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Hulu is giving Shark Week a run for its money this July with not one but seven National Geographic specials dropping on the streaming service at the start of the month. From Shark Beach with Anthony Mackie to Baby Sharks in the City, there are plenty of options for fans of these fearsome finned creatures.

Hulu also has a couple of fun offerings for adult animation fans with the full second season of Marvel’s Hit Monkey dropping on July 15 and Futurama returning for its 12th season on July 29th.

There’s not really anything notable in the way of original movies on Hulu this month, but Aliens, Step Brothers, and (500) Days of Summer are just a few of the noteworthy movies joining the library.

Here’s everything that’s coming to (and leaving) Hulu in July.

Hulu New Releases – July 2024

July 1

Attack of the Red Sea Sharks: Special Premiere...

New year, new Hulu! As the streamer welcomes in dozens of new and classic titles this January, including its new whodunit series “Death and Other Details,” it will first have to say goodbye to the old.

A few titles have already been removed from the library so far this month, including the hit samurai thriller “13 Assassins,” but over the next few weeks of January, dozens more titles will be leaving the platform, including the beloved baseball coming-of-age comedy “The Sandlot,” several Christmas classics, and the 1996 box office buster “Twister.”

Don’t miss your last chance to watch— fill up your watch list with The Streamable’s top picks (and everything else) for what’s leaving Hulu this month!

30-Day Free Trial $7.99+ / month hulu.com What are the 5 Best Shows and Movies Leaving Hulu in January 2024? “Apollo 11” | Wednesday, Jan. 31

“Dinosaur 13” director Todd Douglas Miller picks another number with “Apollo 11,...

Madeleine Gavin’s Sundance award-winning documentary “Beyond Utopia” has garnered the best documentary and best doc editing honors at the 24th annual Woodstock Film Festival.

The documentary, which was recently acquired by Roadside Attractions, is vying for Academy Award attention.

Using hidden camera footage, the doc follows the high-stakes journey that a handful of desperate families make in order to defect from North Korea — a country with the most brutal regime on earth, led by a dictator, Kim Jong-un.

Doc jurors included directors Barbara Kopple (“Harlan County USA”) Richard Rowley (“ Kingdom of Silence”) and Heidi Ewing (“Jesus Camp”).

“This year’s winner is an astonishingly intimate, white-knuckle thriller following families trying to escape North Korea,” the jurors said in a joint statement. “Stitched together from raw, first person footage, it is impossible not to feel the heart-breaking courage as a family clings to each other during a nighttime crossing of the Mekong River.

Prime Video’s new docuseries Shiny Happy People: Duggar Family Secrets takes a critical look at the family that starred in TLC’s hit reality series 19 Kids and Counting. Over four episodes, the show explores the disturbing truth about what was going on behind the scenes in the Duggar home. It also looks at how the family used their TV show to promote an ultra-conservative ideology linked to controversial Christian leader Bill Gothard and his Institute in Basic Life Principles.

‘Shiny Happy People: Duggar Family Secrets’ | Amazon Studios

Were you fascinated by Shiny Happy People’s look at the dark underbelly of conservative Christianity? Then stream these seven documentaries that explore the relationship between faith, abuse, and political power.

‘The Secrets of Hillsong’

In the mid-2010s, Hillsong took the world by storm. The Australian megachurch blended pop music with worship and welcomed celebrities like Justin Bieber and Selena Gomez at its services.

The primary purpose of this roundup is to highlight films new to streaming platforms that could potentially contend for awards. But some weekends there are no new releases that could credibly be considered awards contenders. This is one of those weeks. But we don’t take the week off. Instead, we highlight the best of what’s new on streaming, whether it’s a contender or not. This week’s picks include a notable new release and three older Oscar contenders.

The contender to watch this week: “Fatal Attraction”

Before the Paramount+ adaptation starring Lizzy Caplan and Joshua Jackson premieres at the end of April, revisit this classic for a dose of bunny-boiling electricity. “Fatal Attraction” was the third-highest-grossing release of 1987, eventually earning six Oscar nominations, including Best Picture. People have been arguing about the movie’s messages ever since, but it’s hard to find performances as invigorating as...

The month of April for Hulu is jam-packed with TV and film goodies, from Adam Sandler’s 1999 comedy “Big Daddy” to Fox’s hit sitcom “New Girl.”

On top of Hulu’s rollout of a new interface, it’s also adding some major film and TV titles to its platform. Some of the highlights that set off the first day of April include “American Psycho,” “Shrek” and its sequel “Shrek 2,” plus the Tim Story-directed “Think Like a Man.”

Anime series will be all the rage on Hulu with the dubbed version of the new popular series “Chainsaw Man” arriving, along with “Spy x Family” and “Black Clover.” If you’re looking for something a little bit more kid-friendly, the family can al enjoy “Despicable Me” and “Despicable 2,” “Diary of a Wimpy Kid: Dog Days” and “Nanny McPhee.” For the lovers and heartless romantics, “Dear John” and “Date Night...

