News

Publicis Media U.S. has acquired Picture Motion, a social advocacy and cause marketing company that has developed campaigns for over 400 films, TV series, news and media productions. The company has worked on the likes of “American Fiction,” “Origin,” “Creed III,” “Fire of Love,” “Free Solo” and “The Problem with Jon Stewart.” Terms of the sale, including the price, were not disclosed. Talks between the companies started roughly a year ago.

Picture Motion will sit within the specialty entertainment division, Publicis Media Content & Innovation (Pmci). There, Picture Motion will help with the development of original film and television projects, collaborating with brand clients and entertainment industry partners, while providing concept development, strategy, distribution, monetization and promotional support. Eight Picture Motion staffers will join the company as part of the deal.

Picture Motion will also work closely with Pmci’s Inclusion Investment Fund, which helps find and fund content that amplifies diverse voices.

Produced by Silverback for National Geographic UK, directed by Charlie Hamilton James and with Jeff Wilson taking producer credits, “Billy & Molly: An Otter Love Story,” won Wildscreen Festival’s Golden Panda for best production, as well as Panda Awards for producer/director and scripted narrative.

Other Panda Award winners included BBC Studios’ ‘Wild Isles: Ocean’ (cinematography), Nat Geo-Wildstar’s ‘Queens’ (best series and production management team), Juli-Perpetuo’s ‘Patrol’ (impact), BBC Studios’ ‘The Watches 2023 (sustainability) and Netflix’s Chimp Empire (editing and music).

“Billy & Molly” had its world premiere at Match’s South by Southwest and recently secured six nominations in the 9th Annual Critics Choice Documentary Awards. Producer Jeff Wilson said he originally pitched the doc to Nat Geo as a Mary Poppins-style story in which an otter sheds light into a man’s world and makes the world a better place.

Taking place in Bristol,...

The International Documentary Festival Amsterdam has announced the 55 documentary projects selected for this year’s IDFA Forum, chosen from among 820 entries.

Among the prominent names heading to the forum, which runs November 17-20, is Emmy winner Eva Mulvad (The Cave), who will pitch her upcoming project House of the Holy Father, co-directed with Andreas Koefoed. “In an intriguing cinematic exercise that straddles fiction and documentary,” a release notes, “the film seeks to bare intricate workings of domination and manipulation, as ex-members of the notorious Christian sect Faderhuset direct scenes with well-known Danish actors, including Trine Dyrholm and David Dencik.”

Israeli filmmaker Tomer Heymann, who has won prizes at film festivals around the world, will participate in the Rough Cut Presentations section with Issa’s House, a film set in the West Bank. Another film shot in...

Exclusive: Sandbox Films and Cph:dox — the prestigious documentary film festival in Copenhagen — are teaming up on a new award that will elevate the profile of science-themed storytelling.

The Sandbox Films Science Pitch Prize at Cph:forum, announced today, “will be presented to a science documentary project presented at the Cph:forum that demonstrates exceptional innovation in the genre, artistic merit, and a commitment to inclusivity,” according to release. Cph:forum is the festival’s “long-standing financing and co-production event dedicated to visually strong creative documentary projects with international potential.”

The new prize comes with a $25,000 cash award.

Sandbox Films, a leading production company that occupies the intersection of science and cinema, and Cph:dox have a long-standing partnership, “united by a shared passion for science documentaries that push creative boundaries,” the release noted. “Both organizations are dedicated to supporting films that explore science in bold, innovative ways, reflecting a mutual love for projects that...

Sandbox Films, an independent production company that focuses on making documentaries about scientific issues, has hired Caitlin Mae Burke as its head of production and development. In this position, Burke will work with Sandbox Films executive director Jessica Harrop to play a significant role in helping to decide which projects the company will finance, managing the company’s partnerships with Sundance and other organizations, and overseeing its documentaries from their development through their production and post-production.

“To say I am humbled to join the team at Sandbox Films is an understatement: their expansive support of the most invigorating non-fiction films over the past several years has been truly inspiring in how to best support boundary-pushing artists,” Burke said in a statement. “As a producer and arts administrator it is a gift to follow this example from within the organization setting it. I am ecstatic to follow Jess Harrop’s continued...

In Jordan Peele’s magnificent 2022 film “Nope,” there is a character, a cinematographer, who will do anything and everything to get that perfect shot, including risking his own life. He does so because this is the thing that drives him and fills him with purpose, providing clarity in the chaos of the world. It’s a motivating force that Joe Jennings, a skydiving cinematographer and the subject of the playfully titled documentary “Space Cowboy,” would likely understand well.

As a man who has made a life and career built around jumping out of planes to capture the beauty of the subsequent fall, the point of his profession is about finding meaning in life, no matter the risk. It’s something we all navigate, but few do so cheating death thousands upon thousands of feet above the ground. However, even they must eventually come drifting back down to Earth.

This rich...

Exclusive: About 50 minutes into Blink, the National Geographic documentary that’s about to make its world premiere at the Telluride Film Festival, the Lemay-Pelletier family boards a gondola in Ecuador and begins a spectacular descent down a steep mountainside. But then the gondola jerks to a sudden stop.

