Cinemafile

WINNER of Best Documentary, 2025 Tribeca Festival, Suzannah Herbert's jaw-dropping NATCHEZ captures an unsettling clash between history and memory in a small Mississippi town; a layered mosaic of people contending with the weight of the past in a place where it is always present. Equal parts amusing and disturbing, we journey through an antebellum tourist destination at a crossroads as it grapples with a deeply troubled history that is so thoroughly ingrained in its present, we’re left to wonder if it’s actually past at all. About the filmmaker - Suzannah Herbert is a documentary director and editor from Memphis whose directing work focuses on the American South. Herbert’s directorial debut WRESTLE was nominated for two News & Documentary Emmys and named one of the top five documentaries of 2019 by the National Board of Review. As an editor, Herbert has collaborated on Bob Dylan film projects, most recently editing the permanent experiential film at Tulsa’s Bob Dylan Center. She edited Tony Bennett and Lady Gaga’s Grammy-nominated music video, “I Get a Kick Out of You,” and the award-winning vérité film A WOMAN ON THE OUTSIDE (SXSW 2022, PBS AMERICA REFRAMED) Awarded Best Documentary at its premiere at the 2025 Tribeca Festival, NATCHEZ has since been honored with 18 awards on the festival circuit and was named one of the top 5 documentaries of 2025 by the National Board of Review. THE NEW YORKER’S Richard Brody called NATCHEZ “Stunning.” The film is currently in theatrical release in over 40 cities with Oscilloscope Laboratories and will broadcast on PBS’s Independent Lens in May 2026.

A psychedelic odyssey into the fabric of the universe, guided by a filmmaker and hisimmersive practical experiments that blur the lines between art and science to reveal nature’s inner workings. Captured entirely by camera with no visual effects or artifice, the unfolding awe-inspiring hyper-real imagery is elevated by music from legendary Nils Frahm and an ethereal electronic original score by Rival Consoles, transforming curious observation into a hypnotic audio-visual adventure spanning from the subatomic to cosmological scales. Tracing the forces and elements shaping the natural world, PHENOMENA is a kinetic sensory experience, exploring the wonders of the universe and our connection to it.About the filmmaker - Josef Gatti (writer, director, producer, director of photography, editor, narrator) is a filmmaker and artist based in Melbourne specialising in documentary and experimental film. His distinctive visual style is shaped by innovative cinematography and practical experimentation, bringing together art and science to create immersive experiences. PHENOMENA marks his feature-documentary debut, made in collaboration with Academy Award–nominated production studio Sandbox Films. The project builds on the success of a multi-platform iteration of the same name, broadcast by the ABC (Australia) and screened at international film festivals and immersive exhibition spaces. It was named the second-best Australian series of 2021 by The Guardian, and described by DOC NYC as “a film that just has to be experienced”. Beyond long form filmmaking, Josef works as a creative and cinematographer in Australia's music and arts scene, documenting and collaborating with some of Australia’s leading music festivals and acclaimed artists. Notably, in 2024 Josef directed the series Matter for Cercle Records.

Joachim Trier’s riveting drama, Sentimental Value, follows sisters Nora and Agnes has they reunite with their estranged father, Gustav, a once-renowned director who offers Nora a role in what he hopes will be his comeback film. Nora turns it down, but soon discovers he's given the part to an eager young Hollywood star. The two siblings must now navigate a complicated relationship with Gustav while dealing with an American actress dropped right into the middle of their complex family dynamics. Sentimental Value has been nominated for 9 2026 Oscars, including: Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actress, Best Actor, Best Supporting Actress (2), Best International Feature Film, Best Screenplay and Best Editor, Olivier Bugge Coutté (Our Guest).About the filmmaker - 2026 Oscar nominee Olivier Bugge Coutté is an editor based in Denmark is a graduate of the National Film and Television School where he studied alongside his longtime collaborator, Joachim Trier. While some of his other credits include Thelma, The Apprentice, The Promised Land, Beginners and Copenhagen Does Not Exist, Olivier has cut all of Trier's films, including The Worst Person in The World which was nominated for the Academy Award for Best International feature, and the most recent film, Sentimental Value, which won the grand prize at the Cannes Film Festival this year.