Hulu’s list of new releases for April 2023 don’t feature many blockbusters, but if we dig a little, I’m sure we can find some gems.

Perhaps the most promising items are on the TV side of things. Tiny Beautiful Things premieres on April 7 and stars Kathryn Hahn as “a floundering writer who becomes a revered advice columnist while her own life is falling apart.” That will be followed by comedy Am I Being Unreasonable? on April 11 and two documentaries: high school football story Algiers, America (April 19) and Tupac Shakur piece Dear Mama (April 22).

The best TV candidate this month, however, is probably Saint X on April 26. This series, told via multiple timelines, “explores and upends the girl-gone-missing genre as it explores how a young woman’s mysterious death during an idyllic Caribbean vacation creates a traumatic ripple effect that eventually pulls her surviving sister into a dangerous pursuit of the truth.

Even if you’ve signed up for every streaming service out there, it can feel monumental when a title moves from one to another. In April, Netflix mainstay “New Girl” moves to Hulu; still streaming, but not where fans are used to finding it — like rearranging the furniture in your apartment and waking up surprised every day that the couch is over there now.

But what’s important is that “New Girl” lives on, now joining Hulu’s own TV and movie library and originals from Freeform, FX, National Geographic, and more. Later in the month, Leila Gerstein’s “Saint X” — based on the novel by Alexis Schaitkin — premieres with three episodes, recounting the story of a young girl found dead during a family vacation and the sister piecing it together years later. Alycia Debnam-Carey, Josh Bonzie, West Duchovny, Jayden Elijah, Bre Francis, Kenlee Anaya Townsend, Betsy Brandt, and Michael Park star.

“Marriage is the only way to prosperity and the only way into the kingdom of God,” exclaims Lee-Curtis Childs (Sterling K. Brown), the pastor of a Southern Baptist megachurch, “Take it from me… I am the prophet with the beautiful wife and the gorgeous Bugatti!” The crowd of worshippers laugh and applaud, either glad or ignorant about their role in bankrolling a charlatan. Lee-Curtis and his wife Trinitie (Regina Hall) use religion not for the community but for their own pursuit of wanton materialism. This is the satirical conceit of Adamma Ebo’s Honk for Jesus. Save your Soul. and it lays it on very thick within the opening half hour.

For example, during a tour of their cavernous walk-in wardrobe, Trinitie talks of avoiding extravagance as Lee-Curtis tries on a pair of glittery turquoise loafers and a yellow trilby hat. Another scene sees the couple sitting on gilded thrones.

Documentary filmmaker Dawn Porter considers Title IX, anti-gender discrimination legislation passed by Congress in 1972, as “one of the most misunderstood civil rights laws” and is setting out to change that with “Fifty/50,” a four-part ESPN docuseries that she is executive producing and co-directing.

On Oct. 19, she is slated to unveil a first look at “Fifty/50” during a conversation with fellow executive producer Allison Glock and Hannah Storm at the espnW: Women + Sports Summit in La Jolla, Calif.

“Fifty/50,” which she is co-directing with Nicole Newnham (“Crip Camp), celebrates the 50th anniversary of Title IX while also exploring the current struggle to maintain and evolve the 1972 law that forbids discrimination based on gender.

Prior to 1972, gender discrimination was commonplace in education and athletics. Physical activity for girls and women was cast as unfeminine, and while schools poured money and other resources into programs for male students, budding female athletes were left to fend for themselves.

Kristen Stewart will receive the Performer Tribute and Magnolia Pictures chief Eamonn Bowles will get the Industry Tribute at next month’s Gotham Awards.

The event is returning to its longtime home, Cipriani Wall Street, for an in-person ceremony on November 29. That will once again position the Gothams in the vanguard of awards season as live events replace the endless online parade of last year’s Covid-impaired season.

Stewart’s current role is Princess Diana in Spencer, which world-premiered in Venice and will be distributed theatrically by Neon. She is known for her performances in the Twilight franchise, Personal Shopper, Seberg and Happiest Season, among other films.

Bowles launched Magnolia Pictures with partner Bill Banowsky in 2001. The company this week confirmed it had hired an investment bank to explore a potential sale, with its library of more than 500 films a sure draw in the streaming era. Magnolia releases have included Man on Wire,...

This is the weekend Hollywood has been waiting for. F9: The Fast Saga finally opens in the U.S. after over a year of delays, and it is the first major blockbuster release of the summer. It’s been a rocky summer movie season, with one bonafide hit (A Quiet Place Part II), a string of disappointments, and films that came somewhere in between. It is hard to know exactly where the industry stands and how to diagnose the lackluster grosses of many films. On one hand, there is still some segment of the audience that is reluctant to go back to the movies, and VOD availability for many films could be diminishing the turnout. On the other hand, maybe many of the films released so far have just not been the right films to draw the audience back. F9 might just be the movie to change that for many,...

