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Exclusive: DC/Dox, the prestigious documentary film festival in the nation’s capital, today announced the full slate for its third edition.

The cinematic event will include a dozen world premieres including The Last Class, a documentary about former Secretary of Labor – and ardent Trump opponent – Robert Reich; the sex trafficking documentary The Right Track, directed by Shareen Anderson; A Savage Art: The Life & Cartoons Of Pat Oliphant, a film about the famed political cartoonist directed by Bill Banowsky, and Immutable, a feature on the Washington Urban Debate League directed by Charlie Sadoff and Gabriel London.

As previously announced (and reported by Deadline), DC/Dox will kick off with the world premiere of Steal This Story, Please!, a documentary about Democracy Now! host and author Amy Goodman, directed by Oscar-nominated filmmakers Carl Deal and Tia Lessin.

DC/Dox, running June 12-15, boasts a slate of 59 features and 35 shorts from more than two dozen countries.

President Donald Trump’s sudden announcement on Sunday that he intends to impose a “100 percent tariff” on movies produced abroad jolted advocates who have been working for months to return more film and television production to California.

Between the Stay in LA coalition, the Hollywood guilds, the state legislature and Gov. Gavin Newsom, production insiders thought they knew the players and what their positions were. But, as the White House and Trump ambassador Jon Voight took a stab at offering up a plan, studio chiefs are mostly staying silent (publicly) while union leaders’ considered statements have signaled guilds are keeping their options open.

There’s general skepticism that the tariff will actually be implemented and raised eyebrows about Trump’s motives, as many of these industry types express caution and say they’re waiting for details on the policy. A group of film studio executives are expected to speak with...

Hollywood workers threw themselves a pep rally on Sunday in hopes that their grassroots campaigning — not to mention their ability to lure hundreds of people into a hot warehouse in balmy Sun Valley — will be enough to keep production in Los Angeles.

SirReel Studios on Lankershim Boulevard lent its large, production rentals property for the 2 p.m. rally, which featured food trucks and Stay in L.A. merch while local, state and national politicians — along with a few actors and writers — spoke about how their hometown has become a ghost town when it comes to film and TV production.

The goal, of course, is to show support for Governor Newsom’s proposed $750 million tax incentive plan, as detailed in recently introduced legislation Ab 1138 and Sb 630 which aims to stop the bleeding and keep studios from seeking cheaper locales to make their shows and films.

But Newsom’s proposal may not be a slam dunk,...

This year’s South by Southwest Film and TV Festival was a more star-studded affair than ever. Big movie stars from Nicole Kidman to Ben Affleck and Jenna Ortega descended on the city of Austin, TX to celebrate the premieres of their latest projects. Meanwhile, the festival also served as an exciting showcase of some of the most promising up-and-coming talents in the indie film scene.

From blockbusters to indie gems, this writer saw a total of 51 movies at this year’s SXSW Film and TV Festival. Although narrowing it down to our top ten was challenging, we have decided which films we think you don’t want to miss — whether they come out a few weeks from now or are still looking for a distribution deal.

And if you keep reading after our top 10, you’ll catch some of our additional thoughts on other films that we saw at this year’s festival.

Before there was the idea to interview a deepfaked Sam Altman, there was Adam Bhala Lough’s foundational love of 1991’s Terminator 2: Judgment Day.

The James Cameron film, which sees Arnold Schwarzenegger protecting a future freedom fighter imperiled by an evil AI system, sparked the filmmaker’s lifelong fascination with AI. But it wasn’t until two years after the public release of ChatGPT in 2022, which catapulted AI back into the cultural conversation, that the director — who has previously directed films about Lil Wayne, Internet-era radicals and telemarketing whistleblowers — started pitching a documentary on the technology. That led him to the OpenAI co-founder and CEO, “this guy who’s ferrying us into the future, whether we like it or not,” Lough says now.

Lough’s original aim was to interview the real Altman. But, as he chronicles in his new film Deepfaking Sam Altman, he didn’t have any luck with that request.

Every March, hundreds of thousands of people descend on the city of Austin, TX for SXSW — making it one of the biggest professional events in the world. The storied Film and TV Festival serves as a launching pad for big Hollywood blockbusters and indie gems alike, meaning that attendees are sure to walk away having discovered the next big thing.

We at FandomWire are excited to again be covering the SXSW Film and TV Festival. If you are going to be in beautiful Austin, TX for the city’s top cinematic event of the year, here are a few films — five narrative and five non-fiction — that we think you should check out at this year’s festival.

Narrative Films Not To Miss at SXSW 2025 RelatedFandomWire’s Top 10 Films of Sundance 2025 (Plus Bonus Reviews) Corina

The biggest draw of Uzula Barba Hopfner’s Corina is a supporting performance by Ted Lasso’s Cristo Fernández.