MISTAKE is a nuanced, historical drama about an intersex child born in 1941 who is forced to grow up as a man named Larry in the deep South of the 1970’s. As he struggles with self-loathing over his unique and socially forbidden identity, he desperately seeks to find family and friends who will understand and support him. A surprise discovery of love and friendship with Lily, another town outsider, brings him joy and acceptance, while he must also deal with the heartbreaking violence and uncompromising bigotry of his small-town rural life. Lauren’s feature film is, above all, a standout love story, full of empathy, that celebrates difference. It marks the debut of a sensitive filmmaker who seeks to create compassion for outsiders.About the filmmaker - Honey Lauren is a multi award winning writer, director and actress, with over 100 film and TV credits and dozens of commercials. Emancipated at 16, Honey began studying at A.C.T. in San Francisco. From there she joined The Angels Of Light, an infamous theatre and dance group, which was an offshoot of the Cockettes, a drag group that featured such stars as Sylvester and Divine. Directors Honey has worked with include Luc Besson, Francis Ford Coppola, counter culture maven, Doris Wishman and Paul McCarthy. Honey has written for directors that include Abel Ferrara and Melvin van Peebles. Many of her screenplays won multiple awards. As a director her short film, DOT GOT SHOT won five major festivals including BEST FEMALE FILMMAKER and the acclaimed, WOMAN WITH A VISION AWARD. Honey’s short documentary HAPPY HANDS with Tippi Hedren, won six film awards, and qualified for the Academy Awards in 2014. Honey’s short film WIVES OF THE SKIES garnered over 40 awards. Honey is set to direct her next feature RIFLE DOLL in 2026.

In October 1985, Santa Ana, California was shaken by a brazen act of political violence when Palestinian American Alex Odeh, a beloved teacher and community leader, was killed by a tripwire bomb planted in his office. Despite substantial evidence and identified suspects, the case was never solved. Who Killed Alex Odeh? reopens the mystery, tracking a renewed investigation in real time as new leads emerge, long-buried records come to light, and the forces behind a political assassination are finally confronted. Unfolding like a detective thriller, the film weaves archival footage, firsthand testimony, and new reporting to expose the violent fundamentalist networks behind the attack and the institutional failures that protected them. As the investigation deepens, the story widens to reveal how the extremist ideology that fueled Odeh’s murder did not disappear - it evolved, gaining traction and legitimacy in the modern political landscape. Directed by Jason Osder and William Lafi Youmans, a Jewish American and a Palestinian American, Who Killed Alex Odeh? is both a gripping cold-case pursuit and a timely examination of political violence, asking what it means when acts of terror go unresolved, and how justice denied continues to shape the world we live in.About the filmmaker - Jason Osder (co-director/producer) is the director of LET THE FIRE BURN. It premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival and went on to play more than 50 film festivals and won the best editing prize at RIDM, the IDA Prize in Editing, the Cinema Eye Honor for Editing and the Independent Spirit Truer than Fiction Award. Jason is Associate Professor at The George Washington University.About the filmmaker - William Youmans (co-director/producer) is an Associate Professor in Residence Northwestern University in Qatar. Youmans holds a Ph.D. as well as a J.D. He sits on the board of the Arab America Foundation. As an experienced researcher on Arab American history and Middle East politics, he is the project’s subject-matter expert on Alex Odeh.

Kallia and Ram are at their wits' end with their sleepless baby when they realize Kallia’s Greek mother is on a secret mission to exorcise the family from the evil eye. Trapped between the pressures of new age parenting, old world superstitions, and meddling in-laws, they fight to hold onto their dreams. Inspired by the cultural clash that took place after moving into the same Manhattan apartment building as Shaw’s parents shortly before their son’s birth, filmmakers Shaw and Kamalakanthan turn the lens on themselves as new parents Kallia and Ram—roles that they originated in their award-winning lo-fi comedy New Strains (2023 IFFR Special Jury Award winner) that represent loose alternative versions of themselves. About the filmmakers - Struck by a lack of authentic films about new parenthood and the world of infants more generally, the married filmmaking couple sought to capture the experience of making a movie while in the midst of childcare. Further adapting to real-life conditions, the film incorporated the needs of Shaw’s mother, who suffers from a neurological disorder and blindness. Shot over three months in and around their New York apartment with improvised dialogue and no crew, the production worked around the baby’s schedule and the filmmakers’ day jobs.