To Heidi Ewing, they were simply Iván and Gerardo, a longtime couple who owned restaurants in New York, liked to go dancing, were wonderful company to be around. They had met in Mexico in 1994. Iván had a son and aspirations to be a chef. Gerardo had grown up on a cattle ranch in Chiapas and worked as a teacher. He spotted Iván, closeted at the time, in a gay bar and attracted his attention with a laser pointer. They were very young then. Now they were married, and middle-aged, and settled down.

They say truth is stranger than fiction, but more often than not it’s much sadder too. Where fiction likes to wrap things up in a tidy bow, real life is all about calculated compromise. In the case of Iván Garcia and Gerardo Zabaleta, whose touching love story is dramatized in the timely drama “I Carry You With Me,” the choice between a life together in the U.S. or with family in Mexico has no clear-cut answers. The narrative feature debut of Oscar-nominated documentarian Heidi Ewing (“Jesus Camp”),

“I Carry You With Me” operates on three separate timelines, often jumping between with little rhyme or reason. Ewing intercuts footage of the real Iván, now in early middle age and a successful chef in New York City, alongside the talented actor (Armando Espitia) dramatizing his life as a young man in Puebla, Mexico, with occasional flashes of his childhood self...

It’s always exciting when a filmmaker who is accomplished in one avenue takes a chance on a new venture, especially when that leap entails an unplanned switch from documentary to narrative. Prolific documentarian Heidi Ewing has long been known for her collaborations with Rachel Grady, including the Oscar-nominated 2006 film “Jesus Camp” and “One of Us,” a devastating portrait of ex-Hasidim which made waves when it premiered on Netflix in 2017. A master of non-fiction storytelling, it’s only fitting that Ewing would stumble into making her narrative debut while originally making a documentary.

Based on the true love story of two of Ewing’s friends, “I Carry You With Me” follows two men who fall in love as they navigate the dangerous move from Mexico to the U.S. The film premiered at the Sundance Film Festival earlier this year to warm reviews, where it was picked up by Sony Pictures Classics.

Sony Pictures Classics has released the first trailer for “I Carry You With Me” (“Te Llevo Conmigo”) from Heidi Ewing.

After premiering at the Sundance Film Festival in January, the pic is one of Mexico’s major hopefuls for the best international feature race at this year’s Academy Awards. The film won the audience and innovator awards at the Park City, Utah, festival.

Written by Ewing and Alan Page Arriaga, the movie tells the story of young, aspiring chef Iván (played remarkably by Armando Espitia), who works at a restaurant and dreams of being able to cook while supporting the mother of his child. After meeting a teacher named Gerardo (Christian Vazquez), who is an out gay man, the two develop an instant connection. This love causes Iván to make the dangerous and perilous journey to cross the border to find a life that can help him achieve his culinary dreams,...

“Heidi [Ewing] and I had always been very interested in sociopaths of all stripes,” Rachel Grady said in an interview with IndieWire.

Grady and Ewing are the directors of Showtime’s new true crime documentary, “Love Fraud.” The four-part series follows a group of women conned by one man, Richard Scott Smith, and the “revenge squad” that forms to take him down.

Grady and Ewing have created a filmography aimed at looking beneath the veneer, starting with their 2006 documentary, “Jesus Camp.” In the case of “Love Fraud,” the two wanted to look at the world of double lives, and initially, they set out to tell a story about someone with multiple families.

“You hear these stories, and it’s always extremely puzzling why the fuck anyone would do that,” Grady said.

It was producer Alex Takats who discovered the real story, stumbling onto a blog aimed at exposing Smith and the crimes he’d committed.

After months of anticipation, mobile-only streaming service Quibi will launch Monday with dozens of titles, all served up in “quick bites” of 10 minutes or less. Among them are eight documentaries, including one from Brent Hodge following small-town corruption allegations and another from producer Lena Waithe about sneaker culture.

Additionally, IndieWire has exclusively learned of new non-fiction efforts in development at Quibi from documentary luminaries Marina Zenovich (“Roman Polanski: Wanted and Desired”), Heidi Ewing and Rachel Grady (“Jesus Camp”), Morgan Neville (“Twenty Feet From Stardom”), Amy Berg (“Deliver Us From Evil”), and Chris Moukarbel (“Me at the Zoo”).

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Quibi also has projects in the pipeline from Jon Kasbe, Joanna Natasegara and Orlando Von Einsiedel, Julie Goldman, and Alex Gibney’s Jigsaw Productions.

If you forgot to call your mother on International Women’s Day, well, here’s a friendly reminder from Comedy Central.

Well-timed for release this Sunday, the trailer for the Comedy Central documentary “Call Your Mother” has dropped. In this documentary, stand-up comics you know and love — including Roy Wood Jr., Kristen Schaal, Jo Koy, Bridget Everett, Fortune Feimster, Louie Anderson, and many others — celebrate the women who raised them and made them funny. “Call Your Mother” premieres this Mother’s Day, May 10, on Comedy Central. Watch the trailer below.

