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The 27th Thessaloniki International Documentary Festival (TiDF) returns from March 6-16, presenting 261 films, including 72 world premieres. This year’s edition unfolds in a turbulent global climate, where political shifts and technological advancements raise urgent questions about truth and representation.

A Festival Responding to the Times

Festival director Orestis Andreadakis describes the present moment as one where the foundations of truth and democracy face constant pressure. “Four months have passed since the [Thessaloniki Intl. Film Festival], but it seems like we’re already living in a completely different world — unfortunately, not a better one,” he said. He points to recent events as reminders of lessons unlearned and histories repeating themselves.

The festival’s selection reflects that urgency, bringing together works that aim to document and interpret the complexities of the present. “The art of documentary tries to preserve reality. This is the most important thing in our difficult times. To realize what is truth, what is reality,...

As the Thessaloniki Intl. Documentary Festival prepares to host its 27th edition, which runs March 6 – 16, festival director Orestis Andreadakis sees no shortage of threats to truth, freedom and the values on which the democratic order is based. “Four months have passed since the [Thessaloniki Intl. Film Festival], but it seems like we’re already living in a completely different world — unfortunately, not a better one,” Andreadakis tells Variety.

Likening the times to “a historical documentary about the 1930s, screened backwards,” he describes world events as “an educational documentary that taught us nothing. It is a testimony for the horror of fascism and totalitarianism that it seems we have forgotten,” he continues. “It is a film record of a horrific historical reality that some are trying to repeat in the worst possible way.”

This year’s festival begins hardly a fortnight after Russia’s war in Ukraine marked its three-year anniversary, and as a tenuous...

The highly-anticipated Daisy Edgar-Jones and Jacob Elordi romance “On Swift Horses” will make its U.S. premiere at the 2025 SXSW Film & TV Festival. The film’s start marks the festival’s end.

IndieWire can announce that the epic from “Fellow Travelers” director Daniel Minahan is the Closing Night feature for SXSW. As previously confirmed, “Another Simple Favor” will make its world premiere as the Opening Night selection; Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg’s Apple TV+ series “The Studio” is the Opening Night TV premiere. Check out the full SXSW Film & TV Festival lineup here.

“On Swift Horses” stars Elordi as veteran Julius, who upends his brother’s (Will Poulter) newlywed bliss after he returns from the Korean War, as his appearance sparks something unexpected in his new sister-in-law (Edgar-Jones). “On Swift Horses” is based on the 2019 novel by Shannon Pufahl, and Bryce Kass adapted the novel for the screen.

“On Swift Horses...

Sundance is a place for discovery, where new stars are minted because of the fresh, invigorating images they bring to the screen. It was where Steven Soderbergh helped kick off the indie film revolution in 1989 with “sex, lies, and videotape” and Quentin Tarantino launched “Reservoir Dogs” in 1992. They showed that, at Sundance, if you have something to say, you can have a seat at the table.

This year, that daring new voice belongs to Eva Victor, whose comedic character study “Sorry, Baby,” about a young professor reeling from a trauma, sold to A24 for $8 million. “Sorry, Baby” also has the distinction of placing first in many of the categories in IndieWire’s 2025 Sundance Critics Survey, including Best Performance (for Victor herself), Best Director, Best Screenplay, Best First Film, and Best Film itself.

Though “Sorry, Baby” was the undeniable favorite across the board at Sundance 2025, our critics survey shared the love...

The “now” in “Deaf President Now!” refers to the second week of March 1988 — when the students of Gallaudet University in Washington, D.C., united in protest of the board’s choice of a non-deaf candidate to lead the school. But the activism depicted is still relevant to identity-centric struggles today. For 124 years, the school had operated under an ableist set of assumptions, treating deaf and hard of hearing people as needing “help” from patronizing outsiders. But in the seven days depicted here, the students took charge, teaching their elders — and anyone who would listen — not to underestimate them.

A collaboration between deaf actor-advocate Nyle Dimarco and “An Inconvenient Truth” director Davis Guggenheim, the propulsive nonfiction story feels as inspirational as any scripted feature, reuniting the four Gallaudet grads who organized the movement to describe events in their own words — words of passion, dynamically signed on-screen and spoken aloud by unseen actors.

Six documentaries that have premiered in competition at this year’s Sundance Film Festival are among the 46 recipients of The Ford Foundation’s $4.2 million donation as part of the organization’s commitment to social justice stories, Variety has exclusively learned.