The film directed by Edmund Stenson and Oscar winner Daniel Roher (Navalny) documents the family’s incredible travels around the world – hiking in the Himalayas, hot-air ballooning in Egypt, surfing in Indonesia, on safari in Namibia. But on the gondola, the adventure comes to a perilous halt: hour after hour passes. The light fades to total darkness, with no sign of rescue.

“Why did it have to be us?” one of the kids asks with growing alarm. “This can’t be real. It’s a nightmare.”

The Lemay-Pelletier family (from left): Mia, Sébastien, Colin, Edith Lemay, Laurent and Léo in Kuujjuaq,...

IndieWire can exclusively unveil the official 2024 Doc NYC 40 Under 40 list of rising filmmakers.

The annual honor celebrates young creatives that are making an impact in the field of documentary, ranging from documentarians to editors and sound designers. This year, the seventh annual season for the list, celebrates emerging documentary talent from filmmakers based in the U.S., Canada, and/or Mexico. The 2024 cohort will be honored during the November festival at a private cocktail reception, with the 15th edition of Doc NYC taking place in theaters in New York and online November 13 through 21.

“Doc NYC is proud to honor the accomplishments of these exceptional artists in the documentary field,” Doc NYC Artistic Director Jaie Laplante said. “We’re also excited to highlight for our industry and audiences powerful work and diverse voices that are worthy of close attention.” The honorees include “Measures for a Funeral” director Sofia Bohdanowicz, whose feature...

While the Olympics’ opening ceremony showcased two North American superstars, Lady Gaga and Celine Dion, the closing bash will highlight two iconic French bands, Phoenix and Air, the event’s executive director Thierry Reboul confirmed to Variety in an interview.

Reboul, who produced the blockbuster, controversial opening ceremony show along the Seine and recently filed a police complaint after receiving death threats for it, is now in the final stretch of preparing the closing event alongside artistic director Thomas Jolly.

“We’ve tried to champion French talents from the start even if we had international stars (Celine Dion and Lady Gaga); each time it was promoting a French artist nevertheless,” said Reboul. “We always have in mind to turn the spotlight on our country, of course.” Gaga, who had to pre-tape her performance in anticipation of pouring rain, indeed sang in French and paid tribute to Zizi Jeanmaire’s cabaret-inspired “Mon Truc en Plumes,...

Grasshopper Film has announced today its acquisition of North American distribution rights to Anirban Dutta and Anupama Srinivasan’s mesmerizing documentary “Nocturnes,” which has picked up prize-wins at Sundance, Thessaloniki Documentary Festival, and Mediterrane Film Festival Malta, in addition to screening at other festivals, including Cphdox, Docville, Hot Docs, Sheffield DocFest, Ambulante Documentary Film Festival, Sarasota Film Festival, and Hong Kong International Film Festival. The doc follows the “secret lives of moths in the mountains of northern India” and was an IndieWire Critic’s Pick when it debuted at Sundance in January.

Grasshopper will open the film theatrically on October 18 at New York City’s Metrograph and on October 25 at the Laemmle Royal in Los Angeles, followed by other cities. Per its official synopsis, the film is set “in the dense forests of the Eastern Himalayas, [where] moths are whispering something to us. In the dark of night, two curious observers...

Former U.S. Green Beret Jordan Goudreau, who was arrested on July 31 in connection to his failed 2020 coup to remove Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, is the subject of Neon’s latest documentary “Men of War.”

Directed by Billy Corben (“God Forbid”) and Jen Gatien (“Limelight”) “Men of War” follows Goudreau, who, according to the film’s logline “finds himself in over his head and on the run after mounting the failed Venezuela coup and being chased by the American government who he spent his life fighting for.”

Goudreau, a former Special Forces soldier who served tours in Iraq and Afghanistan, planned to land in Venezuela via speedboat with approximately 60 other men in an attempt to capture Maduro, an authoritarian president. At the time, Goudreau said that he and his team were acting to protect Venezuela’s democracy after Maduro’s 2018 re-election, which was boycotted by the opposition and condemned as undemocratic by the U.

Ibrahim Nash’at knew exactly the moment to flee the Taliban.

It was July 31, 2022, and the militant regime now running Afghanistan had just staged for him and assembled foreign dignitaries a parade showing off their military might — including U.S. aircraft and other military tech abandoned by the American forces a year earlier, which the Taliban had repaired and put back into service for their own use.

“I was clocked by the secret service of the Taliban,” Nash’at told IndieWire in a new interview about his documentary “Hollywoodgate,” about the fundamentalists’ first year back in power. “And they came to me and said, ‘You have to come to our office tomorrow and show us all your footage,’ and for me this was a meaning that my mission here is completed. I was filming the transformation of a militia into a military regime, and I realized at that moment the transformation was complete.

Should cinema be treated as a luxury or as a necessary form that brings people together? That’s the question facing another Toronto institution today as news surfaces of the city’s beloved Toronto Outdoor Picture Show facing dire financial straits. Beginning as the Christie Pits Film Festival in 2011, Tops became a registered non-profit organization in 2015 with a focus on presenting film programming to areas throughout Toronto, including Christie Pits Park, Fort York, Bell Manor Park, and Corktown Common. Over 25,000 people come out each summer for its free screening series, but Tops Founder and Artistic & Executive Director Emily Reid shared in a recent interview with Toronto’s CityNews that it may not have enough funding for next year.