Nearly a decade before Jimmy Kimmel and Stephen Colbert came under attack for their political humor, an unknown comedian from Ohio finds himself in even more serious trouble for making fun of the government. Crime & Parody follows the story of Anthony Novak, an amateur comedian who creates a parody Facebook page mocking his local police department. The page is satire, but the police take it very seriously. They raid Anthony’s home, throw him in county jail, and charge him with a felony punishable by up to 18 months in prison. Soon national headlines mushroom and The Onion head writer Mike Gillis authors the satirical publication's first-ever brief to the U.S. Supreme Court in defense of parody. Anthony’s case helps raise questions that continue to grow more urgent: how do you hold the government accountable in a system that punishes those who exercise their First Amendment rights while law enforcement is protected by expanded qualified immunity? Crime & Parody director Will Thwaites joins us for a spirited conversation on the why and how of restricting our basic, constitutionally protected civil rights is not funny, at all.About the filmmaker - Will Thwaites is a documentary filmmaker based in Brooklyn, New York. He's worked on projects for Netflix, Amazon, National Geographic, and PBS. Will was a producer on the acclaimed Netflix series: Full Swing and My Next Guest with David Letterman. He started his career at Kartemquin Films (Oscar-nominated producers of Minding the Gap and Hoop Dreams) where he worked on the Emmy Award-winning film, The Homestretch.

The Other Roe uncovers the powerful, long-overlooked story behind Doe v. Bolton, the historic Supreme Court case that was decided on the same day as Roe v. Wade yet has been largely erased from public memory. While Roe became a national symbol, Doe quietly provided the broader legal framework that shaped reproductive rights for generations. The film centers on Margie Pitts Hames, a trailblazing civil rights attorney whose courage and brilliance were essential to the modern fight for bodily autonomy. Through archival footage, intimate interviews, and contemporary reflections, THE OTHER ROE traces Hames’s journey as she takes on a segregated hospital system, challenges the state of Georgia, and stands before the United States Supreme Court to argue a case that would redefine the meaning of “medical necessity” and expand access to abortion nationwide. As the nation revisits battles over reproductive freedom, The Other Roe brings forward the missing chapter of this landmark moment. The film restores recognition to the women who fought and paid dearly for rights that are once again under threat. The Other Roe is a reclamation of legacy, a re-examination of justice, and a reminder that history is never complete until all its voices are heard. Director Wendy Eley Jackson and Executive Producer Donia Hames Robinson stops by to discuss the importance of the often overlooked Doe V Bolton decision is and how it the legal principles brought to bear are more important then ever.

SMILE…the Worst is Yet to Come tells the story of Elder Millenial’s, BEN and BIRDIE, who are feeling the pressure of time. After closing his bar and suffering a heart attack-ish incident, Ben is struggling to find his purpose. Birdie put her photography ambitions on hold to be the financially “stable one” as a nurse, but is secretly exploring creative pursuits. Several failed IVF attempts have driven a wedge between them. They retreat to Big Bear Lake to reignite romantic sparks, but their efforts fail every time. Things get further upended when they meet JANUARY and JEREK, early-20s, Gen-Z influencers looking for content. Joining us is the Director Chloe Lenihan, as well as the writer and co-lead actor Joseph Mancuso. About the filmmaker - Chloe Lenihan is a writer, director, producer, and actor based in Los Angeles. She holds an M.F.A. in Creative Producing from Columbia University. Her thesis film, How Far She Went, garnered many accolades including “Best Female Student Filmmaker” by DGAEast and “Best Student Film” at BendFilm Festival before its broadcast premiere on KQED’s “Film School Shorts” series, hosted by PBS. Chloe co-wrote, directed, and starred in the dark comedy All-American Sex Offender, which won “Best Web Series” at HollyShorts Film Festival and is currently streaming on Amazon Prime. She has participated in Stowe Story Lab, and Cine Qua Non’s Storylines and Revision Labs with her feature script Metanoia. About the filmmaker - Writer/ Lead Actor “Ben”/ Executive Producer Joseph Mancuso is a Los Angeles based actor, writer, and editor. He spent 20 years in theater, performing on renowned NYC stages like The Cherry Lane and The Public, starring in Hanoch Levin’s American debut, Retzach. His TV and film credits include The Blacklist, Blue Bloods, Shades of Blue, and Pee Wee’s Big Holiday. As a producer and editor, Joseph has worked on projects for A&E, National Geographic, and Netflix, including the docuseries Against the Odds, which has 8 million YouTube views.

