Jesse Moss Latest Celebrity News & Gossip

Judging from talk in restaurants and on the Telluride gondola, one of the films provoking the strongest reaction at the festival this year is The Mission. The National Geographic documentary, directed by Amanda McBaine and Jesse Moss, tells the story of missionary John Chau whose shocking demise in 2018 made headlines around the world (and elicited insensitive memes).

As award-winning directors Amanda McBaine and Jesse Moss prepared to shoot their new documentary Girls State, they had no way of knowing real-world events would intrude upon the production in a major way. Nor, of course, did their protagonists.

Addie Morfoot Contributor Documentary filmmaking has never been a profession one enters into to get rich — though for a brief period it seemed possible. Cable expanded documentary’s reach to wider audiences in the 1980’s and 1990’s, and films like “Fahrenheit 9/11,” “March of the Penguins,” and “An Inconvenient Truth” became legitimate box-office breakthroughs, but nonfiction features on the whole remained something of a stepchild within the larger Hollywood ecosystem until 2017, when Netflix acquired Brian Fogel’s “Icarus” for $5 million.

Addie Morfoot Contributor Chris Smith‘s “Devo” will open the ninth edition of Chicago’s Doc10 documentary film festival on May 2. The film, which premiered at Sundance 2024, charts the life of the art-movement-turned-band Devo from Akron, Ohio, through archival footage of the band and candid sit-down interviews with band members.

Siddhant Adlakha The nerve-wracking documentary “War Game” follows a 6-hour Situation Room re-creation of events of Jan. 6, 2021, albeit on a larger, more distressing scale. In the process, the film lays bare numerous weaknesses in America’s political infrastructure, but its most revealing subjects might not be who you think.

Jesse Moss’ chilling and engrossing documentary “War Game” begins ominously, moves with urgency, and never lets up. The film begins with two suspicious men surveilling the capitol building in Washington D.C.

Lisa Kennedy The list of accomplishments high school student Emily Worthmore reels off early in “Girls State” sounds impressive at first. Then it becomes a bit concerning. It’s not that the personable teen from suburban St.

Deadline on Tuesday launched the streaming site for Contenders Film: Documentary, its annual showcase of the year’s best nonfiction films that are in the running for the Documentary Feature Oscar.

Peter Debruge Chief Film Critic The world will never know what was going through 26-year-old Christian missionary John Allen Chau’s head when he was shot and killed by arrows off the coast of North Sentinel Island. There are jokes, of course, and educated guesses, but the best most of us can do is search inside ourselves for the answer.

John Chau’s death in 2018 made headlines around the world: an evangelical young man killed on an island in the Andaman Sea inhabited by an isolated Indigenous group. Chau came to North Sentinel Island bearing a waterproof Bible and dreams of converting the North Sentinelese to Christianity, but his ill-fated mission ended in a hail of sharpened arrows. 

Gregg Goldstein When Hayao Miyazaki’s semi-autobiographical fantasy “The Boy and the Heron” has its international premiere Sept. 7, it won’t just be the first animated film to open TIFF, or the master director’s first in a decade. It will be part of an unexpected resurgence of animated work for cineastes at major international festivals.

What is the fine line between altruism and narcissism, and what happens when “higher-calling” religious beliefs blur those demarcations? That vague space is not exactly what celebrated doc filmmakers Jesse Moss and Amanda McBaine are trying to resolve in their compelling new documentary “The Mission.” Honestly, their story is more subtle and nuanced; a fairer and balanced look at the ideas of self-sacrifice, an empathetic examination of a tragedy, and yet a sobering probing of good intentions and the paths that lead us astray.

Addie Morfoot Contributor The 19th edition of the Camden Intl. Film Festival, kicking off Sept. 14, will feature a handful of award-contending documentaries fresh off showings at Telluride, Toronto, Sundance, South by Southwest, Berlin and Tribeca film festivals.

Addie Morfoot ContributorStory Syndicate, the production house founded by Oscar and Emmy-winning documentary powerhouse couple Dan Cogan and Liz Garbus, is bulking up its development and production team with a new hire, a promotion and a first-look deal with producer and investigative journalist Amy Herdy.The New York-based production company, which launched in 2019, was behind several popular docs and docuseries in 2021, including Garbus’ “Becoming Cousteau” (National Geographic), Orlando von Einsiedel’s “Convergence: Courage in a Crisis” (Netflix) and John Hoffman and Janet Tobias’ “Fauci” (Nat Geo).Jon Bardin, most recently Story Syndicate’s head of creative, has been named head of documentary and nonfiction. Bardin, who has been at the production company since its inception, has served as a producer or executive producer on Story Syndicate documentaries including Jesse Moss’ “Mayor Pete,” Erin Lee Carr’s “Britney Vs.

