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Given the risk-averse economics of the current documentary business, it has become hard for audiences to find a place to see some of the most acclaimed docs out of film festivals, including Sundance, TIFF, and the International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam. Mainstream streaming services’ lack of interest in not only political documentaries, but practically all independent doc fare, has made regional film festivals, like the annual Margaret Mead Film Festival, vital to the life of a nonfiction film.

This year’s edition of the Margaret Mead festival kicks off on May 2 at Manhattan’s American Museum of Natural History. The three-day event includes the New York debut of 15 documentaries, many of which do not have U.S. distribution. They include Olivier Sarbil’s “Viktor,” which premiered at TIFF in 2024, Meena Nanji, Zippy Kimundu’s “Our Land, Our Freedom,” which made its world premiere at IDFA in 2023, and the 2025 Sundance Grand...

Exclusive: Dogwoof has acquired international sales rights to Heidi Ewing and Rachel Grady’s Folktales.

Dogwoof will screen the film and launch sales on it at next month’s Cannes market. Magnolia will release the film in North America this summer.

The film debuted in the Premieres strand at Sundance Film Festival in January, going on to play San Francisco, Full Frame and Thessaloniki.

It follows a group of teenagers who converge at a traditional folk high school in Arctic Norway, where they must rely on themselves, on another, and a loyal pack of sled dogs.

US filmmaking duo Ewing...

Magnolia Pictures has acquired North American rights to the feel-good documentary “Folktales,” which premiered at the Sundance Film Festival in January. The film, which follows a group of teens and their sled dogs navigating life in Arctic Norway, will be released in theaters on July 25.

Terms of the deal were not disclosed.

“Every single frame of ‘Folktales’ was designed with the big screen in mind. It’s a movie best experienced with others, so having the rare opportunity to show it to the public the way it was truly intended to be seen is an absolute thrill for both of us,” said filmmakers Heidi Ewing and Rachel Grady. “’Folktales’ is a film about growing up, a love letter to that sacred in-between time where the wild can teach us what it means to be human. We hope audiences feel the magic we discovered while shooting in this wondrously remote corner of the world.

Exclusive: Magnolia Pictures has acquired North American rights to Academy Award-nominated filmmakers Heidi Ewing and Rachel Grady’s Folktales. A July 25 theatrical release is planned.

The acquisition puts the filmmaking duo behind the Oscar-nominated Jesus Camp back in business with Magnolia.

The new documentary, which had its world premiere in January at the Sundance Film Festival, follows teenagers who converge at a traditional folk high school in Arctic Norway during a gap year where they must rely on only themselves, one another and a loyal pack of sled dogs as they all grow in unexpected directions. In Norse mythology, the three “Norns” are powerful deities who weave the threads of fate and shape humans’ futures. Today, Pasvik Folk High School in northern Norway aims to produce a similar life-changing effect on its students. Guided by patient teachers and a yard full of heroic Alaskan huskies, the teens discover their own...

Sundance didn’t have the plethora of late night bidding wars we used to see in the good old days of the festival, but a number of buzziest titles are actually closing deals late into the spring and into the early summer. Over 60 films came into this year’s Sundance looking for homes, and slowly but surely a number of those are finding homes. As we previously reported, the hope was that even more distributors could get creative.

Below we’ll update all the acquisitions following the festival as they arrive.

“Folktales”

Section: Premieres

Buyer: Magnolia

Director: Heidi Ewing, Rachel Grady

Buzz: It’s a reunion 20 years in the making after Magnolia also released Ewing and Grady’s Oscar-nominated “Jesus Camp.” “Folktales” is a verité documentary about a traditional folk high school in Arctic Norway and the kids relationships growing with a pack of sled dogs by their side, taking...

Elegance Bratton’s “Move Ya Body: The Birth of House” will open the 10th edition of Chicago’s Doc10 documentary film festival on April 30.

The doc, which premiered at Sundance 2025, charts the rise of house music. The film recounts how the Disco Sucks movement led to the infamous Disco Demolition Night at Chicago’s Comiskey Park, which resulted in thousands of people throwing records, mostly by Black artists, into a bonfire. The doc highlights Vince Lawrence, who was working as an usher at Demolition Night. Lawrence reveals how the event led him to become one of the founding innovators of house music.

Doc10, a five-day fest running April 30-May 4, will feature a selection of 11 of the past year’s most acclaimed feature documentaries. They include Oscar-winning director Davis Guggenheim and Nyle Dimarco’s recent SXSW audience award winner “Deaf President Now!” and Elizabeth Lo’s “Mistress Dispeller,” which premiered at...

