Tribeca Film Festival has come to an end, but in Part Two of our Ones to Watch, directors behind seven festival stand-outs share their journeys:

• Retrieval directed by Tracy Jarrett

• TikTok Never Dies co-directed by Hao Wu

• Bang My Box: The Robin Byrd Story co-directed by Jyllian Gunther and Stephanie Schwam

• AI: Probably Nothing to Worry About directed by Nick Holt

• Couture to the Max directed by Dori Berinstein

• American Zoo directed by Tim Travers Hawkins

• The Lorraine directed by Sam Pollard

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Now is a great time to become a Doc Voices subscriber. You’ll get access to an archive of 80+ articles including Tribeca Ones to Watch – part one, featuring:

• The Gymnasts of Fisherman Colony directed by Habiba Nosheen

• Stealing Magic directed by Matthew Testa

• Kids Like Me co-directed by Cynthia Lowen and Jon Cohrs

• How to Feed a Dictator directed by Andrew Neel

• Vanishing Tracks directed by Hamed Zolfaghari

• Colors of White Rock directed by Khoroldorj Choijoovanchig (aka HOGO)

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If science allowed you to hold onto a piece of someone you lost, would you? When Christina’s fiancé dies suddenly, she faces the unexpected decision of whether or not to carry on his legacy via postmortem sperm retrieval.

My motivation for the film:

I first heard about postmortem sperm retrieval (PMSR) in 2016 when my cousin lost her husband and retrieved his sperm. Something like this had never crossed my mind before. All I could think about was how, in the midst of such profound grief, this option offered her a sense of hope and control during one of the most hopeless and uncontrollable times in her life. Watching the ups and downs of her journey made me reflect on my own grief and the experience of losing both of my parents. I found myself asking what wouldn’t I do to hold onto a piece of the people I loved the most and lost.

When making Retrieval, I knew I didn’t want to rely on shock value, over-explain the procedure, or take a stance on the ethics of it. Issues around family planning and modern medicine are already deeply polarizing, and I wanted to steer away from that.

Instead, my focus was on why someone might choose postmortem sperm retrieval and what they’re up against. The most honest way to explore that was by centering real experiences, from the families making these decisions to the doctors helping them navigate this new frontier, and capturing how people respond in real time.

How my understanding of the subject changed:

While making Retrieval, I sat in the unimaginable pain of women overwhelmed with the grief of losing their partners, and clinging to this one last piece of hope that their loved one might still live on through PMSR. In the film, one of our main participants, a male fertility specialist, ruminates on whether PMSR is actually helping or hurting the people who grasp on to it. In the beginning I thought about this question a lot.

However, making the film, what I witnessed was that in the worst moment of these women's lives, the option for postmortem sperm retrieval was offering the one good thing that could happen on that day – the opportunity for hope, legacy building, and the potential of holding onto the lives they wanted to live with their partners. I saw not just how much this impacted the women requesting retrievals but whole families. When life was taken away, this was potentially a chance to create new life.

Meeting so many women over the course of filming, I realized how at some point in life, everyone will experience grief and that the desire to go to great lengths to find hope in the midst of loss is not uncommon. Whether or not PMSR worked for any of these women ended up being besides the point, each person I spoke with said that they would do it again and again because it meant they’d done everything they could in that moment. This had a huge impact on me as a filmmaker and what I wanted to say with the film. I wanted to shift the film's central question from is PMSR good or bad to: to what lengths will we go to pursue a hope that we believe will lessen our grief?

The scene that unlocked the entire film:

In the film we include a focus group of women who have either pursued or considered postmortem sperm retrieval, each with different outcomes. Filming this scene really widened the perspective of what the film was about for me. To our knowledge, this was the first time women with this shared experience had come together, as none of them had ever met someone else familiar with the procedure. Because it’s still relatively unknown, many women in this position feel isolated and struggle to navigate it with limited resources.

Mel, who leads the postmortem sperm retrieval network and hosted the group, brought these individuals together to better understand how to support others. My goal was also to create connection by bringing together women who otherwise felt alone.

While the film centers on Christina, a participant in the group, it was filming the focus group that made me realize how no experience of postmortem sperm retrieval is the same. It became extremely important to me to find a way to incorporate the stories of other women to show that this isn’t just one person’s story. The focus group highlights how universal these themes are – grief, loss, and navigating complex systems with limited information. For me, this scene expands the conversation, making the topic feel less singular and more deeply human and relatable. It is a scene we revisit throughout the film.

What I hope this film gives to audiences:

PMSR is not a new practice, but we know that with the visibility of the film grows the awareness of the topic itself. There are valid and important discussions to be had around the subject and its implications, but the story I wanted to tell focused on the why: in what ways does our grief manifest and to what length will we go to hold on. At its core, the film is about our shared need to feel connected, seen, and understood in our most painful and hopeless moments, to understand why we might make the decisions we make when we have lost everything.

My hope with Retrieval was to straddle both the fascinating (even comical!) science behind the practice and interweave it with the deeply emotional reasons that people are choosing to do it, offering audiences a compassionate, nuanced lens that asks us to consider what we might do if we had a chance to hold on to the one thing that most matters to us.

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When TikTok faces a nationwide ban, three influencers fight for their livelihoods, their voices, and the First Amendment. As their efforts advance to the Supreme Court, questions swirl around the stakes, power, and control of the future of social media.

My motivation for the film:

Before becoming a filmmaker, I worked in technology in both China and the U.S., so I have always been drawn to stories about how new platforms reshape the way we live, communicate, and see ourselves. In my 2018 film People’s Republic of Desire, I explored the rise of influencer culture in China and the emotional economy behind online fame. Since then, I had been fascinated by TikTok, the first Chinese app to become a truly global cultural force. But I didn’t want to simply revisit influencer culture on a different platform. So I waited.

When TikTok sued the U.S. government in May 2024 to challenge its unprecedented attempt to ban or force the sale of the app, I immediately felt this was the story I had been waiting for. It seemed clear that the case would likely go all the way to the Supreme Court. I had just completed Admissions Granted, a feature documentary about the pivotal Supreme Court case on affirmative action, so I understood how a legal battle could give a film both real stakes and a powerful dramatic arc. Through that fight, I could follow the human stories of creators whose lives depended on the platform while also examining larger tensions around technology, free speech, national security, and power.

So I jumped on the chance to make a film that moved beyond TikTok’s addictive algorithm and cultural impact, and toward a deeper story about who controls our digital public square, whose voices are protected, and how democracy responds when technology crosses borders.

How my understanding of the subject changed:

Before making this film, I had never used TikTok myself. Like many people outside the platform, I had mostly encountered TikTok videos when they were reposted elsewhere, often stripped of the context, community, and conversation that gave them meaning. I began the project primarily drawn to the intellectual and political stakes: the First Amendment questions, the national security arguments, the U.S.–China tensions, and the unprecedented attempt by the government to ban or force the sale of a major communications platform.

What changed my understanding was spending time with the creators in the film and immersing myself in TikTok’s culture from the inside. I began to see that TikTok is not just another social media app, but a distinctive form of communication shaped by its algorithm, its creative language, and the intimate, often surprising relationships between creators and audiences. That helped me understand the free speech stakes in a more visceral way.

At the same time, the story became less abstract. For the creators I followed, TikTok was not simply entertainment or a place to build a following. It was a livelihood, a community, a creative outlet, and in some cases, a path to a transformed life. The legal battle was still about power, speech, and national security, but it was also about real people whose futures could be changed by decisions made far from them.

The scene that unlocked the entire film:

The scene that unlocked the film for me was Chloe livestreaming on TikTok on the night the app was expected to shut down, after TikTok lost its case at the Supreme Court. Throughout the film, we had already seen how deeply creators’ lives, livelihoods, and identities were tied to the platform. But in this scene, those personal stakes came into sharpest focus.

We intercut observational footage of Chloe in her office, livestreaming as the deadline approached, with the reactions of TikTok users around the country who were gathering online to face the looming end of an app they loved. What emerged was not simply panic over losing a platform, but a kind of collective grieving. People were saying goodbye to a community, a creative home, and in some cases, the foundation of their livelihood.

Chloe’s reaction became the emotional center of that moment. When TikTok finally went dark, she broke down and cried. For me, that scene crystallized what the film had been building toward: the personal consequences of political decisions made far away in Washington, D.C. It showed that the story was not just about whether a government can ban an app, but about what happens when the lives people have built inside a digital public square can disappear overnight.

What we hope this film gives to audiences:

I hope audiences come away from the film with a more complicated understanding of TikTok: not just as an addictive app, a national security threat, or a cultural phenomenon, but as a communications platform where millions of people have built communities, businesses, identities, and creative voices. Whether one loves TikTok or distrusts it, the question of who gets to control a platform with that much influence should matter to all of us.

Social media has become an increasingly powerful force shaping public life, yet its algorithms remain largely opaque. There is a growing consensus that these platforms need more regulation, transparency, and accountability. But the TikTok story shows how easily that process can be shaped by economic and political agendas far removed from the users most affected.

That is why this story is important now. The TikTok ban is not just about one app or one company. It is an early chapter in a much larger global struggle over technology, speech, ownership, and control. As governments around the world try to respond to the power of social media, we need to ask not only how these platforms should be regulated, but who gets to make those decisions, whose interests they serve, and whose voices might be lost in the process.

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Robin Byrd pioneered NYC public access with her cult sex-positive call-in show. Now the larger-than-life 70-year-old champion of free speech, queer visibility, and safe sex reflects on her unique legacy and her hidden, decades-long marriage behind the scenes.

Our motivation for the film:

We love a Trojan horse — archival history snuck inside a character study. On the surface, Robin is a local cable celebrity with a catchy theme song. But the more time you spend with her, the more you realize how much her story encompassed: queer visibility, AIDS, sex work, body autonomy, and First Amendment fights that are still happening today. Robin didn't set out to be important. She was an accidental activist without an agenda or manifesto, but by following her nose, she ended up standing for ways of looking at the world that were radical.

There was also a love story at the center of it that surprised us completely — Robin and her longtime husband, Shelly — which changed the whole shape of the film. The fact that this self-proclaimed “orgy queen” was also in a loving and committed relationship that exists to this day was so exciting to explore. We always say we love a rom-com; we just didn't expect to find one here.

We're also two women who've been making projects together for over two decades, and this subject allowed us to put our whole selves into the work — not just our politics, but our senses of humor, our affection for outsiders, and our love of New York. This was so rare and thrilling!

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Pure Nonfiction recently held its Documentary Spotlight event in front of a live audience in New York City, co-presented by Our latest podcast features conversations with three doc makers hosted by Thom Powers:

Alexandria Stapleton on SEAN COMBS: THE RECKONING – a four-part series unpacking the shocking allegations behind Sean “Diddy” Combs and his Bad Boy empire, spanning decades of his life and career.

Zach Heinzerling on RAFA – a four-part series in which tennis champion Rafael Nadal opens up like never before, as he battles through the final year on the circuit.

Trish Dalton on REGGAE GIRLZ (directed with Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy) – which follows the inspiring journey of the Jamaican women’s soccer team on their way to the FIFA Women’s World Cup 2023 as they confront challenges on and off the pitch.

Thanks to our partners Apple TV, Hulu, Netflix, Prime Video, and Red Bull Studios.

Below are excerpts from the conversations, edited for clarity…

Photography by Lou Aguilar, portraits by Carlos Sanfer.

Listen to Pure Nonfiction Episode 241

Yesterday, we shared snippets from the conversations in the part one of the episode, featuring:

• Director Rebecca Miller on MR. SCORSESE

• Director Ally Pankiw on LILITH FAIR: BUILDING A MYSTERY

• Producer Shane Reid on JOHN CANDY: I LIKE ME (directed by Colin Hanks)

• Producer Sara Bernstein on MARTY, LIFE IS SHORT (directed by Lawrence Kasdan)

You can read that here and listen to the full episode via the button below.

Listen to Pure Nonfiction Episode 240

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SEAN COMBS: THE RECKONING

Alexandria Stapleton on what drew her to the story: It was extremely challenging because I didn’t know where the story was going to end up. I started making this the day that Cassie dropped her lawsuit and I had no idea that [Combs] was going to be indicted. I wanted to look underneath the hood and really investigate whether there was room for acceptance within the hip hop community for me to have a conversation and a reckoning of sorts.

There were other projects being made on at the same time that fixated on the salacious details. I wanted to concentrate on the ecosystem, the world that Sean Combs created, where these crazy incidents could happen. That took connecting with victims, of course, but also people that knew and respected him. I had to gain their trust to access their stories.

On conducting sensitive interviews: My preparation was led by the person that I was in conversation with. I spent a lot of time on the phone and meeting in person to explore where they wanted to go, where they didn’t want to go. It’s not my job to force people to give me more and more details. I wanted them to feel extremely comfortable.

I also felt a great deal of responsibility for my crew. We would have talks about the subject matter before we got started with shooting. Everyone’s identity was confidential until they sat down to interview. We opened a 24-hour hotline for people who needed to speak with a therapist, because the topics being discussed were really heavy.

For the victims, I keep my sets very quiet and calm. We aim to remove all the frenetic energy out of the environment before they sat down, to create a cocoon for the subjects. I make everyone leave except for the DP and sound, the latter whom I tuck in a corner and hide. That way it becomes just myself and my cinematographer present with the person that’s speaking. The result was safe conversations that didn’t make them feel like they were on trial.

RAFA

Zach Heinzerling on accessing Rafael Nadal’s inner sanctum: I had never experienced this with a directing job, but I was told by his team that I was being trialled. I flew to Australia where he was playing his first tournament to see whether he liked me and we would progress.

During our first exchange, I sat next to him in the van and noticed he was looking for his coach. I realised I was sitting in his coach’s seat. If you know anything about Rafa, he has strict routines which people say act as his control mechanism. For example, he’s meticulously obsessed with the way he places his water bottle before he serves. In this first meeting, I had disrupted what was likely a 20 year tradition of a seating arrangement in the van. I immediately wanted to crawl out of my skin.

Rafa had basically said “no” to any kind of documentary or wide scope book for his entire career, which was coming to an end. His team felt that, in order to understand him, you needed to actually see him play as opposed to hear him talk.

He has this gentleness, bordering on an insecurity, but that softness is infectious. It makes you root for him, he’s the eternal underdog. Federer, in contrast, walks on water, whereas Rafa, is this warrior figure, battling for every last point. Even when he was number one, he would rank himself as inferior to his opponent, who may be 200th in the world but who Rafa felt had a good chance of winning. He’s self-deprecating, modest, but he draws you in.

On finding the story structure: I was working with two storylines, which were not necessarily equal, but each of which held significant importance to the film. The challenge was that, in focusing on this tennis season, what are the moments from the past that are going to resonate with what we’re seeing in the present? Where is the juxtaposition between Rafa when he’s young and who he is now?