“Call Your Mother” is directed by documentary stalwarts Heidi Ewing and Rachel Grady, the filmmakers behind “Jesus Camp,” set amid an evangelical Christian summer camp; “Freakonomics: The Movie,” based on the bestselling book; “One of Us,” which chronicles the lives of three ex-Hasidic Jews from Brooklyn; and “Norman Lear: Just Another Version of You,” about the famed television writer and producer.

Exclusive: Wme has inked filmmaker Heidi Ewing who recently directed, wrote and produced I Carry You With Me, which won this year’s Audience Award and Innovator Award in the Next! category at the Sundance Film Festival and was sold to Sony Pictures Classics and Stage 6 Films days into the festival.

Ewing was also nominated for an Oscar in the 2007 Feature Documentary category for Magnolia Pictures’ Jesus Camp. That doc followed the children who attend a Charismatic Christian summer camp outside Devils Lake, North Dakota, wishing that they’ll become the next Billy Graham.

Based on a true story, Ewing’s recent I Carry You With Me is an epic romance that follows two gay men from provincial Mexico as they chase the promise of social and economic freedoms in New York City. Spc will release the film theatrically in June.

Ewing also directed Loki Films’ 2012 doc Detropia which...

Winner of both prizes awarded in the Next category of the 2020 Sundance Film Festival, “I Carry You With Me” tells the true story of an undocumented gay couple from Mexico who risk their lives for love, liberty and the American Dream. Making her first foray into narrative filmmaking, documentary helmer Heidi Ewing began the project as a vérité portrait of her real-life subjects, Ivan and Gerardo, but cast actors to play the two men in reenactments of their early life — both as children and later, at the moment they met and fell in love.

Lgbtq movies out of Mexico are rare, and the idea to combine two styles of filmmaking is unique, but Ewing’s approach needs more cohesiveness. The narrative scenes are shot in a way that makes it hard to stay committed throughout, and the actors don’t seem to be playing the same two people we’re...

Sometimes a story just begs to be told. Documentary filmmaker Heidi Ewing (Oscar-nominated “Jesus Camp”) thought she knew her good friends, Iván and his partner Gerardo, who she met in a lower Manhattan neighborhood bar in 2005. The Spanish-speaking Ewing (thanks to an Cuban old boyfriend) hung out socially with them, danced salsa, and they came to her wedding in 2007.

But eight years ago at Pizza Noodle on Main Street, when “Detropia” played Sundance, the couple told her more of their history. “There were dimensions to my friends I didn’t know existed,” she told me on the phone as she waited for her reps to close a deal with Sony Pictures Classics for her first narrative feature, “I Carry You With Me.” She wrote and directed this true romance about her friends today, as well as “a past that shaped them in so many ways.”

Their story haunted Ewing, as...

Sometimes a story just begs to be told. Documentary filmmaker Heidi Ewing (Oscar-nominated “Jesus Camp”) thought she knew her good friends, Iván and his partner Gerardo, who she met in a lower Manhattan neighborhood bar in 2005. The Spanish-speaking Ewing (thanks to an Cuban old boyfriend) hung out socially with them, danced salsa, and they came to her wedding in 2007.

But eight years ago at Pizza Noodle on Main Street, when “Detropia” played Sundance, the couple told her more of their history. “There were dimensions to my friends I didn’t know existed,” she told me on the phone as she waited for her reps to close a deal with Sony Pictures Classics for her first narrative feature, “I Carry You With Me.” She wrote and directed this true romance about her friends today, as well as “a past that shaped them in so many ways.”

Their story haunted Ewing, as...

Park City – There is a beautiful love story at the center of “I Carry You With Me (Te Llevo Conmigo)” which debuted Sunday at the 2020 Sundance Film Festival. It’s not only moving, but it’s remarkably based on the lives of two real-life people. Heidi Ewing, an Oscar-nominated filmmaker for the documentary “Jesus Camp,” makes her narrative debut chronicling this unique story, a tale that could have been a gay romance for the ages. Instead, Ewing makes a creative decision in the final act of the picture which simply sucks all the air out of the room. It’s almost unbelievable how wrong that decision turned out to be and I’m flummoxed to recall any other film that made such a wrong turn.

Continue reading ‘I Carry You With Me’: A Beautiful Gay Love Story Makes An Unfortunate Creative Turn [Sundance Review] at The Playlist.

Exclusive: Following the November 1 launch of Apple TV+, the streamer is realigning its executive ranks under toppers Zack Van Amburg and Jamie Erlicht, combining development and current into a single-executive structure.

Kim Rozenfeld is leaving as head of current scripted programming and docu/unscripted content. He will return to his producing roots with a first-look deal at Apple for his company Half Full Productions.

Apple TV+ head of scripted development Matt Cherniss will now also oversee current scripted series. Molly Thompson, who joined Apple as Head of Documentaries in April, reporting to Rozenfeld, will continue to oversee documentary film and series programming, development and current.