At its heart, Sundance is about discovery. Some of our brightest, biggest filmmaking stars — we’re talking Steven Soderbergh, Richard Linklater, Ava DuVernay, Paul Thomas Anderson, Lulu Wang, Ryan Coogler, Aubrey Plaza, Catherine Hardwicke, Todd Haynes, Tessa Thompson, Jennifer Lawrence, Robert Eggers, the Duplass brothers, Michael B. Jordan, Amy Adams, Elizabeth Olsen, Brie Larson, Lakeith Stanfield, Miles Teller, Anya Taylor-Joy, and many, many more — first rose to acclaim by bringing their work to Sundance.

In 2025, a year that was long-heralded as one all about new discoveries, that tradition only continued. While this year’s lineup included a number of returning names, like Ira Sachs, Amy Berg, Andrew Ahn, Justin Lin, Ahmir “Questlove” Thompson, Cooper Raiff, Kahlil Joseph, Heidi Ewing & Rachel Grady, David France, Jesse Short Bull, Ryan White, Sophie Hyde, Jesse Moss & Amanda McBaine, Meera Menon, and Clint Bentley, there were also a hefty number of newbies joining those filmmaking ranks.

Many Oscar contenders have been dive-bombed over the years, but Best Actress nominee Karla Sofía Gascón did herself in: first for complaining about rival Fernanda Torres, then for resurfaced tweets on her now-deleted X account (@karsiagascon). In past posts that went viral this week, she dissed Muslims, George Floyd, and Oscars diversity, among other things. We debate: If Gascón is out of the running, does she bring down her movie as well, which leads the field with 13 nominations?

Ryan Lattanzio is back from Sundance, which Friday announced its awards; he and Anne are both bingeing on the Sundance portal. While some films came in with distribution, the market seems slow. One Midnight entry spawned a bidding war won by Neon for over $16 million, Michael Shanks’ horror flick “Together,” starring husband-and-wife team Alison Brie and Dave Franco, which Ryan enjoyed and believes will hit big at the box office. Neon has...

For Jesus Camp and Detropia directors Heidi Ewing and Rachel Grady, a film can be born from the most inconspicuous of things, like something they have overheard, or a phrase that stayed with them. Folktales, their stunning documentary set in a folk school in the snow-clad Northern Norway, was no exception. During the early days of Covid, Ewing was catching the end of a podcast when American dog sledder Blair Braverman was talking about her vocation, as well as what happens to your mind when you’re alone for 12 days with a pack of dogs. As a dog and nature […]

The post “There Are No Good Harnesses, Clips and Clamps That Keep a GoPro on a Dog”: Heidi Ewing and Rachel Grady on Their Sundance Doc Premiere, Folktales first appeared on Filmmaker Magazine.

For Jesus Camp and Detropia directors Heidi Ewing and Rachel Grady, a film can be born from the most inconspicuous of things, like something they have overheard, or a phrase that stayed with them. Folktales, their stunning documentary set in a folk school in the snow-clad Northern Norway, was no exception. During the early days of Covid, Ewing was catching the end of a podcast when American dog sledder Blair Braverman was talking about her vocation, as well as what happens to your mind when you’re alone for 12 days with a pack of dogs. As a dog and nature […]

The post “There Are No Good Harnesses, Clips and Clamps That Keep a GoPro on a Dog”: Heidi Ewing and Rachel Grady on Their Sundance Doc Premiere, Folktales first appeared on Filmmaker Magazine.

Every once in a while you come across a film that is so perfectly made to connect deeply with you and your soul, so wonderfully crafted that your emotions reach a boiling point the moment it starts, so exciting in its majesty that you can't help but fall instantly in love with it. Folktales is one of those film – for me, and hopefully for many others who take the time to watch it. Folktales is the latest documentary film from the incredible filmmaking duo Heidi Ewing & Rachel Grady, who have been to Sundance many times before with many great films including Jesus Camp, 12th & Delaware, Norman Lear: Just Another Version of You, One of Us, Dogs, and the narrative feature film I Carry You with Me. This time they travel up to Norway where they film teens spending a year at a rural folk school above the Arctic Circle. Here,...

In the observational “Folktales,” Oscar-nominated docmakers Heidi Ewing and Rachel Grady (“Jesus Camp”) once again consider education and social context, a concept that marked their first collaboration, “The Boys of Baraka” in 2005. They follow a trio of teenagers taking a “gap year” at a Norwegian Folk High School in Pasvik, located 300 miles north of the Arctic Circle. The nine-month program, teaching outdoor survival skills and dog mushing as well as Norwegian language and culture, is open to teens from all over the world, although how the students are chosen, how many there are and what it costs to attend is never specified. What shines through loud and clear is the importance of the feelings of self-confidence and direction engendered by acquiring such wilderness skills and deploying them successfully.

With the epic, primal beauty of its remote location, “Folktales” scores high on visual aesthetics, but rates lower on actual content, as...

A warm and big-hearted crowdpleaser set against a cold and seemingly inhospitable backdrop, Heidi Ewing and Rachel Grady’s Folktales can look to Sundance precedent to safely expect to find a welcoming audience.

