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The ethics of documentary filmmaking is not a new topic of debate, but after last month’s Washington Post article about an Afghan man allegedly murdered by the Taliban as a consequence of his participation in Matthew Heineman’s Oscar shortlisted 2022 documentary “Retrograde,” the discussion around the moral responsibility of nonfiction filmmakers has once again heated up.

Unlike with journalists, there are no widely-accepted standards that documentary filmmakers are expected to abide by. Regulations for personal nonfiction storytelling can be counterintuitive. Intrusive. Unless a director is working on a documentary for PBS’ “Frontline” series, known for adherence to journalism standards, situational ethics determined on a case-by-case are more often than not the norm.

“Retrograde” tells the story of the United States’ final months of its 20-year war in Afghanistan. In the film Heineman, whose “Cartel Land” was nominated for an Oscar in 2016, embedded with the U.S. Army Green Berets and Lt.

For his docuseries “The Dynasty: New England Patriots,” Matthew Hamachek had to do a little extra convincing to get some people to participate. One of those was Adam Vinatieri, the kicker responsible for the field goals that helped the Patriots clinch their first three Super Bowl victories. To secure his involvement, Hamachek had to do two things with the first being the inclusion of so many of his former teammates and the second had tied into what Hamachek wanted the series to be. “He wanted the unvarnished telling of it and I explained to him that we’re going to do that, and I was going to ask him tough questions, and I was going to talk to him about what it was like to be an Indianapolis Colt and be on the team that accused the Patriots of their second major cheating scandal with ‘Deflategate,’” he tells Gold Derby...

Variety is premiering the trailer (below) for feature documentary “Transition,” which follows Australian filmmaker Jordan Bryon, a trans man, as he embeds with a Taliban unit as they retake control of Afghanistan.

The film, directed by Monica Villamizar and Bryon, will be released in the U.S. on March 26 by Gravitas Ventures. The film is available now for pre-order on Apple. AGC International is selling it at the European Film Market this week.

“Transition” is produced by Villamizar and was financed by AGC Unwritten and Our Time Projects. Academy Award-nominated documentary director Matthew Heineman (“Cartel Land”) is executive producing with Stuart Ford, Lourdes Diaz, Joel Zimmer, Bj Levin, Sebastian Hernandez, Juan Manuel Betancourt and Joedan Okun.

The film’s primary subjects are Bryon, Afghan cinematographer Farzad Fetrat (“Teddy”) and Iranian-Canadian photojournalist Kiana Hayeri.

“Transition” had its world premiere at the Tribeca Film Festival to audience and critical acclaim and was...

The Hollywood studios are alive and well: They dominated the just-announced Oscar nominations, with Universal’s mighty biopic “Oppenheimer” heading for a Best Picture win with an expected 13 nominations, including Picture, Director, and Adapted Screenplay (Christopher Nolan); Actor (Cillian Murphy), Supporting Actor (Robert Downey Jr.); and Supporting Actress (Emily Blunt). Universal specialty division Focus added five for holiday hit “The Holdovers,” including Actor and Supporting Actress, for a studio total of 18.

Disney delivered a total 20, including Searchlight’s “Poor Things” (11), led by Best Actress frontrunner, Oscar-winner Emma Stone (“La La Land”) and Supporting Actor and animated entry “Elemental.” And Warner Bros.’ “Barbie” followed with eight, including expected Supporting Actor and unexpected Supporting Actress and two nods for Best Song.

However, “Barbie” lost a few key nominations, including actress Margot Robbie (who did score her first Best Picture nomination as producer) and DGA nominee Greta Gerwig for Director, who boasts the...

By Glenn Charlie Dunks

Director Matthew Heineman has made a name for himself covering warzones in narrative film (A Private War) and most prominently in documentary. I don’t blame him for stepping back just this once and making a movie about a charming musician and his rise to zeitgeist prominence. The film is American Symphony about Jon Batiste, a soft lob of a tribute that somewhat perversely is the film that could very well win him an Academy Award. Even documentarians can follow the same tried-and-tested path. I just wish I liked it more.

Batiste is 37 years old. American Symphony doesn’t say this stat outright as far as I recall, but it goes to great pains to make the audience very well aware that he is some sort of wunderkind. A Juilliard graduate who landed a big break as bandleader on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert and...

Six directors of standout 2023 documentary features gathered at The Hollywood Reporter’s Los Angeles offices in mid-November for THR’s annual Documentary Roundtable.

Among them were two revered veterans with Oscars to their name: Davis Guggenheim (2006’s An Inconvenient Truth), who helmed Still: A Michael J. Fox Movie, a film about the life and struggles of the beloved actor who was stricken at a young age with Parkinson’s disease; and Roger Ross Williams (2009’s Music by Prudence), director of Stamped From the Beginning, a film about the history of anti-Black racism in America. Meanwhile, a first-time filmmaker, twice-Grammy-nominated producer D. Smith, profiled four Black transgender women who have performed sex work in Kokomo City.

Oscar nominee Nicole Newnham (2020’s Crip Camp) made a documentary portrait of a person once famous but now largely forgotten: The Disappearance of Shere Hite, about the titular sex researcher and her landmark 1976 book about female sexuality.