Former Sony TV head of current programming Rozenfeld was one of the first executive hires after Van Amburg and Erlicht left Sony TV in 2017 to lead worldwide video programming for Apple.

Before joining Sony TV as Evp Current Programming in 2011, Rozenfeld was a scripted series producer based at ABC Studios,...

Thompson founded A&E IndieFilms and has a string of documentary producing credits.

Molly Thompson, the founder of A&E IndieFilms and executive producer of documentary films including Jesus Camp, Life, Animated and City of Ghosts, has joined Apple as the tech giant’s head of documentaries.

Thompson founded A&E IndieFilms, feature production arm of Us cable channel company A+E Networks, where she also served as head of documentary films.

A&E IndieFilms releases have included the Watergate docuseries, Sundance entry Studio 54, Cartel Land and Murderball. Thompson also served as executive producer on The Tillman Story and The Imposter...

Thompson founded A&E IndieFilms and has a string of documentary producing credits.

Molly Thompson, the founder of A&E IndieFilms and executive producer of documentary films including Jesus Camp, Life, Animated and City of Ghosts, has joined Apple as the tech giant’s head of documentaries.

Thompson founded A&E IndieFilms, feature production arm of Us cable channel company A+E Networks, where she also served as head of documentary films.

A&E IndieFilms releases have included the Watergate docuseries, Sundance entry Studio 54, Cartel Land and Murderball. Thompson also served as executive producer on The Tillman Story and The Imposter...

Molly Thompson has joined Apple’s upcoming streaming service as its head of documentaries.

Thompson previously founded A&E Indie Films, the feature film production unit of A+E Networks. She was also previously the head of documentary films for A+E Networks. Recent documentaries she has executive produced include “The Clinton Affair,” Charles Ferguson’s “Watergate” docuseries, “Studio 54,” and “City of Ghosts.” She was also an executive producer on celebrated documentaries like “Life, Animated,” “Cartel Land,” “Murderball,” and “Jesus Camp.”

She also executive produced Amir Bar-Lev’s “The Tillman Story” and Bart Layton’s “The Imposter,” as well as two narrative features for Lifetime Films. Those were “Lila & Eve,” starring Viola Davis and Jennifer Lopez, and “Paris Can Wait,” starring Diane Lane and Alec Baldwin.

Additionally, Thompson served as executive producer on all feature films produced under the History Films banner, including Werner Herzog’s “Meeting Gorbachev” and “Cave of Forgotten Dreams,...

Apple has hired A&E IndieFilms founder Molly Thompson as Head of Documentaries.

Thompson, who also served as Head of Documentary films for A+E Networks, has executive produced such projects as The Clinton Affair; the docuseries Watergate; City of Ghosts; Life, Animated; Cartel Land; Murderball; and Jesus Camp.

Thompson served as executive producer on all feature films produced under the History Films banner, including Werner Herzog’s Meeting Gorbachev — which will have its premiere at the Tribeca Film Festival — and Cave of Forgotten Dreams, Janet Tobias’ No Place on Earth, Errol Morris’ The Unknown Known: The Life and Times of Donald Rumsfeld, Douglas Tirola’s Drunk Stoned Brilliant Dead: The Story of the National Lampoon and the Johnny Knoxville-produced Being Evel.

Among other projects, Thompson also Ep’d Amir Bar-Lev’s Emmy-winning The Tillman Story, Bart Layton’s BAFTA-winning The Imposter and two narrative features for Lifetime Films: Lila & Eve,...

Directing partners Heidi Ewing and Rachel Grady — selected for Filmmaker‘s 25 New Faces in 2005 — first came on to the filmmaking scene with heartfelt documentaries The Boys of Baraka and Oscar-nominated Jesus Camp. In their latest documentary One of Us, currently available on Netflix and just shortlisted for the Best Documentary Academy Award, their signature cinema verite style of filmmaking unveiled a level of suspense and drama they were not expecting. Centered around three people who are attempting to leave the tight reigns of their New York-based Hasidic Jewish communities, the film goes deep inside an overly controlling, […]...

New York City’s annual Doc NYC festival kicks off this week, including a full-to-bursting slate of some of this year’s most remarkable documentaries. If you’ve been looking to beef up on your documentary consumption, Doc NYC is the perfect chance to check out a wide variety of some of the year’s best fact-based features. Ahead, we pick out 14 of our most anticipated films from the fest, including some awards contenders, a handful of buzzy debuts, and a number of festival favorites. Take a look and start filling up your schedule now.

Doc NYC runs November 9 – 16 in New York City.

“EuroTrump”

Donald Trump may seem like a sui generis figure, a one-of-a-kind monster who was forged in a perfect storm of racism, tweets, and chaos, but history suggests that he’s really just a new breed of an old type. You don’t even have to look...