Their new documentary is Boys State (or Girls State) with Norwegian dogsledding instead of American civics.

Or perhaps, to look to the filmmakers’ own catalogue, Folktales is a dyslexic Jesus Camp, its young subjects turning to dog instead of God for personal growth.

Either way, Folktales is an easily embraceable coming-of-age documentary that makes up for what it lacks in depth with its surplus of wise, vaguely anthropomorphized canine companions. It’s a film that benefits from being seen with a crowd, not just to experience its lavishly furry and frigid images on the biggest screen possible, but to be part of a communal ritual in which everybody simultaneously coos at and cajoles the featured animals.

Yes.

In the northern extremes of Norway, along the Russian border, is a folk high school that teaches teenagers self-reliance and survival. That school is the subject of Folktales, directed by Heidi Ewing and Rachel Grady, who also co-directed Jesus Camp and Endangered, among others, together. Most remarkable about Folktales is its remote location. Below, cinematographer Lars Erlend Tubaas Øymo (Songs of Earth) discusses the challenges of working in the Arctic and walks us through the equipment that made shooting a film at temperatures significantly below freezing possible. See all responses to our annual Sundance cinematographer interviews here. Filmmaker: How and why did […]

The post “Shooting Vérité Means Embracing the Coincidences”: Dp Lars Erlend Tubaas Øymo on Folktales first appeared on Filmmaker Magazine.

In the northern extremes of Norway, along the Russian border, is a folk high school that teaches teenagers self-reliance and survival. That school is the subject of Folktales, directed by Heidi Ewing and Rachel Grady, who also co-directed Jesus Camp and Endangered, among others, together. Most remarkable about Folktales is its remote location. Below, cinematographer Lars Erlend Tubaas Øymo (Songs of Earth) discusses the challenges of working in the Arctic and walks us through the equipment that made shooting a film at temperatures significantly below freezing possible. See all responses to our annual Sundance cinematographer interviews here. Filmmaker: How and why did […]

The post “Shooting Vérité Means Embracing the Coincidences”: Dp Lars Erlend Tubaas Øymo on Folktales first appeared on Filmmaker Magazine.

Films are made over many days, but some days are more memorable, and important, than others. Imagine yourself in ten years looking back on this production. What day from your film’s development, production or post do you think you’ll view as the most significant and why? Rachel Grady: Shot in the stunning Norwegian Arctic, Folktales was a project that tested us daily. With long stretches of shooting while exposed to freezing temperatures, combined with the creative demands of filming, it was formidable. These challenges were matched by extraordinary moments of beauty and a deep connection to the sublime wilderness. If I had to choose […]

The post “The Snow Was Deep and the Polar Night Was Underway” | Heidi Ewing and Rachel Grady, Folktales first appeared on Filmmaker Magazine.

Films are made over many days, but some days are more memorable, and important, than others. Imagine yourself in ten years looking back on this production. What day from your film’s development, production or post do you think you’ll view as the most significant and why? Rachel Grady: Shot in the stunning Norwegian Arctic, Folktales was a project that tested us daily. With long stretches of shooting while exposed to freezing temperatures, combined with the creative demands of filming, it was formidable. These challenges were matched by extraordinary moments of beauty and a deep connection to the sublime wilderness. If I had to choose […]

The post “The Snow Was Deep and the Polar Night Was Underway” | Heidi Ewing and Rachel Grady, Folktales first appeared on Filmmaker Magazine.

Heidi Ewing and Rachel Grady‘s camera has locked eyes with youth culture before, from the 20 “Boys of Baraka” who left Baltimore for Kenya during middle school to the young Christians of “Jesus Camp.” For their latest film “Folktales,” the documentary filmmaking team embedded themselves in the arctic wilderness on and off for over a year at the Pasvik Folk High School, where Gen Z leave their phones behind and submit to a confidence-building journey that teaches survival skills — with a few sled dogs as guides to the natural world.

Located in Norway, the school provides a kind of “gap year” for students before college — in other words, the space between youth and adulthood that is often filled with uncertainty anyway. Following three teens who lived in the remote location from August to May, this lovely, absorbing, and patiently shot documentary premieres at the 2025 Sundance Film Festival on Sunday, January...

Every January, the Sundance Film Festival transforms Park City into a hub for independent cinema, and 2025 is no exception. This year, the festival showcases 87 feature films, six episodic projects, and a robust collection of shorts, offering a mix of fresh voices and seasoned creators. With so much to explore, navigating the lineup can feel overwhelming, but we’re here to spotlight the most anticipated titles, some already previewed and others primed for discovery.

While Sundance remains rooted in Park City, speculation grows about a potential move in 2027 to cities like Salt Lake City, Cincinnati, or Boulder. For now, Eugene Hernandez, Sundance’s director, and lead programmer Kim Yutani have highlighted buzzworthy films and sales titles destined to make waves. Competition entries will also be available online during the festival’s second week, expanding access beyond Utah.

