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NYC Weekend Watch is our weekly round-up of repertory offerings.

Film Forum

The Wages of Fear plays in a 4K restoration, while Labyrinth screens on Sunday.

IFC Center

A 4K restoration of Carrie plays daily; Bram Stoker’s Dracula, Ichi the Killer, Threads, and Alien show late.

Roxy Cinema

Friday brings Bob Saget and Norm MacDonald’s seminal Dirty Work on 35mm, while City Dudes returns on Saturday; Adrian Lyne’s Unfaithful shows on a print Sunday.

Museum of Modern Art

A celebration of Robert Frank’s centennial continues.

Museum of the Moving Image

The Frank Oz series has its final weekend.

Metrograph

Three… Extremes, F for Fake, Practical Magic, Man on Wire, A Terra-Cotta Warrior, and Ozu’s Good Morning show on 35mm; Story By Lillian Lee and Absconded Art begin while The World Is a Stage, My Crazy Uncle (or Aunt), Insomnia, and Crush the Strong, Help the Weak continue.

Hhmi Tangled Bank Studios, Tiger Baby, and Emaho Films have set the world premiere of Taira Malaney’s “Turtle Walker” at Doc NYC.

The documentary chronicles the life of Indian sea turtle conservationist Satish Bhaskar. Directed by Malaney in her feature debut, “Turtle Walker” explores Bhaskar’s journey along India’s coastlines in the late 1970s, where he studied and worked to protect endangered sea turtles. The film also examines the impact of the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami on sea turtle habitats.

Submarine Deluxe, the hybrid sales, production, and distribution company, has acquired sales rights. Run by brothers and co-founders Dan Braun and Josh Braun, the company has a track record of success with documentary sales, having been involved with six of the last twelve Academy Award-winning documentaries. These include “American Factory,” “Citizenfour,” “20 Feet from Stardom,” “Man on Wire,” “The Cove,” and “Searching for Sugar Man.”

Prior to completion, “Turtle...

Predicting the winner of the Best Documentary Feature Oscar becomes a lot easier on December 17 when the academy announces the 15 films that make the shortlist. Those semi-finalists will be culled from the more than 100 titles that qualified this year for consideration. (Scroll down for the most up-to-date 2025 Oscar predictions for Best Documentary Feature.)

To winnow those down to a manageable number, the academy adds newly eligible documentary feature to a virtual screening room available to all 500-plus members of the documentary branch. While all members are encouraged to watch as many of these as they can, one-fifth of the voters are assigned each title. Each branch member will submit a preferential ballot listing their top 15 choices.

All of these ballots are collated to determine the 15 semi-finalists. Branch members are then encouraged to watch films on that list which they haven’t seen yet before casting another preferential ballot with their top five choices.

“This film contains extremely dangerous and illegal activities,” reads the Jackass-esque title card at the beginning of Skywalkers: A Love Story. “Do not attempt to imitate.” No kidding. After watching a film like this, you might think twice about going higher than the second story of a building. Maybe a nice comfortable mezzanine, at a push. It’s a feature-length documentary account of “rooftopping”, a singularly social media-driven craze (that seems also singularly Russian) in which young people illicitly ascend rooftops, scaffolding, cranes and other extremely tall structures, in order to get the most epic of selfies, the grandest of panoramas, the most Instagram-friendly drone videos. If you caught the 2022 palm-sweating B-movie thriller Fall — well, this is basically the nonfiction version.

Director Jeff Zimbalist and co-director Maria Bukhonina cannily decide not to simply tell a story about this unusual phenomenon, but focus instead on a couple within that...

After making the leap to narrative filmmaking last year with “Nyad,” Oscar winners Chai Vasarhelyi and Jimmy Chin have returned to their documentary roots and are currently at work in the edit suite prepping their next doc feature — “Lost in the Amazon” (working title), about how four Indigenous children survived for 40 days in the Amazon jungle after a plane crash in 2023. The story of their disappearance and eventual recovery transfixed the global media.

Vasarhelyi and Chin co-directed and produced the film with Colombian filmmaker Juan Camilo Cruz for National Geographic.

The feature docu will tell the story of the struggle for survival of the four children — who ranged in age from 11 months to 13 years — in the guerilla-held jungles of Colombia after a plane they were aboard crashed and killed their mother. The children survived for 40 days in the deep Amazonian rainforest using their Indigenous knowledge of the jungle and the...

Archival producers spend their days immersed in history – cultural, political, or personal, depending on the project. Yet, historically, their specialized work has often been overlooked, even though it’s key to the Ken Burns canon and other great documentaries like Man on Wire, 13th, The Fog of War, Apollo 11, How to Survive a Plague, They Shall Not Grow Old, and so many others.

The recently formed Archival Producers Alliance is helping to address this fundamental lack of understanding of what archival producers do and how they do it. And it’s also alerting the doc community to foundational challenges posed by the rapid emergence of AI.