Michelle Obama is giving a boost to American Symphony, the Oscar-contending documentary about musician Jon Batiste and his wife, musician Suleika Jaouad.

The former first lady introduced the Matthew Heineman film at a special screening Thursday night in New Orleans, a place of special significance for Batiste, who was born in nearby Metairie, Louisiana and raised in Kenner just outside N.O. proper. Michelle and Barack Obama are executive producing the Netflix film through their Higher Ground production company, which has a distribution deal with the streaming platform.

“I’m beyond thrilled to be here in Nawlins with all y’all!” Mrs. Obama began. “There is no better place to lift up this work than in the city where music is at the heart of everything, because music is at the heart of this film.

Aka Mr. Chow

(HBO Documentary Films)

This portrait directed by Nick Hooker follows the life and career of painter turned restaurateur Michael Chow, the owner of the Mr Chow restaurant chain, as he returns to the art world with his first solo show in nearly 60 years.

American Symphony

(Netflix)

Matthew Heineman switches gears from following the front lines of the Mexican drug war (the Oscar-nominated Cartel Land) and the early days of the Covid crisis in New York City (The First Wave), this time helming an intimate profile of Late Night With Stephen Colbert bandleader Jon Batiste as he balances an incredible year of professional success while aiding his wife, writer Suleika Jaouad, through her battle with a rare form of cancer.

Anonymous Sister

(Long Shot Factory/Gravitas Ventures)

Emmy Award-winning director Jamie Boyle chronicles her family’s collision with the opioid epidemic. The film, currently holding a 100 percent score on Rotten Tomatoes,...

Plot: A moving portrait of musician Jon Batiste, who in 2022 found himself the most celebrated artist of the year with eleven Grammy nominations including Album of the Year. In the midst of that triumph, Jon embarks on his most ambitious challenge to date, composing an original symphony. This trajectory was upended, however, when his life partner — best-selling author Suleika Jaouad — learns that her long-dormant cancer has returned.

Review: Few things are as subjective as art, whether film, music, literature or any other creative outlet. Fame is also fleeting, but when true artistry mixes with the zeitgeist, it can be powerful. Jon Batiste is an artist who has found success in many forms, personally and professionally. Best known as the band leader on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert and for his Oscar-winning score for Pixar’s Soul, Batiste won Album of the Year at the Grammys in 2022 despite much of...

For the 10th year in a row, the Scad Savannah Film Festival, the 26th edition of which ran from Oct. 21 through Oct. 28, was the place to be for documentary filmmakers and documentary lovers — specifically on Oct. 25, when The Hollywood Reporter presented and your humble correspondent hosted the fest’s Docs to Watch panel that brings together the directors of up to 10 of the year’s finest documentary features.

Over the past nine years, 45 films were nominated for the best documentary feature Oscar, 19 of which were first highlighted as Docs to Watch. And in seven of those nine years, one of the Docs to Watch went on to win the best documentary feature Oscar: 2015’s Amy, 2016’s O.J.: Made in America, 2017’s Icarus, 2018’s Free Solo, 2019’s American Factory, 2021’s Summer of Soul and 2022’s Navalny. (The other two eventual winners — 2014’s Citizenfour and 2020’s My Octopus Teacher — were not screened...

“Tinder Swindler” studio AGC Unwritten has sold U.S. rights to Monica Villamizar and Jordan Bryon’s feature documentary “Transition” to Gravitas Ventures.

The film follows Australian filmmaker Jordan Bryon, a trans man, as he embeds with a Taliban unit as they retake control of Afghanistan. AGC International will screen the film and launch international sales at the American Film Market next week. Gravitas will release the film in March 2024.

“Transition” is produced by Villamizar and was financed by AGC Unwritten and Our Time Projects. Academy Award-nominated documentary director Matthew Heineman (“Cartel Land”) is executive producing with Stuart Ford, Lourdes Diaz, Joel Zimmer, Bj Levin, Sebastian Hernandez, Juan Manuel Betancourt and Joedan Okun.

The film’s primary subjects are Bryon, Afghan cinematographer Farzad Fetrat (“Teddy”) and Iranian-Canadian photojournalist Kiana Hayeri.

“Transition” had its world premiere at the Tribeca Film Festival to audience and critical acclaim and was an official selection at Sheffield DocFest,...

The Critics Choice Association just unveiled the nominees for its 8th annual documentary awards. Topping the list is “American Symphony” with six bids, including Best Documentary, Best Director for Matthew Heineman, and notices in Cinematography, Editing, and Music Documentary. Heineman is the Oscar nominated director of “Cartel Land” from 2015. The sixth nomination for “American Symphony” is for Best Score thanks to 2022’s Grammy Award recipient for Album of the Year, Jon Batiste. You may recognize another Aoty winner in the Ccda’s lineup — Taylor Swift‘s record breaking concert movie “Taylor Swift: The Eras Tour” is also nominated for Music Documentary.