Currently available on HBO, director Jan Czarlewski’s riveting documentary film 33 PHOTOS FROM THE GHETTO tells the story of the only known photographs from inside the Warsaw Ghetto during the April 1943 uprising and its brutal repression that were not taken by German forces. The images, taken secretly by 23-year-old Polish firefighter Leszek Grzywaczewski, who witnessed the devastating response to the uprising as a member of the Warsaw Fire Service, present a rare civilian account of one of World War II’s darkest moments. The film traces two families, one of which is Jewish, who preserved the images for decades but hadn’t brought them to light. 80 years after their creation, the son of the photographer finds the forgotten negatives and launches an investigation. With a team of researchers, archivists, and animators who use near-forensic precision to reconstruct locations and contexts, they trace the circumstances of those tragic days and the lives captured in each frame. Director Jan Czarlewski joins us to talk about the many twists and remarkable turns that led to the discovery of these devastating photos and the courageous civilians who kept these photos from being lost forever.

Award-winning director Kim A. Snyder’s THE LIBRARIANS is four-alarm siren alerting us to nationwide campaign, funded by shadowy network of special interests to censor and deny Americans access to many of the most consequential books and historical information from world celebrated and renown authors, scientists and historians. THE LIBRARIANS highlights a concerted effort in Texas to restrict, ban and censor books and the so-called “Krause List”, a list of 850 books focused on race and LGBTQIA+ stories. After a Texas House Representative issued a list of these books to be removed from school libraries, Librarians across the state found themselves at the center of what has become a large-scale coordinated conservative movement against freedom of information. With unique access to a new movement in the making, THE LIBRARIANS traverses small-town USA with riveting interviews and troves of archival material to reveal the story of the country’s heroic librarians, who have become unlikely defenders of democracy, risking everything to uphold our most fundamental right. Joining us in conversation is The Librarians director Kim A. Snyder, an Academy Award® nominee and Peabody Award-winning Director / Producer. Her Oscar-nominated short DEATH BY NUMBERS, co-created with gun-violence survivor Sam Fuentes, has won multiple awards. Snyder’s acclaimed films include US KIDS (Sundance 2020), LESSONS FROM A SCHOOL SHOOTING (Netflix Original), and NEWTOWN (Sundance 2016, Peabody Award, PBS)

PAYING FOR IT is a live-action adaptation of acclaimed alternative-cartoonist Chester Brown’s best-selling graphic novel. In the late 90s, Chester and Sonny are a long-term, committed, romantic couple. When Sonny wants to redefine their relationship, Chester, an introverted cartoonist, starts sleeping with sex workers and discovers a new kind of intimacy in the process. PAYING FOR IT is about love, sex and non-monogamy for adults. It deals with the complicated subject of the exchange for sex-work versus the complications of romantic love. The movie celebrates the vibrant underground comic and zine era through the experiences of cartoonist Chester Brown. PAYING FOR IT was Executive Produced by John Cameron Mitchell (Hedwig and the Angry Inch, Shortbus) Our guest on this edition of Cinemafile is director Sook-Yin Lee who goal with the film was to connect the past with the present by bringing together emerging comic actors, performance artists, authors, activists and multimedia creators in front of and behind the camera. About the filmmaker - SOOK-YIN LEE (Writer, Director, Co-Producer) is a Toronto-based filmmaker, musician, actor and broadcaster (CBC, BBC, MuchMusic). She starred in Shortbus, the ground-breaking 2SLGBTQ movie directed by John Cameron Mitchell that premiered at the Cannes Film Festival. Her feature film writer and directorial debut, Year of the Carnivore, starring Cristin Milioti, premiered at TIFF. In 2014, Lee won the Canadian Screen Award for Best Performance by a Lead Dramatic Actress in Jack and went on to write and perform Unsafe for Canadian Stage, which examined questions of censorship and artistic freedom. She won Best Director and Best Picture at the 2018 Downtown Los Angeles Film Festival for Octavio is Dead! --a ghost story starring Sarah Gadon and Rosanna Arquette. Death and Sickness, her feature movie made with Dylan Gamble, streams on CBC Gem. She acts in Darkest Miriam, executive produced by Charlie Kaufman, and is set to release her experimental comedy Rest and Relax. Sook-Yin is a music recording artist and film score composer. She contributed songs to Brandon Cronenberg's horror movies Infinity Pool and Antiviral.