I discovered that, without having him articulate this in his interview – 20 years later, he remained stuck in the same pattern of trying not to disappoint his uncle. I believe that fear is responsible for his victories and his perseverance.

REGGAE GIRLZ

Trish Dalton on understanding the cultural context: We decided to focus on the Jamaican-born players because they had so much riding on getting into the World Cup, while the strength of their personal stories was so evocative. Cedella Marley (daughter of Bob Marley) was incredibly important – as our Executive Producer and someone who’s featured in the film – to know that we were sharing these stories in the right way, that we understood the culture, that we understood the women and had rightfully earned their trust.

Our subjects come from a country without many resources, struggles that many larger countries don’t face. I didn’t realize until we were filming how deep the level of misogyny still exists in Jamaican culture. At the same time, as women making the film – both of whom have been athletes – we’ve had similar experiences where we were shut down and treated differently. Ultimately, we made the film because we believe that women should be able to play as professional athletes, so it also became a story of how women help women.

On what drove her to make the film: What was so encouraging was the players themselves. The film speaks to that, their strength and ability to carry on. These are young women, in their early- and mid-twenties, yet despite everything that happened to them, they kept believing. It makes me emotional to talk about it because they had hard lives and so much riding on their sport.

Telling their stories and showing the lives of these women was so inspiring, we knew that the more attention they get, the more support and resources they will have because people want to see them play. I believe there is a tipping point happening in women’s sports and the 2027 Women’s World Cup is going to be bigger than ever. This film can inspire people to tune in and get excited.

See you next issue!

Bella

As Emmy voting opens today, host Thom Powers interviewed the film teams behind four documentaries in the running on the latest episode of Pure Nonfiction. These conversations were recorded for a live edition of Documentary Spotlight in New York this past weekend, co-presented by

Listen to Pure Nonfiction Episode 240

Director Rebecca Miller on MR. SCORSESE – portraying the iconic filmmaker through the lens of his work. Miller conducts in-depth conversations with Scorsese along with his family, friends and collaborators, combined with unrestricted access to his private archives.

Director Ally Pankiw on LILITH FAIR: BUILDING A MYSTERY – revealing the untold story of the women’s music festival of the late 90s, drawing on over 600 hours of never-seen footage.

Producer Shane Reid on JOHN CANDY: I LIKE ME (directed by Colin Hanks) – exploring the life, career, and loss of one of the most beloved actors of all time, told in the words of those who knew him best.

Producer Sara Bernstein on MARTY, LIFE IS SHORT (directed by Lawrence Kasdan) – profiling the actor’s talent for bringing joy, with clips from his classic performances, fresh interviews and never-before-seen home movies.

Below are excerpts from the conversations, edited for clarity…

Photography by Lou Aguilar, portraits by Carlos Sanfer.

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MR. SCORSESE

Rebecca Miller on earning Martin Scorsese’s permission: I wrote a letter explaining my approach. I didn’t really know what I was going to do – because you can’t know what you’re going to do exactly when you start. But my letter basically explained that I wanted to take a kind of Cubist approach – seeing many angles at once. In painting a portrait of Martin, I’m interested in him as an artist, of course, but also as a father, a lover, an activist, and all the different aspects of him throughout the various periods of his life.

On interviewing the legendary director: Honestly, the conversations with him were so exhausting. I would be trying to remember what I had intended to ask, but at the same time, trying to keep up with whatever amazing journey he was taking me on. I would bring us back on track, then we would go away again. That back and forth would go on for like 4 or 5 hours. Afterwards, I could never remember anything that had happened. I would just be sitting speechless.

LILITH FAIR: BUILDING A MYSTERY

Ally Pankiw on revisiting Lilith Fair: Lilith Fair meant a lot of things to me as a Canadian. Sarah McLachlan was such a presence in our lives and a sort of hero. Lilith Fair was full of all the artists that I grew up loving and knowing were brilliant and cool. Then something happened in the late 90s, early 2000s, entering from my teens into young adulthood, where I sold my taste away to be accepted by the predominant mainstream culture. At that time, especially after Lilith, women who were earnest or progressive were a bit of a punching bag of media. It feels like we’re there again. So for me, making Lilith Fair was a meaningful way to continue my own unlearning of what that era of pop culture taught me about myself as a young woman, as a queer person.

On the central question of the film: The organizing thought and exploration that I focused on was, why was Lilith so misremembered? Why was it either completely unknown about by younger generations and music fans, or why was it – in its immediate aftermath and even while it was happening – trivialized. It was the coolest place to be, it had the biggest artists of the time but still it was mocked and misremembered. My guiding feeling was that Lilith deserved to be remembered correctly, so as long as the stories that were coming up were feeding into that central question, that was my North Star.

JOHN CANDY: I LIKE ME

Shane Reid on finding the balance: From the outset we needed to make a film that felt, in the end, like a John Candy film. It had to cover the highs and lows of the comedy arc, the drama arc, and the thing that John represented the most, which was a very open heart. He’s a very vulnerable person, and we were taking a chance in telling John’s story. That story, turns out, is quite a complicated one. While humor is very much a part of John’s life, anxiety is very much a part of it also. It was important to ride that wave.

On what he learned from making the film: Being kind really matters especially as we’re in such a cynical place right now. I was very emotional cutting the film because he just represented so much light. We miss figures that do that. Now walking away from it, I’ve gotten to know John’s family well and it’s brought together director Colin Hanks and producer Ryan Reynolds, who are very lovely, talented, hard working people. Along with being kind, John had a work ethic that was real. In making this film, we felt we needed to dig deeper, keep going, keep finding it, keep working it. It’s easy to think that John came on camera and it was effortless for him, but it wasn’t.

MARTY, LIFE IS SHORT

Sara Bernstein on what makes the film special: It’s the joy in this film, the way that Marty overcomes these horrible, life or death challenges in his life, but he can barrel on with this positive outlook of knowing that he’s going to do the best he can do and he’s going to perform to the best level that he can perform. There’s something about his comedic talent. I realized he’s one of the greats as we made this film.

On why Lawrence Kasdan was the right filmmaker: This film really began with our director, Lawrence Kasdan, who – as you see in the film – has known Martin Short for years and is a close family friend. Lawrence wanted people to understand what it felt like to just have a hang with Martin. Apparently Martin had been approached to do a documentary many times over the years, especially in recent years. With Lawrence, there was something about the trust between them and that creates a very different kind of sensibility and tone to the film as a result of the trust in that relationship.

See you next issue!

Bella

After a little hiatus on the road, I’m in New York City and it’s the opening day of Tribeca Film Festival! In the next two issues I’ll be sharing my top picks from the doc slate, starting with:

• The Gymnasts of Fisherman Colony directed by Habiba Nosheen

• Stealing Magic directed by Matthew Testa

• Kids Like Me co-directed by Cynthia Lowen and Jon Cohrs

• How to Feed a Dictator directed by Andrew Neel

• Vanishing Tracks directed by Hamed Zolfaghari

• Colors of White Rock directed by Khoroldorj Choijoovanchig (aka HOGO)

Now is a great time to become a Doc Voices subscriber. You’ll get access to an archive of 80+ articles including all the Tribeca coverage and more.

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The birth of a gymnastics team in Pakistan provides an inspiring spark of light for a small group of girls on the margins.

My motivation for the film:

A few years ago, I began reflecting on how rarely we hear stories about the remarkable women and girls in Pakistan who are reshaping expectations with their courage, grit, and determination. I wanted to make a film that looked at young women in Pakistan with tenderness and complexity, a film that made room for joy, friendship, ambition, and the fullness of their lives.

That was the inspiration for The Gymnasts of Fisherman Colony. In many ways, it is the film I wish had existed when I was growing up. As a Pakistani-born storyteller, this film matters to me because it challenges the notion that Muslim girls and sports cannot coexist. But it is not about girls pursuing sports as a path to the Olympics. It is about something much more intimate: the importance of girls from all walks of life having access to sport, and the impact that can have on their self-confidence, physical health, and sense of possibility. But the truth is, I didn’t find this story. It found me.

The journey began nine years ago, when I first met Tahera Hasan, the human rights lawyer in the film who started the gymnastics program for stateless girls. Tahera was my adoption attorney. She helps children who have been abandoned in orphanages get adopted by families. My daughter was one of those children.

Years after I adopted my daughter from Pakistan, I came across Tahera’s posts about girls in Machar Colony (Fisherman Colony) doing gymnastics. I was immediately drawn to them. The next time I went to Pakistan, I asked if I could visit the school, meet their families, and hear their stories. As soon as I did, I knew I had to make this film.

How my understanding of the subject changed:

I will confess that, even as a Pakistani, before working on this documentary, I had no idea about the struggle of Bengali stateless communities in Pakistan. Although Pakistani law allows birthright citizenship for any child born in Pakistan, in reality, many children in ethnic Bengali communities are not able to obtain citizenship documents or ID cards due to discrimination.

As a result, you have a whole generation of children born in Pakistan, like the girls on the gymnastics team, who are proud Pakistanis but cannot obtain the proper paperwork to have their citizenship recognized.

Without those documents, educational opportunities are limited, work prospects are limited, and even the ability to obtain medical care at a public hospital is limited. That continues the cycle of poverty and marginalization.

The scene that unlocked the entire film:

For me, the scene that unlocked the entire film was the moment when the girls are on their way to the beach for an outing. On their way to the beach they break out singing and dancing to a popular Pakistani song. It was just a reminder of how similar teenage girls are in every part of the world. Watching them do cartwheels in the water and collecting sea shells, I knew in that moment that the music, joy, and vibrancy of that beach scene were things I wanted to carry throughout the film.

While this was happening, to be honest, my biggest worry was that I was never going to be able to afford to license the song they were singing. But then I reached out to the producer of the song and told him about the film I was making. He was so moved that he wrote back and said we could use anything from his catalogue in the documentary for free. I think I cried when I read that, because otherwise we likely would not have been able to keep this scene in the film.

This scene really inspired us to think more deeply about the music in the film and how it could showcase the talents of Pakistani musicians. That’s what led us to collaborate with Eva B, a Pakistani woman hip-hop artist, on an original song for the film that is featured in our trailer.

I know the girls live within a level of poverty that would be disingenuous to sanitize but I also wanted to make sure the film showed that these girls are not defined by their circumstances or the stereotypes that are put on them. That beach scene was this really beautiful moment in the filmmaking process that inspired us to capture the vibrancy and hope of these girls, cinematically and musically, in the filmmaking process.

What I hope this film gives to audiences:

As a Pakistani-born filmmaker, this film is important at this moment because it depicts social change in Muslim countries through a nuanced and authentic lens. It shows Muslim girls who are inspiring, complex, and who are creating real change that comes from within the community.

I am very troubled by the ways brown people have been dehumanized over the last few decades, through one war after another. This film is part of a larger effort to correct those narratives. It asks audiences to see brown Muslim girls not only in moments of death, war, and tragedy, but in their full humanity: laughing, training, dreaming, fighting for space, and imagining a future for themselves.

We so often see images of brown children when they are suffering. They also deserve stories that show their joy, complexity, ambition, and dignity.

The Gymnasts of Fisherman Colony premieres on Monday, June 08 – 5:30pm at SVA Theatre

More info + screenings

Someone is stealing the secrets behind magicians' greatest tricks and selling them on illicit websites. Magician Andi Gladwin leads an unlikely team of illusionists on an international caper to track down the culprits.

My motivation for the film:

When I learned that a group of magicians had become citizen detectives who were running around the world in order to stop the internet pirates who were stealing their magic tricks, it immediately sounded like a terrific premise for a real life caper film. But it was the idealism and determination of magician Andi Gladwin that convinced me that his effort was being fueled by a real love of this art form. Andi was not going to quit until some kind of justice was achieved and for me that was a journey worth following.

I think most documentarians harbor a belief that we can improve the world by exposing issues and shouting from rooftops and that was basically what Andi was doing when it came to the threat that piracy poses to magic. I could relate to his persistence and his sense that this injustice simply could not stand. I wanted to show audiences what a few determined people could accomplish in their pursuit of righting a wrong, even if they are largely out of their comfort zone in doing so. As a bonus, there was a clearly entertaining, propulsive and often funny storyline to pursue. I love a good mystery and it appealed to me to make a film that took a lot of fun twists and turns while addressing something important.

How my understanding of the subject changed:

Admittedly I was not much of a magic aficionado going into this project but I relished the opportunity to learn about this secretive world and to have rare access to some of the best magicians in the biz. One thing I found surprising that they shared with me early on was the idea that many magicians don't necessarily invent their own tricks. Certainly there are those who do and I don't want to detract from their incredible work, but there is also an entire industry of magic creators who spend their time dreaming up new routines, devices and gimmicks for magic performers to buy and use in their own shows. These creators are kind of like the hit-making songwriters behind many of the pop stars who are the face of the music industry.

I was intrigued by the kind of genius and skill it takes to devise new magic and by the notion of these brilliant unsung creators toiling away, often for years, to bring new tricks to market. These are the people who are most vulnerable to piracy. Their margins are slim and magic creation isn't a hugely lucrative field to begin with. But whether or not this art form evolves and progresses with the times is completely reliant on magic creators keeping at it. If they work for years to write a magic book or invent a marketable trick only to have it stolen and sold by pirates for pennies on the dollar, they are put in an unsustainable situation. The fact that many creators were quitting the business out of frustration with piracy gave our story some real urgency.

The scene that unlocked the entire film:

Without giving too much away, there is a sequence in the film where the magicians are on the road pursuing evidence that is changing minute to minute. We were all in Europe - a small film team and two magicians - with no idea whatsoever what countries we were going to end up in from one day to the next. It was thrilling, fun filmmaking, if not a bit scary, considering we didn't know how dangerous the pirates might end up being or if and where we might encounter them.

There were a lot of theories about where the pirates were based but a clue led us to an Eastern European country I won't name here to avoid spoilers. We hadn't planned to go there, didn't speak the language and weren't sure what we were getting into, but Andi knew a prominent magician there. So he called the magician up and was immediately made welcome at this person's magic shop. And that magician, who had also been impacted by piracy, ended up helping with the investigation in a meaningful way by going undercover. It was all totally unplanned but it was something you'd expect to happen in a scripted spy film or something. That moment cemented for me that there is a global community that is strongly connected by their love of magic. And this kind of thing ended up happening in other countries as well. Seeing this society of magicians coming together to help each other to combat a common foe was heartening and gave me hope that they could collectively stand up to piracy in a significant way.

What I hope this film gives to audiences:

Certainly I don't want anyone to think this film is anti-technology. Most magic creators are selling their work online and the internet has been a boon to learning magic virtually and making magic products available globally. But I also think we're in a time when human-powered art forms like magic are especially vulnerable when confronted by internet piracy and digital entertainment. Magic takes an impressive amount of craft, practice and commitment and has a long and venerable history. It's worth defending and I think that in our digital age there's a discernible yearning for the kind of wonder and joy that analog entertainment like magic can give us.