“We’ve tried to keep our costs low, but we don’t sell tickets, so it’s always about what kind of funding we can bring in,” Reid said. “And it’s...

The Sundance Institute has selected Lorena Luciano’s feature documentary “#NunsToo” for its 2024 Documentary Edit Intensive, which takes place from July 15-19 at the the Jacob Burns Film Center in Pleasantville, north of Manhattan.

Normally, the Documentary Edit and Story Lab fellowship occurs in June at the Sundance Resort, but due to construction at the resort, the Sundance Institute has reimagined that Lab into the 2024 Intensive. This is not the first Sundance mentorship program to relocate. Earlier this year the Sundance Directors Lab took place in Stanley Hotel in Estes Park, Colo., while the Institute’s Producers Lab moved to Ucross Wyoming.

Luciano, who is directing and editing the project, will attend the Intensive at the Jacob Burns Film Center with the film’s producer and cinematographer Filippo Piscopo. The week-long Documentary Edit Intensive is designed to provide support for one film team (director and editor fellows) at a critical point in post-production.

HamptonsFilm’s 16th annual SummerDocs series will feature three Sundance favorites: “Skywalkers: A Love Story,” “War Game,” and “Super/Man:The Christopher Reeve Story.” HamptonsFilm and Hamptons Intl. Film Festival artistic director David Nugent and chairman emeritus Alec Baldwin will lead conversations with attending filmmakers and guests.

The series will kick-off on July 5 with Jeff Zimbalist and Maria Bukhonina’s “Skywalkers: A Love Story.” Following a successful Sundance debut, Netflix acquired the worldwide rights to the docu about daredevil couple Angela Nikolau and Ivan Beerkus from Moscow, as they take their relationship to terrifying new heights in a wild scheme to climb the world’s last great skyscraper and perform a death-defying stunt on its spire. Following the screening, Bukhonina will take part in a Q&a.

Tony Gerber and Jesse Moss’s “War Game” will screen on July 20 followed by Q&a with both filmmakers. The docu, which debuted at Sundance 2024, imagines a nation-wide insurrection,...

Sandbox Films has promoted Jessica Harrop to executive director of the company. In her new role, she will lead in strategic planning, editorial decision-making and the building of new partnerships and initiatives at the nonfiction studio.

Harrop is an Emmy- and Peabody Award-winning producer. She played a pivotal role in launching and growing Sandbox Films, joining the team before the company’s official formation. Serving for the past five years as the head of production and development, she was instrumental in growing the slate of films and played a major role in all productions including Sara Dosa’s Oscar-nominated “Fire of Love.” Before Sandbox Films, she worked as a freelance showrunner, producer and writer for science television.

“I couldn’t be more excited to take on this new role at Sandbox Films, a company that I helped build from the ground up, with a mission I care deeply about,” Harrop said in a statement.

Producer Ina Fichman, Oscar nominated for “Fire of Love,” was at the 25th edition of Hot Docs Forum on Tuesday to pitch her latest project “Ba’s Book.” Directed by Canadian filmmaker Ashley Da-Le Duong, the hybrid docu focuses on Duong’s father and his experiences living through both the Vietnam War and the Iranian Revolution.

“Let me take you somewhere for a moment,” Duong told the Forum audience and participating distributors including Arte, A24 and Al Jazeera. “It’s 1968 and a young man stands in the middle of a rice paddy field and looks up and sees a helicopter. Not unusual because his house is right beside an American army base, but this time the helicopter overhead shoots at him and he pretends to be dead. He vows to leave his village forever. Eventually he does escape. He wins a scholarship to Iran. But his escaping terror is short...

Science is one of the central themes of leading European doc film festival Cph:dox. Alongside the broad selection of films on offer in the Cph:science section, the event also opens the floor to conversations on the role of science docs with key players, ranging from filmmakers and producers to commissioners and public broadcasters.

Entitled “Widening the Scopes of Science Docs,” the afternoon conference talk on Thursday addressed the shift in contemporary science doc filmmaking away from overt didacticism.

Moderated by Kat Cizek, a Peabody- and Emmy-winning documentarian and author (“A Short History of the Highrise”), the panel brought together Jessica Harrop, an Emmy-nominated documentary filmmaker and founding member of Sandbox Films (“Fire of Love”), Alex Villard-Faure, commissioning editor at Arte, and French filmmaker Marius Léna.

In his upcoming series, “Origins: A Tale of Light” (a working title), Villard-Faure goes back in time to tell the history of the universe – from the unprecedented perspective of light,...

Variety has been given exclusive access to the trailer (below) for dinosaur bone trade documentary “The Bones,” which will have its world premiere at Cph:dox as part of the festival’s Science program. The producer is Ina Fichman, Oscar nominated for “Fire of Love.” Dogwoof is handling world sales.

“The Bones,” written and directed by Jeremy Xido (“Death Metal Angola”), is a cinematic exploration of the high-stakes world of dinosaur bone trading, where obsessive collectors compete with museums, scientists, and high-end auction houses to own a piece of the past.

