In tandem with Women’s History Month, the documentary “The Life & Times of Liz Carpenter” will premiere on public television stations in March. It will also stream on PBS.org and on the PBS app. Directed by Peabody award-winner Abby Ginzberg and Liz’s daughter, Christy Carpenter, this hour-long documentary tells the story of Liz Carpenter, an […]

A new documentary project, “Me, My Mother’s Favorite Monkey” (Aku, Monyet Kesayangan Ibuku), helmed by director Ivonne Kani, examines Chinese-Indonesian identity through the lens of intergenerational family dynamics at the inaugural JAFF Market in Yogyakarta. The film follows Kani’s year-long journey exploring her cultural heritage through traditional Chinese rituals including Chinese New Year, Tomb Sweeping […]

Anyone flipping past a cable channel late at night in the back half of the 1990s and early aughts probably had ads for “Girls Gone Wild” seared into their brains.  The instantly recognizable infomercials projected purposefully pixelated footage of young women pulling up their shirts to flash the cameras between shots at a college town […]

I scream, you scream, we all scream for Beatlemania… but maybe it’s been a while. “Beatles ’64,” the new Martin Scorsese-produced documentary on Disney+, aims to recapture the shrieks that greeted the Beatles’ arrival on American shores at the beginning of 1964. Under the direction of David Tedeschi, the film brings back the tears of […]

Sales agent Syndicado has boarded Irish debut filmmaker Myrid Carten’s “A Want in Her,” which had its world premiere earlier this month in IDFA’s International Competition section. In the documentary, Carten returns from London to Ireland to look for her troubled mother Nuala. Once a successful social worker, Nuala suffered a mental breakdown after the […]

A documentary centered on Miami quarterback Cam Ward is in production from Firebrand Media. The doc will be a part of a 10-episode series titled “Zero Star,” about thriving athletes who were once considered “zero star” recruits, meaning they were unranked and unscouted. Ward, who was a high school athlete with only one college offer, […]

The unresolved case of JonBenét Ramsey has been the subject of countless documentaries and dramatic television retellings throughout the last 28 years. The latest content about the case is Netflix’s “Cold Case: Who Killed JonBenét Ramsey” — a three-part docuseries about the 6-year-old child beauty queen who was brutally murdered on Dec. 26, 1996, in […]

One of the more engaging figures in Ondi Timoner’s 2022 documentary, “The Last Flight Home” — about the decision of her 92-year-old father, Eli Timoner, to use California’s end-of-life option — was the director’s sister, Rachel. A rabbi, Rachel Timoner brought a pastoral warmth and spiritual insight to the sorrows and joys, rites and spiritual […]

What is it like to come of age under constant threat of war? Director Sareen Hairabedian’s poignant documentary “My Sweet Land” follows an ethnic Armenian youngster named Vrej Khatchatryan from the small village of Tsaghkashen in the Martakert region of the disputed enclave of Nagorno-Karabakh. Conflict, displacement and exile color everything in his and his […]

In the HBO documentary “Surveilled,” Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Ronan Farrow travels across the globe to investigate and expose the dark underbelly of the multi-billion-dollar advanced spyware industry. The film reveals that repressive regimes aren’t alone in using spyware to hack into citizens’ cell phones and computers clandestinely; democratic governments are also guilty of spying on […]

Maciej J. Drygas’ “Trains” won Best Film in the International Competition at this year’s International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam, with Miguel Coyula’s “Chronicles of the Absurd” taking the Best Film in the Envision Competition.  “Trains” is a journey through the 20th century told entirely through archival footage. The jury of the International Competition, comprising Juliana […]

In a modern world where work creeps further and further into one’s personal life, eating away at time and energy alike, it is a familiar feeling to realize you don’t have as much time as you would like for a partner. Chinese director Chouwa Liang currently feels that pressure, although her partner’s notion of time […]

Dutch documentarians Peter Lataster and Petra Lataster-Czisch are veterans on their home turf of the International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam — where they won Best Dutch Film in 2014 and 2022 — but this year brought a career highlight for the renowned duo: introducing their latest doc “All Is Well” at the beautiful Tuschinski cinema […]

At the heart of maximalist rock outfit The Mars Volta are two friends: guitarist Omar Rodríguez-López and vocalist Cedric Bixler-Zavala. The pair met as El Paso high-schoolers obsessed with punk music, and soon began a creative partnership that lasted through multiple bands, scores of albums and hundreds of explosive live shows. The centerpiece of their […]

“Dry Sky,” produced by Ibrahim Omar, won the Forum Award for Best Pitch Wednesday at IDFA documentary festival in Amsterdam. “Do You Love Me,” produced by Lana Y. Daher, took home the Forum Award for Best Rough Cut, and “Looking for the Mermaid” by Yara Costa won the Producers Connection Award. The DocLab Forum Award […]

Ignorance is bliss, according to Nicolas Philibert, director of BAFTA nominee “To Be and to Have” and Berlin best film winner “On the Adamant,” discussing his approach to documentary filmmaking at IDFA in Amsterdam. The French filmmaker, whose recent films “The Typewriter and Other Headaches” and “Averroès & Rosa Parks” both screen at IDFA this […]

Documentary filmmakers and industry leaders gathered at this year’s International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam to discuss “independence and resistance in times of repressive populism” at the festival’s yearly Europe Conference in partnership with French public broadcaster Arte. IDFA’s artistic director Orwa Nyrabia introduced the conference by highlighting the “rising success” of populist movements in Europe […]

More than 500 years after his death, the works of Leonardo da Vinci have never been more ubiquitous. “Mona Lisa” just got her own Lego set, and recently played a central role in Rian Johnson’s “Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery.” A controversial allusion to his famed “The Last Supper” during this summer’s Paris Olympics […]

Gravitas Ventures has acquired worldwide distribution rights to BuzzFeed Studios’ documentary “Brother Orange.” The doc follows the story of Matt Stopera, a BuzzFeed founding editor, whose life takes an unexpected turn when his stolen phone becomes the catalyst for a 2015 BuzzFeed article that went viral. The film chronicles how Stopera tracks down ‘Brother Orange,’ […]