominated for Best Political Documentary.

Directed by Dawn Porter, who also helmed another acclaimed political doc this year, “John Lewis: Good Trouble,” “The Way I See It” goes through Souza’s life as a photographer for the Ronald Reagan and Barack Obama presidencies. The film predominantly centers on the Obama years, as we see such iconic photographs as the Situation Room, taken on the night that led to the killing of Osama bin Laden, and “Hair Like Mine,” in which a young Black boy touches the president’s hair.

On the November 18, 2020 episode of /Film Daily, /Film senior writer Ben Pearson is joined by managing editor Jacob Hall, weekend editor Brad Oman, and writers Hoai-Tran Bui and Chris Evangelista to talk about what they’ve been up to at the virtual water cooler. At The Water Cooler: What we’ve been Doing: Hoai-Tran is […]

The post Water Cooler: The Red Shoes, Lego Star Wars Holiday Special, Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom, The Crown, Run, The Orange Years, The Way I See It, and More appeared first on /Film.

A super-crowded documentary field means that many are called and few are chosen. And critics carry more sway than ever in this pandemic year, helping to cull the long list of would-be awards contenders. Every win from whatever source helps to turn a movie into a must-see.

Thus Monday’s fifth annual Critics Choice Documentary Award winners — which recognize the year’s achievements in documentaries released in theaters, on TV and on digital platforms, for which I voted in several categories — push Best Documentary Feature “Dick Johnson Is Dead” (Netflix) and its Best Director Kirsten Johnson into the lead for the Oscar shortlist of 15, which the Academy will announce on February 9, 2021.

Netflix dominated the field with six wins, including “Dick Johnson is Dead,” popular hit “My Octopus Teacher,” which took home Best Cinematography and Best Science/Nature Documentary, Best Narration winner “David Attenborough: A Life on Our Planet,” and, with “Athlete A,...

Dick Johnson Is Dead, Netflix’s personal documentary exploring a daughter’s look into the decline of her aging father, took top honors from the Critics’ Choice Documentary Awards for Best Documentary Feature as well as Best Director for Kirsten Johnson.

The awards, which were spread out among several winners, saw no single docu dominate, and in fact another Netflix film, My Octopus Teacher, was the only other film to win more than one trophy, taking Best Science/Nature Docu and Best Cinematography.

Crip Camp: A Disability Revolution and Gunda had led nominations with five each but were shut out. Mr. Soul! which also had five noms, did take Best First Documentary Feature. Among other significant winners were John Lewis: Good Trouble for Best Historical/Biographical docu, and Apple TV+’s Boys State as Best Political Documentary.

“We couldn’t be more excited about being able to celebrate such a...

The fifth annual Critics Choice Documentary Awards announced the 2020 winners Monday morning, honoring “Dick Johnson Is Dead” for best documentary feature as well as the film’s Kirsten Johnson for best director.

The film focuses on Richard Johnson, the director’s father, who suffers from dementia and imagines different ways in which he could die with a darkly comedic tone. The film premiered at the 2020 Sundance Film Festival and won the special jury award for innovation in non-fiction storytelling.

“My Octopus Teacher” took home two awards for best cinematography and best science/nature documentary.

Like most award shows this year, the Critics Choice Doc Awards had to go virtual due to the coronavirus pandemic.

“We couldn’t be more excited about being able to celebrate such a diverse group of films and filmmakers and subjects this year of all years, on the fifth occasion of the CCDAs, and with 2020 being what it is,...

“Dick Johnson is Dead” won both Best Documentary Feature and Best Director (Kirsten Johnson) at the fifth annual Critics’ Choice Documentary Awards. This Netflix film came into the competition with four bids; it lost the cinematography race to another Netflix title, “My Octopus Teacher,” and thee narration award to “David Attenborough: A Life on Our Planet.” “The Way I See It” won for score while “Totally Under Control” took editing. See the full list of Ccda winners announced on November 16 below.

The six genre prizes were awarded as follows: “MLK/FBI” (Best Archival Documentary); “John Lewis: Good Trouble” (Best Historical/Biographical Documentary); both “Beastie Boys Story” and “The Go-Go’s” (Best Music Documentary); “Boys State” (Best Political Documentary”); “My Octopus Teacher” (Best Science/Nature Documentary); and both “Ali & Cavett: The Tale of the Tapes” and “Athlete A” (Best Sports Documentary).