“It’s a story of intrigue, an illicit caper at the collision of science, commerce and a dark colonial legacy,” according to a press statement. “Part international thriller, part meditation on the nature of existence, ‘The Bones’ reveals the hidden world of passionate, globetrotting scientists and fossil dealers battling over the meaning of ‘The Bones’ and our uncertain future.”

The film sees paleontologist Bolor Minjin,...

Shannon Walsh’s documentary “Adrianne & the Castle”, which will make its world premiere at the South by Southwest Film & TV Festival on March 9, tells the love story of Alan St. George and his late wife, Adrianne, via fantastical musical re-enactments. Before her death, St. Georges, a mascot-maker and artist, hand-built Havencrest Castle, a medieval castle in rural Illinois that represented the love between the couple. Walsh follows St. George as he puts the finishing touches on Havencrest Castle while also grappling with his grief over the passing of his wife.

“We say it’s the greatest love story you’ve never heard of,” says Walsh, whose previous films include “The Gig Is Up.” “It’s really a story of love and grief and the risk that you take whenever you fall in love. Grief is really the central thread. But it’s also about imagination and our ability to create...

Exclusive: Sugarcane has become the latest big documentary deal out of the Sundance Film Festival.

Nat Geo has snapped up the doc, an investigation into abuse and missing children at an Indian residential school which ignites a reckoning on the nearby Sugarcane Reserve.

Deadline understands that the Disney-owned factual brand has struck a deal in the low seven-figures. The doc comes from filmmakers Julian Brave NoiseCat and Emily Kassie.

National Geographic Documentary Films will roll out Sugarcane at global festivals throughout the rest of the year and release it in theaters before its streaming debut on Disney+.

It is the latest deal out of Sundance for National Geographic Documentary Films; the company picked up Fire Of Love, which was nominated for Best Documentary Feature at the Oscars, out of the festival in 2022 as well as The Territory, which came from director Alex Pritz.

There were numerous documentary deals out of...

By the time Dominic Asmall Willsdon’s embattled predecessor Rick Peréz finally left the International Documentary Association (IDA) in 2022, the non-profit organization had shed more than 75 percent of its staff, formulated an employee union, and had taken a big hit in its ability to serve the documentary filmmaker community, all as a result of a fractious tenure and broken culture. Its annual awards show was held remotely this year, and much of the seasoned documentary talent that had been with the group for years walked out the door.

But more than a year since Peréz’s departure, the IDA is in the midst of bouncing back.

In the last year under interim director Ken Ikeda (who served in the role between January 2023 and early January 2024), the IDA has managed to stabilize itself, giving out over $600,000 in grant money, re-vamping Documentary Magazine, and growing membership by 25 percent since 2020.

For Willsdon, who...

With final voting complete, the 96th Oscars telecast will be broadcast on Sunday, March 10 and air live on ABC at 8:00 p.m. Et/ 5:00 p.m. Pt. We update predictions through awards season, so keep checking IndieWire for all our 2024 Oscar picks.

The State of the Race

With a fragile theatrical market for non-fiction features and a dwindling number of active documentary buyers, many Sundance 2023 films did not get picked up for distribution. As the top American film festival for docs, Sundance usually supplies as many as four out of the final five Oscar nominees each year.

And usually, by late summer, Oscar promotion is well underway. Last year, three Sundance grads — eventual Oscar nominees “Fire of Love” (Neon), “All that Breathes” (HBO), and the winner, “Navalny” (CNN) — were actively campaigning.

One Sundance World Cinema entry that built a following during the year was Pulitzer Prize winner Mstyslav Chernov...

Andrew McCarthy is getting back together with his fellow Brat Pack alums Rob Lowe, Demi Moore, Jon Cryer, Ally Sheedy, Emilio Estevez and more for the feature documentary Brats, a revealing look at the cultural phenomenon they became in the 1980s and how that has impacted their lives ever since.

Brats, from ABC News Studios, Neon, and Network Entertainment, is set to premiere on Hulu later this year. McCarthy, author of the 2021 memoir Brat: An ‘80s Story, writes and directs the documentary, which is now in post-production. He co-starred with fellow Brat Packers in some of the biggest hits of the mid- ‘80s including St. Elmo’s Fire (1985), Pretty in Pink (1986), and Less Than Zero (1987).

From left: ‘St. Elmo’s Fire’s Rob Lowe, Demi Moore, Emilio Estevez, Mare Winningham, Judd Nelson,

Ally Sheedy and Andrew McCarthy

“McCarthy crisscrosses the country to meet up with some of the stars of those beloved films,...

The International Documentary Association is beginning 2024 with a new executive director, and now a new executive committee of the IDA board.

The nonprofit, which provides grants in support of documentary filmmakers, advocates for the field and mounts fall and spring screening series and the bi-annual Getting Real conference, announced the election of Ina Fichman and Michael Turner as board co-presidents. They succeed Grace Lee and Chris Perez, who remain on the board.