Just behind “American Symphony” are three films that received five nominations each: “20 Days in Mariupol” from Mstyslav Chernov, “Kokomo City” from D. Smith, and “Still: A Michael J. Fox Movie” from Davis Guggenheim, who is also nominated for Director. The other directors that were heralded for their films...

The Scad Savannah Film Festival, which takes place each year at the Savannah College of Art and Design shortly before the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences votes to determine its Oscar shortlists, and which has become a premier showcase for documentary programming, has revealed the names of the 10 documentary features that it will highlight on this year’s edition of its popular Docs to Watch panel.

The Docs to Watch gathering, which features discussion about the challenges and rewards of documentary filmmaking, will take place at the Lucas Theatre on the evening of Wednesday, Oct. 25, midway through the 26th edition of the fest, which will run from Oct. 21 through Oct. 28. For the 10th year in a row, it will be presented by The Hollywood Reporter and moderated by yours truly.

The films represented on this year’s Docs to Watch panel — all of which will also screen during the fest,...

Netflix announced Monday that it has acquired the distribution rights to “American Symphony,” Matthew Heineman’s documentary about Oscar- and Grammy-winning musician Jon Batiste, which premiered at the Telluride Film Festival.

The film follows Batiste in 2022 as his already decorated career reaches even greater heights — including six Grammy wins — at the same time that his wife Suleika Jaouad is battling leukemia.

Netflix acquired the film alongside Barack and Michelle Obama’s production company Higher Ground and will release it later this year.

“The themes of resilience and love at the heart of ‘American Symphony’ resonate deeply with us — and we’re thrilled to bring the film into the Higher Ground family,” the Obamas said in a statement. “Jon and Suleika’s journey of grace and strength echoes the experience of so many families who are forced to navigate the complications that surface when dreams meet adversity.”

“For many years, Jon...

This year’s best documentary feature Oscar race, which heretofore seemed unusually wide open, now has a frontrunner.

American Symphony, Oscar nominee Matthew Heineman’s moving portrait of the musician Jon Batiste as he experiences his greatest professional success (he dominated the 2022 Grammys) at the same time his wife faces her greatest personal challenge (Suleika Jaouad is battling leukemia), has been acquired by Netflix following a lengthy bidding war, The Hollywood Reporter has learned.

The film will be released this year and will be promoted with a major Oscar campaign in the works. Moreover, Barack Obama and Michelle Obama’s production company Higher Ground, which has a first-look deal with Netflix, is on board for the project, just as it was for two other recent Netflix films: 2019’s American Factory, which went on to win the best documentary feature Oscar, and for 2020’s Crip Camp, which was nominated for it.

How much longer will the Oscars wait? That is, wait to embrace the quality and sheer brilliance of documentary filmmaking in a significant way, meaning nominating one in the best picture category? Matthew Heineman’s deeply moving “American Symphony,” which follows Oscar and Grammy-winning composer Jon Batiste as he prepares for his performance at Carnegie Hall, is yet another home run for the filmmaker behind “Cartel Land” and “City of Ghosts,” not to mention a singular love story.

Batiste’s larger-than-life personality was on full display following the Telluride screening of the documentary, when he led a band down to the main street of Telluride.

The film doesn’t just follow Batiste in his musical element, such as his work as band leader for “The Late Show with Stephen Colbert” or when he led the 2022 Grammy nominations and won album of the year. Instead, it’s an intimate portrait of...

“Be kind, because everyone you meet is fighting a great battle” — that popular maxim (or some variation thereof) is often brought up in the context of remembering to have some sympathy for jerks. But it could also be applied to people whose lives seem too charmed to be true. In the documentary “American Symphony,” Jon Batiste, who often comes off as the merriest performer in all of popular music, turns out to be dealing with grim stuff behind the grin. It’s his wife, Suleika Jaouad, who’s waging the real war, against recurring leukemia. But Batiste is having his own skirmishes with anxiety and panic attacks related to her illness, even as he’s making headlines as the surprise Grammy hoarder of 2022. So don’t hate him just because he seems so damn happy, the film suggests; he’s earned his ebullience.

A Batiste doc might have seemed an...

In his latest documentary, “American Symphony,” Oscar-nominated director Matthew Heineman delivers a portrait of two artists — Grammy winner and former “Late Show With Stephen Colbert” bandleader Jon Batiste and his wife, author Suleika Jaouad.

Heineman is known for putting his life on the line to make documentaries about the Mexican drug wars (“Cartel Land”), the initial explosion of Covid-19 in the U.S. (“The First Wave”) and the final months of America’s 20-year war in Afghanistan (“Retrograde”). But in “American Symphony,” which makes its world premiere at the Telluride Film Festival on Aug. 31, the helmer captures a more intimate battle.

In early 2022, after receiving 11 Grammy nominations including album of the year, Batiste sets out to compose “American Symphony,” an original symphony that reimagines the classical traditions of the form at Carnegie Hall. But life turns upside down when Jaouad learns that her long-dormant cancer has returned. Heineman’s 103-minute...