In the latest episode of Deadline’s Doc Talk podcast, we speak with Debra McClutchy, a member of the APA who earned an Oscar nomination for co-directing the archive-driven short film The Martha Mitchell Effect. She discusses where archival producers find the rarities...

Stars: Michael Fassbender, Kaimana, Rachel House, Oscar Kightley, David Fane, Beulah Koale, Will Arnett, Elisabeth Moss, Uli Latukefu, Chris Alosio, Lehi Makisi Falepapalangi, Rhys Darby | Written by Taika Waititi, Iain Morris | Directed by Taika Waititi

Released in 2014, Next Goal Wins was a phenomenal documentary from directors Mike Brett and Steve Jamison which followed the American Samoa football team as they attempted to persevere following a historic 31-0 loss to Australia. Much in the vein of Grey Gardens, Man On Wire, and Marwencol, the acclaimed documentary has been dramatised into a feature film, this time by Taika Waititi and The Inbetweeners co-creator Iain Morris.

Next Goal Wins focuses on Dutch American coach Thomas Rongen (Michael Fassbender), whose only option to evade being fired is to coach the American Samoa team. As he arrives with a bad attitude and a drinking problem, it soon dawns on Thomas that he may be able...

Four documentary filmmakers have been selected to participate in Yeti’s inaugural Pretty Wild fellowship program, which supports documentaries that give a fresh perspective on the outdoors and the people and stories that live there.

The projects are: Tasha Van Zandt’s “The Arctic Women,” Mike Day’s “Baby Highlander,” Emily Cohen Ibañez’s “River” and Juliana Schatz Preston’s “Rare Bird.”

The four filmmakers, chosen from 330 submissions spanning 30 countries, are currently in Austin, Texas, for the first of two immersive retreats featured in the eight-month program.

In addition to $50,000 in unrestricted grants, each of the four selected filmmakers will receive guidance throughout the development of their films from a board of mentors. That includes the retreat in Austin, which comes to a close on March 7, as well as another retreat in September in Camden, Maine, leading up to Points North’s 20th annual Camden International Film Festival. The retreats include feedback sessions,...

There’s a cheesiness to the title of the new documentary “Skywalkers: A Love Story,” with that heart-on-its-sleeve subtitle baked in. Despite the images of lightsabers it may convey, this Sundance documentary premiere is not about Luke and his “Star Wars” kin, but rather two Russian daredevils who scale towering buildings to create social media content, and also happen to be in a romantic relationship.

If their portrayals in Jeff Zimbalist’s film are accurate, Angela Nikolau and Vanya Kuznetsov have a sweet corniness to them, thanks to all their platitudes about how their daring and illegal sport is also a metaphor for their love. The result is a film that mixes tense, thriller-like scenes of Nikolau and Kuznetsov in action with an ending that’s almost aggressively sentimental.

“Skywalkers” plays a little bit like a “Man on Wire” for the Instagram age, and it’s at its best when...

That Skywalkers: A Love Story maintains its grip on your attention despite some of director Jeff Zimbalist’s florid aesthetic choices testifies to the strength of the documentary’s central narrative. At the heart of this terrifying and exhilarating Sundance entry about two Russian daredevils trying to save their relationship is a poignant lesson in trust.

Before Angela Nikolau and Ivan “Beerkus” Kuznetsov fell in love, they were rivals. The Russian rooftoppers — a term used to describe people who illegally scale tall structures without protective equipment — engaged in an unofficial competition of sorts. Nikolau, who was one of the few, if not the only, women in the sport at the time, felt both inspired by and envious of Beerkus’ success. Unlike other rooftoppers, the soft-spoken urban adventurer’s Instagram posts about his architectural conquests lent a professional air to the illegal activity. This posture partially influences Nikolau to see each...

“Skywalkers: A Love Story” lends new meaning to the words “high anxiety.” It’s a documentary set in the world of rooftoopers, the new generation of daredevils who scale the tallest buildings they can find, climbing to the tips of skyscrapers and posting top-of-the-world footage of themselves on social media. Directed by Jeff Zimbalist (a former rooftopper himself), the film is brilliantly edited, and it’s full of amazing, terrifying, transfixing verité shots of figures walking on girders, sprawling on ledges, and scaling the spindly, often curved spires that shoot out of the tops of buildings.

The movie puts us right up there with these outlaw thrill-seekers, and even if you don’t happen to possess a fear of heights, the images are so vivid in their vicarious immediacy that you may tilt your head ever so slightly one way or another, trying to keep “yourself” from falling. If you...

Oscar-winning “My Octopus Teacher” documentarian Pippa Ehrlich is one of the voices behind a surprise A24 doc, streaming quietly on Prime Video since Friday, January 12.

Titled “My Mercury,” the film follows then-28-year-old conservationist Yves Chesselet, who sheds the comforts of modern living to relocate to the remote Mercury Island off the coast of Namibia. Chesselet is determined to bring 15,000 seals off the island and have Mercury Island solely be home to the critically endangered seabirds of the South Atlantic.

