- June 1, 2025
The Hollywood Reporter writers Steven Zeitchik and Ethan Millman report on shifts in the documentary field toward authorized celebrity music biographies catering to a large built-in audience, and generally, away from rigorous, artistic exploration into a figure or issue.
- May 5, 2025
Freelance journalist/critic Zach Schonfeld details the shifting landscape of celebrity documentary, with more and more projects leaning toward risk aversion and/or incorporating subject participation at varying levels of the filmmaking process.
- April 18, 2025
Senior Editor Daniel Engber writes in the Atlantic about PBS's long-running series POV, as it navigates public media threats from the Trump administration, focusing on filmmaker Jane M. Wagner's account of the repositioning of her film Break the Game within POV programming. *Please note: This article is behind a paywall.
- March 26, 2025
At CPH:DOX, U.S. and European doc leaders met to strategize new funding distribution models for political documentaries as major American streamers shift toward less politically risky content.
- March 1, 2025
Guardian arts writer Adrian Horton details the self-distribution journeys of documentaries like 'No Other Land,' about the destruction of West Bank community Masafer Yatta by the Israeli military, and 'Union,' about the campaign to unionize an Amazon warehouse.
- February 15, 2025
Frustrations are mounting within the documentary community as Oscar voters continue to overlook celebrity-driven docs, highlighting deeper tensions around streamer influence and the future of social issue filmmaking in a polarized political climate.
- February 13, 2025
At the Berlinale’s kickoff, Todd Haynes called for creative resistance amid rising political tensions, emphasizing cinema’s role in confronting destabilization under Trump.
- February 7, 2025
Writer Nicky Yeager interviews Mars Verrone, producer of 'Union,' a self-distributed documentary about the campaign to unionize an Amazon warehouse, discussing the documentary distribution landscape and the struggles the film team faced in getting the film to viewers.
- January 29, 2025
European filmmakers are rallying behind a petition demanding stronger regulation of tech giants, warning that platforms like X, Meta, and TikTok are enabling disinformation and threatening democratic values across Europe.
- January 23, 2025
While streaming platforms have grown wary of political documentaries, Sundance Film Festival continues to spotlight politically engaged documentaries like “Mr. Nobody Against Putin” and “Khartoum,” prioritizing their cultural significance over commercial appeal.
- January 15, 2025
Documentary films sympathetic to Palestine and critical of Israel, including the acclaimed “No Other Land” with over 45 awards, struggle to secure U.S. distribution despite strong audience demand, highlighting broader challenges for geopolitical documentaries in the current marketplace.
- January 12, 2025
Celebrity documentaries are producing outsized financial returns for their subjects and unprecedented creative control, with Netflix’s “Beckham” series netting $36 million.
- October 16, 2024
Streaming platforms have elevated documentaries to mainstream popularity. However, this paradigm shift spawned an immediate decline in documentary quality as streaming prioritizes formulaic-driven storytelling with mass appeal, ultimately diminishing the genre’s artistic and cultural value.
- September 18, 2024
Letterboxd, a growing community of 15 million cinephiles, serves as a valuable platform for independent films, offering distributors targeted access to engaged movie enthusiasts while maintaining authentic commentary through organic buzz.
- August 20, 2024
Distribution Advocates, a collective that reclaims power for independent storytellers, has launched the FilmADE Fund. The Fund supports up to 30 independent film releases annually through marketing strategies and distribution experiments.
- June 18, 2024
Keri Putnam and Barbara Twist discuss groundbreaking audience research on U.S. independent film engagement, highlighting how the industry might grow to meet the current and potential audiences.
- May 23, 2024
Strategic brand consultant and independent film producer Brian Newman conveys his current rules for distribution, including details about the decreasing role of streamers in acquiring documentaries and in output deals with distributors, declining transactional revenue and theatrical engagement with documentaries (aside from event screenings), and more ideas for reaching a targeted audience.
- May 18, 2024
Writer Matthew Carey reports that the documentary film industry is thriving in Denmark, where filmmakers find support from the Danish Film School, government-funded Danish Film Institute, and the documentary film festival CPH: DOX.
- May 3, 2024
Writer Matthew Carey reports on the return of New York's Margaret Mead Film Festival, which celebrates documentary film from around the world—amid a landscape of struggling festivals.
Sundance 2025: Don’t Look Away