There are no talking heads in “One of Us,” Heidi Ewing and Rachel Grady’s expertly crafted portrait of three ex-Hasidic Jews adjusting to secular life. Refreshingly, the interviews in this tense documentary take place on the move; there is a restless energy to the way Luzer drives around Los Angeles in search of auditions, or Etty’s furtive glances through shuttered blinds. The three subjects of “One of Us” are always looking over their shoulders, whether in precaution of real threats or just to make sense of the brave new world in which they find themselves.

Centering on only three subjects, Ewing and Grady keep the film’s focus narrow and intimately human. Luzer is the most charismatic of the bunch; an aspiring actor who got his start playing Hasidic characters, he learned about the secular world as a teenager by secretly watching movies in his car. “The plan...

by Glenn Dunks

Not content to let scientology corner the market in controversial religion exposes, directors Heidi Ewing and Rachel Grady focus their attention on New York’s Hasidic community in their latest feature. A dramatic change of pace after last year’s celebrity bio-doc Norman Lear: Just Another Version of You, the filmmakers return at least somewhat to the themes of their most famous film, the Oscar-nominated Jesus Camp. Yet despite the potential cross-over to be found in the pair that seek to uncover the alarming practises of organised religion, One of Us is a much different beast.

Unlike that earlier film, which trained its cameras on the inner-circle of a camp for raising the next generation of evangelicals, One of Us observes from the outside, following the stories of three individuals who have attempted to extract themselves from the community and tell some often haunting and traumatic tales of their times within it.

Those who’ve been to a live studio taping know how exhausting they are. To sit in the audience, you need to show up five hours before the taping. You get a number and are told to leave and come back an hour before. Then, the interns line everybody up according to their number and shuffle the audience inside. The actual taping isn’t short, either. It takes about three to five hours, depending on the show. It’s a full day experience, and not necessarily too pleasant when you don’t expect to win anything.

So why did Ted Slauson, a math teacher from Texas, attend “The Price Is Right” 37 times? Well, he didn’t do it because he liked to spend his Mondays waiting around in a cold studio.

Read More:‘Face Places’ Clip: Agnes Varda Goes Off Subject in Charming Look at Latest Documentary — Watch

“Perfect Bid: The Contestant Who Knew Too Much...

Friday the 13th is supposed to be an unlucky day, but fans of “Crazy Ex-Girlfriend” may disagree. Rachel Bloom’s romantic musical dramedy is set to return on that fateful night next month and, in its infinite wisdom, the CW has seen fit to release a new trailer and whet the appetites of everyone excited to once again immerse themselves in the glory that is West Covina, California. Watch below.

Read More:‘Crazy Ex-Girlfriend’ Co-Creator Aline Brosh McKenna on the Song From the Show That’s Stuck In Her Head

Not much happens in the 30-second spot, which sees its scorned heroine wearing the robe and beanie that were meant to celebrate her nuptials and looking especially, well, crazy. Ominous onscreen text assures us that she’ll go “to the extreme” this time around.

Read More:‘Crazy Ex-Girlfriend’: Rachel Bloom Doesn’t Care If You Consider Her in New...

When Chinese filmmaker Nanfu Wang — best known to most audiences for her shortlisted documentary “Hooligan Sparrow” — arrived in America, she was possessed by some unique notions regarding certain parts of her newly adopted homeland. For Wang, Florida was “an exotic frontier full of theme parks, prehistoric swamp creatures, and sunburned denizens.”

Ever searching and investigative, Wang took those ideas straight to the source, traveling to Florida and exploring. Once there, she discovered an unlikely subject, and an even more unlikely hero.

Read More:20 Female Directors Who Will Rule This Fall Festival Season, Including Agnes Varda, Greta Gerwig, Dee Rees, and More

As Wang recently told IndieWire, “Every year since I was 20, I’ve given myself the same birthday gift — a last-minute trip to a place I’ve never visited before. On my birthday in 2012 — the first year I lived in NYC, I bought a one-way ticket to Florida. Little did I know,...

“Jesus Camp” and “Detropia” documentarian duo Heidi Ewing and Rachel Grady return to familiar territory in their latest feature, a Netflix original that will premiere this week at Tiff before going on to the streaming giant later this fall. The new film sees the pair going inside yet an insular community, all in hopes of illuminating without judgement.

Filmed over the course of three years, the film follows a trio of Hasidic Jews, all struggling to break away from the only world they’ve ever known. From actor Luzer, still reeling from the effects of leaving the fold nearly a decade earlier, to teenager Ari, haunted by years of abuse, the film turns a sensitive eye on its subjects and their struggles. But its housewife Etty, a mother of seven who initially seeks to leave her violent husband before discovering the shocking fallout of her choice, that will likely set audiences alight.

The Toronto International Film Festival kicks off this week, and with it, the rest of a very busy fall festival season. In preparation for the lauded festival, we’ve hand-picked 20 films we can’t wait to see, from the starriest of premieres to the most unexpected of offerings. Check them out below.

“mother!”