It’s no secret that war reporters are often adrenaline junkies with an astronomically high risk tolerance, but Jordan Bryon takes the cake. A documentarian based in Afghanistan, Bryon was embedded with a Taliban unit after the fall of Kabul while working on a film for the New York Times. A chilling prospect for anyone, much less a white Australian “infidel,” as one source calls him.

But there’s one other little detail that puts Bryon at particular risk: He’s trans. During the risky assignment the 39-year-old journalist also filmed himself, capturing his unique situation in “Transition,” an astonishing documentary that merges the geopolitical with the personal.

As Bryon takes steps to medically transition while living in the Middle East, his relationship to gender evolves against the backdrop of a strictly gendered society. The pressure to pass becomes a life or death situation (as it is for many trans...

80th Annual Golden Globe Awards — Pictured: (l-r) Jessica Chastain arrives at the 80th Annual Golden Globe Awards held at the Beverly Hilton Hotel on January 10, 2023 in Beverly Hills, California. — (Photo by Todd Williamson/NBC) Apple TV+ has announced “The Savant,” a new, eight-episode limited series starring Academy, SAG, Golden Globe and Critics Choice Award-winner Jessica Chastain in the lead role. In addition to starring, Chastain will executive produce through Freckle Films, and Fifth Season and Anonymous Content are the studios. Inspired by a true story published by Cosmopolitan, the storyline and character details are being kept under wraps for “The Savant,” which will be written and showrun by Emmy Award-nominee Melissa James Gibson, whose overall deal is based at Fifth Season. Academy Award-nominee, six-time Emmy Award-winner and two-time DGA-winner Matthew Heineman will direct and serve as executive producer.

The post Academy Award Winner Jessica Chastain To Star In New Apple...

Jessica Chastain is a savant of acting, and now she’s getting a whole limited series to prove it. The “Eyes of Tammy Faye” Oscar winner and current star of “A Doll’s House” on Broadway will star in “The Savant,” a new limited series ordered by Apple TV+.

No other cast members outside of Chastain have been announced, and Apple TV+ states the storyline and character details are being kept under wraps. However, the show is inspired by a feature published in Cosmopolitan, with the original writer Andrea Stanley serving as a consultant.

Apple did not specify what article from Stanley the show is based on, but judging from the title, it’s almost certainly “They Call Her The Savant,” a 2019 profile of an anonymous woman who infiltrates online hate groups in order to track and prevent potential mass shootings.

The eight-episode miniseries will be written and showrun by Melissa James Gibson,...

Jessica Chastain will star in and executive produce the limited series “The Savant” on Apple TV+, the network announced Monday.

The limited series is inspired by a true story published by Cosmopolitan about “a top-secret investigator known as the Savant infiltrating online hate groups,” though additional details about the plot and characters are being kept under wraps.

In addition to starring in the lead role, Chastain will executive produce through her film and television production company Freckle Films. “Anatomy of a Scandal” and “House of Cards” alum Melissa James Gibson will write and serve as showrunner, while “Cartel Land” filmmaker Matthew Heineman directs.

Also Read:

Rose Byrne and Seth Rogen’s Comedy Series ‘Platonic’ Sets May Premiere Date at Apple TV+

Hailing from Fifth Season and Anonymous Content, Chastain, Gibson and Heineman will executive produce alongside Kelly Carmichael, who executive produces with Chastain for Freckle Films, and Cosmopolitan editor-in-chief of Cosmopolitan Jessica Giles.

Fresh from playing country music star Tammy Wynette, Jessica Chastain is swapping the microphone for a laptop.

The George & Tammy star is to front Apple limited series The Savant.

The eight-part series, which has been in the works for some time, comes from Anatomy of a Scandal co-creator Melissa James Gibson and is produced by Fifth Season and Anonymous Content.

Related Story Rose Byrne-Seth Rogen Apple TV+ Comedy Series ‘Platonic’ Sets Premiere Date, Unveils First Look Related Story Noma Dumezweni, Gabby Beans & Sarunas J. Jackson Board Apple TV+ Series 'Presumed Innocent' Related Story Apple's Film Commitment Will Be Over $1B; Question Is, Should It Distribute & Market A Theatrical Slate, Or License Out?

It will see Chastain play a top-secret investigator known as the Savant, who infiltrates online hate groups to take down the most violent men in the country.

Related: 2023 Apple TV+ Pilots & Series Orders

The series is...

“All the Beauty and the Bloodshed” has coasted through the season as the Oscar front-runner for Best Documentary Feature, so it makes sense that it’s also out front in our forecasts for the Directors Guild Award. But the guild doesn’t always agree with the Oscars when it comes to documentaries, and the Expert journalists we’ve surveyed from major media outlets are split between all five of the nominees.

SEEBrendan Fraser (‘The Whale’): ‘I needed only to look into Hong’s eyes’ to ‘reflect the authenticity’ [Complete Interview Transcript]

Laura Poitras is the director of “Bloodshed,” which explores the life and career of Nan Goldin, a photographer and activist who fought to hold Purdue Pharma and the Sackler family responsible for the opioid crisis across the United States. Poitras won the last time she was nominated at the DGA Awards, for “Citizenfour” (2014), and by winning again she would join a...