Chesselet’s sister Joelle Chesselet directed the documentary, with Ehrlich co-directing. Joelle said in a press statement, “My brother’s island saga has held me spellbound for three decades, challenging me to do justice to his tale of exhilaration, courage, positive masculinity and sacrifice. This journey has matured into what I see as a parable for our times, chronicling an intimate account of a re-wilding experiment and then zooming out to the choices we,...

Stars: Michael Fassbender, Kaimana, Rachel House, Oscar Kightley, David Fane, Beulah Koale, Will Arnett, Elisabeth Moss, Uli Latukefu, Chris Alosio, Lehi Makisi Falepapalangi, Rhys Darby | Written by Taika Waititi, Iain Morris | Directed by Taika Waititi

Released in 2014, Next Goal Wins was a phenomenal documentary from directors Mike Brett and Steve Jamison which followed the American Samoa football team as they attempted to persevere following a historic 31-0 loss to Australia. Much in the vein of Grey Gardens, Man On Wire, and Marwencol, the acclaimed documentary has been dramatised into a feature film, this time by Taika Waititi and The Inbetweeners co-creator Iain Morris.

Next Goal Wins focuses on Dutch American coach Thomas Rongen (Michael Fassbender), whose only option to evade being fired is to coach the American Samoa team. As he arrives with a bad attitude and a drinking problem, it soon dawns on Thomas that he may be able...

Exclusive: Submarine has acquired worldwide distribution rights to Ilya Chaiken’s music documentary feature Pretty Ugly: The Story of the Lunachicks, ahead of its world premiere at Doc NYC.

Concord Originals, the narrative content creation division of L.A.-based music management company Concord, has come on board to finance and produce.

The film revolves around influential underground New York punk band Les Lunachicks which had its heyday in the 1990s with songs such as Fallopian Rhapsody and Bitterness Barbie, and performed live with the likes of No Doubt, Green Day, The Offspring, The Go-Go’s, Nofx, Rancid, The Ramones, Rev Horton Heat, The Buzzcocks and Joan Jett.

Director and producer Chaiken catches up with the group decades after its messy break-up as its members attempt to reunite for one last show.

“I’ve been a devoted Lunachicks fangirl since I lucked into their very first show in 1988 when we were all teenagers.

Welcome to the world of documentaries, where real lives and real stories come to life on the screen. There’s something profoundly moving about witnessing the human experience captured through the lens of a camera – the raw emotions, the untold struggles, and the amazing moments that shape our lives. As a documentary enthusiast who believes in the power of storytelling, I’m excited to share with you a curated list of seven documentaries that offer a deep dive into the complexities of our existence.

Related: 10 Must-Watch Documentaries That Changed Public Perception

These documentaries are more than just films; they’re windows into the lives of individuals who have experienced the spectrum of human emotions and challenges. From the comfort of your couch, you’ll have the privilege of walking in their shoes, experiencing their journeys, and gaining insights that might just change your perspective on the world.

Each documentary on...

It’s always tricky to bring the lives of literary greats to the big screen. There’s a balance to be struck between the evocation of their domestic existence and their work. Irish writer Samuel Beckett is perhaps an even more difficult challenge than most since his works were largely absurdist and with a particularly strong authorial voice.

There’s some indication that writer Neil Forsyth, who has previously written TV series including Bob Servant and Guilt, is trying to avoid a straightforward biopic, largely by a device which sees Beckett have conversations with a version of himself, but nevertheless the end result feels distinctly staid and traditional. This is especially surprising given that the director is James Marsh, who has shown a nimble aptitude for embracing experimental and edgy elements in his films, including Man On Wire and The King. Dance First is the closing night movie of San.

Mega Merger

The proposed merger between Indian powerhouse Zee Entertainment Enterprises and Sony‘s Indian TV businesses, which has been nearly two years in the making, is likely to be delayed further, Sony said in a filing on Friday. The companies cleared a key regulatory hurdle in August, but there are other matters pending, especially that of leadership. The original plan had foreseen that Zee’s CEO Punit Goenka would be its captain, while Sony would own a 51% controlling stake. However, Goenka was banned from managing any listed company in India following an interim regulatory report that accused him and Zee founder Subhash Chandra of running the company for their own benefit and “siphoning off” money.

Goenka appealed the decision with India’s Securities Appellate Tribunal, who heard his plea on Wednesday but has reserved a verdict for at least a week.

On Friday, Sony said: “Both companies continue to...

UK director James Marsh’s literary biopic Dance First, starring Gabriel Byrne as iconic Irish writer Samuel Beckett, will close the 71st San Sebastian Film Festival.

The film is sold by London and Paris-based Film Constellation.

As per its synopsis, the biopic touches on various phases in Beckett’s life from “Parisian bon vivant, to World War II Resistance fighter, Nobel Prize-winning playwright, philandering husband and recluse.”

Its focus, however, is on Beckett’s reaction to winning the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1969, which was a turning point in his life as he grappled with his own inner demons.

Byrne is joined in the cast by French actress Sandrine Bonnaire as Beckett’s wife.

Marsh has a long relationship with San Sebastian.

His Academy Award-winning documentary for Man on Wire (2009), directed with Simon Chinn, played at the festival in 2008.

Prior to that his early work Wisconsin Death Trip screened in...

“Dance First,” a portrait of Irish writer Samuel Beckett starring Gabriel Byrne and directed by Oscar winner James Marsh, will close this year’s San Sebastian Film Festival, playing out of competition.

The closing film screening, on Sept. 30, will mark the film’s world premiere.

Byrne, a memorable lead in “The Usual Suspects” and “Miller’s Crossing” who also won a Golden Globe for his performance in “In Treatment,” plays Beckett. The Nobel Prize-winning playwright was a Parisian bon vivant and WWII resistance fighter who became a recluse, living the last years of his life in a single room in a nursing home, ashamed of past actions and convinced that for much of his life he had been a failure.

U.K. director Marsh won an Academy Award for best documentary feature in 2009 with “Man on Wire.” He also directed the Stephen Hawking biopic “The Theory of Everything,” which earned five nominations at the 2015 Oscars,...

It’s a new month, and Hulu subscribers are getting a slew of new movies and TV shows to enjoy.

June 1 is jam-packed with more than 30 titles that have landed on the streamer, including the seventh and final season of Ava DuVernay’s “Queen Sugar,” the Jack Nicholson-led film “Hoffa,” Sacha Baron Cohen’s “Borat” and the entire “Twilight” franchise.

Mixing in a little of the old with new come goodies from 2023, like “Flamin’ Hot,” which tells the story of Mexican migrant Richard Montanez who came up with the idea for Flamin’ Hot Cheetos while working as a janitor at Frito Lay. The film lands on Hulu June 9.

Ending June with a bang will the be second season of “The Bear,” (June 22), Season 20 of “The Bachelorette” (June 27) and the sixth and final season of “Grown-ish.”

Here’s everything you can expect to hit Hulu this June.

Also Read:

The Best Free Movie Streaming Sites,...

It’s summer time on Hulu and that can only mean one thing. With its list of new releases for June 2023, Hulu is bringing back last summer’s unexpected hit.

FX’s The Bear season 2 premieres all episodes on June 22. If you’re not already captivated by this intense culinary story about the little Italian beef shop that could, definitely catch up now. This time around, Carmy (Jeremy Allen White) and friends will attempt a major foodie rebrand. The only other Hulu series of note this month is the docuseries The Age of Influence. Premiering on June 5, this doc will examine the dark side of influencer culture.

Just like its corporate partner Disney+, Hulu will premiere Eva Longoria’s directorial debut, Flamin’ Hot, in June 9. The movie tells the true story of Frito-Lay janitor Richard Montañez (Jesse Garcia) who created an iconic snack that forever changed the food industry. Also...

Season 2 of last summer’s hit breakout series “The Bear” is set to premiere on Hulu on Thursday, June 22. After a tumultuous return to his family’s hole-in-the-wall Chicago restaurant, chef Carmen “Carmy” Berzatto (Jeremy Allen White) and his staff transform the greasy sandwich joint into a first-class dining experience after he discovers the slush fund his brother left behind. Despite having the extra money to make his dreams a reality, the future proves to be both a personal and professional challenge for Carmy and the crew.

Watch the trailer for Season 2 of “The Bear”:

Beginning on June 14, the new series continuation of the beloved film “The Full Monty” arrives on Hulu. It’s 25 years later and the men and women of Sheffield, England, are in reboot mode, navigating life and family. The original 1997 movie focused on a group of down-on-their-luck, blue-collar men who put on a strip show to make ends meet.

An Oscar winner for his documentary Man on Wire and the filmmaker behind 2014’s awards juggernaut The Theory of Everything, James Marsh has been away from the big screen for a few years (his last project was the 2018 heist film King of Thieves). But he comes to Cannes with two buzzy projects in the market. In Night Boat to Tangier, he takes on Kevin Barry’s New York Times best-seller with a cast including Michael Fassbender, Domhnall Gleeson and Ruth Negga.

That film hasn’t shot yet, but Marsh has already completed a rather different feature, Dance First. A sweeping account of the life of literary icon Samuel Beckett (the title is taken from his ethos, “Dance first, think later”), the film sees Gabriel Byrne as the Nobel Prize winner in a story that covers the many aspects of his younger years: from Parisian bon vivant to WWII resistance fighter and philandering husband.

Kohn’s Corner is a weekly column about the challenges and opportunities of sustaining American film culture.

Every year around this time, I relish the opportunity to vanish into a bubble of Cannes hype and pretend that world-class auteurs dominate the movie business on a global scale. But for the moment, I’ll take a breather from the laughing gas and acknowledge it’s a rough moment for the specialty distribution business — especially in America. A lot of those promising Cannes titles won’t follow me home.

Few movies that aren’t in English succeed at our box office. Most get lost in the streaming vortex, if they’re lucky to land there at all. Arthouses nationwide continue to face audience decline. Prestige Oscar movies don’t guarantee strong returns. A24’s winning streak faltered with the flop of its most-costly production, “Beau is Afraid,” suggesting that even its adoring...

The goal of most journalists who work in the film/TV space, I would assume, is to approach the subject matter of something they are going to review with a certain amount of objectivity. Maybe I'm just speaking for myself, but I digress. The point is, sometimes one is confronted by something so uniquely personal that it becomes difficult to dip into the well of objective thought at all. Such was the case with the upcoming documentary "Join or Die," which I had the great pleasure of seeing at this year's SXSW in Austin, Texas. Am I going to see more entertaining movies in 2023? You bet. Am I going to see a movie that makes me more empowered to get off my ass and do something for the betterment of my country? Not a chance.

"Join or Die" is, somewhat basically, a film about why you should join a club.

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

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

Film Constellation is handling world sales on the Sky Original title.

Principal photography has wrapped on James Marsh’s UK film Dance First which stars Irish actor Gabriel Byrne as Samuel Beckett.

The Sky Original film charts the Irish writer’s life, from his time as a fighter for the French Resistance during the Second World War to his literary rise to winning the Nobel Prize for literature in 1969.

The film will premiere in cinemas and on Sky Cinema in 2023.

Byrne, whose credits include The Usual Suspects and Miller’s Crossing, is joined in the cast by Aidan Gillen, Sandrine Bonnaire,...

Werner Herzog has spent much of his time on this Earth staring directly into one kind of abyss or another — the molten heart of a volcano, the melting ice sheets of the Antarctic, the empty hollow of a chicken’s soul — but on the brink of his 80th birthday, cinema’s most unflappable nihilist finally turns his attention to an abyss so impenetrable that it seems to be staring right back at him: The future. It’s the largest and most impenetrable void that Herzog has ever dared to explore, and the closer it gets, the harder it becomes for him to see himself in its reflection.

That opacity is at the core of Herzog’s bemused and discursive “Theater of Thought,” His best hope: The human brain. Whatever the future holds, it will spring from the same folded bundle of tissue that got us to the present, and likewise...

Click here to read the full article.

Disney+ has unveiled an eclectic slate of five new U.K. unscripted originals spanning a broad range of talent and topics from Keanu Reeves to arguably the most talked about U.K. trial in years.

Wagatha Christie (working title), produced by Lorton Street Entertainment in association with Dorothy Street Pictures, will be uncovering one of the biggest tabloid news stories in Britain over the last decade, revealing how Coleen Rooney, wife of soccer star Wayne Rooney, turned amateur sleuth to reveal who had been leaking private stories to the press, and the high-profile defamation case brought against her by fellow footballer’s wife Rebekah Vardy. In something of a coup for Disney+, the three-part series will be told through exclusive access to Rooney, alongside interviews with family, friends and key players involved in the trial.

In Brawn: The One Pound Formula 1 Team...

HBO Max has released a new poster and trailer for The Princess.

The HBO Original documentary film The Princess is an intimate and immersive look at the life of Princess Diana, directed by Academy Award® nominee Ed Perkins (“Black Sheep” “Tell Me Who I Am”) and produced by Lightbox, Academy Award®-winning Simon Chinn and Emmy®-winning Jonathan Chinn.

The film debuts on Saturday, August 13 (8:00-9:50 p.m. Et/Pt) on HBO, coinciding with the 25th anniversary of Princess Diana’s tragic death, and will be available to stream on HBO Max. The Princess had its world premiere at the 2022 Sundance Film Festival.

The relationship of Diana and Charles, the Prince and Princess of Wales, was tabloid fodder for nearly two decades, the subject of almost daily headlines in the 24-hour news cycle. The Princess draws solely from contemporaneous archival audio and video footage to take audiences back...

Aidan Gillen, who played Littlefinger in “Game of Thrones,” and Sandrine Bonnaire, a best actress winner at Venice for “La cérémonie,” have joined Gabriel Byrne in Samuel Beckett biopic “Dance First,” directed by Oscar-winner James Marsh.

Film Constellation has closed pre-sales on the film in Australia/New Zealand (Icon), Italy (Bim Distribuzione), Spain (Filmin), Portugal (Nos Audiovisuais), Greece (Filmtrade), Hungary (Vertigo Media), former Yugoslavia (Discovery) and Taiwan (Cai Chang). Pay TV outlet Sky developed the film as a Sky Original in the U.K.

Marsh, best-known for “The Theory of Everything,” for which Eddie Redmayne won an Oscar, and Oscar-winner “Man on Wire,” will start shooting the film on May 30 in Budapest.