For the first time since 2022, this year’s South by Southwest Film & Television Festival does not overlap with the Oscars — which seems to have given SXSW curators a richer field to pull from, as the 2025 lineup has no shortage of buzzy titles and stars. Running from March 7-15, the festival will present 111 movies and 17 series featuring the likes of Blake Lively, Anna Kendrick, Seth Rogen, Daisy Edgar-Jones, Jacob Elordi, Ben Affleck, Nicole Kidman, Matthew McConaughey, Issa Rae, Jenna Ortega, Daveed Diggs and more.

The festival will open with “Another Simple Favor,” the sequel to the 2018 comedic thriller “A Simple Favor,” once again starring Lively and Kendrick and directed by Paul Feig. The new film is set in Capri, Italy, where Stephanie (Kendrick) and Emily (Lively) travel for Emily’s wedding to a rich Italian businessman; as the logline reveals, “murder and betrayal” ensue. Andrew Rannells, Bashir Salahuddin, Henry Golding, Elizabeth Perkins,...

Even as it continues to seek U.S. distribution, “No Other Land” is continuing its remarkable awards season run. The latest win for the documentary, made by a Palestinian/Israeli collective that includes directors and activists Hamdan Ballal, Yuval Abraham, Rachel Szor, and Basel Adra: a trio of awards at this year’s Cinema Eye Honors.

At the 18th annual Cinema Eye Honors, which took place Thursday, January 9 at the New York Academy of Medicine in East Harlem, the film walked away with three awards, including Cinema Eye’s top prize, Outstanding Nonfiction Filmmaking. Directors Yuval Abraham, Basel Adra, Hamdan Ballal, and Rachel Szor also received the award for Debut Feature, with Abraham and Adra also Honored as Unforgettables for their appearance on screen in the film.

This year’s nominees for the Cinema Eye Honors, which honors the best in documentary fiction and TV, included a healthy crop...

“No Other Land” has been named named the best feature of 2024 at the Cinema Eye Honors, the New York-based documentary awards that were established to celebrate all aspects of nonfiction filmmaking. The show took place on Friday night at the New York Academy of Medicine in East Harlem in New York City.

The film was made by two Israeli and two Palestinian filmmakers over the last five years during the conflict in Gaza. It also won the best-feature award at the IDA Documentary Awards, the other major award devoted to nonfiction films.

“Porcelain War” won the Audience Choice Award, the one Cinema Eye category voted on by the public.

The award for directing went to Mati Diop for “Dahomey,” while the production award went to “Union.” “No Other Land” won the award for the best first feature.

“Eno” won for visual design, “Soundtrack to a Coup d’Etat” for editing and sound design,...

On November 21, De La Soul’s surviving members, Kelvin “Posdnous” Mercer and Vincent “DJ Maseo” Mason, shocked fans by denouncing Marcus J. Moore’s new biography, High and Rising: A Book About De La Soul across their social media accounts. “We’ve been receiving congratulatory messages about a book titled ‘High & Rising,’” read the posts. “However, we want to make it absolutely clear: this is an unauthorized book, and we are not connected to it in any way.” The post went on to say, “If you choose to support this book,...

Apple TV+’s Girls State and HBO’s Ren Faire scored three nominations apiece to lead all broadcast nominees announced Thursday for the 18th Cinema Eye Honors. The group, which recognizes the year’s outstanding nonfiction and documentary films and TV series, also revealed the 16-film longlist for its annual Audience Choice Prize, won last year by National Geographic’s Bobi Wine: The People’s President, which went on to get nominated for the Documentary Feature Oscar.

The past six winners of the Best Documentary Feature Oscar — this year’s winner 20 Days in Mariupol, Navalny, Summer of Soul, My Octopus Teacher, American Factory and Free Solo — were all Audience Choice Prize nominees. Fans voting will whittle the list to 10 beginning next week, with winners in that and all categories to be announced at an awards ceremony January 9 at the New York Academy of Medicine in East Harlem.

The full list...

Cinema Eye Honors today shared a string of announcements, including the 16 films on its Audience Choice Prize Longlist, the unveiling of this year’s Unforgettables Honorees, nominees in its five Broadcast categories, and its annual Shorts List — spotlighting 11 of the year’s top documentary short films — at its 7th annual Cinema Eye Fall Lunch in Downtown Los Angeles on October 24, 2024.

Spotlighted on the film side are several major Best Documentary Feature contenders including “Will & Harper,” “Black Box Diaries,” and “No Other Land,” which all also factored into the organization’s list of Unforgettables — standout on-camera collaborators from eight feature documentaries. This next ceremony will be the first time those honorees, like Harper Steele, Shiori Ito, and Basel Adra and Yuval Abraham for those respective films, receive a special medallion honoring their contribution to their Cinema Eye-winning films.

