Doc Talk ventures into the disturbing territory of The Yogurt Shop Murders with director and executive producer Margaret Brown, her first foray into the true crime genre. The HBO series examines the shocking execution-style slaying of four teenage girls in 1991 in an Austin, Texas frozen yogurt store, a shocking crime that remains unsolved. Brown tells us about the impact of the documentary on friends and family of the young victims, and how making it deeply affected the filmmaker and her crew. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
German director Andres Veiel joins us to discuss his expected Oscar-contending documentary Riefenstahl, about Leni Riefenstahl who was known as Hitler's favorite filmmaker. After World War II Riefenstahl tried to play down her role in furthering Nazi ideology through her 1930s films including Triumph of the Will and Olympia, claiming she was just an artist who had taken on assignments from Hitler and his minister of propaganda, Joseph Goebbles. But Veiel digs into Riefenstahl's archive, including drafts of her memoir, audio tapes and other sources to reveal she was very much in sync with what Hitler stood for. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Ahead of the 50th Toronto International Film Festival kickoff on Thursday, we get a preview of the documentary lineup from doc programmer Thom Powers. He tells us about the Paula Deen film by Bill Corben, Michèle Stephenson's True North, two-time Oscar winner Ben Proudfoot's feature documentary and much more. He also shares insights on his new book, Mondo Documentary, a collection of his TIFF program pieces from his 20 years with the festival. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
As Emmy voting nears its conclusion, we talk with creators — and a key participant — of two of the top contenders. Will & Harper director Josh Greenbaum joins the show along with Harper Steele — the Harper of Will & Harper — whose story of going on a road trip with her pal Will Ferrell after announcing her transition is told in the Netflix film that's nominated for five Emmys. We also speak with Nyle DiMarco and Oscar winner Davis Guggenheim, co-directors of Deaf President Now!, their Apple TV+ documentary about a historic student uprising at Gallaudet University, the famed private university serving the Deaf and hearing impaired. DiMarco speaks to us through his ASL interpreter Grey Van Pelt. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
We speak with Matt Wolf, director of Pee-Wee as Himself, his documentary about the late actor Paul Reubens, and Katie Walsh, director and executive producer of Simone Biles Rising. Pee-wee is nominated for five Emmy Awards, including Outstanding Documentary or Nonfiction Special, while Simone Biles Rising goes for the gold in the category of Outstanding Documentary or Nonfiction Series. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Oscar-nominated filmmaker Amy Berg's new documentary It's Never Over, Jeff Buckley examines the life and career of the titular singer-songwriter-guitarist, who died tragically at the age of 30. Berg discusses her long effort to gain permission from Buckley's mother, Mary Guibert, to make the film and how she combined distinctive visual elements as well as Buckley's own voice to paint a portrait of a sensitive and supremely talented musician. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Description: Actor-writer-filmmaker Ntare Guma Mbaho Mwine joins us to discuss Memories of Love Returned, a documentary 20 years in the making. His film explores the work of an extraordinary photographer, Kibaate Aloysius Ssalongo, who created a lasting portrait of people in rural Uganda, an oeuvre unlike any other. In the episode, hosts John Ridley and Matt Carey also parse the Emmy nominations, spotlighting top contenders and most notable omissions. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Award-winning filmmaker Reid Davenport's new investigative documentary Life After "exposes the web of moral dilemmas and profit motives surrounding assisted dying," suggesting that right-to-die laws are being used to encourage disabled people to end their lives. The director and his producer, Colleen Cassingham, join Doc Talk for a fascinating conversation around one of the most talked about films of the year. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
What films are gaining traction in the Oscar Best Documentary Feature race as we pass the mid-point of 2025? The Perfect Neighbor and Seeds leap out as early frontrunners, but it's a wide open race so far. We discuss the contenders that have emerged so far with journalist Lauren Wissot, contributing editor at Filmmaker magazine and Documentary magazine. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
As a 4K restoration of Hearts of Darkness: A Filmmaker's Apocalypse comes to theaters and home entertainment, we talk with filmmaker Fax Bahr and American Zoetrope's James Mockoski about one of the greatest documentaries of all time. Bahr directed the film — about the fraught making of Apocalypse Now —along with George Hickenlooper and Eleanor Coppola, filmmaker and wife of Apocalypse Now director Francis Ford Coppola. Mockoski oversaw the restoration. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Doc Talk heads to DC/DOX where we speak with filmmaker Rob Petit about his stunning documentary Underland, which just screened at the festival. And we head to the 11th annual Bentonville Film Festival in Arkansas for a conversation with BFF President Wendy Guerrero. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Lauren Greenfield, director of the FX documentary series Social Studies, joins the show to discuss what she discovered in her deep dive into the way high schoolers' lives are ruled by immersion into TikTok, Instagram, Discord and other social media platforms. Slut-shaming, bullying, self-marketing — it's all part of what some might consider a toxic stew. Social Studies is the winner of the breakthrough Nonfiction Series from the Gotham TV Awards and a leading Emmy contender. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