“Dance First’s” cast also includes Fionn O’Shea, who will play the young Beckett. He appeared in “Handsome Devil,” “Dating Amber” and “Normal People,” and will be seen next in “Masters of the Air.” The film is written by Neil Forsyth.

The late Lady Diana’s reign on the big screen continues this summer with The Princess, an upcoming documentary that tells the story of Diana Spencer’s time in the Royal Family through archival footage from the media that both adored and scrutinized her.

The trailer shows how “the People’s Princess” was constantly in the public eye, while also offering a glimpse at the evolution of that coverage: At first the media filmed Diana from a respectful distance, but eventually the boundaries were erased as the public thirsted for more tabloid fodder.

The Danish animated documentary “Flee” has been named the best nonfiction film of 2021 at the International Documentary Association’s IDA Documentary Awards, which were streamed in a virtual ceremony on Friday night.

The film, in which director Jonas Poher Rasmussen uses animation to disguise the identity of an Afghan refugee who fled to Russian and then Denmark, scored an unprecedented trifecta when it was nominated for Academy Awards in the Best Documentary Feature, Best Animated Feature and Best International Feature Film categories.

Ahmir “Questlove” Thompson won the IDA award in the Best Director category for “Summer of Soul,” his directorial debut. The film also won in the Best Music Documentary and Best Editing categories, making it the only film to win more than one award at the ceremony.

Other winners included Jimmy Goldblum’s “A Broken House” in the Best Short category, the series “Independent Lens” for Best Curated Series,...

Six of the most celebrated documentaries of 2021 reflect subjects that span the spectrum of fascinating subjects. They touch on a legendary filmmaker and conservationist, a broken police system in North America’s most populous city, an under-recognized civil rights leader, the stories of families displaced by a brutal civil war and one of the defining rock bands of the late 1960s. In a recent discussion, we got to hear what the filmmakers behind these docs thought about the current state of documentaries and some of their favorites in the genre. Gold Derby recently got to ask these questions with Dan Cogan (“Becoming Cousteau”), Elena Fortes (“A Cop Movie”), Betsy West and Julie Cohen (“My Name is Pauli Murray”), Megan Mylan (“Simple as Water”) and Julie Goldman (“The Velvet Underground”) during our recent Meet the Experts panel.

You can watch the film documentary group panel above with the people behind these five films.

Production, finance and sales outfit Film Constellation is launching pre-sales on upcoming Samuel Beckett biopic “Dance First,” to be directed by James Marsh and to star Gabriel Byrne.

Marsh won an Academy Award for best documentary feature in 2009 with “Man on Wire,” and also directed the Stephen Hawking biopic “The Theory of Everything,” which earned five nominations at the 2015 Oscars, including best picture, and a best actor win for Eddie Redmayne.

Marsh will now be directing his gaze on the life of Beckett, the ground-breaking Irish writer. Titled after Beckett’s famous ethos on life “Dance first, think later,” the film is a sweeping account of the life of this icon of 20th-century literature.

Beckett lived a life of many parts: Parisian bon vivant, World War II Resistance fighter, Nobel Prize-winning playwright, philandering husband and recluse. But despite all the adulation that came his way he was a man acutely aware of his own failings.

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,...

Claire Hungate, who was previously CEO of Warner Bros. TV Production UK, has joined eSports group Team Liquid as President and COO.

Hungate will oversee the Utrect-based company’s global business strategy and operations and lead plans for global expansion, acquisitions and new revenue streams.

Based in London and the Netherlands, Hungate will also oversee the company’s P&l and handle its diversity, equity and inclusion efforts.

She was most recently independent director at international games publisher Avalanche Studios Group and chair of production music library The Nerve. Before that, she ran Brave Bison, turning it from a multi-channel network into a social content studio. From 2014, she spent several years running Warner Bros. UK television business after the Hollywood studio acquired Shed Media. The production group was responsible for titles such as Man on Wire, and formats such as Who Do You Think You Are and Supernanny.

“I believe...

Warner Music Entertainment will co-produce, co-develop and co-finance projects with Lightbox.

Warner Music Entertainment (WME) has signed a partnership deal with UK-us production company Lightbox to co-produce, co-develop and co-finance non-fiction film and TV projects.

Under the terms of the deal Lightbox will have access to the catalogue of WME’s parent company Warner Music Group for its documentaries.

The two companies have a slate underway with details yet to be announced.

Lightbox was founded in 2014 by Simon Chinn in London and his LA-based cousin Jonathan Chinn.

The company’s recent slate includes Kevin Macdonald’s Whitney, which premiered at Cannes in 2018; HBO title Tina,...

Warner Music Entertainment, the film and television division of Warner Music Group (Wmg), and London and Los Angeles based television and film production company Lightbox, have signed a partnership deal to co-produce, co-develop and co-finance non-fiction film and TV projects.