Darren Aronofsky has veered off in many unpredictable directions over the years, but at his core, he’s a master at subverting the horror/thriller genres: From “Pi” to “Black Swan,” the filmmaker excels at taking his stories in creepy, unpredictable directions in which it’s hard to tell how much we can believe onscreen — and whether his characters have lost their minds. That mode certainly seems to be in play for “mother!”, which appears to be a “Rosemary’s Baby”-like tale of a married couple (Jennifer Laurence and Javier Bardem) whose home is infiltrated by...

Following an initial round of premieres and the announcement that Borg vs. McEnroe will open Toronto International Film Festival 2017, they’ve now announced their lineup for Midnight Madness and Documentaries. Leading the pack of our most-anticipated among midnight tiles is Brawl in Cell Block 99, which is S. Craig Zahler’s follow-up to Bone Tomahawk and will premiere at Venice beforehand. There’s also the latest film from Joseph Kahn, Bodied, which will open the sidebar, and the first trailer has landed.

On the documentary side, there is Frederick Wiseman’s Ex Libris – The New York Public Library, as well as new films from Morgan Spurlock, Heidi Ewing (Jesus Camp), Brett Morgen (Kurt Cobain: Montage of Heck), and more. Check out the new additions below, along with images and trailers where available.

Midnight Madness

Midnight Madness Opening Film

Bodied Joseph Kahn, USA

World Premiere

Our #TIFF17 Midnight Madness Opening Night Film is @JosephKahn’s Bodied,...

The race always begins at Sundance, but the Toronto International Film Festival documentary lineup will impact the list of Oscar contenders — and this year, without clear frontrunners, Tiff’s influence will be greater than ever.

Every year, Thom Powers leads the Tiff documentary programmers through an enormous number of submissions to cull 22 selections. “It never gets any easier to make those decisions,” said Powers, who also programs influential November festival Doc NYC. “This year we’re going to see a greater range of different documentaries spread across the fall festivals, instead of a cluster of films that moves from festival to festival. More films will get more opportunities at the festivals this fall.”

Here’s a list of 10 must-sees for Tiff 2017 with potential to shake up the awards race.

1. “Super Size Me 2: Holy Chicken!”: Morgan Spurlock’s under-the-radar sequel to his 2005 Oscar nominee focuses on the new craze...

The race always begins at Sundance, but the Toronto International Film Festival documentary lineup will impact the list of Oscar contenders — and this year, without clear frontrunners, Tiff’s influence will be greater than ever.

Every year, Thom Powers leads the Tiff documentary programmers through an enormous number of submissions to cull 22 selections. “It never gets any easier to make those decisions,” said Powers, who also programs influential November festival Doc NYC. “This year we’re going to see a greater range of different documentaries spread across the fall festivals, instead of a cluster of films that moves from festival to festival. More films will get more opportunities at the festivals this fall.”

Here’s a list of 10 must-sees for Tiff 2017 with potential to shake up the awards race.

1. “Super Size Me 2: Holy Chicken!”: Morgan Spurlock’s under-the-radar sequel to his 2005 Oscar nominee focuses on the new craze...

Catherine Pearson Feb 22, 2017

Documentary fans are well served by these 11 great documentary series and features, currently available on Netflix UK...

In recent years, even months, Netflix has upped its game. No longer just a site to instantly stream an old title you might have once picked up in Blockbuster, it's become a hub of quality new and original film and television and this is by no means limited to its vast selection of fiction.

See related The world of the Peaky Blinders

With the scope of possibility in visual effects and the boundlessness of imagination there are very few places we cannot explore in fiction nowadays… that is unless we explore stories that are stranger than fiction. There is a tangible thirst for the real; the overwhelming response to recent Netflix documentary Making A Murderer in the news and social media, as just one example, exposes the desire for and...

The documentary community is not backing down from Donald Trump. At the Doc NYC annual Visionaries Tribute lunch in New York Thursday, four honorees from the documentary world received prestigious awards, but rather than bask in the glow of accolades, the winners seized their time in the spotlight to address the urgent need to expose the truth now more than ever as the start of Trump’s presidency draws near.

Read More: Doc NYC 2016: 13 Movies We Can’t Wait to See at the Festival

“I don’t think the election of Trump changes anybody’s personal agenda,” Jonathan Demme said after receiving one of two lifetime achievement awards presented Thursday, the first day of the one-week documentary festival. “We still have our agendas and we’re still going to push for meaningful progressive change. The bar is just higher.”

The other lifetime achievement award recipient, Stanley Nelson, told the...

The idea behind the Local Voices ad campaign is to capture the concerns that everyday Americans have about presidential hopeful Donald Trump in unscripted, personal commentaries that later air as one-minute ads in the same swing state communities where they were filmed. The key is to find voices who belong to community leaders who aren’t normal Hillary Clinton supporters, may they be conservatives or generally apolitical figures.

Read More about Local Voices: How Filmmakers Are Making a Difference in Swing States

In swing states where the voters have been confronted with constant barrage of political ads, the other key ingredient is authenticity, so they are not dismissed as just another manufactured political message.