This year, women directors – and their women-centric subjects – swept the awards at Sundance Film Festival. Three women directors – Madeleine Gavin, Maryam Keshavarz, and Noora Niasari – won Audience Awards for their films on North Korea (“Beyond Utopia”), intergenerational motherhood (“The Persian Version”), and custody in diaspora (“Shayda”). Portraits of masculinity were also celebrated as well. First-time feature filmmaker Sing J. Lee won the Directing Award for his touching portrait of masculinity and fatherhood in “The Accidental Getaway Driver,” while Sauvnik Kaur’s intimate documentary on brotherhood “Against The Tide” took home a Special Jury Award. After two years of isolation and virtual festival-ing, it seems that stories of tenderness appealed over aggressive storytelling at Park City this year.

“This year’s Festival has been an extraordinary experience,” said Joana Vicente, Sundance Institute CEO. “The artists that comprise the 2023 Sundance Film Festival have demonstrated a sense of urgency and dedication to excellence in independent film.

Just one year after Maggie Gyllenhaal (“The Lost Daughter”) became the second woman to win the Directors Guild of America’s First-Time Film Director award, Charlotte Wells (“Aftersun”) is set to follow her as the category’s third female champ. The 35-year-old Scottish filmmaker, who helmed three narrative shorts between 2015 and 2017, has already been heavily feted for her feature directing (and writing) debut with accolades such as the Cannes French Touch Prize and the Gotham Award for Best Breakthrough Director. Now, the fact that a whopping 96 of Gold Derby’s 2023 DGA Awards predictions odds-makers have her as their top choice in the rookie race should translate to a decisive win.

This category’s current lineup is the only one in its eight-year history to include just one male nominee. Last year’s unprecedented field of six consisted of two men and four women, including Gyllenhaal. Our odds show Wells far outpacing female contenders Alice Diop,...

National Geographic has revealed a first look teaser trailer for the new documentary film Retrograde, the latest from award-winning filmmaker Matthew Heineman. This initially premiered at the 2022 Telluride Film Festival over the weekend, hence the new teaser, and will be showing up later this year though an exact date isn't set yet. The film is about one of the most upsetting topics of 2021 – it captures the final nine months of America's 20-year war in Afghanistan from multiple perspectives. Focusing on the intimate relationship between American Green Berets and the Afghan officers they trained. From the Oscar-nominated & Emmy Award-winning filmmaker, Retrograde offers a cinematic and historic window onto the end of America’s longest war, and the costs endured for those most intimately involved. With everything in Afghanistan in 2021 being a major political topic, this doc should interest many viewers as it's as close as one can get to learning about...

Click here to read the full article.

If “documentary-style” has become shorthand for a certain kind of blandly flat aesthetic that viewers have learned to code as “reality,” you can’t blame Matthew Heineman.

In only a decade of directing docs, Heineman has set a template for astonishingly well-shot films marked by impeccably intimate access and the sort of eye for compositional detail you’d expect from a feature film with the budget and time for elaborate set-ups and uncannily placed lighting, not a seat-of-your-pants shoot in some of the most precarious situations imaginable. Put more simply, from Cartel Land to City of Ghosts to his TV work on The Trade, Heineman makes films that are both pretty and pretty unnerving.

A more negative interpretation would be that I’m frequently so impressed with the look of Heineman’s films — and his ability to somehow have cameras in places cameras...

Black Bear Pictures and New Regency today announced the launch of Double Agent, a new joint venture designed to produce and finance non-fiction content spanning all genres and formats for a global audience. New Regency’s Yariv Milchan and Michael Schaefer and Black Bear Pictures’ Teddy Schwarzman have joined forces to utilize their combined strategic expertise, financial acumen and resources to take advantage of the extraordinary growth of the audience for non-fiction and the unprecedented opportunities that now exist in the documentary marketplace.

Double Agent will look to offer filmmakers robust financing capability and high-end creative services for the development and production of non-fiction feature films, series and emerging formats. Dana O’Keefe has been appointed as President of the company, exiting Cinetic Media where he served as Partner. He was involved with hundreds of films over the course of his tenure at Cinetic, including the Oscar-winning docs Summer of Soul,...

Partners to leverage resources, relationships to create premium content spanning all genres, formats.

Black Bear Pictures and New Regency have formed the joint venture Double Agent to produce and finance premium non-fiction content spanning all genres and formats.

Dana O’Keefe has been named president and departs from Cinetic Media where he served as a partner and was involved in hundreds of films over the course of his tenure including Oscar-winning documentaries Summer Of Soul, Free Solo, and Amy, along with Oscar nominated films like Collective, Rbg, Cartel Land, The Square and Exit Through The Giftshop.

Combining the strategic expertise, resources...

The New England Patriots will be the subject of a new documentary event series ordered from Apple called “The Dynasty” that will give a behind-the-scenes look at the championship NFL team and its former star quarterback Tom Brady, as well as general manager Bill Belichick and CEO Robert Kraft, the streaming video service announced Tuesday.