The 2025 slate has something for everyone: gripping narratives, thought-provoking documentaries, and compelling episodic premieres.

While we were eager to tell you last year about Sundance premieres starring Kristen Stewart and Pedro Pascal, the unlikely “Thelma” became the true indie success story of 2024. Unexpected buyer Magnolia Pictures turned the June Squibb film into a hit, opening the doors for other buyers to take their own risks this year.

Heading into 2025, uniqueness is the name of the game, as is picking out the discovery that you won’t see coming, and not necessarily the movie with the big cast, commercial pedigree, or crowdpleaser premise. Last year, we were pretty spot on with “A Real Pain” and “My Old Ass” surviving the long haul, and we were among the few to tell you about “It’s What’s Inside” before Netflix plunked down $17 million to buy it; we were way off on a few others.

The below list is not a collection of movies certain to sell or do so for eight figures,...

“Thelma,” the action comedy starring a 93-year-old June Squibb, sold to Magnolia Pictures out of last year’s Sundance for around $2-3 million and made $12.5 million at the box office. That box office is about $4.5 million less than what Netflix paid for the straight-to-streaming horror title “It’s What’s Inside” at the fest. That movie spent just one week on the streamer’s global Top 10, and without a significant theatrical release.

Looking ahead in 2025, it’s time to start recalibrating what success looks like, and Sundance may be the perfect place to start.

For Magnolia, last year’s “Thelma” turned out to be the best-performing film in the indie distributor’s 23-year history. Magnolia bought the movie in a competitive situation at Sundance 2024 and was an unlikely player to give it a wide release.

The indie success stories don’t stop there. Mubi was a surprise, aggressive buyer for “The Substance” out of Cannes,...

Sundance Film Festival’s 2025 line-up comprises 87 features, nearly half of which are directed by women, and is crammed with new work by returning stars and indie stalwarts including Olivia Colman, Benedict Cumberbatch, Jennifer Lopez, Isabelle Huppert, Mark Ruffalo, and Dev Patel.

Among anticipated highlights are the feature directorial debut of UK playwright and incoming Young Vic artistic director Nadia Fall with her Bankside Films sales title Brides inWorld Cinema Dramatic Competition,about teenage friends who plan to travel to Syria.

Scroll down for the full line-up

Peter Hujar’s Day, a drama in Premieres about the New York portrait photographer...

Sundance, as ever, is coming, and fast. Today, the nonprofit Sundance Institute announced the 87 feature films and six episodic projects selected for the 2025 Sundance Film Festival, with more announcements expected in the coming weeks. While the festival may be moving in 2027, for 2025, it will be out in full force in its traditional home of Park City, Utah.

This year’s lineup includes a number of returning names, including Ira Sachs, Amy Berg, Andrew Ahn, Justin Lin, Ahmir “Questlove” Thompson, Cooper Raiff, Kahlil Joseph, Heidi Ewing & Rachel Grady, David France, Jesse Short Bull, Ryan White, Sophie Hyde, Jesse Moss & Amanda McBaine, Meera Menon, and Clint Bentley. But there are also a hefty number of newbies joining these ranks, as the 2025 program is composed of 36 of 87 (41 percent) feature film directors who are first-time feature filmmakers. Mostly, new work will be on offer, as the film and episodic slate includes 89 (or 96 percent) world premieres.

The HBO Original documentary Quad Gods, directed by Jess Jacklin, will debut on Wednesday, July 10 (9:00-10:27 p.m. Et/Pt) on HBO and will be available to stream on Max. The documentary had its world premiere at the 2024 Tribeca Festival.

Quad Gods is a high-stakes and heartwarming film that follows the lives of three New Yorkers with quadriplegia who meet in a neuro-rehabilitation lab and create the world’s first-ever, fully quadriplegic e-sports team.

As they navigate New York City, confronting challenges at every turn, they pursue their dream of competing as athletes while subverting assumptions about disability.

Richard, aka “Breadwinner1007,” Blake, aka “RepNProof,” and Prentice, aka “Mongo Slade,” meet at the Abilities Research Center at Mount Sinai Hospital where Dr. David Putrino, known colloquially as the “Quadfather,” develops innovative solutions for rehabilitation and therapy.

Illustrating the promise of new technology, including exoskeleton robotics, adaptive controllers, and brain stimulation techniques,...

Warner Bros. Discovery has announced the movies, TV shows, and live sports that will be available on the Max streaming service in July. The Max July 2024 lineup includes Hard Knocks: Offseason with the New York Giants and Max Original series Kite Man: Hell Yeah!

The July schedule also includes the HBO Original documentaries Faye, Wild Wild Space, and Quad Gods, A24’s Love Lies Bleeding, and Saban Films’ Knox Goes Away.