Piracy is a problem for a lot of industries, including luxury goods, gaming, movies, music, publishing and art. Some of those industries are large enough to absorb the financial hit, but artists like magicians can't. It's important that we value creative work and intellectual property and that we recognize how vulnerable it is right now. While there are law enforcement agencies tasked with protecting creative work online, we see in this film that they can be largely ineffectual. I hope that our story raises some awareness of the problem and the need for law enforcement to hold pirates and the internet services that enable them (like web hosting and payment sites) accountable. I also hope this movie shows audiences that artists deserve to be compensated and that it discourages people from using or sharing pirated material. And I hope it turns folks on to magic!

Stealing Magic premieres on Fri June 05 – 5:00pm at Village East by Angelika

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During SXSW I moderated a fascinating panel with three directors premiering their films at the festival:

• Marq Evans, director of Capturing Bigfoot

• Scott Veltri, co-director the The Ascent (Documentary Feature Competition Audience Award Winner)

• Bayan Joonam, director of Phoenix Jones: The Rise and Fall of a Real Life Superhero

We discussed a process familiar to many documentary filmmakers, setting out with one story in mind, only for it to suddenly drag you into uncharted waters where you’re left choosing between swimming back to shore or committing to the uncertain, often years-long, and financially precarious path of following it wherever it leads.

The three films at the centre of the conversation feature vastly different topics. Capturing Bigfoot uncovers the secret, lies and heartbreak behind the very notorious 1967 footage of a tall, furry bipedal creature galumphing through a California forest. The Ascent follows the unbreakable Mandy Horvath as she scales Mount Kilimangaro – on her hands (!) – following the loss of her legs in an incident shrouded in secrecy. Phoenix Jones: The Rise and Fall of a Real Life Superhero confronts the street crime avenger behind his custom rubber suit, amidst a cloud of pepper spray, fabricated origin stories and accusations. In all of them, I think, the question of what makes – and breaks – a real hero arises.

Below is an edited version of our conversation about everything it took to tell these wild tales.

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Bella: Let’s start at the beginning with the inception of these films and the stories you thought you were going to tell. Marq, what drew you into making a Bigfoot documentary in today’s world and how seeing this as different from the many existing discovery channel-style Bigfoot docs out there?

Marq: I can’t say that I ever went into this thinking I wanted to make a Bigfoot documentary. I know there are people fascinated by Bigfoot and I’m interested in it, but that wasn’t the starting point.

The story kind of fell into my lap. In June of 2022, I got an email out of the blue from a professor at the same college where I teach in Washington. She said, “I have a piece of 16 millimeter film related to the very famous Bigfoot footage from 1967, the one most people have seen of it walking through the woods in that iconic pose.”

She asked if I would help her get it developed, and maybe do something with it. I didn’t really know what to say, but I agreed to help. We sent it out to be processed and scanned, and when I got it back, there was a Bigfoot. But it wasn’t what I expected, which was that famous film.

At first I was disappointed. I had a personal connection, my dad worked with people involved in that original footage, so I’d heard those stories growing up. I thought this could be that lost film but it was something more. From that moment, the whole direction of the project became about curiosity. Trying to figure out where the film came from, whether it connected to the original, and following that thread wherever it went.

Bella: Scott, we learn early on in the film that your subject Mandy Horvath has serious trust issues with people, what did you and your co-directors have to do to gain that trust in order to tell this story?

Scott: It was a years-long process. At first, she was more comfortable with the climbing itself. That was something she understood. Trusting us, my co-directors, the crew, all these new people, especially in a new environment, was a big leap. On the mountain, there were moments where she didn’t want help from anyone, just out of stubbornness. That was the first phase.

The deeper challenge was what happened to her, how she lost her legs. It was a traumatic night involving people she didn’t know well, and there was a cover-up. That’s where the trust issues really come from. Getting her to talk about that, to revisit it, took time. You see a lot of vulnerability in the film. As we started uncovering information she didn’t even know existed, she began to open up more.

It became almost like an investigation. We were chasing leads she had kept buried because she didn’t want to relive that experience. Through the process, she was able to start rediscovering her own story.

Bella: Bayan, At what point in the timeline did you discover Ben Fodor (aka Phoenix Jones) and what kind of hero’s journey were you hoping this would follow when you began?

Bayan: In November of 2009, I started looking into this subculture of real-life superheroes. There are hundreds, maybe thousands, of people around the world who dress up in superhero costumes, take on a persona, and go out into the streets. Some confront crime, others do acts of kindness.

Phoenix Jones stood out immediately. His backstory, being orphaned, the way his identity was revealed, it felt like a movie. A complete origin story. Then in January 2019, I saw a headline, “Real Life Superhero Arrested for Dealing Drugs to Undercover Police.” I clicked on it, and there was Phoenix Jones. That was the moment I knew I needed to understand what happened. The circumstances around the arrest felt strange. Why would someone who had worked with the Seattle PD for years suddenly be on the wrong side of the law?

At first, I thought I was telling a campy story about modern-day do-gooders. But once you meet him, you realize there’s a lot more happening beneath the surface. I wanted his story to fit the traditional hero’s journey. But it became clear that real life doesn’t work that way. Ignoring the parts that didn’t fit would have been dishonest, so we leaned into the complexity.

Bella: Let’s talk about following the story into literal danger. Scott, tell us about the experience of climbing Kilimangaro from a crew perspective, you show how dangerous it was and were there personal moments where you thought, what the hell have we got ourselves into?

Scott: That though came on day one! We started with smaller climbs, and then it became Kilimanjaro, for which Mandy trained for a year. The logistics were intense. Mandy moves fast, so we had to constantly reposition, get ahead to film, then fall behind to capture everything. Altitude hit members of the crew hard. Equipment failed in different conditions. We lost drones.

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It’s the last day of SXSW and I’m rounding out my coverage with a roundup of four captivating docs about crime and pun-ish-ment, including tales of bear-owning drug lords, rogue pilots, exploding casinos and a thirty-year-old heinous cold case that is finally solved by the filmmaker and her subjects:

• Cornbread Mafia co-directed by Evan Mascagni and Drew Morris

• My Brother’s Killer directed by Rachel Mason

• I Got Bombed at Harvey’s co-directed by Amy Bandlien Storkel and Bryan Storkel

• #SKYKING directed by Patricia E. Gillespie

Now is a great time to become a Doc Voices subscriber. You’ll get access to an archive of 80+ articles including all the SXSW coverage, spotlighting all my top films:

• Capturing Bigfoot directed by Marq Evans

• Daughters of the Forest directed by Otilia Portillo Padua

• The Ascent co-directed by Edward Drake, Scott Veltri and Francis Cronin

• The Life We Leave directed by JJ Gerber

• Stormbound directed by Miko Lim

• Amazing Live Sea Monkeys co-directed by Mark Becker and Aaron Schock

• Manhood directed by Daniel Lombroso

• Serling directed by Jonah Tulis

• We Are The Shaggs directed by Ken Kwapis

• The Dads directed by Luchina Fisher

• Baby/Girls directed by Alyse Walsh and Jackie Jesko

• My NDA co-directed by Juliane Dressner and Miriam Shor

• Scarlet Girls directed by Paula Cury

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The unbelievable true story of the Cornbread Mafia, a group of Kentucky farmers who built the largest domestic marijuana syndicate in U.S. history. Sons of tobacco farmers, moonshiners, and bootleggers, they turned to pot to keep their families fed.

Our motivation for the film:

Evan: I was born and raised in Kentucky, and the story of the Cornbread Mafia has been part of my life for as long as I can remember. My mother’s family is from Marion County, where the heart of this story took place. Growing up, I heard fragments of it through family stories and local lore, but the version that exists in popular imagination often feels misunderstood.

What drew me to this film was the chance to move beyond the mythology and hear the story directly from the people who lived it. The people at the center of the Cornbread Mafia story are not just characters in a legend. They are farmers, neighbors, and members of a tight-knit community shaped by the realities of rural Kentucky in the 1970s. I wanted to create space for them to tell their story in their own words.

Drew: I was initially drawn to this story because of how far these guys were willing to take their operation. It had smuggling, car chases, fugitives, exotic animals, crooked cops, and an excessive amount of cocaine. But the more I got to know our subjects, the more I realized how special of a group of people we were documenting. They cared deeply about their families and the people of central Kentucky. The feds saw reckless criminals with bad drug habits, but there were so many more layers to these guys. When we got to know other members in the community, they had nothing but positive things to say about them.

The biggest challenges and achievements:

Evan: This story spans an enormous stretch of time, from growing up as the sons of moonshiners during Prohibition, to beginning to grow marijuana in the 1970s, expanding beyond Kentucky throughout the 1980s, and ultimately being arrested and serving long prison sentences in the 1990s. Condensing that into a 90 minute film was a real challenge.

At the same time, it’s not like they were walking around with video cameras documenting themselves breaking federal law, so there wasn’t a deep archive of footage to rely on in the edit. Animation became an exciting solution. It allowed us to bring some of these stories to life while matching the humor and personality of the storytellers, especially in moments that truly felt stranger than fiction.

Drew: This story took place over the span of more than 50 years and had such wide range of characters with different storylines. But the more we looked into everyone, the more clear it came that the Bickett Family were at the heart of the whole story. Their family is so close knit and so special, that viewing this journey through their eyes added so much more emotion to it. Some of our most memorable moments were the time we spent with the Bicketts outside of filming. Getting to know their family and being allowed to take a step into their lives was something I’ll always be grateful for.

Why audiences need this film now:

Evan: Today, cannabis is a billion-dollar industry, with governments collecting tax revenue and entrepreneurs building massive businesses. The people at the center of this film were pioneers of that same crop, yet they served decades in federal prison for farming it. Their story highlights the human cost of that shift and why this history still matters.

Drew: With the feds ramping up funding for busting organized crime and cannabis legalization sweeping across the country, a story like this could never happen again on this scale. It’s rare to see something go from illegal to legal, so this film shows what it feels like to go to prison for two decades only to come out to your crime not being considered a crime anymore. Most of all, this film is a wild ride filled with larger than life antihero characters that you can’t help but root for. We hope audiences are as entertained watching it as we were making it.

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The unsolved murder of Billy London, a gay adult film performer brutally killed in West Hollywood, was an urban legend for 33 years. A documentary intended to honor his life took an unexpected turn when members of the community joined forces to uncover overlooked clues, and seek a resolution to the mystery of who killed him.

My motivation for the film:

At first, I was motivated by the hope that making this film might contribute to solving a decades-old cold case but if we couldn’t solve it we could understand why it wasn’t solved. I learned about Bill Newton’s (aka Billy London) murder while researching gay adult film models for my documentary Circus of Books. The story of his murder immediately unsettled me. He was a gay man, brutally killed, and worked in the gay porn industry which connected to my parents store.

Over time my motivation evolved. It was no longer just about a terrible crime that occurred near where I grew up. It became about understanding the victim beyond the circumstances of his death, and about reckoning with a period of intense fear and vulnerability for young gay men. In the shadow of AIDS and rising hate-fueled violence, lives were not only endangered, but often dismissed. Telling this story became a way to restore dignity to someone reduced to a headline, and to explore the cultural forces that allowed such violence to fade into the abyss of history.

The biggest challenges and achievements:

This film was made entirely independently, which was both a challenge and a defining strength. I did try to pursue traditional avenues of support, but it became clear that the story did not fit neatly into conventional models. Embracing a fully independent approach gave us creative freedom, but it also meant constant uncertainty around financing. As a filmmaker, that weighs on you.

And yet, at the same time, it was generosity that carried us through. Crew members, collaborators, and community participants showed up not because of financial incentive, but because they believed in the story. That collective belief created a sense of shared purpose that you cannot manufacture.

The most extraordinary moment was realizing that we had actually solved the crime. And it was then that I realized that all of the time, resources, and information which people contributed was what led to this. It affirmed for me the power of filmmaking on a grander level. An even greater achievement than simply completing a film, we solved a murder.

Why audiences need this film now:

This film feels necessary now because I know how easy it is for stories like this to disappear. For years, Bill’s murder sat unresolved, and the message, intentional or not, was that his life did not warrant the same urgency or attention as others. I did not want to accept that. Making this film was, in part, about refusing to take no for an answer when there were still questions left to ask. I hope audiences feel that persistence and understand the power individuals and communities have to keep momentum alive when it feels like history has moved on.

What moves me most is that this became a group effort. Members of the LGBTQ community and allies showed up, shared information, and stayed engaged. That teamwork helped bring real closure to a family who had been waiting for decades. It was not abstract activism. It was personal and sustained care.

At a time when queer lives are still debated and politicized, there is power in simply insisting that one gay man’s life mattered and still matters. Without this film, Bill Newton might have remained a footnote. Telling his story is my way of making sure he is not forgotten.

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It’s the second week of SXSW and we’re shining a spotlight on some of the more serious issues brought to light by the impactful docs at the festival, dealing with issues of reproductive and gender rights, and legal mechanisms to censor and control:

• The Dads directed by Luchina Fisher

• Baby/Girls directed by Alyse Walsh and Jackie Jesko

• My NDA co-directed by Juliane Dressner and Miriam Shor

• Scarlet Girls directed by Paula Cury

Now is a great time to become a Doc Voices subscriber. You’ll get access to an archive of 80+ articles including last week’s SXSW coverage, highlighting premieres with a connection to nature and unconventional biographical films:

• Capturing Bigfoot directed by Marq Evans

• Daughters of the Forest directed by Otilia Portillo Padua

• The Ascent co-directed by Edward Drake, Scott Veltri and Francis Cronin

• The Life We Leave directed by JJ Gerber

• Stormbound directed by Miko Lim

• Amazing Live Sea Monkeys co-directed by Mark Becker and Aaron Schock

• Manhood directed by Daniel Lombroso

• Serling directed by Jonah Tulis

• We Are The Shaggs directed by Ken Kwapis

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Inspired by the Emmy-Award winning short documentary of the same name, The Dads chronicles fathers of trans and nonbinary children as they are forced to choose between country and family when a new right-wing administration and conservative Supreme Court take hold in the United States.

My motivation for the film:

In many ways, this feature is a continuation of the journey we started with our Daytime Emmy-winning short documentary, also called The Dads (Netflix, in 2023), about fathers of transgender and gender expansive kids. The new film captures the dads launching their movement to support fathers around the country.

We filmed their second retreat and went home with some of the dads to meet their families. Then the political landscape shifted, and our story took on a new urgency as each of the fathers grappled with the best way to protect their families. Some ultimately decided to flee the country. Everyone agreed we should keep filming in order to document this critical juncture, which includes a pivotal U.S. Supreme Court decision and the collapse of gender-affirming care for youth, to show the impact on trans families.