The Sundance documentaries chosen include “Free Leonard Peltier,” “Heightened Scrutiny,” “How to Build a Library,” “Seeds,” “Life After” and “Marlee Matlin: Not Alone Anymore.” Collectively, these films cover topics such as Native American rights, media reporting on transgender issues, decolonization, disabled communities and navigating Hollywood as a deaf actor.

The Ford Foundation’s JustFilms program provides production grants as well as deepens the organization’s commitment to supporting historically marginalized voices and adjusting to distribution challenges in the industry.

In a statement to Variety, program officer of JustFilms’ Creativity and Free Expression programs Paulina Suárez said that “we are committed to supporting independent filmmakers as central agents of narrative power.

Marlee Matlin said it was “imperative” that the person directing her documentary, “Marlee Matlin: Not Alone Anymore,” was also deaf. So when producers of American Masters suggested her longtime friend Shoshannah Stern, who created Sundance Now’s “This Close” — the first TV series created, written by, and starring deaf artists — Matlin knew she was in good hands.

“Having her on board, I knew that I could trust her 100%,” Matlin told TheWrap via an Asl interpreter at TheWrap’s Sundance Studio presented by World of Hyatt. “She followed her instincts all those years of us knowing each other, I knew she was the perfect fit.”

The 59-year-old actress, who was the first deaf performer to win an Oscar in 1987 for her role in “Children of a Lesser God,” said, “It was imperative that I had a director who was deaf, and I knew that someone deaf like myself had the same lived experiences with ‘deafness,...

Every year, IndieWire reaches out to the cinematographers behind the documentary films premiering at the Sundance Film Festival and asks them which cameras, lenses, and formats they used — and what creative decisions informed those choices. A documentary may need to have a low footprint or be nimble in a dozen different ways, with myriad budgetary and logistical constraints. The choices made by these directors and directors of photography are as fascinating for what the challenges trying to solve as the worlds they create.

The 2025 documentarians who responded to our survey have gone everywhere and done everything under the sun, from dog-sledding in the far north — in “Folktales” — to letting the camera behave like an extra puppy in an intimate portrait of a household, as in “Come See Me in the Good Light.” They surmount technical challenges, with the camera team behind “Marlee Matlin: Not Alone Anymore” creating multi-camera set-ups and deploying remote monitors,...

For almost 40 years, actress Marlee Matlin has shown how what some may deem a disability can actually be made a strength. Winning the 1986 Academy Award for Best Actress for her stunning turn in “Children of a Lesser God,” Matlin became the first deaf performer to receive such an accolade and quickly rose as a representative for the deaf community at-large, promoting the implantation of closed-captioning and serving as a celebrity ambassador for disability rights with the ACLU. Her film and television career has also continued to flourish, recently taking part in the 2022 Best Picture winning family drama “Coda.” To honor her work, American Masters at PBS commissioned a documentary on her life, but before agreeing to sign on, Matlin had a few stipulations.

“I was approached by American Masters at PBS to do a film about my life and I said, ‘Sure, absolutely,’ and I have, though, one condition that...

Four years ago, Oscar winner Marlee Matlin experienced the magic of a Sundance premiere virtually when the heartfelt indie “Coda” made its debut at the fest (it then sold for $25 million to Apple on the way to winning the Oscar for best picture). But this year, Matlin gets to enjoy Sundance in-person with the debut of the documentary about her life and career, “Marlee Matlin: Not Alone Anymore,” which premiered before a packed house at the Eccles Theatre in Park City, Utah on Thursday.

“You just gave me chills,” Matlin tells Variety a couple days before the festival, thinking ahead to how she’ll feel as a roomful of strangers watch her story play out on the big screen. “Being in Eccles and opening the festival is pretty cool, I have to say.”

We’ve convened over Zoom with the documentary’s director Shoshannah Stern and their interpreters to discuss...

It begins like any other documentary. Interviewees take their seats before oversized lights and camera crews, director Shoshannah Stern setting the stage for the questions soon to be asked of each, main subject Marlee Matlin making herself comfortable on a couch alongside Stern, the latter of whom will maintain a constant presence throughout the film as she interacts with each participant. Yet, as the film begins, a noticeable shift occurs as it becomes apparent there exist just as many speaking vocally as those who employ American Sign Language; this, unsurprisingly, befits the narrative of “Marlee Matlin: Not Alone Anymore” and the lively, eloquent centerpiece that is Matlin.

Continue reading ‘Marlee Matlin: Not Alone Anymore’ Review: A Perfect Look At A Trailblazing Career [Sundance] at The Playlist.