Highlights among the Broadcast nominees include filmmaker Lance Oppenheim, nominated for both...

The Apple TV+ documentary “Girls State” and the HBO doc series “Ren Faire” led all projects in nominations in the Cinema Eye Honors broadcast categories, which were announced on Thursday in Los Angeles.

“Girls State” was nominated in the Broadcast Film category and also for its editing and cinematography. “Ren Faire” was also nominated in those last two categories, as well as for Nonfiction Series.

Other broadcast films and series with multiple nominations included Netflix’s “America’s Sweethearts: Dallas Cowboy Cheerleaders,” Apple’s “The Enfield Poltergeist,” HBO’s “Telemarketers” and National Geographic’s “Photographer.”

At its annual Cinema Eye Fall Lunch at Redbird in downtown Los Angeles, the New York-based organization also announced the Audience Choice Award Long List, 16 films that will compete for the audience-voted award; 11 semi-finalists in the short doc category; and “The Unforgettables,” its annual list of the year’s most interesting documentary subjects.

The Audience...

Variety & Rolling Stone’s Truth Seekers Summit, presented by Paramount+, is dedicated to honoring those who prioritize the discovery of truth. Curated by the editors of Variety and Rolling Stone, the collection of panelists at this year’s annual summit showcased a remarkable lineup of documentary filmmakers, political journalists and overall advocates for justice. The event featured thought-provoking discussions and insights from renowned figures such as acclaimed documentary maker Alex Gibney, comedian and host Amber Ruffin, the tireless crusaders behind the “Unsolved Mysteries” series and many more.

Key moments included a panel of political correspondents and anchors comprised of Abby Phillip, Yamiche Alcindor, Katy Tur, Tony Dokoupil, and Geoff Bennett, who discussed the realities and hypocrisies of covering former President Donald Trump. CBS News President Susan Zirinsky also joined the conference to discuss the documentary “We Will Dance Again.” The event concluded with the presentation of the Truth Seekers Award to journalist E. Jean Carroll.

Skateboard movies are fan-favorite films with dramatic storytelling, whether documentary or fictional, attracting top talent. Wassup Rockers delves deep into race and culture surrounding skateboarding, exploring social realities within the sport. Movies like Lords of Dogtown and Skaterdater depict the history and evolution of skateboarding culture through iconic figures and events.

Over the years, the best skateboard movies usually belong to documentary films, many of the early examples created by skateboarding companies to help popularize this extreme sport. Skateboarding as a sport began in the 1950s when surfers in California wanted something to do when the waves in the ocean were flat. After serving as part of the counterculture in the 1970s, the sport enjoyed an explosion in popularity in the 1980s thanks to names like Jason Lee and Tony Hawk. In 2020, skateboarding broke through to the Olympics and is now a worldwide competition at the Summer Games.

Skateboard movies...

It’s a Tuesday morning in late July, and at a gigantic warehouse-turned-production facility in L.A.’s Canoga Park, Kevin Hart and Kenan Thompson are in one studio riffing on the Summer Olympics. On the other side of the building, comedian Earthquake is recording a podcast. Meanwhile, between that building, another nearby and a third in West Hollywood, teams of staffers are running around, working on one of the two dozen other projects across TV, film, audio, branded entertainment and experiential events that Hart’s entertainment company, Hartbeat, has in the pipeline.

You know Kevin Hart, the comedian and star of films like “Ride Along,” “Central Intelligence” and the just released “Borderlands.” But he’d really like you to think of him as Kevin Hart, production maven. This year alone, he’s produced Netflix’s “The Roast of Tom Brady,” a revival of “Comic View” with BET and released...

Patrick J. Pespas has been found over three weeks after the unlikely star of HBO’s recent hit docuseries Telemarketers had gone missing.

Adam Bhala Lough, the series’ co-director, announced the good news Thursday night, writing, “Patrick J. Pespas has been found and returned safely to his wife Sue. Thank you to everyone who has shared messages of support, donated and prayed for Pat’s safe return. One day I hope to tell the whole story but for now Pat asks that everyone respects his and Sue’s privacy.”

Patrick J.

New details are emerging about the disappearance of Telemarketers star Patrick J. Pespas, who went missing Friday in Easton, Pa.

Telemarketers co-creator Adam Bhala Lough shared an update Tuesday on X (formerly known as Twitter), telling his followers, “We’re growing increasingly concerned about his well-being. Pat left without his essential medications — both his methadone and his bipolar meds. Without them, he may be experiencing withdrawal symptoms. Moreover, he departed without his phone, leaving him without a way to reach out to us or anyone he knows. If anyone sees Pat or has information on his whereabouts, we kindly request you get in touch immediately.

“Telemarketers” docuseries subject Patrick J. Pespas has been reported missing, according to limited series helmer Adam Bhala Lough. Lough, who co-directed the recent HBO docuseries with Sam Lipman-Stern, took to X (previously known as Twitter) over the weekend to share, “Pat is missing, and [his wife] Sue, his family and friends are very worried about him. Please put out the word that Pat is missing and help us find him.”

“Telemarketers” centers on a New Jersey-based call center that previously employed Lipman-Stern, Lough’s cousin. Pespas was featured in the docuseries as a salesperson who worked for Civic Development Group. Lough and Lipman-Stern began investigating the workplace after its employer, CDG, allegedly stole donations people made for different organizations through the telemarketing scheme; the docuseries takes place over the course 20 years. The Safdie brothers and Danny McBride produced the HBO three-part docuseries.

Pespas went missing from his home in Easton, Pennsylvania on...

Patrick J. Pespas, the gregarious, affable center of HBO’s surprise hit docuseries Telemarketers, has gone missing, as friends and family put out urgent calls on social media for assistance.

Adam Bhala Lough, the series’ co-director, announced Pespas’ disappearance over the weekend, writing Friday night, “Pat is missing, and [Pespas’ wife] Sue, his family and friends are very worried about him. Please put out the word that Pat is missing and help us find him. He was last seen in the Easton, Pa area. Thank you.”

Bhala Lough confirmed Sunday night that...

Patrick J. Pespas, one of the subjects of the recent HBO documentary series “Telemarketers,” has gone missing. That’s according to the directors of “Telemarketers.”

In a post on X, director Adam Bhala Lough wrote, “Pat is missing, and Sue, his family and friends are very worried about him.”

Sue is Pespas’ wife.

“Please put out the word that Pat is missing and help us find him,” Lough wrote. “He was last seen in the Easton, Pa area. Thank you.”

He was last seen Friday night at 8 p.m., according to the post. Lough notes that Pespas left in his white Ford Mustang and was most likely somewhere in New Jersey.

This is Pat’s white ford mustang – he left in this car. He is most likely somewhere in New Jersey. Please look out for this car. pic.twitter.com/ulPaDaCdvu

— Bhala (@AdamBhalaLough) October 1, 2023

Pespas proved to be a dynamic...

Telemarketers is a three-part documentary series directed by Adam Bhala Lough and one of the telemarketing company employees, Sam Lipman-Stern. This miniseries documented Sam and his buddy Patrick’s decade-long investigation into a fundraising scam in the United States. Sam started recording videos when he worked at Civic Development Group (CDG), a fundraising company that was later found to be involved in fraudulent activities. After CDG was shut down due to its scams, Sam and his friend Patrick Pespas teamed up to dig into CDG’s connections with charities. They aimed to expose how these groups were illegally taking money from people in the name of charity, but none of the funds were being used for actual charitable purposes.

What Happened To CDG?

In the first episode of Telemarketers, we meet Sam Lipman-Stern, a 14-year-old high school dropout who joined CDG in the early 2000s. CDG provided a haven for...

If there's a golden rule in telemarketing, it's that it never hurts to ask — or, as a manager tells top salesman Pat Pespas, "Just keep pushing." That mantra was burned into the brains of the callers at Civic Development Group, the company at the center of HBO's Telemarketers. Reminders about sticking to the script littered the office, as did signs detailing the appropriate rebuttals to concerns from people on the other end of the line. "Your house just burned down, John? Is it completely totaled?" asks one caller in early-aughts footage filmed by fellow employee Sam Lipman-Stern, who co-directed the docuseries with Adam Bhala Lough. "Now John, I don't want to burn you, but we do have a bronze [donation package] at $20, or a booster at $15."...

Sam Lipman-Stern was 14, he’d just dropped out of ninth grade, and he needed a job stat. There wasn’t a host of options for an underage kid in New Jersey in terms of gainful employment, and his main interests at the time — skating, graffiti, filming his friends on his camcorder — weren’t necessarily gateways to a paying gig. But his parents told him that if he left high school, he would need to work, full stop. And then Sam heard about the Civic Development Group.

The telemarketing firm, commonly referred to as CDG,...

Two decades ago, Civic Development Group put a lot of people to work who couldn’t find it anywhere else. The telemarketing company employed high school dropouts, convicted felons, and drug addicts, many of whom felt as though they’d found their calling at a company that incentivized them to unwittingly participate in a high-stakes grift.

As they juggled calls on behalf of policemen unions and other charitable organizations, inadvertently duping gullible targets into opening their wallets, they had no idea how little money actually went to the organizations themselves. In truth, CDG was making a killing, keeping 90 percent of all donations — while its staffers treated the office as a hedonistic playground.

The footage of those antics provides the backbone for the first episode of “Telemarketers,” directors Adam Bhala Lough and Sam Lipman-Stern’s gritty and often darkly funny look at the CDG’s scam and the wider conspiracy of...