While the short film focused on the internal pressures that dads face when they learn that their kid is trans or nonbinary, this film looks at the external pressures they are facing. The question they all have had to ask themselves – “what are you afraid of” – is instead posed to the audience, as these men demonstrate love, vulnerability, courage and community in the face of tyranny.

The biggest challenges and achievements:

Stephen Chukumba, one of the original dads, pushed me to keep filming after the short and came on board as a producer on the feature. We started filming with a small donation from the Matthew Shepard Foundation, followed by in-home fundraisers filled with parents and allies of trans kids. Dwyane Wade and Jon Marcus from 59th and Prairie Entertainment returned as our executive producers and introduced us to Elevate Studios, who came on board just as we were in post-production. So many people showed up for this film because they understood the importance of telling this story right now.

The biggest challenge during filming was the emotional and mental stress of seeing my fellow advocates and people I love flee the United States. As always, the community that we formed and that has grown during filming has held me, this project and each other in a way that has allowed us all to keep going and bring this film into the world.

Why audiences need this film now:

Fewer than three million Americans aged 13 and older identify as transgender, yet billions of dollars, thousands of legislative bills, and sweeping executive actions have been directed at restricting their rights and, in many cases, denying their existence. The Dads arrives at a moment when the human cost of this backlash urgently needs to be seen and understood.

Since the 2024 election, nearly half a million transgender Americans have effectively become “political refugees,” leaving their home states – and in some cases the country – because they no longer feel safe or cannot access essential care. These are not abstract statistics; they are our neighbors, co-workers, classmates and members of our communities. Through the voices of fathers, the film explores profound questions about parents’ rights, democracy and our shared responsibility to protect vulnerable people.

At the same time, it offers a powerful reimagining of fatherhood and masculinity, as these men wrestle with their fears, challenge what they have been taught about gender, and ultimately choose love. The Dads reminds us that allyship takes courage and that, when people show up for one another, it can save lives. Through our partnership the Ali Forney Center, we hope audiences will not only be moved but inspired to be part of the change.

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Teen birth rates in America’s Heartland are among the highest in the nation. In the wake of the landmark Dobbs decision, a Christian maternity home in Arkansas becomes a crossroads in the lives of three pregnant teenagers.

Our motivation for the film:

Jackie: It was barely a year after the Dobbs decision that we started developing the concept for this film. Our initial question was simple: how will this change things for the women and girls living in the states where abortion access is now illegal? Looking back, I don’t think we realized how complex the answers to that question would be, but ultimately I think that is the true strength of the film.

The young girls who became the main characters of the film are regular teenagers in so many ways, but they also live in depressed areas without a lot of access to education or good jobs. They have dealt with different heavy issues growing up, like addiction, sexual abuse, and generational poverty. Their lives take place a world away from the statehouses where consequential decisions are being debated that will affect the most intimate parts of their lives. Making sure these girls’ perspectives and voices were heard and understood in all their nuance was a huge goal of making this film and something we’re really proud of in the final result.

Alyse: Telling the stories of women has always been a big part of my career. After Roe v. Wade was overturned and so much of the United States banned abortion, I became particularly interested in the trickle down effects for people like our film’s subjects who very rarely are seen or given a voice, let alone in the culture wars debates. The film isn’t political nor is it directly about abortion, but the political situation in the South is sort of the elephant in the room and the unspoken backdrop to everything these young women are facing.

That said, what we found in making the film challenged a lot of my assumptions about the after-effects of Dobbs, which made it all the more interesting in my opinion. I find it very motivating in general to be able to share the points of view and the lived experiences of young women whose lives are almost entirely unseen by our media. Walking in their shoes, I hope, will build empathy and understanding in viewers.

The biggest challenges and achievements:

Alyse: One of the film’s primary challenges, as with any true verite documentary, was gaining and continuing to cultivate trust with the young women and their families. Once we were able to identify our three primary characters, growing our relationships with them so that we could go even deeper into their stories and lives was paramount. Earning the level of trust where we were permitted to hang out with them during private moments — whether at parties with other teenagers or having deeply intimate conversations with one another as a family — is a delicate and lengthy process. It was important to me that everyone involved felt seen and not judged by us, but it was also important that we make sure that they were comfortable with the level of access they were giving us every step of the way. This can sometimes be tricky when you become emotionally close with the people whose lives you are documenting.

I think between Jackie, myself and our incredible producer Melissa Leardi, we toed that line carefully and now have deep bonds with all of the families in the film. I’m proud of that and I was proud and relieved when the girls watched the film and felt that their stories were represented accurately and sensitively.

Why audiences need this film now:

Jackie: We are living in perhaps the most overwhelming news environment anyone can remember. It can be so hard to digest big issues because there’s a constant barrage of consequential and unprecedented news coming at us at all times. It’s remarkable that even in the few short years it took to make this film, women’s issues in the US have very much retreated to the background of the national conversation.

While this film is not an advocacy film in its approach, it does deal with important issues that seem to have dropped out of the national conversation: access to contraceptives, sexual education, and abortion. But even if they’re not dominating headlines, these issues absolutely continue to impact the lives of young girls across the US, specifically in the South. They certainly impacted the lives of Ariana, Grace and Olivia, our film’s subjects. We’re very grateful to have gotten the opportunity to bring their voices to the forefront in this film.

Alyse: There are so many things to be deeply concerned about in our current moment in the United States, but one of my largest concerns as a woman and as the mother of a little girl is that our voices and stories are silenced to make space in the news cycle for a variety of other distractions. I’ve felt that there have been these moments that feel like turning points, like the #MeToo movement for example, where the experiences of women are brought into the zeitgeist and validated only to have those same “women’s issues” fade into the background again with little to no meaningful change actually taking place on a policy level or within our business structures. Now it feels like not only are those stories not given the limelight, but that we’re seeing some significant backsliding in terms of the norms around how women are considered and treated in this country.

The film is necessary now because it disallows that silencing and brings these young women, who already live on the margins of our society and are so often ignored, into the conversation. I want to keep those voices, as well as those of many more women and girls, loud and in the conversation. They have every right to be there.

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We continue our wild rodeo through the SXSW documentary slate with a look at unconventional biographical films that shine a light on a cast of both obscure and well-known characters:

• Amazing Live Sea Monkeys co-directed by Mark Becker and Aaron Schock

• Manhood directed by Daniel Lombroso

• Serling directed by Jonah Tulis

• We Are The Shaggs directed by Ken Kwapis

Now is a great time to become a Doc Voices subscriber. You’ll get access to an archive of 80+ articles, including yesterday’s issue. In case you missed it, I began my SXSW coverage highlighting premieres with a connection to nature:

• Capturing Bigfoot directed by Marq Evans

• Daughters of the Forest directed by Otilia Portillo Padua

• The Ascent co-directed by Edward Drake, Scott Veltri and Francis Cronin

• The Life We Leave directed by JJ Gerber

• Stormbound directed by Miko Lim

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Tomorrow, Saturday, March 14 at 4pm, I’ll be moderating a panel conversation with Scott Veltri (The Ascent), Marq Evans (Capturing Bigfoot) – and Bayan Joonam (Phoenix Jones: The Rise and Fall of a Real Life Superhero).

We’ll be discussing what happens when the story you once thought you were telling careens off in a totally different direction and how to embrace the unknown, unexpected and downright bizarre in the process of making a documentary. If you’re in town, I’d love for you to join and say howdy!

Register here!

From her crumbling estate on the Potomac, Yolanda Signorelli von Braunhut is engaged in a David-and-Goliath battle to wrest control of her late husband Harold’s iconic toy Amazing Live Sea Monkeys! back from the corporate men who she insists stole them from her.

Our motivation for the film:

After months of preliminary phone conversations with Yolanda Signorelli, we travelled down to her Sea-Monkeys estate in Maryland, where Yolanda had lived since she and Harold von Braunhut moved from New York City in the early 80’s. After passing through a half-occupied exurban development we landed at a dead end. Before us lay a densely forested wood guarded by large iron gates in the shape of the iconic Sea-Monkeys nuclear family.  A worker was waiting for us, and he pushed open the rusting gates and signaled for us to follow. Down that winding dirt road we have since driven dozens of times, and it’s been a winding road both literally and metaphorically.

Over the course of making Amazing Live Sea Monkeys, we found a resonant story well beyond our expectations. At first, we were captivated by Yolanda - once a bohemian actress in B movies - who was now living without water and electricity while fighting to regain her beloved Sea-Monkeys. Gradually, we began to uncover the life of her mysterious late husband Harold, who ruled the back pages of comic books with advertisements for his novelties like X-Ray Specs, Crazy Crabs, and Invisible Goldfish.  When we learned that Harold also had a secret life, we discovered a new level of power and meaning to the Sea-Monkeys story, which added dimension to Yolanda’s efforts to free them – and herself – from the past. 

Past those Sea-Monkey gates, a universe had opened before us that speaks volumes about American life, and as filmmakers, it has been our privilege to tell that story.

The biggest challenges and achievements:

For documentary filmmakers, access and trust are paramount. We look back fondly on our countless production days on Yolanda’s Sea-Monkeys estate, which provided a time-travel portal to the past. Endless varieties of novelty toys were strewn around the property gathering rainwater. Sea-Monkeys drawings from the great graphic designer Joe Orlando rested amidst beakers and science scales, alongside books on mind-reading, exotica from Yolanda’s modeling and film career, and mimeographed political screeds.  It was a kaleidoscope of textures and signifiers from a recent cultural past. 

As filmmakers we are of the slow-cook variety, and that suited Yolanda’s needs – to have tea, snack, and discuss. By the time we needed to broach the more difficult eras of Yolanda’s life, we had fully established the kind of trust where we could navigate each other (us as filmmakers and her as film participant) thoughtfully. This period of production grounded us, so that we could then head out into the world to meet all the other players in this layered, stranger-than-fiction Sea-Monkeys story. 

There is something we’ve noticed after years of working in the realm of immersive documentary storytelling. Through observation, natural human discourse and un-pushy discovery, we learn about the lives of others, but also learn about ourselves.  And given our epiphanies while learning the contours of someone’s story over time – the obstacles they face, how they interpret their own past – we then aspire to share this experience with the viewer as well. With Amazing Live Sea Monkeys, it’s our hope is to offer the viewer their own portal of discovery through the Sea-Monkeys universe.

Why audiences need this film now:

Scratching below the surface of an iconic American novelty, one discovers the ingenuity and creative success that can characterize this country; but in that same aquarium lay cutthroat capitalism, misogyny and extremist politics. Amazing Live Sea Monkeys reveals the murky undercurrents of American culture — undercurrents that time and again rise to the surface – and offers the story of Yolanda’s drive to rise above.

Amazing Live Sea Monkeys premieres on March 13, 6:15pm at Alamo Lamar 6.

More info + screenings

Dallas entrepreneur Bill Moore attempts to make penis enlargement as commonplace as Botox. Along the way, an OnlyFans star and a father of five put their bodies — and their insecurities — on the line

My motivation for the film:

There’s a lot of media coverage around the so-called “male loneliness epidemic,” but I hadn’t seen a movie that gave voice to this cultural moment. Around two years ago, I heard about an underground cosmetic revolution in the world of penile enhancement, and I thought it would be such a fun and fascinating way to explore male insecurity. I booked a one-way ticket to Texas and started to embed in a penis-enlargement clinic. Right away, I met the most unexpected patients – a megachurch pastor, a border agent, a father of five – each of whom thought that a little more “manhood” might solve their problems in life. Can cosmetic surgery help men feel more secure, or is the issue deeper? The film grapples with that question in a sincere way, exploring masculinity in the age of Trump.

The biggest challenges and achievements:

When I first flew down to Texas, I never imagined I’d get a single patient to show their face. Shockingly, I found many men who were more than ready – feeling disconnected or lonely in life, but somehow ready to talk in the safety of the clinic. The injection room felt almost like a church confessional for these men – a way for them to share their deepest insecurities, with their pants at their ankles, and finally get secrets, traumas, and dreams off their chest. Around that time, I met Ruben Ramirez, a father of five who was spending upwards of ten-thousand dollars on a temporarily thicker penis. He claimed his partner loved it; her feelings were ambivalent. I also met David Smith, a former OnlyFans star who was botched by a bad practitioner. Once I earned their trust, I knew we had a film, and I followed them for the next two years of their lives. I’m proud of the surprising tenderness in Manhood – an open-hearted view of the pressures we all feel and how we as a country might speak more publicly about our shame.

Why audiences need this film now:

Rates of male-body modification are skyrocketing. Men are getting hair transplants, lengthening their legs, and taking enhancing drugs in the name of their manhood. Tech CEOs call for a more "masculine" work culture. An American President is going to war with members of his cabinet, calling it a "manly" event. We live in an era of hypermasculinity, even as men feel more isolated, disconnected, and sad than ever before. Manhood tries to reckon with that pain, using the funny and absurd hook of penis enlargement to explore the deeper truth that exists underneath. We hope that audiences will come for the dicks ... but stay for the emotional journeys of men finally facing their shame.

Manhood premieres on March 14, 2:45pm at Alamo Lamar 9

More info + screenings

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Giddy up, we’re going to SXSW! I’m thrilled to be returning to Austin, one of my favourite cities, home of brisket, two-steppin’ and the sunset bat phenomenon.

One thing I appreciate is that the festival never fails to serve up a platter of eclectic and unusual docs, with subjects ranging from cryptids to penis enlargement to rogue marijuana farmers. Over the next two weeks, I’m excited to spotlight the films that tickled my fancy the most and share exclusive insights from the filmmakers behind them.

I’ve organised this multifarious slate of films into loose themes, so in this issue i’ll be highlighting premiering documentaries with a connection to nature:

• Capturing Bigfoot directed by Marq Evans

• Daughters of the Forest directed by Otilia Portillo Padua

• The Ascent co-directed by Edward Drake, Scott Veltri and Francis Cronin

• The Life We Leave directed by JJ Gerber

• Stormbound directed by Miko Lim

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On Saturday, March 14 at 4pm, I’ll be moderating a panel conversation with the directors of two of the films on this list – Scott Veltri (The Ascent), Marq Evans (Capturing Bigfoot) – and Bayan Joonam, director of Phoenix Jones: The Rise and Fall of a Real Life Superhero, which I’ll feature in a future issue.

We’ll be discussing what happens when the story you once thought you were telling careens off in a totally different direction and how to embrace the unknown, unexpected and downright bizarre in the process of making a documentary. If you’re in town, I’d love for you to join and say howdy!

Register here!

On October 20, 1967, Roger Patterson captured 59 seconds of film showing a creature walking through the Northern California woods — footage that became the most analyzed and debated in history. Fifty-seven years later, a reel of 16mm film discovered in a safe changes everything.