Fichman earned an Academy Award nomination last year for producing Fire of Love. She has also earned Emmy, BAFTA, and Cinema Eye Honors nominations for her work, and won awards from the Jerusalem Film Festival, the Gémeaux Awards in Montreal, the Latino Entertainment Journalists Association, among many others.

Turner oversees business and legal affairs for Netflix’s slate of documentary films. He previously served as SVP and head of business and legal affairs at Discovery’s production studio.

To mark the festival’s fortieth anniversary all 16 of this year’s jurors are festival alumni.

Lena Waithe, Mira Nair and Shaunak Sen are among the 16 jurors who will choose award winners in six competitive sections at this month’s Sundance Film Festival.

To mark the fortieth edition of the US festival, which runs January 18-28 in Park City and Salt Lake City, all 16 jurors are festival alumni. In addition to serving on juries they will participate in talks, panels and other events to mark the festival milestone.

Awards for feature films in five competition sections of the festival will...

Exclusive: Sandbox Films (Fire of Love) and Xtr (Ascension) have teamed to produce feature doc A Life Illuminated, exploring the life and legacy of pioneering marine biologist Edie Widder, in association with ocean exploration nonprofit OceanX.

Set to direct the pic is Tasha Van Zandt, the filmmaker behind such award-winning documentaries as After Antarctica, about legendary polar explorer Will Steger, and One Thousand Stories, about renowned artist Jr.

A Life Illuminated watches as Widder undertakes an extraordinary journey into the magical world of bioluminescence, through which she decodes the language of light that allows deep-sea life to communicate in complete darkness. It’s Widder’s unceasing need to understand and communicate with the most enigmatic forms of life on Earth that leads her to dive into the unknown, exploring the profound mysteries hidden beneath the ocean’s surface.

The film will draw upon Widder’s vast archive, from her earliest dives in deep sea submersibles,...

Exclusive: London-based sales and production outfit Dogwoof has boarded world sales for Anirban Dutta and Anupama Srinivasan’s Nocturnes, which will get its world premiere in the World Cinema Documentary Competition at the 2024 Sundance Film Festival.

Set in the Eastern Himalayas, the eco-doc sees two curious observers shine a light on a secret universe, transporting audiences to a rarely-seen place where moths help knit together an important ecosystem.

Oscar-nominated Sandbox Films (Fire of Love) is producing.

In addition to co-directing, Dutta is producing along with executive producers Boustead and Harrop. Yaël Bitton (Advocate) is editor; Satya Rai Nagpaul is director of photography; original score is by BAFTA Breakthrough composer Nainita Desai (For Sama). The movie is a production of Sandbox Films and the directors’ Delhi-based Metamorphosis Films Junction.

Anirban Dutta and Anupama Srinivasan’s latest documentary, Flickering Lights, competed in the International Competition at the 2023 edition of IDFA, where it...

At documentary festival IDFA this week, National Geographic’s exec VP of marketing and communications Chris Albert – whose slate includes IDFA entry “The Mission,” about the death of American evangelical missionary John Chau on the remote Indian island of North Sentinel – was asked during an onstage interview with the festival’s artistic director Orwa Nyrabia: “How would you market a film with a budget of $20,000?”

The executive, who has worked at National Geographic for over 20 years, was quick to respond: “Whether you’ve got $20,000 or $2 million, marketing can’t make a bad movie good. You can throw as much money as you want into a bad movie and it’s not going to make it better.”

Albert said he could spend his entire marketing budget for a low-budget film by placing it on the viewing portal for Oscar voters, but that is not the way he would proceed. “I...

“We have seen titles doing the best they’ve ever done before in this ‘unhealthy’ marketplace.”

In a keynote address at Sunday’s (November 12) IDFA distribution panel Neon’s president of distribution Elissa Federoff gave a surprisingly upbeat assessment of prospects for the US and global independent documentary sector.

While acknowledging the market is “down” and that there are fewer titles being released that in the pre-Covid period, Federoff claimed that “in many ways, the box office is healthier than ever”.

Box office has decreased by around 20% since 2019 which the executive suggested was largely because there are 20% fewer titles being released.

It’s a sweep! The Critics Choice Association revealed the winners for its 8th annual documentary awards on Sunday, November 12, 2023, and one film claimed all five of the awards it was nominated for. Though it trailed “American Symphony” in bids going into the night, “Still: A Michael J. Fox Movie” prevailed as the night’s biggest winner, taking home prizes in all five of its categories, including Best Documentary. The film’s other wins went to Davis Guggenheim in Best Director, Michael Harte in Best Editing, and in Best Narration and Best Biographical Documentary.

“American Symphony,” the nomination leader with six, took home two prizes: Jon Batiste won Best Score and the film was named Best Music Documentary. The other two-time winners were “20 Days in Mariupol,” Best First Documentary Feature and Best Political Documentary, and “The Deepest Breath,” Best Cinematography and Best Sports Documentary.

If, like us, you’re...

Sandbox Films — the non-fiction studio behind Oscar nominee Fire of Love — has opened new New York City offices, featuring an Atmos theater.

In addition to the 22-seat theater, the studio, located in the Flatiron District, includes two edit suites and a multimedia facility designed to support a variety of production needs.