Adam Bhala Lough and Sam Lipman-Stern’s new three-part HBO documentary Telemarketers occupies a space on the nonfiction continuum somewhere between the angry, journalistic interrogation of early Michael Moore and the more laid-back, observational curiosity of the Nathan Fielder/John Wilson school.

It’s a slightly precarious position. As a muckraking crusade, Telemarketers conveys and synthesizes less revelatory information than your typical Last Week Tonight With John Oliver main story — which is to say that anything you learn from the documentary you probably could have learned five years ago if you’d just wanted to know. As more personal storytelling, the series sometimes lacks introspection and sufficient autobiographical candor.

In the uneasy blending, though, Telemarketers finds something that’s frequently funny, unexpectedly poignant and occasionally rather special. It isn’t going to topple an industry, but its story of two unlikely friends who, after doing the wrong thing for a long time,...

“Telemarketers” may be summer TV’s oddest thrill ride. Co-director Sam Lipman-Stern begins the three-part docuseries, which launches August 13 on HBO, in retrospect. He’s looking back at the footage he shot of his time working for telemarketing firm CDG (short for Civic Development Group) two decades ago. Then a teenager, Lipman-Stern recorded everything: The aggressive sell he and his colleagues made over the phone to solicit donations for what the callers claimed were police charitable unions, as well as the freewheeling culture that permeated throughout the office. Closer to the present day, he and co-director Adam Bhala Lough reconnect with Lipman-Stern’s former colleague Pat Pespas to delve into how the system has morphed since they first worked together, and how they might be able to use what they’ve learned from their years of calling strangers to take it down.

Backed by high-profile executive producers including Benny and Josh Safdie and Danny McBride,...

The Safdies may be (temporarily) breaking up as directors, but the brothers are still a showbiz team. Josh and Benny Safdie have executive produced a new documentary limited series “Telemarketers” for HBO, it was announced Wednesday. The channel has set an August 13 premiere date for the series, in addition to releasing the official trailer.

“Telemarketers” focuses on two former telemarketing employees Pat Pespas and Sam Lipman-Stern, the latter of whom is credited as co-director of the series with Adam Bhala Lough. The series chronicles, with the assistance of footage shot by Limpman-Stern, the duo’s time working in the telemarketing industry during the early 2000s, when Limpman-Stern was a 14 year-old high school dropout and Pespas was a top salesman dealing with addiction issues. The two worked for a company that advertised itself as raising money for police and firefighter charities, but in reality pocketed most of the money.

After a...

Another month, another Criterion Channel lineup. In accordance with Black History Month their selections are especially refreshing: seven by Melvin Van Peebles, five from Kevin Jerome Everson, and Criterion editions of The Harder They Come and The Learning Tree.

Regarding individual features I’m quite happy to see Abderrahmane Sissako’s fantastic Bamako, last year’s big Sundance winner (and Kosovo’s Oscar entry) Hive, and the remarkably beautiful Portuguese feature The Metamorphosis of Birds. Add a three-film Laura Dern collection (including the recently canonized Smooth Talk) and Pasolini’s rarely shown documentary Love Meetings to make this a fine smorgasboard.

See the full list of February titles below and more on the Criterion Channel.

Alan & Naomi, Sterling Van Wagenen, 1992

All That Heaven Allows, Douglas Sirk, 1955

The Angel Levine, Ján Kadár, 1970

Babylon, Franco Rosso, 1980

Babymother, Julian Henriques, 1998

Bamako, Abderrahmane Sissako, 2006

Beat Street, Stan Lathan, 1984

Blacks Britannica, David Koff, 1978

The Black Panthers: Vanguard of the Revolution,...

At the start of April, SXSW and Amazon announced that films from this year’s canceled SXSW would stream for free on Prime Video, giving some filmmakers the opportunity to get their projects seen by Us audiences after the Covid-19 pandemic nixed plans for the annual festival, and now the full lineup has been confirmed.

Only a small section of filmmakers who were set to debut their titles at SXSW have taken Amazon up on its streaming offer, but 39 projects will be available to watch from April 27 to May 6.

“This is really an unprecedented time. People are waiting for the new normal. And others are waiting for the return to normal,” SXSW director of film Janet Pierson remarked to THR. “We’re just trying to make best of a complicated situation. And this was a concrete and exciting offer from Amazon to give a wider swath of filmmakers an opportunity...

Svod service iwonder has launched in Australia, New Zealand and Singapore, initially offering more than 500 hours of documentaries and current affairs programming for $6.99 per month or $69.95 a year.

Co-founder James Bridges tells If he plans to double the volume of content by the end of this month, including local acquisitions; he estimates more than 70 per cent of the programming is not available on any other platform.

He is attending the Australian International Documentary Conference in Melbourne where he will initiate discussions with Australian producers on commissions and co-productions.