My motivation for the film:

I always knew I’d make a Bigfoot documentary someday - not because the creature itself held any mystique for me, but because the story had been circulating through my blood since childhood, passed down as a strange inheritance from my father. He’d grown up alongside the very people who shot the famous Patterson footage of a Bigfoot back in October 1967, and the tales he’d spin weren’t the sanitized versions you’d find online. They were raw, human stories - full of the kind of contradictions and complexity that make you understand that truth is never as clean as we pretend it is.

For decades, these characters lived in my head: the friendships that turned into betrayals, collapsed financial schemes and the desperate men chasing something elsuive. It always felt cinematic, but I never imagined the film I’d actually end up making would be anything like what eventually unfolded.

The biggest achievement:

The entire process of making this film feels like an achievement. We tackled a subject that had been an ongoing and passionate debate for over five decades, and managed to bring something new to the conversation by connecting with the actual subjects that were involved and getting them on camera for the first time ever. By doing so, we actually brought a conclusion to a story that has fascinated so many for so long. The investigative work and dogged determination by our entire team are something I am very proud of.

Why audiences need this film now:

We solved one of the greatest mysteries of the last sixty years, but somewhere in the process, we realized the film had become about something far more essential than proving or disproving the existence of a creature in the woods. It became a meditation on the stories families hold dear, on the fragility of friendship, on forgiveness and the weight of carrying someone else's truth. It's about why we believe what we believe, and how we'll twist ourselves into impossible shapes to defend those beliefs, even when the evidence stares us in the face.

In the end, this isn't just a Bigfoot documentary. It's a mirror held up to our capacity for self-deception, our hunger for mystery in an over-explained world, and our endless ability to find meaning in the shadows between what we know and what we choose to believe. These themes feel as urgent now as they did in 1967 - maybe more so.

Capturing Bigfoot premieres on March 12, 3:45pm at Alamo Lamar 4.

More info + screenings

The extraordinary true story of climber Mandy Horvath, a bilateral amputee attempting to crawl to the summit of Mt. Kilimanjaro on her hands and an investigation into the night she tragically lost her legs.

Our motivation for the film:

Edward: I felt, in my bones, Mandy's incredible story of resilience would inspire the world. Her story has already inspired so many to find the courage to persevere through their darkest hour. The experience of climbing Mt. Kilimanjaro was personally life changing, and we wanted to shine a light on the phenomenal transformation and personal growth it takes to summit the highest freestanding mountain in the world.
Our journey into the heart of the crime that almost claimed Mandy's life became our way of shedding light on the institutional injustices affecting so many Americans today.

Scott: When I heard about what Mandy went through, and that despite all of that she stepped up to the challenge of Kilimanjaro, I was blown away. I couldn’t believe the depth of persistence and ferocity she possessed. We often discussed within our team and when telling friends about this story how would we deal with it if what happened to Mandy happened to one of us. And the answer was often the opposite of her resilience. “I would have just crawled up and died,” or “Given up.” They may seem like ignorant responses but in most cases a painfully true assessment of the average person’s outlook when facing trauma in life. Mine has certainly been pushed to a higher standard and our hope is the film will have the same effect on all who see it.

Francis: From the moment Mandy shared her raw, unfiltered account, I knew this wouldn't be just another "inspirational" climbing film. It was a chance to honor a woman who turned unimaginable violence into a defiant, record-breaking achievement. The drive was exploring hard truths with care, amplifying a voice often sidelined, and showing resilience isn't tidy or performative. It's messy, painful, and profoundly human.

The biggest challenges and achievements:

Scott: Earning Mandy’s trust and the emotional sensitivity required to get her to speak openly about her past and the night of the incident was one of our greatest challenges. Tracking down certain people during the investigation at times became a full time job along with thoroughly vetting all the evidence and witness accounts for authenticity and accuracy.

Creating a safe space for Mandy to be her most vulnerable was as much an achievement as it was a challenge that we, along with her, are proud of. Working with the brilliant Adam Peter’s to compose a score that captured the opposing light and dark elements of the story really brought the film to the next level.

Edward: Our guides told us, as the filmmakers, we were risking our lives attempting to climb to the summit and document Mandy at the same time. They told us stories of seasoned studio crews who had failed and turned back. We succeeded, but barely. I was hallucinating from oxygen deprivation by the time we reached the summit.

Climbing Mt. Kilimanjaro turned out to be the 'easiest' part of the production.

To do justice to Mandy's story, and uncover what happened to Mandy the night she lost her legs, required us to immerse ourselves in the darkness of her trauma. Not a great headspace to be in for five years. On top of that, we were threatened by locals, lied to by law enforcement, and told we would face retaliation if we continued to search for the truth of what happened to Mandy in Nebraska on July 26th, 2014. I'm so grateful we didn't give up.

Francis: The challenges were relentless: Altitude sickness hit the crew hard on summit push at 19,341 ft, freezing nights, and Mandy's raw physical demands (crawling endless miles over volcanic terrain, scree, glaciers). Logistically, hauling camera gear, batteries, and backups up Africa's highest peak while staying unobtrusive was brutal. There was one particularly tough night on the mountain when Mandy’s hands were opened up and we had tense discussion about whether she would be able to make it.

Nevertheless, we summited together safely, captured Mandy’s record journey, and earned Mandy’s trust to tell us the full, unflinching truth. Being selected for SXSW's Documentary Feature Competition is a huge validation for the whole team.

My most memorable moment was summiting Uhuru Peak in golden light on that final dawn, watching Mandy touch the sign after days of doubt, tears mixing with exhaustion, the whole team in awe.

Why audiences need this film now:

Francis: Right now, when disability representation is still somewhat tokenistic and survivors’ truths are often dismissed, this story celebrates unapologetic strength. That’s something people need now more than ever.

Edward: Mandy's story is one of hope against all odds. No matter how dark life can get, we must always fight to find the light. Her harrowing yet uplifting spirit will leave you so grateful for the life you have.

Scott: The human spirit isn’t unbreakable — it can absolutely be crushed. Completely. What’s remarkable is our ability to repair and rebuild. Mandy embodies that resilience at the highest level and I think people need a boost of inspiration to apply in their own lives, a little extra strength to keep it going, especially in the craziness of today’s world.

The Ascent premieres on March 15, 11:00am at Zach Theater.

More info + screenings

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Whether or not you observed, the Grammy Awards took place last weekend, so it’s only fitting that I end my Sundance series celebrating Composers! Below, hear about scoring the sonic universes of four fab films that premiered at the festival:

• Taul Katz on Barbara Forever

• Will Epstein on Joybubbles

• Suad Bushnaq on American Doctor

• Helena Czajka on Sentient

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This is the perfect moment to become a paid Doc Voices subscriber. You’ll unlock upcoming paywalled editions, including our features on Sundance below:

Focus on debut directors, featuring:

• Barbara Forever

• The Disciple

• Kikuyu Land

• TheyDream

• Joybubbles

Focus on veteran directors, featuring:

• When a Witness Recants

• Time And Water

• Paralyzed By Hope: The Maria Bamford Story

• The Brittney Griner Story

• Silenced

Focus on cinematographers, featuring:

• Soul Patrol

• Antiheroine

• The Lake

• Cookie Queens

• To Hold a Mountain

Focus on editors, featuring:

• The History of Concrete

• American Pachuco: The Legend of Luis Valdez

• The Oldest Person in the World

• Give Me the Ball!

• Public Access

Focus on archival producers, featuring:

• Once Upon A Time in Harlem

• Aanikoobijigan [ancestor / great-grandparent / great-grandchild]

• Jane Elliott Against The World

  and more!

Plus, you’ll get full access to our archive of 80+ past newsletters.

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An archive-driven exploration of the life, work, and legacy of iconic, pioneering lesbian filmmaker Barbara Hammer.

How I connected to Barbara Forever:

Director Brydie O’Connor and I had been fans of each other’s work for a few years and kept in touch, waiting for the right project to collaborate on. A few years ago, my music featured in her short The Faultline and around that time she mentioned Barbara Forever while it was still in its early stages.

I’ve long been a huge admirer of Barbara Hammer’s work, not only for what she’s done for the queer community, but for how she gave people permission to queer their art in the same way they queer their lives. Her spirit has always resonated with me.

When Brydie reached out as the film began post-production, I immediately said yes. It felt like a very natural continuation of an ongoing creative conversation and an opportunity I didn’t want to pass up.

Brydie O'Connor in Doc Voices

My musical approach:

From the beginning, this project felt like a deep and personal collaboration, not just with Brydie, but with Barbara herself. Since Brydie and I had been in conversation for a while before the film entered production, she gave me early access to Barbara’s archival materials and the freedom to experiment however I wanted. I spent the first month immersed in that archive, pulling sounds from Barbara’s films such as reel clicks, breath, analog hiss and early synth textures, building a personal sample library that would serve as the foundation of the score. The process felt incredibly intimate, like collaborating across time.

Barbara’s work is both profoundly moving and deeply playful, and I wanted the score to reflect that duality. Once I had a first pass of the music and had recorded the majority of the instrumentation, including harp, cello, clarinet, flute, piano, and saxophone, Brydie and I began working together in person. We had the rare privilege of time, which gave us space to experiment freely. Those sessions were about exploration with no pressure for immediate results.

I also had a lot of help from incredible collaborators. Jon Nellen assisted me and helped with some of the compositions. I've been lucky enough to collab with some incredible instrumentalists for this as well whose names I want to acknowledge below.

Assistant Composer:
Jon Nellen

Additional Composition:
Jon Nellen
Samba Jean-Baptiste
Nina Keith

Instrumentalists:
Harp - Leng Bian
Cello - Oliver Coates
Cello - Daniel Hass
Cello - Ouri
Drums - Jon Nellen
Synth and piano - Diego Gaeta
Synth - Taul Katz
Synth - Samba Jean-Baptiste
Guitar/Bass - Taul Katz
Sax - Caleb Giles
Clarinet - Adelyn Strei
Flute - Kima Hibbert
Trombone - Kalia Vandever

Learn more about Taul

Joybubbles discovers he can manipulate the telephone system by whistling a magic tone. Born blind and yearning for connection, his early obsession unwittingly lays the groundwork for a subculture that shapes the future of hacking and technology.

How I connected to Joybubbles:

Joybubbles' wonderful producer Sarah Winshall and music supervisor Taylor Rowley were familiar with my previous scores for New Strains (which screened at Sarah's festival, Los Angeles Festival of Movies) and Nam June Paik: Moon Is The Oldest TV. I'm not sure precisely what their thought process was in choosing me, but both of those previous scores had a whimsical tonality that connects with the Joybubbles’ story while the New Strains score specifically had a clear use of melody that ended up being an element in this score as well.

Joybubbles director in Doc Voices

My musical approach:

I was immediately drawn to Joybubbles' open-heartedness and playful demeanor and felt a connection with his spirit. The film already had a really vibrant and clear visual and sonic language by the time I came onboard and I instinctively had a sense of some of the instruments I would begin composing with.

Most of the score is built with a Mellotoron and a microtonal synthesizer – the former recreates analog instruments in a slightly uncanny realm due to its tape loop functionality. I felt like I could use it in a way that would bounce off nicely with the vintage instrumental tracks that Taylor had already selected for the film, creating sort of abstracted refractions of these pieces that could get under the skin some of the more emotional moments in the film. The analog microtonal synth allowed me to explore the analog world of pre-digital telephone communication that Joybubbles was such a master of and added an interesting layer to the "acoustic" sounds from the Mellotron. I also have a fun 80s synth that has a sampler and mic built in that I was able to whistle into to make a whistle-synth. I employed it sparingly so as not to be too on the nose but I did use it in one of my favorite moments in the film when Joybubbles has a sort of spiritual awakening and the whistle sound has a really nice ethereal quality to it.

Also, given Joybubble's sincerity in his efforts to communicate, I tried to incorporate some clear melodic moments in the score. The best example of that comes at the end of the film when Joybubbles' friends are having a memorial on the phone for him and a simple flute melody takes center stage and a gentle Mellotron choir sings him off into the sunset.

Learn more about Will

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Happy February! Yesterday concluded the final day of Sundance 2026, it’s last iteration in Utah. Nevertheless, in this issue I’m continuing shining a light on more heroes of the documentary process, Archival Producers, who one contributor below describes – most aptly – as private investigators:

• Matt Hoffman and myself on Once Upon A Time In Harlem

• Helen R. Russell on Give Me the Ball!

• Frauke Levin on Jane Elliott Against The World

• Jennifer Petrucelli on American Pachuco: The Legend of Luis Valdez

• Avery Fox on Aanikoobijigan [ancestor / great-grandparent / great-grandchild]

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This is the perfect moment to become a paid Doc Voices subscriber. You’ll unlock upcoming paywalled editions, including our features on Sundance below:

Focus on debut directors, featuring:

• Barbara Forever

• The Disciple

• Kikuyu Land

• TheyDream

• Joybubbles

Focus on veteran directors, featuring:

• When a Witness Recants

• Time And Water

• Paralyzed By Hope: The Maria Bamford Story

• The Brittney Griner Story

• Silenced

Focus on cinematographers, featuring:

• Soul Patrol

• Antiheroine

• The Lake

• Cookie Queens

• To Hold a Mountain

Focus on editors, featuring:

• The History of Concrete

• American Pachuco: The Legend of Luis Valdez

• The Oldest Person in the World

• Give Me the Ball!

• Public Access

Plus, you’ll get full access to our archive of 80+ past newsletters.

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A decade after his death, genre-defying filmmaker William Greaves has one last trick up his sleeve with what he considered the most important event he captured on film: a 1972 party he engineered with the living luminaries of the Harlem Renaissance.

How I connected to the film:

Matt: I’m incredibly honoured to have worked on this film. I first connected with it in August 2020, when I began working with Louise Greaves, the widow of William Greaves, to organize the last of their archival materials that hadn’t yet been acquired. The two of us spent weeks sorting through her and Bill’s archive, spread across a Manhattan storage unit, a Brooklyn unit, and their Upper West Side apartment. Finishing this film was one of Louise’s driving forces in the final years of her life, so any time we came upon papers related to its production, financing, or completion, we set them aside.

After we finished cataloguing the collection, I continued working with Louise to oversee film exhibition and licensing for William Greaves Productions, which she managed entirely on her own. In the last months of Louise’s life, producer Anne De Mare was able to retrieve the long-stalled sound elements for Once Upon a Time in Harlem, and for the first time it finally felt like the film could be completed. I worked with Louise until her passing in 2023, and then continued that work with Bill’s granddaughter, Liani Greaves, who produced the film. When Liani later invited me to formally join the project as an archival producer, it felt like a meaningful continuation of the work I’d begun with Louise

Bella: I was brought on by Matt Hoffman in the latter stages of post-production to finalise archival and was honoured to do so; Once Upon A Time In Harlem is a true documentary time capsule. The frequent use of split screen in the film demonstrates its power as a portal, first to the 1970s and then deeper into the 1920s through the power of the participants memories – it was thrilling to find the right archival that would evoke these stories as vividly as possible. I love the fact that the film’s final manifestation was due to three generations of the Greaves’ family – William, David and Liani – carrying the baton of responsibility for protecting a vital cultural legacy. At the premiere Q&A, I was struck how so many of the audience thanked William Greaves for having the foresight for capturing these conversations for posterity and it reminded me of the urgent importance of preserving the memories of my own elders through documentary.