When Barbara Walters joined ABC news in 1976, she became the highest paid journalist in the U.S. – pulling in $1 million a year. That, not surprisingly, triggered a lot of resentment among her peers, none more so than her evening news co-anchor Harry Reasoner. Overcoming envy and sexism and balancing a career and motherhood, Walters reached the pinnacle of her profession and stayed there, a story explored in the new documentary Barbara Walters: Tell Me Everything. The film directed by Jackie Jesko premieres Thursday evening at Tribeca Festival in New York. The feature, which debuts on Hulu later this month, is the latest from Imagine Documentaries, the enormously successful nonfiction division of the production company founded by Ron Howard and Brian Grazer. On the latest edition of Deadline’s Doc Talk podcast, we explore the company’s upcoming docs and impressive slate of Emmy contenders with Imagine Entertainment President Justin Wilkes and Imagine Documentaries President Sara Bernstein. Taking their cue from the Barbara Walters documentary subtitle – Tell Me Everything – Wilkes and Bernstein tell us everything: why Imagine got into documentaries, how the Barbara Walters project came about, how they work with estates and other stakeholders on celebrity biographies without surrendering editorial independence, and what they see as the future of branded content in the nonfiction and fiction spaces. Imagine Documentaries won five Emmys last year for its film Jim Henson Idea Man, directed by Ron Howard. While the Television Academy has proven receptive to honoring documentaries about well-known people, the documentary branch of the Motion Picture Academy has demonstrated reluctance to do likewise. Wilkes shares his unvarnished thoughts about how the Academy could change voting rules to give celebrity-oriented documentaries a fair shake. The Imagine execs also respond to a recent article in the Hollywood trade papers asserting that music and other celebrity films are “killing the documentary.” They don’t see it that way. That’s on the latest edition of the Doc Talk podcast, hosted by Oscar winner John Ridley (12 Years a Slave, Shirley) and Matt Carey, Deadline’s documentary editor. The pod is a production of Deadline and Ridley’s Nō Studios. Listen to the episode above or on major podcast platforms including Spotify, iHeart and Apple. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Doc Talk heads to the Croisette to speak with filmmakers and film participants who debuted their documentaries at Cannes: Raoul Peck on George Orwell; Eugene Jarecki on Julian Assange; U2's Bono on his new Apple TV+ film; Mariska Hargitay on her film about her late mother, Jayne Mansfield, and the makers of Slauson Rec, a documentary about Shia LaBeouf's stormy tenure leading a free theater company in L.A. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Another glamorous Cannes Film Festival has ended, after an exciting fortnight on the Côte d’Azur that drew the likes of Tom Cruise, Jennifer Lawrence, Emma Stone, Scarlett Johansson, Robert Pattinson, Denzel Washington, Paul Mescal, Kristen Stewart, and many others. Stars of documentaries also turned up: Shia LaBeouf, whose exploits as founder of a free theater company in L.A. are chronicled in Slauson Rec, and Julian Assange, focus of the documentary The Six Billion Dollar Man. The latter film, directed by Eugene Jarecki, won a Special Jury Prize marking the 10th anniversary of the L’Oeil d’or award, which goes to the top documentary at Cannes. Imago, directed by Chechen filmmaker Déni Oumar Pitsaev, took the 2025 L’Oeil d’or prize. For the first time, Deadline’s Doc Talk podcast traveled to Cannes to record interviews and to moderate a panel at the American Pavilion. Today’s episode of the show is built around our AmPav discussion on the state of the documentary industry which featured panelists Vanessa Hope (director of Invisible Nation); Joe Tufano, VP of Distribution at Submarine Entertainment, and Catherine Quantschnigg, Producer, Sales at Noah Media Group. Tufano explains how documentary filmmakers are increasingly moving to a territory-by-territory approach to sell their features in the absence of acquisitions for worldwide distribution. Hope tells us why she considered going the self-distribution route in the U.S. for her award-winning film that explores Taiwan as it contends with almost daily threats from mainland China. And Quantschnigg reveals how the distribution landscape has changed dramatically in only a few years since Netflix acquired Noah Media Group’s acclaimed film 14 Peaks: Nothing Is Impossible. That’s on the latest edition of the Doc Talk podcast, hosted by Oscar winner John Ridley (12 Years a Slave, Shirley) and Matt Carey, Deadline’s documentary editor. The pod is a production of Deadline and Ridley’s Nō Studios. Listen to the episode above or on major podcast platforms including Spotify, iHeart and Apple. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Doc Talk travels to Millennium Docs Against Gravity in Poland, where we speak with artistic director Karol Piekarczyk about what has become one of the biggest and most prestigious all-documentary festivals in the world. We also visit with Northern Irish filmmaker Mark Cousins, who conducted a special "anti-masterclass" at MDAG. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Stanley Tucci joins us to discuss his new National Geographic documentary series Tucci in Italy, which finds the acclaimed actor exploring the country's immensely rich culinary traditions, from trippa to lardo, hay soup and barbecued mutton. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Oscar-winning director Ahmir "Questlove" Thompson explores the brilliance of Sly Stone in Sly Lives! (aka the Burden of Black Genius), his Emmy-contending documentary feature. The Summer of Soul filmmaker joins us to talk about Sly's incredible contributions to music, and the mystery behind the one-time superstar's career and personal implosion. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
MSNBC is airing the six-part documentary series David Frost Vs, built around some of the most extraordinary interviews conducted over a 50-year period by David Frost, the legendary British journalist and entertainer. We speak with executive producer Wilfred Frost, one of David's sons, about his dad's tête-à-têtes with Richard Nixon, Elton John, Muhammad Ali, John Lennon, Yoko Ono and more. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Filmmaker Miranda Yousef joins us to discuss her documentary Art for Everybody, which enjoys a 100 percent critics approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes. It's the story of self-styled "Painter of Light" Thomas Kincade, who made a mint selling kitschy scenes of cozy cottages. Kinkade marketed himself as a devout Christian, but as the film reveals, beneath all that light lurked a dark side. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices