Know Your 2017 Oscar Nominees: Documentary Feature

We’ve gone big for our Oscars coverage this year. Our annual "Know Your Nominee" series once again looks at every category, giving you the information you need to conquer your Oscars pool. Learn more about the nominees for Lead Actor, Foreign Language Film, Costume Designers, Documentary Short, Editing, Live Action Short, Actress in a Supporting Role, Makeup & Hairstyling and Animated Feature. Now ...

By  |  February 9, 2017

Interview

Actor Director

NYFF: In Where to Invade Next Michael Moore Picks Flowers, Not Weeds

After a six year hiatus, documentary filmmaker Michael Moore is back with a kind of travel journal – Where to Invade Next. Moore’s mission was to find the best ideas from each country he visited, claim them as his own, and bring them home to America to help solve some of our biggest problems. The ...

By  |  October 12, 2015

Interview

Director

Found Foot-age: Finders Keepers Directors on Their Insane Doc

In Finder Keepers, filmmakers Bryan Carberry and Clay Tweel chronicle one of the strangest feuds in the history of small-town America. John Wood, who lost his foot in a small-plane crash, lost it again when he couldn't pay the rent on the Maiden, N.C. storage unit where he'd stored the amputated, embalmed limb in a BBQ smoker. The contents were ...

By  |  September 24, 2015

Interview

Director Screenwriter

A Look Alex Gibney’s Steve Jobs Doc The Man in the Machine

While people are understandably excited about director Danny Boyle’s upcoming Steve Jobs, starring Michael Fassbender and based on a script by Aaron Sorkin, there’s another Jobs film you might want to set a reminder for on your iPhone (or Apple Watch): Steve Jobs: The Man in the Machine. A new trailer, and the pedigree of ...

By  |  July 27, 2015

Interview

Director Screenwriter

Jane Anderson on her Moving HBO Doc Packed in a Trunk

Writer-director Jane Anderson’s career has spanned film, theater and television. She never planned to make a documentary, let alone figure so prominently in one. But for nearly half her life, Anderson, most recently Emmy-nominated for her adaptation of Olive Kitteridge for HBO, has yearned to bring the artwork and the story of her great-aunt, Edith ...

By  |  July 20, 2015

Interview

Director Producer Screenwriter

Dana Nachman on the Phenomenon of her Doc Batkid Begins

When Miles Scott told the Make-A-Wish Foundation that he wanted to be “the real Batman” no one could have predicted how epically his dream would be fulfilled. The documentary Batkid Begins, which premiered at this year’s Slamdance Film Festival, goes back to November 15, 2013, when, with the help of the Mayor, the Chief of ...

By  |  June 24, 2015

Interview

Director Producer

Battle of the Titans: Robert Gordon on William Buckley vs. Gore Vidal in Best of Enemies

Playing at the BAMcineamaFest in Brooklyn and AFI Docs in Los Angeles tonight, Magnolia Pictures' Best of Enemies is a riveting behind-the-scenes account of the explosive 1968 televised debates between liberal Gore Vidal and conservative William F. Buckley Jr., where these two intellectual heavyweights clobbered each other over their views about God, sex, and politics. We spoke with co-director and ...

By  |  June 17, 2015

Interview

Director Producer

Tribeca Recap: Code Looks at the Lack of Women in Computer Science

Why is there such a dearth of women in computer science and other high-tech fields? Director/producer Robin Hauser Reynolds searches for the answers in CODE: Debugging the Gender Gap, which made its world premiere at the Tribeca Film Festival. Two years ago Reynolds received a call from her daughter, who had become so discouraged by ...

By  |  April 28, 2015

Interview

Producer

Check-It Follows a DC Gang that Disproves Gay Clichés

Filmmakers Dana Flor and Toby Oppenheimer (The Nine Lives of Marion Barry) are relying on an Indiegogo crowdfunding platform to raise $60,000 to finish Check It, their documentary about a gay gang in one of Washington D.C.’s most violent neighborhoods. The campaign ends on April 4 — and as of this writing they have raised a bit ...

By  |  April 3, 2015

Interview

Director

Lethal Force: Sheriff Confronts SWAT Team he Founded in Peace Officer

“Since the late 1970s, there has been a 15,000% increase in SWAT team raids in the United States.” This alarming fact is revealed in Peace Officer, an extremely timely, unsettling documentary that swept the Audience and Jury Awards for best feature documentary at this year’s SXSW Film Festival. Directed by Scott Christopherson and Brad Barber, Peace ...