The deal gives Lightbox, founded by double Oscar winner Simon Chinn and double Emmy winner Jonathan Chinn, access to Wmg’s catalog, to create new content telling the stories of Wmg’s current talent, songwriters and legacy acts.

Simon Chinn and Jonathan Chinn said: “This deal with Wmg will open up the vaults to an archive of amazing musical talent and rich history of songwriters and performers. We are thrilled to have the opportunity to bring some of Warner Music’s extraordinary artists and their stories to audiences around the world.”

“This is a really exciting partnership for us at Warner Music. We have such an incredible array of artists...

I first learned that “Roadrunner,” Morgan Neville’s documentary about the life and death of Anthony Bourdain, contains three sentences spoken by Bourdain that he never actually spoke out loud in the same way that you learn about a lot of things these days: by seeing an eruption of outrage about it on Twitter. The eruption immediately sent me to the New Yorker article in which Neville, the award-winning director of “Won’t You Be My Neighbor?” and “20 Feet From Stardom,” first explained how he used AI technology to feed 10 hours of Bourdain voice recordings into a computer, which then simulated Bourdain’s reading of those sentences — every one of which he had, in fact, written.

The words weren’t faked; the sound of him speaking them was. This was characterized, on social media, as an ethical lapse, and my first reaction is to say that I don’t necessarily disagree.

Copenhagen documentary film festival Cph:dox sees the world premiere of “Children of the Enemy,” which captures the journey of a Swedish-Chilean man to a Syrian prison camp to rescue his grandchildren, after their parents – members of the Islamic State terrorist group – are killed. Director Gorki Glaser-Müller spoke to Variety about the film, and his next projects, a Chilean thriller centering on questionable adoptions, and an interactive virtual reality experience with the American dancer and choreographer Bobbi Jene Smith.

Amanda, the daughter of bohemian musician Patricio Galvez, married a Swedish Muslim convert, and the two of them travelled with their children in 2014 to join Isis in Syria to fight for the Caliphate. Both parents were killed in 2019, and their seven children were transferred to the Kurdish-run al-Hol prison camp in north-east Syria. There are up to 22,000 foreign children of at least 60 nationalities in Syrian camps, according to Unicef, but Sweden, like many European countries,...

The pandemic heated up the long-simmering romance between January’s Sundance Film Festival and the Academy Awards: For the first time, the Oscar race showcases four Best Picture contenders that were Sundance premieres. Lee Isaac Chung’s rural family auto-fiction “Minari,” Florian Zeller’s play-to-film “The Father,” and Emerald Fennell’s “Promising Young Woman” all premiered in 2020; the virtual Sundance 2021 presented a late-inning surprise with Shaka King’s studio-financed “Judas and the Black Messiah” two weeks before Warner Bros. released the film day and date on HBO Max.

Sundance is known for delivering high-profile documentary Oscar winners like “American Dream,” “An Inconvenient Truth,” “Searching for Sugar Man,” “The Times Of Harvey Milk,” “The Cove,” “Man on Wire,” and “20 Feet From Stardom.” This year’s Documentary Feature Oscar nominees included three Sundance 2020 non-fiction world premieres: Nicole Newnham and Jim LeBrecht’s “Crip Camp,” Garrett Bradley’s “Time,” and Maite Alberdi’s “The Mole Agent.

The pandemic heated up the long-simmering romance between January’s Sundance Film Festival and the Academy Awards: For the first time, the Oscar race showcases four Best Picture contenders that were Sundance premieres. Lee Isaac Chung’s rural family auto-fiction “Minari,” Florian Zeller’s play-to-film “The Father,” and Emerald Fennell’s “Promising Young Woman” all premiered in 2020; the virtual Sundance 2021 presented a late-inning surprise with Shaka King’s studio-financed “Judas and the Black Messiah” two weeks before Warner Bros. released the film day and date on HBO Max.

Sundance is known for delivering high-profile documentary Oscar winners like “American Dream,” “An Inconvenient Truth,” “Searching for Sugar Man,” “The Times Of Harvey Milk,” “The Cove,” “Man on Wire,” and “20 Feet From Stardom.” This year’s Documentary Feature Oscar nominees included three Sundance 2020 non-fiction world premieres: Nicole Newnham and Jim LeBrecht’s “Crip Camp,” Garrett Bradley’s “Time,” and Maite Alberdi’s “The Mole Agent.

When “My Octopus Teacher” won the Producers Guild Award for Best Documentary on March 24, I started to wonder if that clears the path to it winning the Oscar. It’s an emotional, heartwarming film about nature, and feel-good movies sometimes have an advantage over investigative docs and grittier subjects.

First, it must be acknowledged that the PGA Award often veers wildly from the Oscars. In fact, the last three PGA winners weren’t even nominated by the motion picture academy: “Jane” (2017), “Won’t You Be My Neighbor?” (2018) and “Apollo 11” (2019). But when an Oscar nominee does win PGA, it tends to win the Oscar too, like “Searching for Sugar Man” (2012), “Amy” (2015) and “O.J.: Made in America” (2016) in the last decade. The last time the PGA winner had an Oscar nomination but lost it was Michael Moore‘s “Sicko” (2007), and that was 13 years ago.