Featured Programming

Hard Knocks: Offseason With The New York Giants (HBO Original Sports Unscripted Series)

Debuts July 2 at 9 p.m. Et, 5 episodes

Hard Knocks: Offseason with the New York Giants will bring viewers inside the New York Giants organization as the team prepares for its highly anticipated 100th season. Camera crews will chronicle the team’s every move as general manager Joe Schoen and other members of the team’s front office and staff navigate the critical offseason...

Exclusive: Netflix has enlisted Yon Motskin (Encounters) to direct an untitled documentary feature on Connecticut native Nathan Carman, a young man who, after a fishing trip with his mother Linda off the coast of New England, survives a week on a life raft while she is lost at sea.

As highlighted in the doc, the sensational incident renews interest in the unsolved murder of Carman’s wealthy grandfather years earlier, spurring a media frenzy, a war over a vast family fortune, multiple investigations and ultimately federal charges against Carman for murder on the high seas. He died by suicide last summer while awaiting trial in connection to the death of his mother.

With unprecedented access to family, friends and investigators, the film currently in production is a nautical thriller that explores intimate human mysteries about family, greed, perception, mental health and the unpredictable mind of an enigmatic young man.

Motskin is producing alongside Mary-Jane Mitchell.

The primary purpose of this roundup is to highlight films new to streaming platforms that could potentially contend for awards. But some weekends there are no new releases that could credibly be considered awards contenders. This is one of those weeks. But we don’t take the week off. Instead, we highlight the best of what’s new on streaming, whether it’s a contender or not. This week’s picks include a notable new release and three older Oscar contenders.

The contender to watch this week: “Fatal Attraction”

Before the Paramount+ adaptation starring Lizzy Caplan and Joshua Jackson premieres at the end of April, revisit this classic for a dose of bunny-boiling electricity. “Fatal Attraction” was the third-highest-grossing release of 1987, eventually earning six Oscar nominations, including Best Picture. People have been arguing about the movie’s messages ever since, but it’s hard to find performances as invigorating as...

Click here to read the full article.

All that Breathes topped the 2022 IDA Documentary Awards, winning best feature and two other competitive awards. The film was previously selected as the winner of the Pare Lorentz Award.

In addition to the top prize, the HBO title, which follows two brothers who run a bird hospital dedicated to rescuing injured black kites that are often affected by air pollution in New Delhi, won best director for helmer Shaunak Sen and best editing.

National Geographic and Neon’s Fire of Love documentary about volcanologists Katia and Maurice Krafft, which led the nominations for the 38th annual International Documentary Association honors with five nods, won two awards.

The IDA Documentary Awards were presented in a ceremony at Los Angeles’ Paramount Theater, hosted by actor-comedian Jenny Yang.

Best Feature Documentary

All that Breathes (India, United States, United Kingdom | Sideshow and Submarine Deluxe, HBO Documentary Films...

Simon Lereng Wilmont’s Thessaloniki Documentary Festival winner A House Made Of Splinters and Young Plato from Neasa Ní Chianáin and Declan McGrath are among the 38th International Documentary Association (IDA) feature nominees with Laura Poitras’s Venice Golden Lion winner All The Beauty And The Bloodshed.

They will vie for the top prize at the awards ceremony on the Paramount lot in Los Angeles on December 10 alongside Shaunak Sen’s All That Breathes, Sara Dosa’s Fire Of Love, Edward Buckles, Jr.’s Katrina Babies, Isabel Castro’s Mija, Daniel Roher’s Navalny, Akuol de Mabior’s No Simple Way Home,...

Endangered Review — Endangered (2022) Film Review from the 21st Annual Tribeca Film Festival, a documentary directed by Heidi Ewing and Rachel Grady, featuring Patrícia Campos Mello, Carl Juste, Sáshenka Gutiérrez, Oliver Laughland, and Joel Simon. Back with their trademark observational approach, documentarian duo Heidi Ewing and Rachel Grady turn their cameras around [...]

Continue reading: Film Review: Endangered: The Trials and Tribulations of Modern-Day Journalists Are Given a Sharpened View But a Limited Scope [Tribeca 2022]...

After the Supreme Court decision to overturn Roe v. Wade, it might seem crass to talk about the movies. This week’s column is not here to offer listicles about must-see cinema on a subject that causes such immediate pain and hardship. However, the people who produced documentaries on abortion rights provided essential context— and a few hours after the court’s decision, they told me we need more.

“We need all hands on deck,” said filmmaker Heidi Ewing, speaking over Zoom from the Nantucket Film Festival. “I’ve never claimed that movies can change the world, but I do feel movies should be part of all the conversations we’re having about this.”

As Ewing and others explained, this work can have measurable impact. With her regular co-director Rachel Grady, Ewing made the 2010 documentary “12th & Delaware,” which looked at both sides of the divide by contrasting an abortion clinic in Fort Pierce,...