The Shoes in the Bed title “Mr. Soul!” won one of its...

Kirsten Johnson’s playful “Dick Johnson Is Dead” has been named the best nonfiction film of 2020 at the fifth annual Critics Choice Documentary Awards, which were announced on Monday morning.

Johnson also won the Best Director award for her Netflix film, in which she deals with the impending death of her father by staging his death in a variety of ways.

Melissa Haizlip won the Best First Documentary Feature award for “Mr. Soul!,” while other awards went to “My Octopus Teacher” for cinematography, “Totally Under Control” for editing, “The Way I See It” for music and “David Attenborough: A Life on Our Planet” for narration.

“MLK/FBI” was named Best Archival Documentary, “John Lewis: Good Trouble” Best Historical/Biographical Documentary, “Boys State” Best Political Documentary” and “My Octopus Teacher” Best Science/Nature Documentary.

There were two ties: “Ali & Cavett: The Tale of the Tapes” and “Athlete A” tied in the Best Sports Documentary category,...

Director Dawn Porter is responsible for two of the more notable political documentaries of the year: “John Lewis: Good Trouble,” about the late Georgia congressman John Lewis, and “The Way I See It,” the story of White House photographer Pete Souza. The director was about two-thirds into production on “Good Trouble” before taking on “The Way I See It,” and she was struck by how much the two films feel of a piece. “The movies speak to each other for me,” says Porter in a new interview with Gold Derby. “John Lewis was saying, ‘Say something. Get in the way,’ and that’s exactly what Pete was doing. It just really felt like such a natural transition.” Watch the exclusive video interview above.

It wasn’t always easy to get Congressman Lewis to provide meaningful reflections on his life’s work in between meetings or in his free time at home.

Moderated by Megan Lombardo, a professor in the Savannah College of Art and Design’s Film & Television department, this year’s Wonder Women: Producers panel was an all-Zoom affair. And taking to the computer screen were six diverse (albeit all white) women with a variety of career stories to tell. There was Jayme Lemons, whose Dawn Porter-directed doc The Way I See It had played the virtual fest earlier in the day, and who runs Jaywalker Pictures (with another wonder woman Laura Dern). Also Julie Christeas, founder and CEO of Tandem Pictures, who most recently produced Lawrence Michael Levine’s Black Bear; […]

The post Wonder Women: Producers Zoom In at the 2020 Scad Savannah Film Festival first appeared on Filmmaker Magazine.

Moderated by Megan Lombardo, a professor in the Savannah College of Art and Design’s Film & Television department, this year’s Wonder Women: Producers panel was an all-Zoom affair. And taking to the computer screen were six diverse (albeit all white) women with a variety of career stories to tell. There was Jayme Lemons, whose Dawn Porter-directed doc The Way I See It had played the virtual fest earlier in the day, and who runs Jaywalker Pictures (with another wonder woman Laura Dern). Also Julie Christeas, founder and CEO of Tandem Pictures, who most recently produced Lawrence Michael Levine’s Black Bear; […]

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The International Documentary Association has announced a shortlist of 30 films from which it will choose its nominations for the 2020 Ida Documentary Awards, with a list that includes “76 Days,” “Boys State,” “Crip Camp,” “MLK/FBI,” “The Reason I Jump,” “The Truffle Hunters,” “Time” and “Welcome to Chechnya.”

The list also included a generous helping of foreign-made docs, including “Notturno,” “Acasa, My Home,” “Collective,” “The Earth Is Blue as an Orange,” “Gunda,” “Me and the Cult Leader,” “A Metamorfose dos Passaros,” “Once Upon a Time in Venezuela” and “Softie.”

The rest of the list: “City Hall,” “Disclosure,” “The Forbidden Reel,” “I Walk on Water,” “The Mole Agent,” “Reunited,” “Self Portrait,” “Stray,” “‘Til Kingdom Come,” “To See You Again,” “Unapologetic,” “The Viewing Booth” and “Wintopia.”