Getting its World Premiere at the 2026 Sundance Film Festival, JOYBUBBLES begins in the 1950s, recounting the unbelievable story of Joybubbles, (the legal name of the former Joe Engressia since 1991) as he discovers he can control the global telephone system simply by whistling a magic tone. Born blind and hungry for connection, his early obsession with the telephone sparks a subculture that shapes the future of hacking and modern technology in the 20th century. Told through vivid archival footage and Joybubbles’ own voice recordings, the film celebrates a visionary who redefined connection and challenged assumptions about disability, identity, and imagination. JOYBUBBLES pulses with the curiosity and wonder he brought to the world, brought to life by our guest, director Rachael J. Morrison’s inventive, tactile storytelling.About the filmmaker - Rachael Morrison is a documentary filmmaker and archival producer. Her short documentary, ELVERS, premiered at the 2019 Camden International Film Festival and is featured online as part of The Atlantic Selects. She has worked as an archival producer on documentary series and feature films for HBO, Hulu, Netflix, Paramount Plus, and FX. JOYBUBBLES is her feature-length directorial debut.

Middle-aged and erratic, Oscar is a failed writer who has given up on life. Unemployed and living with family, he wanders the streets of Medellín in a drunken stupor, lamenting the state of literature in his home country, where he has succumbed to the cliché of the tortured artist. However, the opportunity to mentor a young student offers a chance at redemption, if he doesn’t screw it up first. In a performance marked by darkly comic pathos, first-time actor Ubeimar Rios stars in Simón Mesa Soto’s Un Certain Regard Jury Prize-winner A POET, a raw and riotous farce about how good deeds are often met with the universe’s idea of cruel and unusually poetic punishment. Director Simón Mesa Soto joins us for a freewheeling conversation on why he was determined to tell Oscar’s story that would resonate with a broader audience and the unexpected physicality and pathos that Ubeimar Rios brought to Oscar.About the filmmaker - Simón Mesa Soto is a Colombian director, screenwriter and producer. He studied Audiovisual Communication at the University of Antioquia and later pursued a Master’s Degree at the London Film School. His thesis film, Leidi, won the Palme d’Or at the Cannes Film Festival 2014. With his next short film, Mother, he was again selected in the Official Competition of the Cannes Film Festival 2016. Both short films were widely screened at festivals around the world. Amparo, his first feature film, premiered at the Cannes Critics’ Week 2021, where it won the Louis Roederer Foundation Rising Star Award for the its lead actress. The film has toured more than fifty film festivals around the world and has won awards in Havana, Chicago, Lima and Punta del Este, among other festivals. Amparo was the big winner of the Colombian Film Academy’s Macondo Awards 2022, winning seven awards including Best Director and Best Film. A Poet is his second feature film.