The resurgence of neo-fascist movements and authoritarian rule around the world has unsurprisingly coincided with a ramping-up of hostility against press freedom. Assassinated U.S.-based Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi is the most notorious single example, but hundreds in his profession have been murdered in recent years, with many more assaulted, detained, harassed and so forth. Telling the truth has become a dangerous business in an era where politicians now frequently stoke anger towards “fake news,” as they often brand any reportage that doesn’t flatter them. All this is occurring at a time when professional outlets and standards continue to diminish, their existence eroded by competition from newer platforms where opinion and rumor often supplant factual reality.

That escalating crisis gets its pulse taken by “Endangered,” the latest documentary feature by Heidi Ewing and Rachel Grady, whose stellar collaborations to date have tackled diverse subjects from U.S. evangelicals...

"We can never tell what threats are going to materialize on the ground." HBO has revealed the trailer for a documentary titled Endangered, which is premiering at the 2022 Tribeca Film Festival later this week. The title is a spin on endangered species, about how journalists are endangered now with so many threats from fascists people all over the world. It's made by talented doc filmmakers Heidi Ewing & Rachel Grady and opens later in June on HBO. An investigation of threats against journalists in the United States and internationally, from intimidation to physical violence, following four different journalists. "As newsrooms across the world face economic hardships and layoffs, conventional checks and balances against corrupt institutions of power are weakening; journalists are at the forefront of a dangerous culture war with the very right to free speech at the crux of it." As timely and ...

Timely topics including abortion, freedom of the press, the opioid crisis and the Boy Scouts of America bankruptcy case serve as the subject matters of four documentary features premiering at this year’s Tribeca Festival.

In “Battleground” director Cynthia Lowen follows three women in charge of anti-abortion organizations, who are devoted to overturning Roe v. Wade. While the efforts of pro-choice women determined to safeguard access to safe and legal abortions are also featured in the doc, Lowen felt it necessary to focus on “anti-choice actors.”

“In 2019 I went down to Alabama and originally was filming with several pro-choice advocates in the state about the abortion ban,” Lowen says. “But I quickly realized that to really understand what was happening at the local clinic and state level I needed to take a step back and get this bird’s eye view of the power structures that were in play that...

The HBO Original documentary film Endangered, produced and directed by Oscar-nominees Rachel Grady and Heidi Ewing and executive produced by Pulitzer Prize winning journalist Ronan Farrow, debuts Tuesday, June 28 (9:00-10:30 p.m. Et/Pt) on HBO and be available to stream on HBO Max. An official selection of the 2022 Tribeca Film Festival, Endangered chronicles a […]

The post HBO Releases Trailer For New Documentary ‘Endangered’ appeared first on Hollywood Outbreak.

Plans are in the works to launch a new documentary film festival in Washington, D.C. in June 2023, with a launch event to take place later this month.

Jamie Shor, president of PR Collaborative, and Sky Sitney, director of the film and media studies program at Georgetown University, are founders of the new event, called DC/Dox.

The announcement comes after the AFI announced earlier this year that it would merge AFI Docs this year into the AFI Fest in Los Angeles in November.

“Washington, D.C. has always been an essential home for leading-edge documentary films,” Sitney said in a statement. “With the explosion of non-fiction storytelling in recent years, we wanted to create a new space to showcase this vital work.”

Shor, whose firm had done PR for AFI Docs, said that the festival will be “serving as a critical marketplace for the launch of prestige documentary films in the nation’s capital.

Next month’s Mubi lineup for the U.S. has been unveiled, with a major highlight being their recent release Lingui, The Sacred Bonds and more films from director Mahamat-Saleh Haroun (read our recent chat with him). Matías Piñeiro’s Isabella and Kazik Radwanski’s Anne at 13,000 Ft., two of last year’s highlights, will also arrive.

Two recent Cannes premieres, the Adèle Exarchopoulos-led Zero Fucks Given and Peter Tscherkassky’s Train Again will also finally come to the U.S. courtesy of Mubi. In terms of older highlights, Kathryn Bigelow’s Near Dark, Hong Sang-soo’s The Power of the Kangwon Province, Jafar Panahi’s Crimson Gold, Jean Renoir’s Grand Illusion, and more will arrive.

Check out the lineup below and get 30 days free here.

March 1 | The Willmar 8 | Lee Grant | Down and Out in America: Lee Grant’s Documentaries

March 2 | Train Again | Peter Tscherkassky | Brief Encounters

March...

Ten years ago, the New York Times embarked on an experiment to incorporate short documentary films into its opinion section and quickly established itself as an alternative to HBO Documentary Films, then the most prominent distributor of short documentaries, growing along with the market for these short nonfiction films in its first decade.