“We put a lot of thought into the design. We want our nerdy, indie doc filmmakers to feel as loved as A-list celebrities. Because, to us, they are A-list celebrities,” founder Greg Boustead tells The Hollywood Reporter. “These doc spaces don’t traditionally get the love or polish or fanfare.”

Sandbox Films Studio screening room

Boustead, who leads Sandbox with head of production and development, Jessica Harrop, notes that the goal is to bring the teams behind Sandbox productions, which focus on science-centric storytelling, under one roof. The facilities will soon be used by Sandbox production Nocturnes, which centers...

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...

Matthew Heineman’s “American Symphony” leads all films with six nominations for the 8th annual Critics Choice Documentary Awards, the Critics Choice Association announced on Monday.

The film, a Netflix doc that follows musician Jon Batiste and his wife, writer Suleika Jaouad, as Batiste prepares a composition for Carnegie Hall and Jaouad battles the return of her cancer, was nominated in the Best Documentary Feature, Best Director, Best Cinematography, Best Editing, Best Score and Best Music Documentary categories. Mstyslav Chernov’s “20 Days in Mariupol,” D. Smith’s “Kokomo City” and Davis Guggenhein’s “Still: A Michael J. Fox Movie” received five nominations each.

Apart from “American Symphony,” “20 Days in Mariupol,” “Kokomo City” and “Still,” films nominated in the Best Documentary Feature category were “Beyond Utopia,” “The Deepest Breath,” “The Eternal Memory,” “Judy Blume Forever,” “The Mission” and “Stamped From the Beginning.”

All of those films received nominations in multiple categories,...

Exclusive: The Oscar-winning team behind Navalny is embarking on its next project, a National Geographic documentary under the working title Blink of an Eye. It will focus on the Pelletier family, “a happy, adventurous family of six,” who decided to go on a world tour after learning three of their children would soon lose their vision.

Navalny’s Daniel Roher is directing with Edmund Stenson, who will make his feature debut on the film. MRC and Fishbowl Films are producing, with Fishbowl’s Melanie Miller and Diane Becker on board to produce. They won Academy Awards for producing Navalny (along with fellow producers Shane Boris and Odessa Rae).

The Pelletier’s world “was changed forever when they found out three of the four children were diagnosed with retinitis pigmentosa, a rare, incurable disorder that leads to permanent blindness,” noted a release about the documentary. “Edith Lemay and Sebastian Pelletier decide...

National Geographic documentary films specialize in telling stories of adventurers whose journeys put themselves at great risk, but few are more unbelievable than “The Mission.” NatGeo has released the official trailer for the upcoming documentary, set for theatrical release October 13.

The documentary focuses on the story of John Chau, an American evangelical Christian missionary. In 2018 and at the age of 26, Chau traveled to the extremely remote Andaman Islands, claimed by India but closer to Myanmar in the Bay of Bengal, on an unsanctioned missionary trip. There, he repeatedly visited North Sentinel Island, which is restricted by the Indian government to outside visitors because of the indigenous Sentinelese, a voluntarily “uncontacted people,” who live there. They’re considered so vulnerable to contamination from outside influences that the Indian government has armed marine patrols around the island to prevent landings. Chau somehow made it ashore, nonetheless. It did not go well.

The film,...

Neon said Tuesday that it has hired Sierra/Affinity veteran Kristen Figeroid as President of International Sales and Distribution. She starts this week.

Figeroid, who will also handle sales on third-party projects, is bringing with her to the indie distributor a team of foreign sales execs including Laurel Charnetsky as VP International Acquisitions & Operations and Dan Stadnicki as Manager, International Sales & Distribution.

Figeroid most recently served as Managing Director and EVP of Sales & Distribution at Sierra/Affinity, where she handled sales on Atomic Blonde starring Charlize Theron, the Oscar-winning Whiplash starring Miles Teller, and Nightcrawler starring Jake Gyllenhaal. Prior to that, Figeroid was SVP International Sales & Distribution at Endeavor Content, working on features such as The Lost Daughter, Monkey Man, The Peanut Butter Falcon, Book Club and Assassination Nation. Prior to Endeavor Content, she was VP International Sales at The Film Department, where she sold a number of films including Law Abiding Citizen...

We will update this article throughout the season, along with all our predictions, so make sure to keep checking IndieWire for the latest news from the 2023 Emmys race. The nomination round of voting takes place from June 15 to June 26, with the official Emmy nominations announced Wednesday, July 12. Afterward, final voting commences August 17 and ends the night of August 28. The 75th annual Primetime Emmy Awards will now take place Monday, January 15, live on Fox at 8:00 p.m. Et/ 5:00 p.m. Pt.

See our previous thoughts on what to expect at the 75th Primetime Emmy Awards here.

The State of the Race

This year, Outstanding Documentary or Nonfiction Special has been one of those Emmy races where the writing has been on the wall from the beginning, with “Still: A Michael J. Fox Movie” rocketing toward the front of the line after its Sundance premiere. The subject not only is refreshingly revelatory and inspiring,...

The Sundance Institute has named the 2023 grantees of its Documentary Fund, supporting the work of nonfiction filmmakers from around the globe, with 23 projects being selected for unrestricted grant funding totaling just over $1M.