By  |  March 31, 2015

Interview

Screenwriter

Juliano Ribeiro Salgado on his Doc The Salt of the Earth

The Oscar-nominated documentary Salt of the Earth, which opens theatrically this week, examines the life and work of Brazilian-born photographer Sebastião Salgado. But it’s much more. Co-directed by Wim Wenders and Salgado’s son, Juliano Ribeiro Salgado, it’s a portrait of the artist whose bracing visuals are matched by a deep empathy for humanity and a ...

By  |  March 27, 2015

Interview

Director

It’s Me, Hilary Director Matt Wolf Discusses his HBO Doc

Who exactly is Hilary Knight, the artist behind the iconic "Eloise" books? Director Matt Wolf sets out to paint a complete portrait of the now 88-year-old artist, covering not only his odd and wonderful life as an illustrator but also his often contemptuous relationship with not only his most famous creation, the character of Eloise, ...

By Alison Prato  |  March 24, 2015

Interview

Actor Director

SXSW 2015: A Q&A With the Director & Star of She’s The Best Thing In It

Films by women, about women, and in many ways, targeted to women were a huge part of this year’s South by Southwest festival. Women were tremendously prominent in the line-up, serving as two of the four SXSW film keynote speakers: Ava DuVernay, the noted director of Selma, and Christine Vachon, who has produced some of the ...

By  |  March 19, 2015

Interview

Director Producer Screenwriter

Bert Marcus on his Knockout Documentary Champs

As star-studded as the front row of any primetime heavyweight fight, the boxing doc Champs calls on A-listers from Mark Wahlberg and Ron Howard to Denzel Washington and Mary J. Blige to weigh in on one of the most brutal sports in history. Beautifully shot reenactments and first-hand stories are interspersed with real footage of ...

By  |  March 10, 2015

Interview

Director

Director Michele Josue’s Matt Shepard is A Friend of Mine

The documentary Matt Shepard is A Friend of Mine puts a human face on the young man who paid the ultimate price for homophobia. Michele Josue’s accomplished debut film — poignant, revealing, powerful in its anger, grief and humanity — reminds us 15 years later what his friends, family and the world lost when Shepard ...

By Loren King  |  March 4, 2015

Interview

Director

Director Henry Corra on his Heartbreaking, Beautiful Farewell to Hollywood

When director Henry Corra met aspiring young filmmaker Regina Nicholson at a film festival, neither knew they would be embarking on a journey that would become literally about life and death. The result of their collaboration is Farewell to Hollywood: The Life and Death of Reggie Nicholson, an intimate documentary that emerges as a powerful ...

By  |  February 25, 2015

Interview

Actor Editor Producer

Inherent Risk: Editor and Producer Mathilde Bonnefoy on Making Citizenfour

When documentarian Laura Poitras asked Edward Snowden why he had chosen her, out of all the potential people to disclose his information to, he replied, “I didn’t. You chose yourself.” At the time Snowden was writing to her as “citizen four,” and for months Poitras alone knew about his trove of information on the N.S.A.'s ...

By Bryan Abrams  |  February 17, 2015

Interview

Director Screenwriter

Erik Parker & One9 on Their Doc Nas: Time is Illmatic – Part I

“I’m an eighth grade dropout…I didn’t know what the future was going to hold,” says Nasir Jones at the outset of journalist Erik Parker and multimedia artist One9’s documentary, Nas: Time is Illmatic. For the uninitiated, the future held one of the most groundbreaking hip hop albums of all time (the titular “Illmatic”), a legendary career, ...

By  |  October 1, 2014
Barney Frank on Doc Compared to What, Hollywood, Politics, & More

By the time Barney Frank retired, he was one of the most beloved figures in Congress, and also one of the most vilified from a certain segment of the population. On the local level, especially in his Fourth District in southern Massachusetts, which includes the liberal Boston suburbs of Newton and Brookline, Frank was admired ...

By  |  June 27, 2014

Interview

Cinematographer Director

Award Winning Documentarian Rachel Beth Anderson on Filming in Conflict Zones

Rachel Beth Anderson is a cinematographer-turned-director who has spent her career working almost exclusively in conflict zones. She was recently awarded the cinematography award for a U.S. documentary at Sundance, along with Ross Kaufman, for her work on E-Team, which followed a group of four Human Rights Watch workers documenting war crimes around the world. ...

By  |  April 15, 2014