In a year of pandemic, social unrest and political polarization, one Oscar-contending documentary arrived to lift people’s spirits, not just in the U.S. but around the world.
10.01.2021 - 23:45 / deadline.com
Neon’s documentary Totally Under Control paints a devastating picture of the Trump administration’s response to the Covid-19 pandemic.
“There are moments that we look at in the film where the administration could have sort of righted the ship, released more funds, released the Defense Production Act to get more companies making more PPE, and that didn’t happen,” co-director Suzanne Hillinger says during Deadline’s Contenders Documentary awards-season event. “We’re still seeing effects of that
In a year of pandemic, social unrest and political polarization, one Oscar-contending documentary arrived to lift people’s spirits, not just in the U.S. but around the world.
Donald Trump has just hours left in office and TV’s late-night hosts are taking all the shots they can before President-elect Joe Biden’s officially takes over the White House on Wednesday.
Bill Maher has a message for Donald Trump during his final hours in the White House: “Pack your s**t and go.”
Deadline on Monday launched streaming sites for its first two Contenders awards-season events that took place over the weekend: Contenders International and Contenders Documentary.
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.
The California town of Paradise was home to about 26,000 people in November 2018 when a catastrophic wildfire reduced most of the town to ash. Ron Howard’s National Geographic documentary Rebuilding Paradise begins with footage of the community in flames.
No one can say filmmaker Bryan Fogel doesn’t enjoy a cinematic challenge.
Qandeel Baloch, the subject of MTV Documentary Films’ A Life Too Short, became a new kind of celebrity in her native Pakistan. Beautiful and outspoken, she challenged the norms of her society by daring to post semi-nude photos of herself and to voice provocative opinions.
For more than 20 years, former music industry executive Drew Dixon held onto a corrosive secret. The HBO Max documentary On the Record, directed by Kirby Dick and Amy Ziering, reveals how Dixon made the painful decision to come forward with allegations that she had been raped by her boss at Def Jam Recordings, hip hop impresario Russell Simmons.
Politics and Covid-19 have been intertwined ever since the novel coronavirus emerged in Wuhan, China a year ago. But when director Hao Wu made 76 Days, his harrowing film documenting hospital workers and Covid patients in Wuhan as the city went through lockdown, he left political questions aside.
For his documentary Notturno, Italian director Gianfranco Rosi did the unthinkable—spend most of his time in the field without a camera.
Russian-born director Viktor Kossakovsky says it was a monumental struggle to make his documentary Gunda, starring the title character: a sow raising her litter of piglets on a farm in Norway.
The Neon documentary The Painter and the Thief begins with a surprising “meet cute.” After two paintings are stolen from artist Barbora Kysilkova in Oslo, Norway, she encounters one of the suspected thieves in court. Instead of feeling angry at the accused, Karl-Bertil Nordland, he excites her compassion, and an unlikely friendship develops between them.
Attending summer camp is a joyous time for many kids. For filmmaker Jim LeBrecht, it was life-changing.
Filmmaker Jeff Orlowski has become known for his environmental documentaries Chasing Ice and Chasing Coral. But with The Social Dilemma he turns his attention to another issue with major implications for humanity: the damaging impact of social media.
To Bonni Cohen and Jon Shenk, directors of the Netflix documentary Athlete A, the women who came forward to call out rampant sexual abuse within the USA Gymnastics program are “American heroes.”
Dick Johnson Is Dead director Kirsten Johnson has become all too familiar with the devastating impact of dementia. In 2007, her mother died of Alzheimer’s.
For his documentary The Human Factor, about the elusive quest for a peace agreement between Israelis and Palestinians, director Dror Moreh spent time with American diplomats involved in those negotiations. A lot of time.
Directors Michael Dweck and Gregory Kershaw didn’t necessarily get much sleep when they were making their Sony Pictures Classics documentary The Truffle Hunters, about superannuated men and their dogs in Italy who search for the subterranean delicacy.