Six of the selected projects are in development, with 14 in production and three currently in post. Notable filmmakers recognized as part of the group include Oscar and Emmy nominee Lourdes Portillo (with Looking at Ourselves), artist and filmmaker Amy Jenkins (with Adam’s Apple), and Anayansi Prado (with Untitled Uvalde Documentary). Also represented are such sophomore filmmakers coming off strong debuts as Reid Davenport (I Didn’t See You There) with Life After, Sky Hopinka with Powwow People, and Tali Yankelevich (My Darling Supermarket) with Girl-Tubers.

Sundance Institute’s Documentary Fund prioritizes supporting and empowering historically marginalized voices and providing a platform for integral stories to be amplified. Many of the...

Alexandra Altschuler and Don Wilcox have joined the Neon marketing team, making the move from their previous marketing roles at A24. Altschuler will serve as Neon’s VP of media while Wilcox serves as its VP of marketing. The marketing team expansion comes ahead of Neon’s release of anctipated films “Ferrari,” “Anatomy of a Fall,” “La Chimera” and “Eileen.”

While at A24, Altschuler helped launch numerous award-winning projects, including the recent horror film “Talk to Me.” Before joining A24, Altchuler served as social manager at Operam, Inc. and held various roles at ABC Television, NBCUnivseral and E! Online.

Wilcox previously served as head of A24’s international marketing team, where his campaigns included Oscar-sweeping “Everything Everywhere All at Once” along with Brendan Fraser-led “The Whale,” “Past Lives” and “Pearl,” starring Mia Goth. Prior to his role at A24, Wilcox served as Amazon Prime Video’s film marketing lead.

With documentary distribution in a state of disruption, most independent nonfiction filmmakers have been left on their own to find new and creative solutions to ensure that their films reach audiences.

Ian Cheney is the latest director to turn to a bespoke distribution method for his docu “The Arc of Oblivion.” Cheney wrote, edited, and directed the film, which explores people’s impulse toward preservation and how it relates to the natural world, memory and legacy. During the course of the docu, produced by Sandbox Films, a wooden ark is constructed on Cheney’s parent’s property in Maine. The structure serves as both a physical storage space for archival materials and a symbolic representation of humanity’s desire to retain meaning in an impermanent world.

During the month of August, Cheney, along with Sandbox Films’ Greg Boustead and Jessica Harrop decided to transform the ark into the Ark Light...

Netflix released the first trailer for the upcoming documentary “The Deepest Breath” on Tuesday. The new film, out next month on the streaming service, tells the heartbreaking true story of champion freediver Alessia Zecchini and her coach and safety expert Stephen Keenan, two people “destined for one another despite the different paths they took to meet at the pinnacle of the freediving world.” Told through archival footage and interviews, “The Deepest Breath” unfolds in almost real-time.

“I wanted the film to feel like going through life, not knowing anything until it happened,” director Laura McGann told Vanity Fair in an interview published Tuesday. “That way I could let viewers grow with Alessia and Steve, getting to know them organically.”

“The Deepest Breath” debuted earlier this year at the Sundance Film Festival to strong reviews.

“The world can probably be divided into two camps of people: those who will watch ‘The Deepest Breath,...

In early summer, the still-slim Oscar conversation around documentary contenders got an unexpected bump: from an Emmy contender.

When the team behind AppleTV+’s “Still: A Michael J. Fox Movie” realized that the field of Oscar contenders was thinner than usual, the Davis Guggenheim-directed doc entered the fray. Right now, the film about the hugely popular TV and film star fighting off the vicissitudes of Parkinson’s and reflecting on his past looks good not only for an Emmy nomination, but Oscar rules make it possible to double dip and also pick up an Oscar nod.

But it doesn’t work the other way. Only if a movie does not land an Oscar nomination can it then submit for the Emmy race, as Brett Morgen’s “Jane” did in 2017. But given the weak Oscar competition this year, “Still,” with superb reviews for its innovative filmmaking — which elevates it beyond...

Memorial Day brings a smattering of high-profile TV finales — “Succession,” “Yellowjackets,” “The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel,” “Somebody Somewhere,” “Barry,” and “Citadel” — but the long weekend leaves plenty of time to slip in a movie or two. Our top choice is an invigorating documentary with ties to the recent hits “Fire of Love” and “Free Solo,” but you can also shell out for the latest installment in one of Hollywood’s great action franchises.

This week’s contender to watch: “Wild Life”

Part love story and part conversation ode, “Wild Life” bows on Disney+ and Hulu after getting a theatrical release in April. It would make for a great double feature with last year’s “Fire of Love,” another documentary about married environmentalists whose passionate romance matched their sense of adventure. In this case, we’re talking about Doug and Kris Tompkins, former corporate executives who used their wealth to preserve the wilderness of Chile and Argentina.

The highest award for docs-in-progress at the Cannes Film Market’s sidebar dedicated to documentary, Cannes Docs, has gone to Ya-Ting Hsu’s debut feature doc “Islands of the Winds.”

Twenty years in the making, the film follows the anti-eviction struggle of the patients of Losheng Sanatorium for lepers, which became a symbol of the fight for democracy in Hsu’s native Taiwan.