To accomplish this, founder Lee Hirsch (“Bully”) turned to fellow documentary filmmakers and recruited some of the top filmmakers working in nonfiction, including Amir Bar-Lev, Amy Berg (“West of Memphis”), Marshall Curry, Heidi Ewing and Rachel Grady...

The idea behind the Local Voices ad campaign is to capture the concerns that everyday Americans have about presidential hopeful Donald Trump in unscripted, personal commentaries that later air as one-minute ads in the same swing state communities where they were filmed. The key is to find voices who belong to community leaders who aren’t normal Hillary Clinton supporters, may they be conservatives or generally apolitical figures.

Read More about Local Voices: How Filmmakers Are Making a Difference in Swing States

In swing states where the voters have been confronted with constant barrage of political ads, the other key ingredient is authenticity, so they are not dismissed as just another manufactured political message.

To accomplish this, founder Lee Hirsch (“Bully”) turned to fellow documentary filmmakers and recruited some of the top filmmakers working in nonfiction, including Amir Bar-Lev (“Happy Valley, “The Tillman Story”), Amy Berg (“West of Memphis”), Marshall Curry (“Street Fight,...

Morgan Spurlock may have the perfect surprise ending to his upcoming documentary about the group of armed militants who took over an Oregon federal building and wildlife refuge earlier this year. On Thursday, all seven anti-government militia members were acquitted of conspiracy and weapons charges, the New York Post reports. The eighth member of their group, Lavoy Finicum, was killed by police during the standoff.

Read More: Morgan Spurlock Boards Doc About The Right-Wing ‘Patriots’ Who Occupied Oregon’s National Wildlife Refuge

The militia leaders Ammon and Ryan Bundy are the sons of Cliven Bundy, who led a similar armed standoff with federal authorities at his Nevada ranch in 2014. After the verdict was announced Thursday, court officers had to tase and subdue Ammon Bundy lawyer Marcus Mumford, who began screaming that his client should be released immediately. Ammon is still being held, however, for charges related to the 2014 standoff.

Spurlock...

James + Semaj is a column where James Franco talks to his reverse self, Semaj, about new films. Rather than a conventional review, it is place where James and Semaj can muse about ideas that the films provoke. James loves going to the movies and talking about them. But a one-sided take on a movie, in print, might be misconstrued as a review. As someone in the industry it could be detrimental to James’s career if he were to review his peers, because unlike the book industry—where writers review other writer’s books—the film industry is highly collaborative, and a bad review of a peer could create problems. So, assume that James (and Semaj) love all these films. What they’re interested in talking about is all the ways the films inspire them, and make them think. James is me, and Semaj is the other side of me.

The idea behind the Local Voices neighbor-to-neighbor campaign is simple: use a documentary approach to capture the concerns every day Americans have about Donald Trump in unscripted, personal commentaries and then air them as one-minute ads in the same swing state communities where they were filmed.

Filmmaker Lee Hirsch (“Bully”), who started the Local Voices Democratic Super Pac in 2008, has spent the last three election cycles studying and experimenting with how best to engage and motivate voters.

Read More: The Presidential Debate ‘Late Night’ Helped Prove That Seth Meyers is the Host Network TV Needs

“I’ve seen the same thing over and over again,” Hirsch wrote IndieWire, “election season is intense, and perceived community norms lead to an almost palpable intimidation that suppresses an honest public dialogue about the presidential candidates, and has the deepest affect on those who might be leaning towards the democratic ticket.”

See More Local...

Curious to know what movies and TV shows are coming to Netflix over the next few weeks? Get a head start and mark your calendars using the list below, just released to us by Netflix. But first, here are our editors' 10 must-see recommendations from below's incoming crop of movies: 1. Dazed and Confused (1993) 2. Ferris Bueller's Day Off (1986) 3. Three Kings (1999) 4. Dheepan (2015) 5. Quiz Show (1994) 6. Unforgiven (1992) 7. 13th (2016) ­ Netflix Original 8. Mascots (2016) ­ Netflix Original 9. Big Eyes (2014) 10. Jesus Camp (2006) Check out all of October's new Netflix releases -- as well as the films and TV shows expiring -- below.   Avail...

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Next month, Netflix offers up a big selection of films of all stripes — modern to classic, animated to live action, Best Picture winners to teen phenomenons — and we’ve picked seven that you should watch as soon as humanly possible, either for the first time or as part of a nostalgic little binge. Enjoy.

1. “Unforgiven” (available October 1)

The winner of four Oscars, including Best Picture, Clint Eastwood’s 1992 film “Unforgiven” is the last Western he directed and starred in, and he made it count. About an aging outlaw tasked with one final job, the film examines the myths of the West and how they’re perverted and distorted over time, as well as the contradictions within established national archetypes. It’s arguably Eastwood’s defining masterpiece, and one of the very best films of the 90s. See it immediately.

2. “Dazed and Confused” (available October 1)

The 1993 cult classic “Dazed and Confused...