Errol Morris, Jessica Yu and Alex Gibney made shorts for “New York Times: Op-Docs” its inaugural year and since that time its roster has expanded to include Garrett Bradley and Laura Poitras, who expanded their respective op-docs into features that garnered favor with Oscar voters: Poitras’ Oscar-winning documentary “CitizenFour” was born out of “The Program” (2012), while Bradley’s Oscar nominated “Time” grew out of her 2016 op-doc short titled “Alone.” Four op-docs shorts have received Oscar nominations, including “Walk Run Cha-Cha” and “A Concerto Is a Conversation” the past two consecutive years, and the program’s docs have...

The 12th edition of Doc NYC kicks off today — exactly one month before the AMPAS documentary branch begins voting to determine the 2022 Oscar documentary shortlist.

The nine-day affair, which runs until Nov. 18, will feature over 125 short docus and 127 feature-length nonfiction films that will screen at New York City’s IFC Center, Sva Theater and Cinépolis Chelsea. (The fest will be available online until Nov. 28)

Penny Lane’s “Listening to Kenny G,” will serve as the opening night film while Matthew Heineman’s “The First Wave” will close the festival. Sam Pollard and Rex Miller’s “Citizen Ashe” and Dave Wooley and David Heilbroner’s “Dionne Warwick: Don’t Make Me Over” are both fest Centerpiece docs.

Festivities commence with the fest’s annual Visionaries Tribute Honoree luncheon at Gotham Hall. While kudos will be given to cinematographer Joan Churchill, Oscar nominated director Raoul Peck (“I Am Not Your Negro”), Emmy Award-winning...

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.

The Woodstock Film Festival will resume indoor screenings at its 22nd annual edition this fall, and also will recognize Neon founder and CEO Tom Quinn with a career honor.

This year’s festival will run from September 30 to October 3. It has carved out a notable place in the fall fest circuit because of its location, which is 110 miles north of New York City and also close to a number of film industry figures in the Hudson Valley. The surrounding region has also become more active in terms of film and TV production in recent years, adding multiple new soundstages.

Quinn will receive the festival’s 2021 Honorary Trailblazer Award. Before Covid-19 turned the 2020 edition into a hybrid affair with drive-ins and online screenings, Quinn had been scheduled to get the award last year, on the heels of Neon’s triumph with Parasite. The film, which had its world premiere in Cannes...

To Heidi Ewing, they were simply Iván and Gerardo, a longtime couple who owned restaurants in New York, liked to go dancing, were wonderful company to be around. They had met in Mexico in 1994. Iván had a son and aspirations to be a chef. Gerardo had grown up on a cattle ranch in Chiapas and worked as a teacher. He spotted Iván, closeted at the time, in a gay bar and attracted his attention with a laser pointer. They were very young then. Now they were married, and middle-aged, and settled down.

Documentarians Cecilia Peck and Inbal B. Lessner (“Seduced: Inside the Nxivm Cult”) and Heidi Ewing and Rachel Grady (“Love Fraud”) not only share similar shooting philosophies, in focusing on vérité, but they are also passionate about centering their projects on female survivors’ stories.

The four-part Starz series “Seduced” explores the connection between a few women, including India Oxenberg, who escaped the clutches of Nxivm and its more dangerous subsets Jness and Dos, while the four-part “Love Fraud” for Showtime follows a group of women (including bounty hunter Carla Campbell) as they go after the con man who stole their hearts and a lot of their money.

These four powerhouses came together to talk about their experiences making these two Emmy contending series, as well as the sense of healing and justice they wanted for their subjects.

There is often a debate over how much to say a criminal’s name...

Heidi Ewing and Rachel Grady know how to find compelling subjects. From the religious extremists of “Jesus Camp” to the abortion clinics of “12th & Delaware” and the ex-Hasidic Jews expelled from their community in “One of Us,” the documentary filmmaking duo have been capturing urgent scenarios for years. On Wednesday, while much of America experienced the presidential inauguration at home, Ewing and Grady were running around D.C. with their cameras, working on a new project. For Ewing, that was business as usual. “Two of our subjects are U.S. journalists, and we go where they go,” she said by phone the next day.

Co-executive-produced with Ronan Farrow as part of his HBO deal, with Loki Films producing, the movie has the working title “Endangered” and follows several journalists around the world. Amid working on the project, Ewing also premiered her narrative debut, “I Carry You With Me,” at the 2020 Sundance Film Festival.

Exclusive: Wired Studios, Condé Nast Entertainment and Loki Films will bring the mysterious 2018 death of an unidentified hiker to screen.

From Loki Films’ Oscar-nominating directing duo Rachel Grady and Heidi Ewing (Jesus Camp), the newly announced project is based on the viral story by Wired’s editor in chief Nick Thompson.

“This is a special story not just about the seemingly impossible reality of a person leaving no digital footprint, but also of the human instinct to pull up all roots and disappear,” says Grady.