“Does it get more Sundance than this?” Eugene Hernandez, the festival’s director, said at the opening night premiere of “Twinless,” which was being unveiled Thursday at the Eccles, Park City’s biggest venue. But the evening didn’t go off without a hitch. Shortly after Hernandez left the stage, a sizzle reel promoting the festival’s nonprofit arm had suffered sound problems. The moment was particularly unfortunate as the audio malfunctioned as the clip was introducing festival founder Robert Redford.

The house lights came up while sound was tested for five minutes. The film was quickly restarted, but the problem persisted throughout the screening to groans of “Nooooo!” from stressed audience members. Luckily, it didn’t derail the otherwise enthusiastically received film or the dual performance from Dylan O’Brien as twin brothers. Add to that extremely chatty Sundance tech and ground staff, and it made for a disruptive kickoff.

In her documentary “Marlee Matlin: Not Alone Anymore,” the star continues to explore the at times lonesome space she has occupied since bursting on the scene in 1986: that of being a representative for deaf people, and being herself. For more than three decades, Matlin was the only deaf performer to have won an Oscar, and among the few to have what could be considered a mainstream acting career. That changed when Troy Kotsur, her co-star in the 2021 Oscar-winning drama “Coda,” took home the prize for best supporting actor.

At 19, Matlin was cast opposite William Hurt in the adaptation of the play “Children of a Lesser God.” She portrayed Sarah Norman, a janitor in a school for the deaf. Hurt’s character is a speech teacher. She resists speaking. He says he won’t push her to speak but then does. After production, Hurt became Matlin’s romantic partner. So,...

The annual IndieWire Studio at Sundance returns for the 2025 edition of the Park City festival. It will feature interviews with the talent behind 25 of the most anticipated films of the festival with discussions taking place in-person on Main Street.

Presented by Dropbox, the IndieWire Studio at Sundance will welcome actors, directors, producers, screenwriters, and documentary subjects for exclusive video interviews with IndieWire’s senior staff starting Friday January 24.

Among the talent we’ll be welcoming to the studio are Jennifer Lopez and Diego Luna (“Kiss of the Spiderwoman”), Josh O’Connor (“Rebuilding”), Sarah Jessica Parker (“The Librarians”), Ahmir “Questlove” Thompson (“Sly Lives!”), Marlee Matlin (“Marlee Matlin: Not Alone Anymore”), Olivia Colman and John Lithgow (“Jimpa”), Alia Shawkat and Callum Turner (“Atropia”), Juliette Lewis (“By Design”), Rachel Sennott (“Bunnylovr”), Joel Edgerton and Kerry Condon (“Train Dreams”), Molly Gordon and Geraldine Viswanathan, Dave Franco and Alison Brie (“Together” plus Franco for “Bubble & Squeak...

It’s shocking, now, to look back and realize that actress Marlee Matlin was just 21 when she won an Academy Award in 1986. She was, as she recalls in “Marlee Matlin: Not Alone Anymore,” practically a child. As we learn in this deeply affectionate biographical history, the actress, who is deaf, has already been through a lifetime of challenges. And yet, there were plenty more to come.

As a PBS American Masters portrait designed to celebrate Matlin’s accomplishments, “Not Alone Anymore” can’t really be called a traditional documentary. Matlin chose first-time director Shoshannah Stern herself (they worked together on the Sundance Now series “This Close”), and the connection between them is evident. Though this obviously precludes a lack of neutral distance, it also opens up space for Matlin to share her story with unguarded intimacy.

And what a story it turns out to be. Matlin lost her hearing as...

Updated with details on documentaries from Elegance Bratton, Amy Berg, Jesse Moss, and Amanda McBaine, and Sally key art. Some of the biggest talents in documentary film will be unveiling new work at the 2025 Sundance Film Festival, including Oscar winners Ahmir “Questlove” Thompson, Davis Guggenheim, and Mstyslav Chernov.

The marquee names in the nonfiction slate extend to the subjects of films – musical great Sly Stone examined in Questlove’s Sly Lives! (aka The Burden of Black Genius); the late Selena Quintanilla’s story told in a film by Isabel Castro; Actress Marlee Matlin’s trailblazing career explored in Marlee Matlin: Not Alone Anymore, from director Shoshannah Stern; astronaut Sally Ride’s gravity-defying journey and personal life revealed in Sally, directed by Cristina Costantini.

No Sundance premiere documentary may attract more attention than Pee-wee as Himself, “A chronicle of the life of artist and performer Paul Reubens and his alter ego Pee-wee Herman.