The shortlisted films present a dramatically different view of the year in nonfiction filmmaking than the Critics Choice Documentary Awards, which were announced on Monday. Only three films — “Crip Camp,...

“After We Collided” is the big winner this week. It is #1 at both Apple TV and Google Play, and #2 at FandangoNow (where its $6.99 price on the revenue-based chart put it at a disadvantage). Its Friday debut precluded Spectrum.

This is the sequel to 2019 college romance “After,” which grossed $12 million domestic and $57 million overseas. “After We Collided” also had a theatrical release this weekend, but earned only $420,000 at theaters willing to play day and date. This opened weeks ago in international theaters (including Canada), where it’s earned over $46 million. It’s a sign of how foreign results are dwarfing domestic ones (albeit with minimal competition).

Briarcliff opted to go at a non-premium VOD price and this clicked right away. “After” cost $14 million; figure this is more. It’s recouped a nice share of its cost overseas, and now can collect 70 percent of its domestic VOD from what appears to be a strong response.

Three films lead the fifth annual Critics’ Choice Documentary Awards with five nominations apiece. “Crip Camp: A Disability Revolution” and “Gunda,” both nabbed nominations for Best Documentary Feature and Best Director as well as three others apiece while “Mr. Soul!” was nominated for Best Documentary Feature and Best First Documentary Feature as well as three more.

Netflix led the way of all distributors with an impressive 31 nominations. In addition to “Crip Camp,” the studio also earned Best Documentary Feature bids forr “Athlete A,” “Dick Johnson Is Dead,” “My Octopus Teacher,” “A Secret Love,” and “The Social Dilemma.” Rounding out the top category nominees are “Belushi” and “The Go-Gos” from Showtime, “Feels Good Man” from Wavelength and PBS Independent, “The Fight” from Magnolia, “The Painter and the Thief” from Neon, and “Time” from Amazon. “Gunda” is Neon’s second nominee and “Mr. Soul!” comes to us from Shoes in the Bed.

“Crip Camp: A Disability Revolution,” “Gunda” and “Mr. Soul” lead the fifth annual Critics Choice Association’s documentary nominations, with five apiece. Among the eclectic list of nominees are Taylor Swift, Greta Thunberg, veteran filmmaker Werner Herzog and longtime disability advocate Judith Heumann, as well as docs about such notables as John Lewis, Muhammad Ali, Bruce Lee and Frank Zappa.

Recognized with four nominations each are “Athlete A,” “Dick Johnson Is Dead,” “My Octopus Teacher” and “Totally Under Control.”

In terms of distributors, Netflix led with 31 nominations, followed by Neon with 14 and Magnolia Pictures with nine. Showtime had six, while HBO, Amazon, National Geographic, PBS Independent Lens and Shoes in the Bed Productions earned five each.

It’s the fifth annual documentary honors for the group, honoring projects released in theaters, on TV and on major digital platforms, as determined by the voting of Cca members. Winners will be announced at a presentation on Nov.

“Crip Camp,” “Gunda” and “Mr. Soul!” led all films in nominations for the fifth annual Critics Choice Documentary Awards, which were announced on Monday by the Critics Choice Association.

The three films each received five nominations, including nods in the Best Documentary Feature category. As usual, that category cast a very wide net and contains far more nominees than other awards for nonfiction filmmaking — 14 this year, with nominations also going to “Athlete A,” “Belushi,” “Dick Johnson Is Dead,” “Feels Good Man,” “The Fight,” “The Go-Go’s,” “My Octopus Teacher,” “The Painter and the Thief,” “A Secret Love,” “The Social Dilemma” and “Time.”

Films with four nominations are “Athlete A,” “Dick Johnson Is Dead,” “Octopus Teacher” and “Totally Under Control.”

The list was missing many of the year’s most acclaimed nonfiction films, including “Welcome to Chechnya,” “The Dissident,” “Collective,” “Disclosure,” “76 Days” and “On the Record,” none of which received any nominations.

It makes sense that this year’s AFI Fest closed on Thursday night with the premiere of director Errol Morris’ wild and entertaining documentary “My Psychedelic Love Story.” In a year in which reality has smacked all of us in the face, nonfiction filmmaking is in the spotlight more than ever, from a string of docs that deal with issues at stake in the upcoming election to more freewheeling works like Morris’ film, a Wtf concoction from a director who only gets this playful once in a while.