Director Praise Odigie Paige's beautiful narrative short Birdie's will have its World Premiere at the 2026 Sundance Film Festival, BIRDIE is a narrative short set in 1970’s Virginia, following a young Nigerian refugee trying to keep her family together in the aftermath of the Biafran War. Director Praise Odigie Paige BIRDIE is a coming-of-age film told through the eyes of 16-year-old English, the younger daughter of a Nigerian family living in a Catholic charity home in rural Virginia. As the war ends, the arrival of a new refugee unsettles their fragile balance and drives a wedge between English and her sister Birdie, leaving English to face the truths she’s been avoiding about her father, her family, and what is left of their home.About the filmmaker - Praise Odigie Paige is a Nigerian-born filmmaker whose work centers girls and women on the edge of quiet transformation. Her films are intimate and atmospheric, often unfolding in charged historical moments where private desires collide with larger social forces. She is currently developing her debut feature, Igboland (working title), an intimate period drama about faith, girlhood, and desire at the edge of war. She lives and works in Brooklyn, NY.

Director Brittany Shyne’s Oscar Shortlisted Feature Documentary seamlessly weaves together the stories of three Black generational farmers to create a collective and intimate portrait of farming today, SEEDS is a moving and powerful exploration of their lives, joys and struggles as well as the fragility of legacy and owning land. With remarkable intimacy, the film documents their everyday lives - cotton harvesting, chasing cows, dealing with broken machinery and financial precarities. The camera relishes simple moments - conversations through car windows, candy from grandma’s purse as it captures moments of warmth, joy and fulfillment - turning them into striking vignettes that honor the families’ connection to the land and each other. First-time Director Brittany Shyne stops by to talk about her own nine-year journey to bring thus multi-dimensional to us and how their stories have became more prescient with every passing day.About the filmmaker - Brittany Shyne is an independent filmmaker based in Dayton, Ohio. Working in the narrative and non-fiction artform, her work seeks to depict the complexity of everyday life by examining themes such as personal histories, alienation and cultural modernization. Her films lyrically weave together frameworks of race, class, culture, identity and family lineage. She has worked as a cinematographer on films such as THE DEBUTANTES (Tribeca,’24) and Julia Reichert and Steve Bognar’s academy award-winning film AMERICAN FACTORY. Shyne was the recipient of the 2021 Artist Disruptor Award from the Center of Cultural Power. Her film SEEDS is her first feature documentary. . She is an alumni of the Chicken & (Egg) celerator Lab and was a Firelight Media Documentary Fellow (2020-2022). Shyne received her MFA in Documentary Media from Northwestern University and a BFA in Motion Pictures from Wright State University.

Michael Apted’s The Long Way Home, a revealing, rollicking portrait of the Soviet underground rock legend Boris Grebenshchikov, who became the first to record in the West during the early, optimistic days of Glasnost—not quite believing he would collaborate with Dave Stewart, Annie Lennox, Chrissie Hynde, and Ray Cooper—was released to critical acclaim after its broadcast in the UK and premiere at Sundance, but has largely disappeared these past 30 years. Thanks to Steven Lawrence, the film’s producer, THE LONG WAY HOME: REMASTERED AND EXPANDED (2026) will now have a second life in this newly remastered edition. In addition, together with Susanne Rostock, the film’s editor, he has created an epilogue charting Grebenshchikov’s fate following the release of his US album Radio Silence as an exile and an outspoken critic of Putin’s war in Ukraine. The new epilogue partially fulfills Apted’s own ambitions to make a sequel before his death in 2021.

Mickey (Zelda Adams) faces a deadly diagnosis, but she isn’t ready to die yet. Heading into the woods with her father (John Adams), she seeks dark magic at the hands of mysterious recluse, Solveig (Toby Poser) , who has an intimate relationship with death and roots that go deep in the land. For three days, Mickey endures Solveig’s extreme rituals of death magic. But every cure has its cost, and every curse is another’s gift. As buried secrets claw their way to the surface, the veil between the living and the dead begins to unravel, and Mickey finds herself facing dark truths that only the dead and the dying can know. Co-directors and co-screenwriters and co-stars John Adams, Zelda Adams, and Toby Poser stop by for a rollicking conversation on the making of Mother of Flies, the community of family and close friends that make their work possible and the deeper meaning of making films that celebrate life. About the filmmakers - John Adams, Toby Poser, and daughters Lulu and Zelda Adams (collectively known as The Adams Family) have been making films under the creative marquee of Wonder Wheel Productions since 2010. Features include The Deeper You Dig (2019, Dark Sky Films), Hellbender (2021, Shudder), Where the Devil Romas (2023, Tubi), and Mother of Flies (2025, Shudder). The family’s films have been represented by Yellow Veil Pictures for sales, festivals, and theatrical runs since 2021. John and Toby also directed the sci-fi feature Hell Hole (2024, Shudder) and the episode 'Plastic Smile' for Screambox’s “Tales from the Void” (2024). The soundtrack for Adams Family films is performed by the family’s band, H6LLB6ND6R.