The 10-part docuseries is based on Jeff Benedict’s 2020 book, “The Dynasty: The Inside Story of the NFL’s Most Successful and Controversial Franchise.” The author was given “unprecedented access” to the team and now so has “The Dynasty” director Matthew Hamachek, whose films include the 2021 Tiger Woods doc “Tiger” and the Emmy-nominated “Cartel Land” and “Amanda Knox.”

The Patriots have broken open their archives for the series to share never-before-seen video footage and audio files. Hamachek also conducted hundreds of interviews with past and present Patriots players, coaches and executives, along with league officials and sports rivals.

New York City and L.A.-based indie distributor 1091 Pictures, known for such hit releases as Taika Waititi’s “Hunt for the Wilderpeople,” Spirit Awards winner “Christine” and knockout comedy “The Overnight,” has swooped in on rights to all English-speaking territories for psychedelic thriller “To the Moon.” The drama, sold by Yellow Veil Pictures, marks the directorial debut of actor Scott Friend (“The Dark End of the Street”), who also wrote the pic and plays a lead role in it.

The movie, which is debuting its first poster in Variety, premiered last year at the online film festival Nightstream, and was in selection at the 2020 U.S. in Progress industry showcase organized by Wroclaw’s American Film Festival, which later hosted the pic’s international premiere.

“To the Moon” is a twist on the unwanted-house-guest trope. It follows a young couple, played by Friend and Madeleine Morgenweck, who find...

Exclusive: National Geographic is making the Oscar-shortlisted documentary The First Wave available for free for 48 hours, beginning tomorrow. Matthew Heineman’s film, shot in a Queens hospital as New York City endured the initial explosion of Covid, can be seen without commercial interruption through the ABC and National Geographic apps in the U.S., starting Thursday at 12:01 a.m. Est.

The free release marks the two-year anniversary of the first Covid-19 case in the United States to be confirmed by the CDC. The documentary also will be available for free during that two-day window through local ABC station apps in New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Philadelphia, San Francisco, Houston, Raleigh-Durham, North Carolina, and Fresno, California. The First Wave will be preceded by a special message from Surgeon General Dr. Vivek Murthy, “addressing and thanking frontline workers and medical support staff,” who have selflessly cared for the ill from the outset of the pandemic.

The Producers Guild of America (PGA) announced the eight nominees for its 2022 Best Documentary award on Friday, December 10. The winner will be revealed at the 33rd Annual PGA Awards which will take place on Saturday, February 26, 2022. The remaining Producers Guild Awards nominations, including those for the Oscar bellwether Best Picture, will be unveiled on Thursday, January 27, 2022. The eight documentary features in the running are:

Ascension

The First Wave

Flee

In The Same Breath

The Rescue

Simple As Water

Summer Of Soul

Writing With Fire

The PGA nomination is an important step on the path to Oscar glory. Five of the last six eventual Oscar champs for Best Documentary Feature were nominated first by the producers guild, including last year’s “My Octopus Teacher,” which took home both prizes. The PGA win was the film’s first major accolade after missing nominations from prestigious non-fiction bellwethers Cinema Eye Honors and the International Documentary Association.

National Geographic’s “The First Wave” is a harrowing documentary that covers the first four months of Covid-19 at one of New York’s hardest-hit hospitals, Long Island Jewish Medical Center in Queens. It was a film that Matthew Heineman, who’s helmed the docs “Cartel Land” (2015) and “City of Ghosts” (2017), knew he had to make as the virus erupted stateside in March 2020.

“I think I woke up sort of in early March as this issue started to become plastered across headlines and we were inundated with stats and misinformation, I just felt this huge obligation to tell this story,” Heineman tells Gold Derby at our Meet the Experts: Film Directors panel (watch above). “Like previous films I’ve made, I wanted to try to humanize this issue, put a human face to it. And so I sought hospitals around the country to try to get access and ultimately gained...

With his breathless, soul-piercing “The First Wave,” director Matthew Heineman makes a tough cinematic proposition. He asks his audience to travel back to March 2020 and relive the early, frightening days of the Covid-19 crisis in New York City, when the Big Apple quickly became the world’s coronavirus epicenter through four deadly months.

More graphic in its approach than two similarly themed nonfiction films — Nanfu Wang’s “In the Same Breath” and Hao Wu and Weixi Chen’s “76 Days” — Heineman’s documentary is indeed a hard one to consent to at first, considering that the globally ruinous pandemic is far from over. But even when the high-adrenaline “The First Wave” gets a touch too explicit for its own good with shots of morgue truck interiors, glimpses at newly sealed body bags and close-ups of eyelids flickering on the verge of lifelessness, it is also a necessary and undeniably moving...

In March 2020, just after New York City shut down due to Covid-19, Matthew Heineman picked up his camera and embedded with a group of healthcare workers at Long Island Jewish Medical Center in Queens. For the next three months, the director and a skeleton crew captured doctors, nurses, and medical technicians as they battled to keep Covid patients alive and the virus at bay at one of the country’s hardest-hit hospitals.

The result of Heineman’s efforts is “The First Wave” – a documentary that will have its world premiere and serve as the opening night film at the 29th Hamptons Intl. Film Festival on Oct. 7.

Besides documenting the devastating physical and emotional impact the pandemic had on hospital staff, the verité film executive produced by Alex Gibney and produced by Leslie Norville and Jenna Millman follows Covid patients who recovered at the hospital for months as well as their family members back home.

Matthew Heineman is a risk-taker. Having filmed in Mexico with criminal gangs and corrupt police — for the Oscar-nominated 2016 documentary “Cartel Land” — and putting himself in danger in war-torn Syria and Afghanistan (his most recent untitled film chronicles the end of the U.S. war), it was no surprise that the 38-year-old filmmaker would jump into documenting the Covid crisis.

The question is, when will audiences be ready to experience “The First Wave”? The movie finally premieres this week at the Hamptons International Film Festival, after a series of festival rejections that the lauded filmmaker was not expecting. He initially fought to get the film finished in time for Sundance 2021, and while he got praise from the festival, director Tabitha Jackson wasn’t ready to show it. Nor was Cannes, Telluride, Toronto, or the New York Film Festival. London and a dozen regional festivals will follow the Hamptons, along with Doc NYC.

Matthew Heineman is a risk-taker. Having filmed in Mexico with criminal gangs and corrupt police — for the Oscar-nominated 2016 documentary “Cartel Land” — and putting himself in danger in war-torn Syria and Afghanistan (his most recent untitled film chronicles the end of the U.S. war), it was no surprise that the 38-year-old filmmaker would jump into documenting the Covid crisis.

The question is, when will audiences be ready to experience “The First Wave”? The movie finally premieres this week at the Hamptons International Film Festival, after a series of festival rejections that the lauded filmmaker was not expecting. He initially fought to get the film finished in time for Sundance 2021, and while he got praise from the festival, director Tabitha Jackson wasn’t ready to show it. Nor was Cannes, Telluride, Toronto, or the New York Film Festival. London and a dozen regional festivals will follow the Hamptons, along with Doc NYC.

HamptonsFilm, the presenting organization of the Hamptons International Film Festival, said the festival’s 29th edition will return to in-person events and screenings in October.

The festival will open October 7 with the world premiere of Academy Award-nominated director Matthew Heineman’s The First Wave. The feature documentary spotlights medical staffers at the country’s hardest-hit hospitals at the epicenter of the Covid-19 pandemic. Heineman’s previous films include the Oscar-nominated Cartel Land.

Those attending the festival, which runs through October 13, will need to show proof of vaccination for in-person events and will be required to wear masks.

As part of the Signature Program Views from Long Island program, supported by Suffolk County Film Commission, Hiff will feature the world premiere of Kelcey Edwards’ The Art of Making It. The documentary follows a diverse cast of young artists at defining moments in their careers as they explore whether the art world...

Exclusive: Baby Driver and I Care a Lot actress Eiza González, Oscar-nominated/Emmy-winning director Matthew Heineman and Linden Entertainment have partnered with the estate of the iconic Mexican film star Maria Felix to bring her story to life. The team is looking for a Latin American writer to adapt Felix’s life for the screen.

González will portray Felix and also produce the film alongside Dana Harris and Nicole King for Linden Entertainment. Walter Rivera will executive produce the film on behalf of Felix’s estate.

Felix was one of the most successful Mexican stars of all time, and this is the first time her estate will be involved in telling her story. The actress starred in 47 movies in Mexico, France, Italy and Argentina and was the queen of the silver screen in Mexico, becoming known as “La Dona.” Felix’s story is one that follows her from the rough Northern town of Sonoa,...

Some of the documentary features vying for 2021 Emmys may seem familiar. That’s because a bunch of them pushed through the ultra-long Oscar season last year, and some landed on the Oscar shortlist of 15, only to be left off the final five nominations. Last year’s revised Emmy rules dictate that no Oscar nominees will be chasing one of two Primetime Emmy Award categories for features, Outstanding Documentary or Nonfiction Special or Exceptional Merit in Documentary Filmmaking. That’s why you can count out of the Emmy running the Oscar-winning “My Octopus Teacher” (Netflix) and four nominees “Collective” (Magnolia), “Time” (Amazon), “Crip Camp” (Netflix), and “The Mole Agent” (Gravitas Ventures).

Last year, the Television Academy forged a stronger divide between the Emmy Awards and the Oscars to clear up some of the confusion that has reigned as movies have double-dipped from one to the other. The Academy has done its...

Some of the documentary features vying for 2021 Emmys may seem familiar. That’s because a bunch of them pushed through the ultra-long Oscar season last year, and some landed on the Oscar shortlist of 15, only to be left off the final five nominations. Last year’s revised Emmy rules dictate that no Oscar nominees will be chasing one of two Primetime Emmy Award categories for features, Outstanding Documentary or Nonfiction Special or Exceptional Merit in Documentary Filmmaking. That’s why you can count out of the Emmy running the Oscar-winning “My Octopus Teacher” (Netflix) and four nominees “Collective” (Magnolia), “Time” (Amazon), “Crip Camp” (Netflix), and “The Mole Agent” (Gravitas Ventures).