EXCLUSIVE: Michael Ellenberg’s Media Res, the production company behind high-profile scripted series such as Apple TV+’s The Morning Show and upcoming Pachinko, is expanding into nonfiction. The company has launched a new division, focused on premium nonfiction content, including docuseries, documentary films and unscripted programming.

Pete Buttigieg’s profile is rising within the Biden administration, thanks in part to passage of the $1.2 trillion infrastructure bill. 

Pete Buttigieg’s historic presidential campaign is getting the documentary treatment. “Mayor Pete” follows the candidate as he navigates public service, all the while maintaining a private life.

NewFest, New York’s LGBTQ+ film festival, kicks off tonight with one of the most prominent documentaries of the fall.

The annual 50-state student government conference Boys State, sponsored by the American Legion, first came to filmmaker Jesse Moss’ attention after reading about the Texas edition in the Washington Post. At each summer’s conferences, boys gather to set up a mock-state legislature — they organize political campaigns, run for office, give speeches, write bills and debate it at all their respective state’s capital.

Addie Morfoot ContributorAhmir “Questlove” Thompson’s “Summer of Soul (…Or, When The Revolution Could Not Be Televised),” released nationwide in theaters July 2 and simultaneously on Hulu’s streaming service, is the latest in a series of high-profile documentaries from L.A.-based Concordia Studio since it formally launched early last year.Concordia snagged a quarter of the 16 slots in the 2020 U.S.

The January 6 insurrection at the U.S. Capitol underscored the precarious state of American democracy in a time of deep political polarization. But the Emmy-contending Apple Original Film Boys State offers some hope that bridging ideological differences remains a possibility.

Pete Buttigieg, look no further than the heavyweight filmmakers and top distributor who will mount the story of his historic presidential campaign.“Mayor Pete,” directed by Jesse Moss, the co-director of last year’s “Boys State” and director of the 2014’s “The Overnighters,” will take the audience inside Buttigieg’s quest to be the first openly gay president in United States history.

Filmmakers Jesse Moss and Amanda McBaine sat down with The Hollywood Reporter to discuss the pair’s acclaimed documentary feature Boys State in a THR Presents Q&A powered by Vision Media. Joining them was Steven Garza, one of the 1,000 teenage subjects in the film who participated in the annual event at the University of Texas at Austin.

The pressure was on when directors Jesse Moss and Amanda McBaine set about making Boys State, their film documenting an annual exercise in Texas that gives high school boys the chance to practice democracy in action.

MTV Documentary Films’ Gay Chorus Deep South will make its broadcast premiere Sunday, December 20 at 9:00 PM ET/PT on Pop and Logo and Pluto TV.

MTV Documentary Films’ Gay Chorus Deep South will make its broadcast premiere Sunday, December 20 at 9:00 PM ET/PT on Pop and Logo.,

Many might describe “Boys State,” the critically acclaimed and Sundance Film Festival award-winning documentary by Jesse Moss and Amanda McBaine as timely. Especially as the United States finds itself once again in a divisive presidential election.

Jazz Tangcay Artisans EditorEvery year, the American Legion sponsors high school boys as they’re given a crash course on American politics.

Every Tuesday, discriminating viewers are confronted with a flurry of choices: new releases on disc and on-demand, vintage, and original movies on any number of streaming platforms, catalog titles making a splash on Blu-ray or 4K. This biweekly column sifts through all of those choices to pluck out the movies most worth your time, no matter how you’re watching.

Boys State, Amanda McBaine and Jesse Moss’ Sundance-winning documentary, is an occasionally excruciating but always captivating political commentary that hints at what the future of US democracy might look like. Arriving this week on Apple TV+, the film spotlights the Texan chapter of a week-long annual leadership conference that teaches young men about government.

Tom Grater International Film ReporterAfter delaying its 2020 edition due to the pandemic, Sundance’s London offshoot will return August 7-9 in an online form for a scaled down version. The event will present three features from this year’s Park City festival: Alan Ball’s Uncle Frank, Zeina Durra’s Luxor, and Jesse Moss and Amanda McBaine’s Boys State, which won the Grand Jury Prize: Documentary in Utah this year.

In today’s film news roundup, a pair of long-running film festivals in San Francisco and Cleveland are moving ahead and Warner Bros.’ Fred Hampton biopic gets additional backing and Dule Hill gets cast.

Every summer, more than 1,000 teens swarm the Texas capitol building to attend Boys State, the annual American Legion-sponsored leadership conference where these incipient politicians divide into rival parties, the Nationalists and the Federalists, and attempt to build a mock government from the ground up.

By Anthony D'Alessandro