The piece of archival I’m most proud of:

Matt: I’m especially proud of securing the James Van Der Zee photographs featured at the beginning of the film. Although we licensed them from the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Met wasn’t able to provide high-resolution files for all of the images. In the end, we had to pull materials from six different institutions to complete the set. The photograph above, Nude, Harlem was particularly difficult to track down. As picture lock approached, I genuinely thought we’d have to replace it. Thankfully, at the last minute, the one art gallery that appeared to hold a copy finally responded to my very persistent emails and calls, and we were able to include it.

Bella: One of my challenges was finding mastheads for the various Black newspapers that circulated during the Harlem Reniassance – some of which had only existed in print for a few issues. My proudest score was finding a reprint of The Daily Negro Times published by Marcus Garvey in 1922 deep within an 900-page declassified report by the Bureau of Investigation (the precursor to the FBI) on Garvey and the Universal Negro Improvement Association!

More info

World champion tennis trailblazer Billie Jean King has had a game-changing impact on culture and sports. Rare archive and candid interviews with Billie Jean and those closest to her reveal how one woman put changing the world ahead of saving herself.

The piece of archival I’m most proud of:

There were many wonderful archival pieces that were special in Give Me the Ball! But one of the gems I’m most proud of securing features footage of Billie Jean King leading a tennis clinic in her hometown of Long Beach California in 1988 for Domino’s Pizza TeamTennis when she was Commissioner of the league.

A little backstory: A few years ago, I was researching for Billie Jean’s book, ALL IN and had learned that Serena Williams and Venus Williams had attended a Billie Jean King clinic when they were kids. So the hunt began then to see if any imagery existed from the event. I had access to Billie Jean’s archive and after scouring through her collection came across a binder of negatives of the various clinics that Billie Jean held all over the country. I located the Long Beach dates and pulled out my loop to look through the several pages of negatives. And there it was – right before my eyes looking through the loop and seeing a crystal-clear image of a six-year-old unmistakable Serena Williams, in perfect follow through form hitting a forehand with Billie Jean standing directly behind her. It was an absolutely incredible sight, and I was in awe.

I continued to the next frame of Serena and Billie Jean and then again, to another perfectly composed photo showing a seven-year-old, and again, unmistakable Venus Williams hitting her signature forehand with her high follow through – and Billie Jean standing watching it in real time.

How could it be? When you find something like this it always makes me wonder about all the details and what it meant that everything in the universe was aligned for it to happen. What were the odds that, A: A photographer would be there, B: that of the most likely hundreds of kids who attended how would the photographer capture this child at this moment. C: That Billie Jean would hold this clinic in Long Beach and D: That the Williams family lived driving distance from the clinic E: That the Williams family even saw the notice in the first place that announced that Billie Jean King was even going to be in Long Beach F: That the Williams family could even attend the clinic. The list could go on and on. It’s awesome in the truest sense. Even the composition of the photographs. Perfect. It was taken by photographer Jerry Lenander and is owned by Billie Jean King Enterprises.

You have to understand - this was Billie Jean King, 39-time Grand Slam champion, including 20 Wimbledon Championships witnessing two iconic future tennis phenoms at a clinic.

Jump ahead to 2024 when I was brought in by Story Syndicate to become the senior archival producer for a new documentary on Billie Jean King. Needless to say, the photos of Serena and Venus were on my mind – and in the back of my mind I’m thinking and wondering if it could be – could lightning strike twice and might there be any footage of the same clinic. So, archival producer Andrew Mayz and I were mindful to be on the lookout for anything. Late in our research, we were sent a reel of Billie Jean called Sportstraits from IMG – and as if it was a message from a higher place - there was footage from the very same clinic where the photos were taken. At first seeing the miscellaneous shots I couldn’t believe it. And again, in another extraordinary moment – as I was watching the screener footage down for the first time it was right there – in full color – in footage - Billie Jean on court, holding the clinic, giving instruction to children as they came up for their turn in line to get in front of the legendary champion to receive feedback on their strokes. And then there it was, into the frame emerges this little girl in a pink shirt and short combo about to hit the ball – she connects and you hear and see an animated Billie Jean King saying enthusiastically as Serena hit the ball, “Did McEnroe help you?” - pause and another Serena hit ball, King says, “You could help him.”

Deep breath, pause, repeat and watch again, and again, and again. What did I just witness? Moments later, a seven-year-old Venus Williams wearing a white t-shirt, and black sweatpants followed her sister onto the screen providing yet another incredible piece of footage hitting her iconic forehand.

Just to let this sink in – and give another sports analogy. This archival find is like uncovering footage of the immortal baseball legend Babe Ruth holding a baseball clinic in some little league field park somewhere in the country and into the hitting line pops up a youngster named Ted Williams who went on to become arguably the greatest hitter who ever lived.

Sometimes you just pinch yourself at the marvel of it all. As an archival producer you are always in the deep dive search to find something special, something that no one has ever found or seen before. As I always say, I’m like a private investigator. Knowing sports well and understanding its history and all the nuances is part of the find. And the search is never ending.

What’s so thrilling for me as well and as important, is that this footage is now part of the historical record and will be around forever and for generations to see and witness firsthand this initial meeting – and how this came to be. Serena Williams went on to win 39 Grand Slam titles and Venus Williams won 23 Grand Slam titles.

Billie Jean’s pioneering efforts led to securing equal prize money for women and men at the 1973 US Open Tennis Championships and eventually lead to equal prize money at all the Grand Slam tournaments.

Here is the difference in lifetime prize money earned for the three champions:

Billie Jean King $1,966,487
Serena Williams $94,816,730
Venus Williams $42,874,504

Thank you Billie Jean King.

As always, the search continues for what’s next! It’s such a pleasure to have the opportunity to work on these documentaries and find something historic, significant and special.

More info

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I may have left Park City (for the final time - welp!) but I’m continuing my roundup of Sundance hits from my desk warmer climes with a look at directors who premiered their latest works at the festival:

• Dawn Porter on When a Witness Recants

• Sara Dosa on Time And Water

• Neil Berkeley on Paralyzed By Hope: The Maria Bamford Story

• Alexandria Stapleton on The Brittney Griner Story

• Selina Miles on Silenced

If you haven’t already, check out our features on debut directors, cinematographers and editors with exclusive insights into the making of:

• Barbara Forever

• The Disciple

• Kikuyu Land

• TheyDream

• Joybubbles

• Soul Patrol

• Antiheroine

• The Lake

• Cookie Queens

• The History of Concrete

• American Pachuco: The Legend of Luis Valdez

• The Oldest Person in the World

• Give Me the Ball!

• Public Access

  ---

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This is the perfect moment to become a paid Doc Voices subscriber. You’ll unlock upcoming paywalled editions, including features with Sundance editors, cinematographers and veteran directors, and get full access to our archive of 80+ past newsletters.

I’ll be in Park City for the first half of the festival, with a few extra Pure Nonfiction beanies to give away to subscribers. If you spot me, come say hello!

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In 1983, author Ta-Nehisi Coates learned that a 14-year-old boy was murdered in his Baltimore middle school. Upon revisiting the case, he uncovers the truth: Three innocent teenagers were wrongfully convicted and spent 36 years in prison — creating a lasting impact on the accused, the witnesses, and their community.

What drove me to make this film:

I’ve done a number of stories about the criminal legal system, but none affected me more than the story of these three teenagers and the witnesses the police coerced into testifying against their friends. After 36 years they were free, but the scars of their incarceration remain.

The biggest challenge in pulling it off:

There were almost no pictures and really no footage for the 36 years of their incarceration, so we really had to get creative. I wanted people to feel the passage of time - how much they were missing as the world went on without them. That led me to the graphic novel-style illustrations. Now, I’m dying to make an entirely illustrated film.

When a Witness Recants screens on January 31, 9am MST at Megaplex Redstone - 1

All in-person and virtual screenings

Facing the death of his country’s glaciers and the loss of his beloved grandparents, Icelandic writer Andri Snær Magnason turns his archives into a time capsule to hold what is slipping away — family, memory, time, and water.

What drove me to make this film:

I was driven to make Time and Water by the urgency to translate the overwhelming, abstract scale of the climate crisis into an intimately human story. By collaging Andri Snær Magnason’s family narrative with Iceland’s dying glaciers, I wanted to explore how memory, love, and storytelling can serve not only as acts of preservation but also as a kind of cultural transmission that invites the dreaming of a possible habitable future. As such, we structured the film as a cinematic time capsule; or, as we say in the film, “a portal to a time when glaciers are still alive, held open so they can continue to be.” Like glacial records, archival storytelling layers time itself, preserving traces of who we’ve been within what still remains.

Moreover, I was excited to make a film that is polytemporal; embracing geologic time, ancestral memory, and cinematic temporality. I believe that alternative frameworks of timekeeping can rebuff the dominant regime of standard time that has its origins in extractive industrial systems, by reorienting us toward rhythms of interdependence, care, and continuity with the more-than-human world. Understanding something as fundamental as time in this way can be a powerful tool at this critical juncture in our planet’s history.

The biggest challenge in pulling it off:

Artistically, this was an extremely challenging film to make. From the outset, I envisioned it as a collage of archives: from Andri’s grandparents, among the first to explore and photograph Iceland’s glaciers, alongside national archives and Andri’s own footage. This approach was essential, as the film’s form echoes the idea that glaciers themselves are planetary archives, freezing fragments of Earth’s processes over hundreds, thousands, and even millions of years. Moreover, we shot our own contemporary footage of glaciers to build upon the archive of glaciers, in order to create a visual layer of the present” where glaciers are still powerful and alive.

However, it was very difficult to find the right narrative shape that could contain these multidimensional collages of archives and stories; and where the shape was not just any shape, but one that uplifted the themes of the film itself. In many ways, the messy beauty of life and polytemporality contained within family archives resists neat narrative containers.

We also had to balance the rhythms of first-person narration by our protagonist and guide, Andri Snær Magnason (whose book On Time and Water and greater body of work inspired the film) which proved a tremendous undertaking in terms of writing.
I was extremely lucky to work with an extraordinary team though in navigating these challenges – my beloved and exceedingly talented producers, editors, director of photography and archival researchers made all this possible. This is a collage film in style, but I think of the process as a collage of our teamwork, as well.

Time and Water screens on January 29 at 9:40am MST at Megaplex Redstone - 2

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The festival is in full swing and to continue our Sundance series, we’re turning our attention to another group of filmmakers shaping some of this year’s most exciting premieres.

In today’s issue, editors share the challenges and choices that shaped the final films:

• Cori Wapnowska, ACE on The History of Concrete

• Daniel Chávez-Ontiveros on American Pachuco: The Legend of Luis Valdez

• Aaron Wickenden on The Oldest Person in the World

• Josh Pearson on Give Me the Ball!

• Geoff Gruetzmacher on Public Access

If you haven’t already, check out our features on debut directors and cinematographers with exclusive insights into the making of:

• Barbara Forever

• The Disciple

• Kikuyu Land

• TheyDream

• Joybubbles

• Soul Patrol

• Antiheroine

• The Lake

• Cookie Queens

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After attending a workshop on how to write and sell a Hallmark movie, filmmaker John Wilson tries to use the same formula to sell a documentary about concrete.

What drew me to the film:

When director John Wilson told me the film was called The History of Concrete, I laughed because I understood it would seriously be about concrete (which would generally be considered unsaleable in an industry of flashy big-budget docs) but also that it would spiral into a much bigger conversation about things like the American relationship to quality, the environment, the film business, technology, and how we experience time. That’s the joy of working with John — he takes a very specific subject and, through humor, quietly leads you somewhere much broader and stranger than you expected. As an editor, I loved following those detours, figuring out how these seemingly unrelated ideas talk to each other, and helping stitch them back together into a larger, slightly absurd reflection on how we live today.

The biggest challenges:

Unlike John’s show How To, this film had a stripped-down independent staff, all working other jobs while moving the project forward. This became a meta-storyline about the changing economics and fragility of the film business. Editorially, the main challenge was balance: staying connected to John’s personal experience while making sure the concrete-related vignettes continued to reveal new facets of the material. Music was another ongoing discussion. John wanted the film to remain relatively quiet, making sure the music didn’t compete with the voiceover jokes, but we also wanted a subtle, ethereal dystopian tone. A last-minute blessing of Suzanne Ciani’s music library helped us land there. The final challenge was the ending, as we wanted to hit the right philosophical note and create emotional impact with subtle call-backs.

Soul Patrol screens on January 30, 2:30pm MST at Library Center Theatre

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Against political resistance and industry skepticism, Luis Valdez pushes Chicano storytelling from the fields to the film screen with Zoot Suit and La Bamba, crafting iconic works that challenge, celebrate, and expand America’s story.

What drew me to the film:

I became interested in the subject matter because I’m a Mexican immigrant living in the United States, and I strongly identified with the struggles Luis Valdez faced throughout his life as a Mexican-American artist, growing up in a country that didn’t fully understand him or recognize Mexican-Americans as human beings. He fought against these stigmas through his art, finding a sense of identity in his ancestral roots, honoring his Chicano culture, and integrating these themes into his body of work in theater and film. Through his art, he made a powerful statement: “Chicanos, we are American, and we belong here.” He was also one of the Latinx artists who opened doors in the entertainment industry for the rest of us. Since my editing work has always centered on themes of identity, memory, and the experience of living between worlds, I felt deeply connected to Luis’s story. As a Latino artist myself, I also felt a strong affinity with his experiences in the industry.

Given the current political climate in the country, I believe this is an important and urgent film, one that can inspire our communities to resist, affirm our presence, and challenge the way Mexican-Americans are seen and understood.

The biggest challenges:

The main challenge of the film was condensing such an extraordinary life story and vast body of work, in both theater and film, into a 90-minute film. We had hundreds of hours of archival footage, photographs, and old interviews spanning more than 60 years. In addition, we conducted a new interview with Luis, totaling 24 hours of footage filmed over five days; interviewed Luis’s family, members of El Teatro Campesino, and other actors; and shot vérité scenes with him in San Juan Bautista. Altogether, it was a massive amount of material.

Fortunately, David had a clear plan. He decided to structure the film into five acts: Luis’s early years growing up as a farmworker; the founding of El Teatro Campesino during the 1960s farmworkers’ strike in California; writing and directing the play Zoot Suit; writing and directing the film La Bamba; and his lasting legacy in American culture. By focusing on these five pillars, we were able to shape and construct the film.