Follow director Adam Bhala Lough as he sets out to better understand the technology and people at the center of the AI boom. His quest sends him on a path towards the father of AI, OpenAI CEO, Sam Altman. When he isn’t able to sit down with Altman himself, Adam travels to India to create an AI version of him to interview instead. DEEPFAKING SAM ALTMAN is a verité documentary with a sci-fi comedic twist, the film becomes a sharp, surprisingly moving exploration of how we’re all trying to navigate the chaotic new world of artificial intelligence, and what happens when the answers we seek can’t (or won’t) come from their human source. Our guest Adam Bhala Lough (Telemarketers, Bomb the System, Alt-Right: Age of Rage) joins us to talk about the inspiration for making DEEPFAKING SAM ALTMAN and why he hopes that his film will help foster a broader conversations on the looming impact that AI will have on all of us.About the filmmaker - Adam Bhala Lough is a Punjabi‑American film director, producer, and writer known for crafting award‑winning, widely viewed film and television projects. Lough burst onto the scene at 19 when he directed three music videos for MF DOOM. At 23 he premiered his narrative feature debut Bomb the System (2002), a graffiti‑culture drama that earned an Independent Spirit Award nomination for Best First Feature. His follow‑up, WEAPONS (2007), starring a then‑emerging Nick Cannon and Paul Dano, was nominated for the Sundance Grand Jury Prize and distributed by Lionsgate. Transitioning to documentary, Lough co‑directed The Upsetter: The Life and Music of Lee Scratch Perry (2008), narrated by Academy Award‑winner Benicio del Toro, and the incendiary Lil Wayne portrait The Carter (2009). The Upsetter has since been inducted into the Criterion Collection. His Sundance‑premiering The New Radical (2017) featured a rare interview with Julian Assange inside the Ecuadorian Embassy and explored Bitcoin and 3‑D‑printed guns. Alt‑Right: Age of Rage (2018) followed, airing on Netflix (U.S.) and BBC (U.K.) after a fearless year embedded with both neo‑Nazi and ANTIFA. Lough’s HBO Original doc‑series Telemarketers (2023), which he co‑directed and executive‑produced with Josh and Benny Safdie, became the most‑watched doc‑series on HBO MAX upon release.

In the wake of the opioid epidemic, insurance companies were now required to cover addiction and mental health treatment at the same reimbursement rate as other medical conditions, but without any of the regulations, a move that effectively monetized the 40 million Americans struggling with these issues. Shot over the course of three years, Shuffle follows three individuals trapped by the insurance-fueled cycle of treatment fraud spreading across the country. whose future depend not on getting into treatment, but on getting out alive. A journey of discovery and transformation, these personal stories provide the framework for a more public investigation with the help of an FBI informant, an insurance analyst and the former Executive Director of a Philadelphia-based treatment facility shuttered for fraud., Shuffle unravels a web of public policy and private interest preying on a desperate population for the sake of profit. Director Benjamin Flaherty joins us on Cinemafile to talk about his approach to storytelling, “My goal was to craft a narrative that refused to flatten them into victims or heroes, and instead allowed their contradictions to remain intact. Directing SHUFFLE was an act of witness, accountability, and ultimately love.”About the filmmaker - Writer/Director/Producer/Executive Producer Benjamin Flaherty is an Austin-based filmmaker with a diverse collection of work - from documentary and art films with Lou Reed & Lola Schnabel to commercial spots for major brands. His short form PSA’s have been awarded at Cannes, D&AD, One Show and the Clios. His documentary feature debut, SHUFFLE, won the Jury Award for Best Documentary Feature at SXSW 2025.