Last year, the Television Academy forged a stronger divide between the Emmy Awards and the Oscars to clear up some of the confusion that has reigned as movies have double-dipped from one to the other. The Academy has done its...

Exclusive: Documentary+, the non-fiction streaming service established by studio Xtr, is to share viewership data with its filmmakers, potentially becoming the first digital platform to reveal ratings.

The move is an interesting one given the often nebulous data put out by many of the more established streamers. Netflix has started to release some data for hit titles over their first 28 days, but generally only if they do particularly or surprisingly well, while many of the others release vague statements of success.

Alongside the news that it will share data with its filmmakers, the service revealed that between January and May, its top performing title on the service was Western, a documentary about life at the border of Mexico and Texas directed by Bill Ross IV and Turner Ross, followed by Cartel Land and The Imposter.

It will give filmmakers information including a gender identity breakdown, age range, which platform, such as Roku,...

Exclusive: One week after we brought you news of his app Erupt, today we can reveal that film and Broadway producer Edward Walson (Blue Jasmine) is launching Curia, a curated film streaming SVOD platform.

The idea behind the platform — which is initially only available in the U.S. — is to offer rotating monthly programming organized into niche sub-genres. Organizers say the service will be a fixture on the film festival circuit — including the upcoming Cannes Film Festival and market — with an appetite for new, exclusive acquisitions, including shorts.

The lineup will include auteur-driven cinema, movie classics and some commercially-minded fare. The first month’s programming in June will include sections such as Lol (comedies), Growing Pains (coming-of-age), Les Provocateurs and LGBTQ Pride.

Movies at launch will include Some Like It Hot, Dirty Rotten Scoundrels, In The Loop, Capote, Birdman Of Alcatraz, Paths Of Glory, A Ciambra, Boyhood, The Selfish Giant,...

J Balvin has released a new trailer for his documentary, The Boy From Medellín, which is set to arrive on Amazon Prime Video May 7th.

The documentary follows J Balvin throughout the week leading up to a massive homecoming show at the Estadio Atanasio Girardot in Medellín, Colombia, in December 2019. The show also happened to coincide with a swell of protests throughout Colombia against corruption, police brutality (including the death of an 18-year-old who was hit by a police projectile), and various austerity measures being imposed by Colombia’s conservative government.

Music documentary about the reggaeton superstar opens on Amazon Prime Video May 7

In the music documentary “The Boy From Medellín,” Colombian reggaeton superstar J Balvin is prepping for a massive concert in his hometown of Medellín — a show that will host up to 45,000 people — only for protests to break out in the city’s streets.

The documentary depicts the anxiety and depression that have plagued Balvin for years whenever he’s offstage, but the new decision of whether to amplify the voices of young people protesting and being persecuted by the government leaves him torn about how to use his platform.

“If you speak up, it’s wrong. If you don’t, it’s wrong. So either way, you lose,” a confidant says to him in the trailer. “I don’t want to get into political things because it’s not my thing. I just want to focus on bringing light into the world,...

If you don’t know the work of Academy Award®-nominated and Emmy-winning filmmaker Matthew Heineman, you really outta change that. A cameraman and cinematographer on top of being a documentarian, Heineman’s work is always super cinematic, super intimate, and seems even to blur the lines of fact and fiction; he gets into such personal spaces, it seems impossible that moments aren’t staged, but they aren’t.

Continue reading ‘The Boy From Medellín’ Trailer: Doc Filmmaker Matthew Heineman Tracks The Life Of Reggaeton Star J Balvin at The Playlist.

National Geographic Documentary Films and Neon have revealed the first details of “The First Wave,” a Covid-19 documentary from “Cartel Land” Oscar nominee Matthew Heineman. Below find a teaser for the film, which was shot with exclusive access inside one of New York City’s hardest-hit hospitals during the pandemic’s early days.

Neon will release the film in theaters later this year domestically ahead of a broadcast premiere on National Geographic in 172 countries.

“I feel deeply honored that I had the opportunity to document — through our subjects over four terrifying months — the impact of this pandemic. It has forced us to question everything, the fragility of our lives, and the way we live,” Heineman said. “The film explores every aspect of the human condition — fear and courage, death and birth, and the inescapable weight of trauma, both the kind that is deeply held and also newly experienced. I hope...

Nat Geo has acquired the rights to “The First Wave,” a documentary about the fight against Covid-19 inside a New York City hospital, from “Cartel Land” director Matthew Heineman.

National Geographic Documentary Films is partnering with Neon, Participant and Our Time Projects on the release. Neon will release “The First Wave” to theaters later this year, prior to its premiere on National Geographic in 172 countries and 43 languages worldwide.

Heineman’s film is set inside Long Island Jewish Medical Center in Queens, one of the hardest hit hospitals in all of New York City. The film takes a cinema vérité, character-driven look at the “first wave” of the virus’ effect on the city during the first few harrowing months, with Heineman embedding himself among healthcare workers from March-June 2020.

With “The First Wave,” Heineman hoped to capture the unseen reality of a hospital overwhelmed by the pandemic, as well as the emotional...