The direct-to-consumer platform’s documentaries span the spectrum of entertainment, sports, history, politics, science and technology, religion, music, movies, nature, war and biographies.

The exclusives include Meal Tickets, Mat de Koning’s film about a Perth rock band whose ambitions were never realised, which premiered at Miff in 2016; Israel Cannan’s Fish Out of Water, which traces the journey of two ordinary...

Producer of Framing John DeLorean will oversee doc production, acquire titles for sale.

Heading into its tenth anniversary celebrations at Sundance, Los Angeles-based Xyz Films has named Tamir Ardon head of documentaries as it steps up its involvement in the non-fiction genre.

Ardon will oversee original documentary production and work with the North American sales team to expand the documentary sales slate.

The new hire produced Xyz Films’ upcoming Framing John DeLorean, a hybrid documentary directed by Don Argott and Sheena Joyce that stars Alec Baldwin as the titular and celebrated inventor and automotive entrepreneur. IFC Films will release the film later this year.

In “Alt-Right: Age of Rage,” screening at the Ji.hlava doc fest, director Adam Bhala Lough takes on the machinations of white power leader Richard Spencer, balancing his philosophies against the views of Daryle Lamont Jenkins – a spokesperson for the anti-fascist movement Antifa – who has tirelessly exposed the group who led the Charlottesville march last year that ended in the death of protester Heather Heyer and dozens of injuries. How did you arrive at the structure of “Alt-Right: Age of Rage,” in which you alternate between the white power leader Spencer and Antifa member Jenkins? Were their personalities important in deciding this way to tell the story? It was organic. We had a lot of characters but it felt unfocused. We honed it down to those two. We felt they represented their sides well, and the polar extremes of America. What was the most disturbing thing for you personally to...

No matter which side of the political spectrum you happen to fall on, Alt-Right: Age of Rage comes as an important documentary that shines light on what is currently happening in the country, exposing the truth behind a lot of social turmoil.

Alt-Right: Age of Rage will arrive in theaters August 17th. Today we have a first look at this investigative documentary that explores both sides of the political landscape and ends with the events that happened in Charlottesville, Va. The movie is coming from Gravitas Ventures. It was written and directed by Adam Bhala Lough. Here is the official synopsis.

"In the first year of the Trump presidency, the Alt-Right is on the rise and civil rights organizations like the shadow collective Antifa and the NAACP are fighting back. Following such leaders as, Richard Spencer, an Alt-Right leader and Daryle Lamont Jenkins, an Antifa activist, "Alt-Right: Age of Rage...

“I think there is blame on both sides. You look at, you look at both sides. I think there’s blame on both sides, and I have no doubt about it, and you don’t have any doubt about it either,” President Trump told a room full of reporters at a press conference following the Unite the Right white nationalist rally in Charlottesville, which resulted in the vehicular homicide of Heather Heyer. Occurring nearly one year ago today, the event was a chilling reminder of the festering hatred of the alt-right that has been invigorated by Trump and his rhetoric.

At this year’s South by Southwest Film Festival, director Adam Bhala Lough (The New Radical) premiered a new documentary Alt-Right: Age of Rage, which explores this divide in our country–one of, if not the first, to specifically look at the tragedy in Charlottesville in feature-length form. Featuring interviews...

Despite being billed as a documentary about the subject, Alt-Right: Age of Rage doesn’t know what to make of the modern day neo-Nazi movement. At least some of the film’s subjects would resist the label, saying that the purpose of the alt-right is to protect European heritage, just as they would tell you that the Civil War and Confederate flag have nothing to with slavery. You can’t win an argument with the brainwashed, but the film–to its credit–gives an equal platform to those leading the white nationalist movement and their opposition: organizations like Antifa and the Southern Poverty Law Center.

The documentary focuses largely on the face of the alt-right movement and instant meme Richard Spencer, a University of Chicago-educated “academic” quick to call someone a “cuck,” but barely able to recognize the death of Heather Heyer as a tragedy. The documentary allows...

Canadian documentary festival Hot Docs has added 17 additional special presentations.

They include McQueen, Ian Bonhôte’s documentary about fashion designer Alexander McQueen, and Steve Loveridge’s Matanga / Maya / M.I.A., the Sundance world premiere about British rapper and record producer M.I.A. that has been picked up for the UK by Dogwoof.

Other highlights in the programme include Liz Garbus’s The Fourth Estate, a look into how The New York Times covered the first year of the Trump presidency, and Mercury 13, the story of Nasa’s first female astronaut training programme.

The full selection from Hot Docs,...

A single, persistent question hangs over Adam Bhala Lough’s “Alt-Right: Age of Rage,” a blunt new documentary that chronicles how America’s white nationalists crawled out of the sewers during the first year of the Trump administration. And the question is this: Do we really need to watch a movie about these assholes?