It’s undeniable that the Oscars race for Best Picture is off to a slow start, with fewer films than usual playing the scaled-down fall film festivals and studios reluctant to commit to theatrical openings as the pandemic stretches on. But the race for Best Documentary Feature promises to be a robust one. More than 50 films are now available in the Academy...

“I look at myself as a historian with a camera,” proclaims photographer Pete Souza early in Focus Features’ documentary “The Way I See It,” directed by Dawn Porter (“John Lewis: Good Trouble”). As the official photographer during the presidential administrations of Ronald Reagan and Barack Obama, Souza made it a mission to document the smallest exchanges and moments alongside the most significant ones to paint a picture of what both presidents were like behind closed doors. The film not only serves as a documentation of Souza’s work as a presidential photographer but draws a stark contrast with the current occupant of the White House.

See ‘On the Record’ documentary from HBO Max gives a platform to Black women’s experiences in music industry

While “The Way I See It” devotes a solid amount of time to Souza’s work with Reagan, the bulk of the documentary is about his years working for Obama,...

Every year the zeitgeist hits the Oscar race, and this year is no exception. Academy voters are a liberal bunch, and more than ever, many have been inspired during this pandemic election-year lockdown to get active politically. Many documentarians rushed out political agitprop, from White House exposés “Totally Under Control” and “The Way I See It” to Stacey Abrams profile “All In: The Fight for Democracy.” Aaron Sorkin asked Paramount to sell “The Trial of the Chicago 7” to Netflix, so that the timely political drama could be seen by as many viewers as possible before the election.

That movie showcases the moving performance of Sacha Baron Cohen as Yippie Abbie Hoffman, a man who understood how to use comedy to expose hypocrisy and corruption. And now Baron Cohen is back with “Borat Subsequent Moviefilm” (Amazon Studios), a hilarious yet unexpectedly poignant father-daughter story that was filmed during the pandemic.

Every year the zeitgeist hits the Oscar race, and this year is no exception. Academy voters are a liberal bunch, and more than ever, many have been inspired during this pandemic election-year lockdown to get active politically. Many documentarians rushed out political agitprop, from White House exposés “Totally Under Control” and “The Way I See It” to Stacey Abrams profile “All In: The Fight for Democracy.” Aaron Sorkin asked Paramount to sell “The Trial of the Chicago 7” to Netflix, so that the timely political drama could be seen by as many viewers as possible before the election.

That movie showcases the moving performance of Sacha Baron Cohen as Yippie Abbie Hoffman, a man who understood how to use comedy to expose hypocrisy and corruption. And now Baron Cohen is back with “Borat Subsequent Moviefilm” (Amazon Studios), a hilarious yet unexpectedly poignant father-daughter story that was filmed during the pandemic.

The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences honored 18 student winners from colleges and universities from around the world for the 47th Student Academy Awards ceremony. In a first-time virtual ceremony hosted by Eugenio Derbez, the gold, silver and bronze medalist winners were announced by a gathering of the industry’s most talented creatives. Showcasing another initiative by the Academy of embracing and nurturing the next generation of diverse talents, 13 out of the 18 winners are women, marking the most diverse class ever honored. The class is also encapsulated by multiple Asian, Latinx and Black artists.

Answering a question from Variety regarding if the group feels like the next generation of filmmakers, many had various perspectives. NYU graduate Karishma Dube, who grew up in India, says she “never really thought about it” while China-born Curry Sicong Tian wants to be accurately categorized as “more of a storyteller than a filmmaker.”

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It was when Laura Dern saw photographs of President Obama in Newtown, Connecticut in 2012, consoling families involved in the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting, that she first became aware of the work of Pete Souza. “The sensitivity, the compassion, the invisibility that it takes to capture those stories—that was where I really understood the gift of the White House photographer,” Dern says.

Souza, who photographed both the Obama and the Reagan presidencies, is the subject of a new documentary directed by Dawn Porter, The Way I See It, which Dern and her business partner, Jayme Lemons, produced under ...