Additionally, we integrated the relationship between Luis and one of his brothers, Frank. This relationship allowed us to see Luis on a more intimate level and to explore more deeply the emotional complexities of being Mexican-American.

American Pachuco: The Legend of Luis Valdez screens on January 31 at 3:30pm MST at Holiday Village Cinemas - 1

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It’s an eye-watering -8 degrees (that’s celsius) this morning, so grab a hot choc and let’s continue our spotlight on the filmmakers premiering bold new work at Sundance this year!

In today’s issue, I’m sharing behind the camera experiences of:

• Logan Triplett on Soul Patrol

• Magda Kowalczyk on Antiheroine

• Alex Takats on The Lake

• Eva Kraljevic on To Hold a Mountain

• Antonio Cisneros on Cookie Queens

If you missed it, check out yesterday’s issue where debut directors gave exclusive insights into the making of:

• Barbara Forever directed by Brydie O’Connor

• The Disciple directed by Joanna Natasegara

• Kikuyu Land co-directed by Andrew H. Brown and Bea Wangondu

• TheyDream directed by William D. Caballero

• Joybubbles directed by Rachael J. Morrison

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I’ll be in Park City for the first half of the festival, with a few extra Pure Nonfiction beanies to give away to subscribers. If you spot me, come say hello!

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From deep behind enemy lines, a hidden chapter of American military history is uncovered, prompting the question of whether reckoning with the past can bring peace to those who lived it. The Vietnam War’s first Black special operations team reunites to tell their story.

My approach to shooting Soul Patrol:

This film has several story lines happening at once in addition to archival. I wanted the audience to know where they were at all times. I wanted the photography to drift between moments of intense realism and moments of almost euphoric fever dream. The characters of our film live each day caught between their haunted pasts and their every day struggles: it was important for the photography to exemplify this complex dichotomy.

My approach was to slowly build on each scene, carefully revealing certain truths that we were after. I think that the worst thing you can do to an audience is to isolate them with an image that is pretty but doesn’t add to the story. I was very careful to hit the right notes at the right time.

The scene I’m most proud of:

The scene I am most proud of is probably the round table conversation between the veterans. It is one of the many reoccurring scenes within the film. We decided that it should be black and white so that the audience knew where they were in an instant. The scene isn’t particularly notable from a visual standpoint, but it was an extremely difficult scene to shoot. We could only afford two cameras despite having 6 people at the table. No one single person was to be the main point of focus. We had each camera on a zoom and slowly taped off 20 or so camera positions with stand ins. We used chairs and set dressing to hide a small video village for director and AC’s as we had to be hidden for 360 degrees.

The location had drop board ceiling in which we rigged lights to, keying them mostly with a hard bounce light into the table. I didn’t realize that many of them would be wearing glasses, and the photos that they were using to spark memories would reflect in their glasses. I loved that happy accident.

It was 8 hours of communicating and making sure that one camera was in position before another would move to find a new shot. I really like the way that scene turned out as it feels very off the cuff, as it was for them.

Soul Patrol premieres on January 25, 11:30pm MST at The Ray Theatre

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Singer, songwriter, and actor Courtney Love has long had an impact on rock and pop culture. Now sober and set to release new music for the first time in over a decade, Courtney is ready to reveal her story, unfiltered and unapologetic.

My approach to shooting Antiheroine:

The first question I was asked by co-directors Edward Lovelace and James Hall was whether I could work quickly, stay light, and remain invisible. The intention was clear: to create an intimate portrait of Courtney Love — one that felt close, present, and honest, without ever intruding. My approach grew from that idea of proximity with care.

Very quickly, I was drawn into Courtney’s world. Her charisma filled the space, and the camera followed quietly as she moved through her home in London, allowing moments to unfold at their own pace. We observed her daily rhythms, her strength and fragility, and the reality of her health struggles. She allowed us in, and that trust shaped the way the film was shot.

The visual language leans toward softness and tactility, evoking memory rather than documentation. Images feel lived-in, warm, and close, as if the viewer is standing beside her, sharing the same air. Focus drifts gently, movement remains fluid and responsive, and the camera listens as much as it looks.

The goal was never to explain or define Courtney, but to be present, attentive, and open, allowing intimacy to emerge naturally through observation and time.

The scene I’m most proud of:

For me, filming Courtney in her bedroom was one of the most powerful moments of the shoot. We filmed there several times, and each visit felt deeply intimate. Being invited into such a personal space and experiencing her charisma so closely was intense and moving. Spending hours there, often filming almost nonstop, allowed the camera to become part of the room rather than an intrusion. The experience was challenging, driven by adrenaline and the pleasure of capturing something truly powerful.

Antiheroine premieres on January 27 at 9pm MST at Eccles Theatre.

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Sundance 2026 has begun, kicking off what promises to be an historic and emotional year as the last hurrah in Park City. We’ll be covering it from the ground over the next week, starting by spotlighting the bold new voices making their feature directorial debuts at Sundance.

Below, I’m sharing exclusive insights into the making of:

• Barbara Forever directed by Brydie O’Connor

• The Disciple directed by Joanna Natasegara

• Kikuyu Land co-directed by Andrew H. Brown and Bea Wangondu

• TheyDream directed by William D. Caballero

• Joybubbles directed by Rachael J. Morrison

  ---

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This is the perfect moment to become a paid Doc Voices subscriber. You’ll unlock upcoming paywalled editions, including features with Sundance editors, cinematographers and veteran directors, and get full access to our archive of 80+ past newsletters.

I’ll be in Park City for the first half of the festival, with a few extra Pure Nonfiction beanies to give away to subscribers. If you spot me, come say hello!

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An archive-driven exploration of the life, work, and legacy of iconic, pioneering lesbian filmmaker Barbara Hammer.

My path to becoming a documentary director:

I wrote my thesis on Barbara Hammer’s early filmography in undergraduate, and connected with Barbara through purchasing her DVDs for my research. At the time, I thought I would be a writer or a film critic, but Barbara’s fearless and inventive approach to documenting her body, lovers, and her community inspired me to try making my own films. When Barbara passed in 2019, I reached out to her widow, Florrie Burke, to share how much Barbara impacted me and see if she would be interested in collaborating on a short documentary about Barbara’s legacy through the lens of her and Florrie’s love that lasted 31 years. We began working together on this piece, eventually released in 2022 as Love, Barbara, and I was totally invigorated by the process of discovery involved in the research and editing phases of documentary filmmaking, in particular.

As I continued working on my Barbara Hammer project at large, which has now culminated in Barbara Forever, I made several other documentary shorts that revisit the past as a vehicle for self-discovery and creating lineage, often utilizing personal archival collections. Barbara Forever is my debut feature documentary, and the culmination of my generative work to date.

Why I wanted to tell this story:

Barbara Hammer was one of the first filmmakers to put a lesbian life on screen, at a time when she hadn’t seen herself reflected in cinema before. That dedication to self-invention and creating presence is what initially drew me to her work. Barbara didn’t wait for permission to create, she developed and shared her worldview through experimentation, risk, and persistence.

For me, Barbara’s films function as both historical records, and a path forward into the future. They offer a blueprint for women, queer people, and creatively expansive artists to write our own histories into existence, especially when those histories have been ignored or erased. I was motivated to tell this story not only to honor Barbara’s extraordinary body of work, but to illuminate her way of working – her commitment to curiosity, play, and continual reinvention.

My hope is that encountering Barbara’s films and her process encourages viewers to keep making, keep questioning, and keep trusting their own creative impulses, regardless of age, institutional support, or experience. Barbara’s life and work offer not only a legacy to be preserved and proliferated, but an ongoing invitation to live and create boldly, on one’s own terms.

Barbara Forever premieres on January 24, 5:45pm MST at The Ray Theatre

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An outsider fueled by relentless determination works his way into the inner circle of the Wu-Tang Clan, where his ambition and creativity converge in the making of an album poised to ignite global controversy.

My path to becoming a documentary director:

I’ve been working as a documentary producer for quite a long time with some of the world's most talented directors and teams. I have always very much enjoyed the creative end of the job and I think contributed a lot to that side of the work. I felt it was time to set myself a new challenge and so just dove in at the deep end. It’s been a really enjoyable and joyful process working with the most supportive producers in Abigail Anketell-Jones, Lauren Dark and Vanessa Kirby, uber talented DPs in Franklin Dow and Pierre Aïm and an amazing editing team in Chloe Lambourne and Chris Dickens, not to mention our heroic composer, MJ Cole and there are so many other folks as well!

Why I wanted to tell this story:

When I first heard it, I thought the story was just so unbelievably interesting and original, but also moved through worlds and art that I happened to have loved since I was a child. The more I dug, the more I found the layers and depth to the story that resonated with something deeply in me, but first and foremost the story itself really is just an exceptionally fun and boisterous odyssey. I also think the themes of mentorship and fighting for your dreams are things we see the characters live through, and are credos we all need to hang on to as artists.

The Disciple premiered yesterday at Eccles Theatre and will screen next on January 23 at 12pm MST at Megaplex Redstone - 1.

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We began our Sundance 2026 coverage yesterday with part one of Thom’s ten picks from this year’s line up. That list included

• The AI Doc: Or How I Became an Apocaloptimist directed by Daniel Roher, Charlie Tyrell

• All About the Money directed by Sinead O’Shea

• Everybody to Kenmure Street directed by Felipe Bustos Sierra

• Once Upon a Time in Harlem by William Greaves and David Greaves

• One in a Million directed by Itab Azzam and Jack MacInnes

You can read it here. Today we bring you part two.

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Now is an ideal time to join Doc Voices as a paid subscriber. You’ll unlock the paywall of upcoming newsletters and gain access to over 80 past editions including our reports on:

• Oscars Doc Branch

• Documentary Producers Alliance

• Alliance of Documentary Editors

• Archival Producers Alliance

• Festival coverage of TIFF, Blackstar, Tribeca, Sheffield, Cannes, SXSW

• And much more!

I’ll be in Park City for the first half of the festival and carrying some extra Pure Nonfiction knit caps to give away to our subscribers. If you see me, please say hello!

Now I’ll turn this over to Thom for part two of his 2026 Sundance Top Ten.

Cheers, Bella

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Sundance is full of great documentaries, but these are the ten titles (including the five yesterday) that have stayed with me the most. - Thom Powers

GETTING INSIDE OF GAZA

American Doctor directed by Poh Si Teng

Filmmaker Poh Si Teng has long been an esteemed producer with stints at ABC News, Al Jazeera, Vice, and the New York Times. Now she makes her directing debut with this feature length work that’s a stunner. Her film follows three American doctors from different backgrounds - Palestinian, Jewish, Zoroastrian - who volunteer in Gaza hospitals under the constant threat of Israeli bombing. From their vantage point, we gain a unique perspective on propaganda, politics, and the carnage caused by U.S.-funded weaponry. Although Gaza has been under intense bombardment for over two years, we’ve scarcely seen this kind of cinematic portrayal. As one doctor puts it, the only question to ask in face of this horror is: “Did you do everything that you could?”

American Doctor premieres on January 23, 5:45pm MST at The Ray Theatre

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If you look back to last year’s festival newsletters, you’ll find we shined a spotlight on many films that made the Oscar Short List including our picks of 2000 Meters to Andriivka, Coexistence, My Ass!, and Cutting Through Rocks. In the coming days, we’ll highlight different talent sets at Sundance. While you wait, you can revisit the our coverage from last year including:

• Debut Directors to Watch with Brittany Shyne (Seeds)

• Cinematographers to Watch with Brandon Somerholder (Come See Me in the Good Light), Mohammedreza Eyni (Cutting Through Rocks), Lars Erlend Tubaas Øymo and Tor Edvin Eliassen (Folktales)

• Editors to Watch with Michelle Mizner (2000 Meters to Andriivka) and Virdiana Lieberman (The Perfect Neighbor)

• Directors to Watch with Andrew Jarecki and Charlotte Kaufman (The Alabama Solution).

Subscribe now

Now is an ideal time to join Doc Voices as a paid subscriber. You’ll unlock the paywall of upcoming newsletters and gain access to over 80 past editions including our reports on:

• Oscars Doc Branch

• Documentary Producers Alliance

• Alliance of Documentary Editors

• Archival Producers Alliance

• Festival coverage of TIFF, Blackstar, Tribeca, Sheffield, Cannes, SXSW

• And much more!

I’ll be in Park City for the first half of the festival and carrying some extra Pure Nonfiction knit caps to give away to our subscribers. If you see me, please say hello!

Now I’ll turn this over to Thom for his 2026 Sundance Top Ten.

Cheers, Bella

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Whether you’re attending Sundance in person or watching online, here are my first five recommendations for titles worth your time. - Thom Powers

THE CONVERSATION STARTER ABOUT NEW TECHNOLOGY

The AI Doc: Or How I Became an Apocaloptimist directed by Daniel Roher, Charlie Tyrell

I’m putting this first because after I watched, I found myself looking at every other film through the filter of how AI stands to change our lives - for better or worse. Oscar-winning filmmaker Daniel Roher (Navalny) is our guide interviewing an array of experts, trailblazers, and alarmists on the topic. He teams with co-director Charlie Tyrell whose witty doc short My Dead Dad’s Porno Tapes took a visually inventive approach that’s put to great use in illustrating abstract concepts. The film’s interviews are roughly divided into the pessimists, the optimists, and the tech moguls who are growing obscenely rich. See which ones you trust the most.

Hear Daniel Roher on Pure Nonfiction

The AI Doc: Or How I Became an Apocaloptimist premieres on January 27, 5:30pm MST at The Ray Theatre

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As we approach Oscar nomination voting, host Thom Powers interviews the film teams behind four documentaries shortlisted for the Oscars on the latest episode of Pure Nonfiction. These conversations were recorded for an online edition of Documentary Spotlight, co-presented by

Listen to Pure Nonfiction Episode 235

THE ALABAMA SOLUTION (co-directed by Andrew Jarecki and Charlotte Kaufman) exposes systemic abuse and corruption, using smuggled footage from inside Alabama’s prisons

YANUNI (directed by Richard Ladkani) profiles indigenous leader Juma Xipaia during her courageous fight to protect the Amazon from environmental destruction amidst mortal danger.

MY UNDESIRABLE FRIENDS: PART I - LAST AIR IN MOSCOW (directed by Julia Loktev) follows a group of young journalists navigating persecution as Russia descends into authoritarian crackdown.

CUTTING THROUGH ROCKS (co-directed by Sara Khaki and Mohammadreza Eyni) captures a fearless motorcycling midwife as she defies tradition to fight for women’s rights in a remote Iranian village.