The most striking moments of Lough’s scattershot new film address that question head-on, weighing — to use terms borrowed from one of the talking heads — the policy of quarantine vs. the policy of inoculation. In other words, does talking about neo-Nazis help expose the flimsy hatred that fuels their ideologies, or does giving oxygen to toxic firebrands like Richard Spencer and Milo Yiannopoulos only make them stronger? The mere fact that “Age of Rage” was shot, and that it possesses the baseline self-awareness required to reflect on its value, is enough to suggest that Lough believes in the former.

Fortuitously timed in its production if not its theatrical debut, Adam Bhala Lough's Alt-Right: Age of Rage was assembling its portrait of new strains of white nationalism — and of the counter-protesters they've inspired — well before a rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, last August made "alt-right" and "Antifa" household words. Choosing a ground-level approach with just a handful of interviewees, and generally more attuned to their attitudes than the details of their arguments, the film may not greatly deepen the understanding of viewers who've read some well researched journalism in the months since the Unite the Right rally. But it will...

Exclusive: Making its world premiere at SXSW, Adam Bhala Lough’s documentary Alt-Right: Age of Rage comes at a time when tensions between the left and the right are at an all-time high under the Trump administration. In this exclusive clip from the feature documentary, Lough puts the camera on activist Daryle Lamont Jenkins and alt-right leader Richard Spencer as they talk about their respective movements. “I don't care if you're on the left or the right, truth is going…...

Musicians The xx presents a curated programme; festival hosts world premieres of new films by Andreas Dalsgaard and Iris Zaki.

Cph:Dox will offer more than 200 films during its 15th event, which runs March 15-25.

In its five competitions (full list below), world premieres include Woman In Sink director Iris Zaki’s new film Unsettling, about Jewish setllers in the West Bank; The War Show director Andreas Dalsgaard’s The Great Game, about a man trying to find out if his grandfather was a spy; Emma Davie & Peter Mettler’s Becoming Animal, about how our relationship with nature has evolved; and Elissa Mirzaei & Gulistan Mirzaei’s Laila at the Bridge, about an Afghan woman trying to save heroin addicts in Kabul.

Highlights also include a specially curated programme by The xx; a focus on justice (films will include Pre-Crime, Recruiting for Jihad and The Congo Tribunal); and a film programme and art exhibition dedicated to social experiments (with films...

As “Mr. Robot” fans fall further down the rabbit hole that is season three of the techno-thriller, a new documentary unveils the real hackers who using digital means to topple governments, banks, and society. One of the most controversial films that played the Sundance Film Festival earlier this year, “The New Radical” is a portrait of the founders of Dark Wallet, the bitcoin app that allows users to make purchases without leaving a digital fingerprint. It’s a chilling peak behind into the extremist techies, as you can see in the first full trailer.

Read More:‘The New Radical’ Review: This Bitcoin Documentary Is a Real-Life ‘Mr. Robot’ — Sundance 2017 Review

“In a very, I guess you could say ‘Jihadist’ way, I’m not afraid,” says Dark Wallet founder Amir Taaki in “The New Radical,” which explores the lives of various crypto-anarchists. Filmmaker Adam Bhala Lough focuses on the terrifyingly brilliant Cody Wilson,...

At Cph:Forum, Eurimages Award goes to Maria Back’s Psychosis in Stockholm; 31 projects pitched.

Cph:dox expanded its industry offerings this year by adding a Work-in-Progress session on the eve of its Cph:forum for six Nordic documentaries currently in production or post-production.

Short presentations including footage was shown for projects including:

The Acali Experiment (Swe/Den/Ger/Us), dir Marcus Lindeen, prod Erik Gandini

The story will examine what happened when Mexican anthropologist Santiago Genovés tried a unique experiment in 1973, putting 10 people on a raft for a 101-day voyage to study human behaviour. Lindeen brought the participants together for the first time in 43 years to talk about Genoves’ manipulative behaviour. “I wanted make a reunion and let them talk about their memories of what happened on the raft,” he said. “We let the subjects make a study of the scientist.” The team aims to deliver the film in the autumn.

Contact: gandini@fasad.se

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The documentary festival is also launching a fifth competition strand at its 2017 edition.

Scandi documentary festival Cph:dox (Mar 16-26) has unveiled the films in its usual four competitions as well as introducing a new competition section.

World premieres announced across the competitions include Bridgend director Jeppe Rønde’s The John Dalli Mystery [pictured], a Kafkaesque story with Mikael Bertelsen and Mads Brügger; Do Donkeys Act?, a film about unruly donkeys narrated by Willem Dafoe; Accidental Anarchist, about the British former diplomat Carne Ross who has transformed into an anarchist; Sigrid Dyekjær’s A Modern Man, about violinist and model Charlie Siem; and Ben Rivers’ Urth, about the failed ecosystem Biosphere 2.0 in Arizona.