In 2018, the body of a hiker was found in a Florida nature preserve. Despite meeting hundred of other hikers as he headed down nearly the length of the Appalachian Trail and thousands of amateur sleuths on Facebook pouring over the clues he left behind, the hiker has yet to be identified.

The documentary will take a deep dive into the mysterious story, drawing on forensic reports,...

With such a wide array of potential awards contenders in film and television, awards groups like the Cinema Eye Honors help to cull the field. This year, HBO Documentary Films leads the broadcast categories with 10 nominations, including three each for Liz Garbus’ serial killer series “I’ll Be Gone in the Dark” and David France’s Oscar contender “Welcome to Chechnya.” Cinema Eye also unveiled 10 short documentary semifinalists for the short filmmaking honors.

The Outstanding Broadcast Film nominees also include “Bully. Coward. Victim.: The Story of Roy Cohn,” directed by Ivy Meeropol, 2020 Oscar winner “Learning to Skateboard in a Warzone (If You’re a Girl),” directed by Carol Dysinger, “Rolling Thunder Revue: A Bob Dylan Story by Martin Scorsese,” and “Sea of Shadows,” directed by Richard Ladkani.

Outstanding Series Nominees include “Atlanta’s Missing and Murdered: The Lost Children,” directed by Joshua Bennett, Maro Chermayeff, Jeff Dupre, and Sam Pollard, “Hillary,...

With such a wide array of potential awards contenders in film and television, awards groups like the Cinema Eye Honors help to cull the field. This year, HBO Documentary Films leads the broadcast categories with 10 nominations, including three each for Liz Garbus’ serial killer series “I’ll Be Gone in the Dark” and David France’s Oscar contender “Welcome to Chechnya.” Cinema Eye also unveiled 10 short documentary semifinalists for the short filmmaking honors.

The Outstanding Broadcast Film nominees also include “Bully. Coward. Victim.: The Story of Roy Cohn,” directed by Ivy Meeropol, 2020 Oscar winner “Learning to Skateboard in a Warzone (If You’re a Girl),” directed by Carol Dysinger, “Rolling Thunder Revue: A Bob Dylan Story by Martin Scorsese,” and “Sea of Shadows,” directed by Richard Ladkani.

Outstanding Series Nominees include “Atlanta’s Missing and Murdered: The Lost Children,” directed by Joshua Bennett, Maro Chermayeff, Jeff Dupre, and Sam Pollard, “Hillary,...

David France’s “Welcome to Chechnya,” a documentary about LGBTQ activists trying to help during the Chechnya government’s brutal crackdown on gays and lesbians, leads all films in nominations in the Cinema Eye Honors’ broadcast categories, which were announced on Thursday during a virtual edition of its annual fall lunch.

Cinema Eye, a New York-based organization founded in 2007 to recognize all aspects of nonfiction filmmaking, also announced its new Stay Focused initiative. The program spotlights 12 films by up-and-coming filmmakers who lost the chance for theatrical exhibition and film-festival exposure because of the coronavirus pandemic. Cinema Eye has pledged to find “in-person opportunities” for the filmmakers once the pandemic subsides, starting with theatrical screenings at the new Vidiots Theatre in Los Angeles in late 2021.

The 12 films include Cecilia Aldorondo’s “Landfall,” which recently won a jury award at Doc NYC; David Osit’s “Mayor,” about the Christian mayor of a...

HBO’s Baby God, debuting Wednesday, December 2 (9:00-10:20 p.m. Et/Pt), from first-time director Hannah Olson and executive produced by Academy Award® nominees Heidi Ewing and Rachel Grady, is a shocking examination of the work of a Las Vegas fertility specialist and the many women he guided to pregnancy through use of his own sperm, often without their knowledge or consent. The documentary follows his newly-discovered offspring as they grapple with the scope of his misdeeds and the impact that his genes may have on their own identities. Baby God will debut on HBO and be available to stream on HBO Max. When retired detective Wendi Babst decides to explore her ancestry through home DNA testing, she makes a stunning discovery. The quest to find the truth about her biological father takes her down a rabbit-hole of furtive medical procedures and unsuspecting women… leading to one man: Dr.

It’s always exciting when a filmmaker who is accomplished in one avenue takes a chance on a new venture, especially when that leap entails an unplanned switch from documentary to narrative. Prolific documentarian Heidi Ewing has long been known for her collaborations with Rachel Grady, including the Oscar-nominated 2006 film “Jesus Camp” and “One of Us,” a devastating portrait of ex-Hasidim which made waves when it premiered on Netflix in 2017. A master of non-fiction storytelling, it’s only fitting that Ewing would stumble into making her narrative debut while originally making a documentary.

Based on the true love story of two of Ewing’s friends, “I Carry You With Me” follows two men who fall in love as they navigate the dangerous move from Mexico to the U.S. The film premiered at the Sundance Film Festival earlier this year to warm reviews, where it was picked up by Sony Pictures Classics.