Below are excerpts from the conversations…

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THE ALABAMA SOLUTION

Andrew Jarecki: There’s been a big groundswell of support and interest in the film, because even the people of Alabama don’t really have a sense of what’s happening in their own prison system due to the secrecy. When people are faced with this kind of video proof, they begin to understand the level of not just brutality, but corruption. Charlotte told me the other day that the Alabama Department of Corrections is the largest law enforcement agency in the state, and the most significant drug-dealing operation. The drugs are being brought in by law enforcement officers. It’s a very topsy-turvy world where people have, little by little, become accepting of this, and there’s probably a little shame too: if you have a family member in prison, you probably don’t talk about it. But when they see the film, they realize this is also happening to their neighbor, to a family down the street, and there’s a real sense of opportunity to cooperate in saying, “this is wrong.”

The most encouraging thing is that people inside the 14 prisons have all seen the film, some on contraband cell phones, some sent by someone else. That togetherness, and families seeing for the first time what their loved ones experience, is resulting in real action on the ground. People are starting to show up at legislative sessions, making real noise, and we want to help them do that.

Charlotte Kaufman: Historically, most journalism and storytelling around prisons has been done with the oversight and permission of the state. Journalists cannot speak to people who are incarcerated, and they cannot visit prisons unless they have that permission, a restriction affirmed and backed by Supreme Court rulings. This has meant that much of the storytelling around prisons is not truly free journalism; it is mediated and moderated by state authorities. The fact that we were able to communicate with incarcerated men through contraband cell phones meant we could circumvent that. In some ways, you could consider our film one of the first examples of truly free journalism about the prison system: we are able to see inside not because the authorities granted us permission, but because we had another way in. That’s what makes our film unique, we are seeing the truth about incarceration without the permission of the state.

YANUNI

Richard Ladkani: When I met Juma, she had just survived a sixth attempt on her life. She was in hiding and uninterested in talking to journalists or filmmakers, she just wanted to survive and live a life with her family.

I made her a proposition: many indigenous leaders are targeted, killed, or disappear without notice, and this film could be a tool in her fight for meaningful change. If millions know who she is, she becomes a harder target, facing outrage, media attention, and scrutiny.

I also wanted to give her as much control as possible, because I quickly realized she’s a storyteller who really understands narrative structure. You see it when she speaks on stages, she mesmerizes people. So I told her, I want you to be the storyteller. I want you in control. I asked her to be a producer on the film to give her meaningful control over the narrative. Security was a big question; I didn’t want her to feel threatened or exposed.

The one thing I had to do was learn Portuguese, because she didn’t even trust the translator I was using. So I took a six-month course in Portuguese and learned the language so I wouldn’t need a translator and could be fully embedded in her life.

MY UNDESIRABLE FRIENDS: PART I - LAST AIR IN MOSCOW

Julia Loktev: I tried not to think about the risks for myself, though I was acutely aware of them, especially in the first week of the full-scale invasion. I kept thinking like a filmmaker: I can’t lose the footage. How do I get it out? How do I protect my iPhone, my microphones, my equipment?

For me, the consequences mattered. If I were detained, I couldn’t film, I couldn’t keep doing my job. Every moment counted, and this was a historic, momentous event, so I just focused on filming. I avoided public spaces like protests because I didn’t have press accreditation, and had my characters film those instead.

The place I felt most threatened was their workplaces. Every day, these journalists went to offices where they feared searches, yet they carried on with their work. Watching that, I thought, I just have to shut up and film.

What impresses me most about the people I filmed is that it’s not about whether they reach a goal, it’s about how they keep working, and whether they do the right thing while doing it.

CUTTING THROUGH ROCKS

Sara Khaki: I was born and raised in Tehran, Iran, and I left when I was a teenager. Growing up, I witnessed so many women in my immediate and extended family striving for independence.

When I moved to the United States, I carried this idea that many of the issues explored in Cutting Through Rocks – mainly gender injustice – are still a work in progress, even here. That made me curious about women who never left their home countries or hometowns: what are they doing, and how are they pushing for space for the women and girls around them?

Through extensive research, I discovered Sara Shahverdi, a tenacious individual, the only female motorcycle rider in her village, and a midwife who had delivered 400 children. Over several months of phone conversations, she told me she was thinking about running for a council seat. I knew there was a story here, but I also knew I couldn’t tell it alone. I needed a male co-creator, who was also a skilled cinematographer, so I called Mohammad Reza and said, “Let’s go to this village together. This is a story worth telling.”

Mohammadreza Eyni: For us as filmmakers, it was a lesson in seeing how change is contagious, how, even when it’s hard and sometimes seems impossible, if you fight for it, you can make it possible. Our main character and her community taught us so much while making this film.

This film was, for us, a long masterclass in studying power and how it works: seeing a woman take a council seat for the first time, taking power, and observing how the community responded to her. When we finished the first phase of Sarah winning the election, one of our colleagues even said, “Guys, you have a film here, you don’t need to continue.” But for both of us, it was crucial to see how she used that power and how others in the village reacted.

Throughout the process, Sarah used her power to fight for women’s rights: asking men to give land rights to women, teaching teenage girls to ride motorcycles, and stopping child marriages, among many other things. She was using her power to empower women in the village.

Happy New Year!

Bella

Before we sign off for the year, we have two features to share. First is the latest episode of Pure Nonfiction focusing on “Sean Combs: The Reckoning” that shot to #1 on Netflix this month. Second is a conversation I hosted in partnership with the Los Angeles Times celebrating five new films that deal with urgent themes about the environment in unique ways. Two of those titles are now shortlisted for the Oscar: the feature Yanuni and the short All the Walls Came Down. The full line-up covers:

• Director Ondi Timoner on All The Walls Came Down (Shortlisted)

• Director Richard Ladkani on Yanuni (Shortlisted)

• Co-director Rosanna Xia on Out of Plain Sight

• Co-director Bonni Cohen on The White House Effect

• Co-director Colin Arisman on Arctic Alchemy

You can listen to the whole panel conversation here:

Below, read highlights and watch clips from the conversations.

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On episode 233, Pure Nonfiction host Thom Powers interviews director Alexandria Stapleton on Sean Combs: The Reckoning, executive produced by 50 Cent.

This doc series stands out from others on P. Diddy by gaining access to never-before-seen insider footage and securing interviews with close associates who have never spoken so openly.

I’ve pulled some of the most compelling quotes from Alexandria as she reflects on each of the four episodes. If you’ve watched the series, you’ll want to listen to the full podcast.

• On Episode One: “To examine allegations of sexual assault and violence, I really believe that context is key; monsters are not born, monsters are made.”

• On Episode Two: “When you’re watching the Source Awards and Sean is publicly trying to say, ‘One love,I ’m just trying to bring everyone together,’ you have to ask whether that was really the case. Because with all that we’re able to see that behind closed doors, a lot of other things were going on.”

• On Episode Three: “When Cassie’s lawsuit dropped, a lot of people who had buried their experiences just moved on with their lives and were never planning to come public. Cassie’s lawsuit was a Pandora’s box, where all of this stuff came back out.”

• On Episode Four: “Once you’ve been conditioned, it reminds me a lot of being in a cult. You’re taught that this is how things are done, and if you say anything, you’re putting yourself directly in the line of fire.”

  Listen to Episode 233

Now let’s recap the Los Angeles Times lunch dialogue:

Ondi Timoner on All The Walls Came Down

Ondi Timoner (Last Flight Home) was a longtime resident of Altadena in Los Angeles and lost her own home in the 2025 fires. In the wake of the disaster, sheturns the camera on her community to see how her neighbors respond.

Bella: How did you navigate making this film while contending with profound personal and community loss, and balancing your roles as both director and participant?

Ondi: There have been a few moments on this journey when I’ve felt deeply grateful to be a filmmaker. The first was right after the house burned down. We were in the middle of making a film about the Holocaust, and I had an interview scheduled with a Holocaust survivor whose father was murdered when he was six.

That interview was the very next morning. I couldn’t cancel on him. And in those first 24 hours, after learning we had lost literally everything, it became the greatest gift.

Everything we knew in our town is gone. Nineteen of our neighbors have perished, and our cat is gone. But we are still here. So what can we do? Picking up a camera is almost our second language.

The filmmaking community surrounded us completely. They started a GoFundMe, supported our recovery. Producers showed up. Filmmaking, and being a filmmaker, became everything. Turning our devastation and our community’s devastation into a rallying cry, that’s a kind of shield.

We’re standing on the front lines with our neighbors, many of whom are Black and brown and being pushed out by the banks to stop foreclosures and protect our community.

There’s no greater gift. Because otherwise I’d just be lying there crying – which I still do, as you see in the film. But filmmaking gives us a way to do something.

Richard Ladkani on Yanuni

Filmmaker Richard Ladkani (Sea of Shadows) tracks the extraordinary journey of Juma Xipaia, an Indigenous chief from the Brazilian Amazon, as she rises from a remote village in Xipaya territory to the political frontlines of climate justice. A fearless defender of her people and the rainforest, Juma has survived six assassination attempts while confronting illegal gold miners, land-grabbers, and multinational corporations threatening her ancestral land.

Bella: The film is visually stunning, but it also shows profound environmental and human violence. How did you balance that?

Richard: When I first met Juma, all I knew was that she was living a life of constant crisis and extremes. There were death threats. People tried to kill her. She survived.

At the same time, she’s a mother. She can’t always be with her children because they could be kidnapped simply for being close to someone others want to kill. So the film became a day-by-day journey navigating those realities in the moment and figuring out how to hold them in a film.

All I knew was that Juma, as a character and as a person, was so powerful that if I stayed close to her long enough, something would unfold. And I had no idea how wild that journey would be. We filmed over four years, and once we really went into production, things accelerated in unexpected ways. Lula won, and she was called into government, suddenly becoming the second most powerful woman in a newly created Indigenous ministry.

That required another shift. How do you deal with someone moving from being a hardcore street activist – being tear-gassed, being an assassination target – to suddenly holding power inside the government? Then she became pregnant.

So the film was about constantly navigating that, especially security. We didn’t want to put the family, or the children, in more danger. We had to become almost invisible. I used the smallest camera possible. I didn’t have a crew. I shot about 70% of the film myself. I did the sound, flew the drone, everything so we could stay under the radar.

There was no posting on social media, no talking about what we were doing. It was a life of secrecy and constant risk assessment.

It was a wild ride, and I’m grateful we came through it healthy and alive and still close. We tour together, we fight together. We’re risking a lot for nature and environments and it’s worth fighting for.

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Apocalypse in the Tropics looks at how fundamentalist religion plays a crucial rule in the rise of authoritarian politics. The focus is on Brazil, but there are parallels in many countries, including the United States. Pure Nonfiction host Thom Powers interviews the director Petra Costa and producer Alessandra Orofino to capture the lessons they learned documenting the wild political swings in their country over the past ten years.

Listen to Pure Nonfiction Episode 232

Below are edited excerpts from the conversations.

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Thom: Petra, your previous film The Edge of Democracy traced the tumultuous events in Brazilian politics that caused former President Lula to go to prison, for the then current President Dilma to be impeached and for the right wing politician Bolsonaro to rise to power. When the film came to Netflix in 2019, Bolsonaro was still in power. What was the response to the film in Brazil?

Petra: It was a very intense reaction. First, because I think no documentary was as widely seen in Brazilian history. It was seen by 2 million people in the first month and it was the second most watched documentary on Netflix that year. So I think more than 10 million people saw the film by the time it was nominated for an Oscar. And so it provoked so much reaction. Most of the Brazilian media had portrayed a different version from the version I’m telling in the story. Most of the establishment was in agreement with a narrative that Dilma should be impeached, that she did commit crimes, and so did Lula. It was not until the international press started to report on what was happening that we started having different perspectives. So this film comes like a cry from half of the population that was not agreeing with the way the facts were being portrayed.

Then Bolsonaro criticizes the film. He says that I’m a traitor of the nation. He uses the official Twitter of the secretary of communication to attack me. One of his Senate congressmen asks for my prison so that there’s a huge attack. That would prove itself to be part of a series of his attacks on female journalists.

Thom: Just a few weeks after you attended the Oscars in 2020, the world shut down for COVID. Did you know right away that it was time to make a new film?

Petra: Actually, I didn’t. The Edge of Democracy was so exhausting from a psychological and physical perspective that I couldn’t think of continuing. But then in March the pandemic begins. And in April, I’m already itching to film because we’re living through the worst sanitary crisis of our history with the worst president in command. It was just a surrealist nightmare. So we started filming mainly in in the favela. As soon as the material started to come back, it was clear that the evangelical presence was prominent – both in helping people where the state would not help, but also in spreading misinformation that the virus would be cured by Jesus. So I invited the producer, Alessandra Orofino to work with me. She suggested we film the televangelist Silas Malafaia and we did. At that moment he was just one of many allies of Bolsonaro. But, with time, other allies would die, including of COVID. And he became the most important ally.

Thom: Alessandra, you spent seven years producing Brazil’s leading political comedy show, inspired by The Daily Show. There are times when I feel envious of how those comedy shows can reach audiences compared to documentaries. So what appealed to you about the world of documentary?

Alessandra: The main difference is that when you’re doing well with comedy, timing is everything. A joke can be very funny today and not funny at all tomorrow. If you want to be funny, you have to be funny before someone else is funny on Twitter. So I was for many years producing a weekly show. It’s very satisfying because you see the results immediately. But the time frame is not great for reflection.

When you look at Petra’s films you can see the years that went into it and and and that gives you as the audience a very different experience. When I go into screenings [of Apocalypse in the Tropics], particularly in Brazil, we’re helping people look back and what they just experienced and make sense of the full narrative. You can’t compare these different kinds of impacts. I wouldn’t say that one is more impactful than the other. Both have a place in the culture. And we need to fight for them to exist because they have a role.

Thom: When you were filming, Bolsonaro was firmly in power. Now he’s facing a long prison sentence for a conviction of trying to stage a coup and other crimes. How are you experiencing this moment of the film coming out?

Alessandra: As you know, Bolsonaro has been convicted to 27 years in prison. I wouldn’t count on that being a permanent decision because these things have a way of coming around. However, he’s lost much of his power. The movement, though, is still strong and electorally powerful. [The televangelist Malafaia] will channel its energy towards a different leader. We don’t know who is going to be the heir of that movement in the 2026 elections. So that will be an interesting thing to watch.

The situation we didn’t see coming is that by the time the film was released, the debate around religious fundamentalism in politics continues to gain importance outside of Brazil. In many different countries, we’re seeing religious fundamentalism play a bigger role in political life. That is true in India, Hungary, Israel, and that is definitely true in the United States. I think of the religious fundamentalists surrounding the Trump administration and the movement gaining strength after the assassination of Charlie Kirk.

So outside from the conversation in Brazil itself, we hope that the film can spark some reflection on audiences in other countries. And often it’s easier to have a conversation about whatever it is that is happening in your own country through a mirror, through someone else’s problems, right?

See you next week!

Bella