Read Screen’s festival preview here.

Other high profile documentaries to screen at the event include Matthew Heineman’s Cartel Land follow up City Of Ghosts.

New competition Next:wave is launched to highlight international emerging talents “who have the courage to take chances and stand out.”

The...

The New Radical is yet another timely, foreboding Sundance documentary with a fast-moving story that will surely benefit from a sequel. Directed with the energy of a Hollywood conspiracy thriller by Adam Bhala Lough, it tells the tale of Cody Wilson and friends. Famous for his YouTube channel Distributed Defense, Wilson cracked the formula for building a 3D-printed gun. Taking the second amendment to its extreme, even the NRA declines to offer support or even a formal comment on Wilson’s 3D-printed serial number-free Liberator Gun.

Following Wilson, once a law student at University of Texas at Austin and staunch libertarian, over the course of several years as 3D printing technology evolves, The New Radical offers a cinematic look at the kind of decentralized on-demand production that scares governments around the world. After cracking distributed defense, Wilson and British Iranian programmer Amir Taaki turn to crypto-currency, forming Darkwallet, marketed as...

A few decades ago, a show like “Mr. Robot” — which transforms modern fears of technological instability into suspense — might look like science fiction. These days, however, real life is almost as unsettling. Several recent documentaries on a growing community of hackers and acolytes focus on the developing momentum of a digitally enhanced landscape and the anarchistic tendencies that blossom within it: Laura Poitras’ “Citizenfour” and her yet-to-be-released “Risk” follow the twin struggles of Edward Snowden and Julian Assange, while Alex Winter’s “Deep Web” captured the plight of incarcerated dark web pioneer Ross Ulbricht.

Adam Bhala Lough consolidates the focus of these projects with the restless, scattershot approach of “The New Radical,” a portrait of the founders of Dark Wallet, the bitcoin app that allows users to purchase materials without leaving a digital fingerprint. Lough gives these troublemakers a dense platform to voice their extremist perspectives, but the movie primarily...

Conceived and created before the Presidency of Donald J. Trump, Sundance’s documentaries straddle one of the most profound cultural and political shifts in the United States’ recent history.

As the country is forced to grapple with a new range of issues in the post-Obama age, documentarians are also now straining to catch up. You could see it on the screen at Sundance, where last-act codas and recent news snippets suggested how the triumph of Trump had impacted, and in some cases, undermined the stories being told. The story of the election is explicitly told in “Trumped: Inside the Greatest Political Upset of All Time,” but even when Trump wasn’t presented, the country’s conservative turn—and the pain and fractures it has caused among many of its citizens—may influence the way these films are received and understood.

A People Divided

How are this year’s nonfiction stories,...

Locating the common ground between pro-gun activism and anti-big-bank subversion, The New Radical is as complex as it is discomforting. Adam Bhala Lough’s portrait of two key figures in the world of Internet-enabled antiauthoritarianism explores a new paradigm of political extremism, one whose provocations and innovations include virtual currency and 3D-printed pistols. Densely packed with info, incident and philosophy, the film is a guaranteed debate sparker. Its strength lies not just in the filmmaker’s intimate access to his subjects, but in the multiple points of view he engages. The doc's voices include those of journalists, a former FBI agent,...

“The New Radical” is designed to induce discomfort. How could it not? At the heart of this stirring documentary is a divisive figure, someone who not only warrants controversy, but invites it. This man is Cody Wilson, an Austin, Texas, resident and self-proclaimed crypto-anarchist and gun rights activist. The latter descriptor (“gun activist”) is something consistently debated within the confines of director Adam Bhala Lough’s prismatic portrait. It’s this ongoing ethical and moral debate that makes the film so ideologically riveting. It’s unlikely a film about Wilson could be made any other way. The polemical 20-year-old garnered...

Bidding wars have already begun for the 2017 Sundance Film Festival. Buyers snapped up six titles in the days leading up to the fest, including one that A24 purchased sight unseen: David Lowery’s “A Ghost Story,” starring Casey Affleck and Rooney Mara. Other movies acquired in the past two weeks are “Berlin Syndrome” (Netflix), “Call Me By Your Name” (Sony Pictures Classics), “Casting JonBenet” (Netflix), “Cries From Syria” (HBO for television rights) and “Long Strange Trip” (Amazon).

Read More: Sundance 2017: Netflix, Vertical Acquire ‘Berlin Syndrome’

With 120 features playing at Sundance, there are plenty of hot titles remaining for acquisition executive, though it will be tough for any film to exceed last year’s $17.5 million purchase of “The Birth of a Nation” by Fox Searchlight, the biggest deal in the festival’s history.

Which movies are likely to have buyers lining up in the cold this year? Here are 14 hot...