The prize comes with a €10,000 cash prize and project follow-up by Iefta (the International Emerging Film Talent Assn.).

It is produced by Hsu’s Taiwan-based Argosy Films and Media Productions, Huang Yin-Yu and Baptiste Brunner.

Handing out the prize, the jury, composed of Angeliki Vergou, head of Agora at Thessaloniki Doc Fest, French producer Karim Aitouna and Brazilian Fernanda Lomba, EP at Mundi Filmes and co-founder of Nicho 54, congratulated the film “for its patience, dedication and the respectful way the filmmaker approached this grass-roots movement with an engaged and passionate camera.

Neon has acquired North American rights to Robot Dreams, the first animated feature from Spanish filmmaker Pablo Berger (Blancanieves), which is poised to premiere in the Special Screenings section of the Cannes Film Festival this Saturday, May 20th.

The acquisition, which is the first North American deal announced for a Cannes festival movie this edition, comes on the heels of Neon’s past triumphs at Cannes with three consecutive Palme d’Or winners: Parasite, Titane and Triangle of Sadness.

Based on the award-winning graphic novel of the same name by Sara Varon, Robot Dreams follows Dog, who lives in Manhattan and one day, tired of being alone, decides to build himself a robot, a companion. Their friendship blossoms, until they become inseparable, to the rhythm of ’80s NYC. One summer night, Dog, with great sadness, is forced to abandon Robot at the beach. Will they ever meet again?

Berger produced the film alongside Ibon Cormenzana,...

“Abbott Elementary,” “Atlanta,” “Better Call Saul,” “Mo,” “Andor” and “Severance” were among the 35 winners of the 83rd Annual Peabody Awards announced this morning, representing the “most compelling and empowering stories” released in broadcasting, streaming and interactive media during 2022. They were chosen by a unanimous vote of 32 jurors from more than 1,400 entries, with PBS producing the most triumphs with six, followed by Apple TV+ and Disney+ (three apiece) and HBO Max (two).

It’s the second Peabody wins for “Atlanta” and “Saul,” which received trophies for their first seasons and now for their final ones as well.

Also emerging as Peabody winners were the dark comedy “Bad Sisters,” the Spanish-language comedy “Los Espookys.,” the Asian drama “Pachinko” and the docuseries “We’re Here.” Also earning Peabodys were the docs “The Rebellious Life of Mrs. Rosa Parks” and “Fire of Love,” the docuseries “We Need To Talk About Cosby” and the documentary film “Mariupol: The People’s Story.

The 2023 Peabody Awards have officially crowned their winners.

The 83rd annual awards ceremony will take place for the first time since the pandemic on Sunday, June 11 at the Beverly Wilshire Hotel in Los Angeles.

The respective final seasons of “Atlanta” and “Better Call Saul” are among this year’s celebrated series. The Peabody Awards Board of Jurors today announced the 35 winners elected to represent stories released in broadcasting, streaming, and interactive media during 2022. The winners were chosen by a unanimous vote of 32 jurors from over 1,400 entries from television, podcasts/radio and the web/digital in entertainment, news, documentary, arts, children’s/youth, public service and interactive programming. Of the 35 total wins, PBS produced the most with six, followed by Apple TV+ and Disney+ (three each), and HBO Max (two), per the official press statement.

This year’s Peabody Awards also unveiled the first annual Visionary Award, bestowed to Shari Frilot,...

The winners of the 2023 Peabody Awards have been announced and PBS leads the pack with a total of 6 followed by Apple TV+ and Disney+ with 3 a piece and HBO Max with 2 trophies.

“Representing a wide range of mediums, genres, and narrative approaches, this year’s winners continue to advance what it means to craft storytelling that is compelling, powerful, and prescient,” said Jeffrey Jones, executive director of Peabody.

“Whether capturing the lives of teachers in Philadelphia or young women in Afghanistan, these stories are powerful enough to make us laugh, cry, and learn. They are all deserving of this honor, and we are thrilled to shine a light on their amazing achievement. All citizens should seek out, watch, and engage these winners.”

This year’s winners included Atlanta, Better Call Saul, Bad Sisters, Andor and Abbott Elementary.

The winners of the 83rd annual Peabody Awards will be celebrated on Sunday,...

The Peabody Awards today announced the winners in the 35 categories honoring the most compelling and empowering stories released in broadcasting, streaming, and interactive media during 2022.

Notable winners include FX’s Atlanta and AMC’s Better Call Saul, which earned their second Peabody Awards after both series won for their first seasons.

Thematic trends among this year’s winners include projects that focused on environmental issues (Fire of Love, The Territory and The Power of Big Oil), mental health (The Gap: Failure to Treat, Failure to Protect and Life Is Strange: True Colors), reproductive rights (This American Life: The Pink House at the Center of the World and Aftershock) and transgender rights (We’re Here and Contrapoints).

Winners were chosen by a unanimous vote of 32 jurors from over 1,400 entries from television, podcasts/radio and the web/digital in entertainment, news, documentary, arts, children’s/youth, public service and interactive programming. Of the 35 total wins,...