SEE4 documentary filmmakers for ‘Crip Camp,’ ‘The Dissident,...

Feature documentary “Tina,” about music icon Tina Turner, will debut March 27 in the U.S. exclusively on HBO and will be available to stream on HBO Max.

Universal Pictures Content Group has taken world rights excluding North America and U.K. with a theatrical release planned across multiple territories in early summer before its release on digital, TV, SVOD and other home entertainment platforms.

Altitude will release “Tina” theatrically and on home entertainment across the U.K. and Ireland in April concurrent to its broadcast on Sky Documentaries.

Directed by Oscar-winning directors Dan Lindsay and T.J. Martin (“Undefeated”), the film charts Turner’s rise to early fame, her personal and professional struggles throughout her life and her resurgence as a global phenomenon in the 1980s. It features interviews with Turner herself, and with those close to her, along with never-before-seen footage, audio tapes and personal photos.

The film is produced...

Altitude to release documentary in the UK and Ireland, while HBO will debut the film in the US.

World rights to an upcoming documentary about musical icon Tina Tuner have been snapped up by Universal Pictures Content Group (Upcg), which will mount a theatrical release this summer.

The deal does not include North America, where Tina will debut March 27 on HBO and streamer HBO Max, or the UK and Ireland, where Altitude will handle both a theatrical and home entertainment release in April concurrent to its broadcast on Sky Documentaries.

London-based Upcg is planning a theatrical release in multiple territories...

Founded by Oscar-winning “Man on Wire” producer Simon Chinn and Emmy winner Jonathan Chinn, high-end documentary producer Lightbox is navigating the next phase of its evolution, and exiting one of the key initiatives that helped the transatlantic company set up shop.

Variety can reveal that the London- and Los Angeles-based outfit is buying back its shares and leaving U.K. broadcaster Channel 4’s Indie Growth Fund (Igf), which invests in British production companies by taking minority stakes to help them grow. Lightbox is now fully independent, and plans to remain so “for the short term” before considering a sale in the future.

Since accepting the Channel 4 investment in 2014, the “Whitney” producer has more than tripled in size, growing from a £4-million to £13-million turnover company, and establishing itself as a bona fide U.S.-U.K. player specializing in high-end documentaries for streaming services and premium cablers.

“It’s...

Ever since “Man on Wire,” in 2008, more and more documentaries have been using visualizations, staged scenes, and other illustrative methods that are meant to bring a true story to life but, to my mind, often end up getting in the way of it. I tend to prefer my documentaries without a speck of cereal, and that made the early sections of “Misha and the Wolves” seem a bit of a challenge. The film employs a great deal of obvious staging to chronicle the life of Misha Defonseca, a Belgian Holocaust survivor with a singular past, one so remarkable that it became both a bestselling book and a movie.

In the early ’90s, while living in the small town of Millis, Massachusetts, Defonseca began to talk, first to friends and neighbors and then to the congregation of Temple Bel Torah, about what happened to her when she was a child during World War II.

The real-life stories explored by Nicole Newnham and James Lebrecht (“Crip Camp”), Bryan Fogel (“The Dissident”), Hao Wu (“76 Days”) and David France (“Welcome to Chechnya”) are immensely powerful and are sure to be remembered for a long time to come. It’s probable that these docs could serve as a springboard for some of their viewers to pursue a career in documentary filmmaking. Thinking about that possibility does beg the question, what documentaries inspired these filmmakers to take that chance in the first place? We asked the directors from Netflix, Briarcliff, MTV and HBO that and more during our recent “Meet the Experts” panel, which you can watch right now. Click on each person’s name above to be taken to their individual interview.

For Newnham, it was the Oscar-winning doc, “The Times of Harvey Milk”, that forever changed her. Not only did it change the way that she...

National Geographic has commissioned event series “Return To The Moon” (working title), which will chronicle NASA’s historic Artemis program that will see a woman step on the lunar surface for the first time.

Named after Greek mythology’s goddess of the moon, National Geographic will take a comprehensive look at the mission, using all of its print and digital storytelling platforms to invest in extensive, multi-year coverage of NASA’s journey.

The series will be produced by Lightbox, the company co-founded by Simon Chinn, double Oscar winner for “Searching for Sugar Man” and “Man on Wire,” and Jonathan Chinn, double Primetime Emmy winner for “LA 92” and “American High.” The Chinns will serve as executive producers alongside Emmy-nominated producer Suzanne Lavery (“Cajun Navy”), with Simon Raikes executive producing for National Geographic.

Sundance winner Jerry Rothwell (“The Reason I Jump”) is the series director.

“For more than 130 years, National Geographic...