Latest in Documentary

Think of it as the Marché du Film, except just for documentaries. That's one way to picture Sunny Side of the Doc, the annual gathering of some of the top buyers and sellers of nonfiction content around the world. The four-day event got underway Monday in La Rochelle, the historic port city on…

EXCLUSIVE: National Geographic is paying homage to Jaws, giving a green light to Jaws @ 50 (working title), a feature documentary to celebrate the 50th anniversary of Peter Benchley’s bestselling novel and the blockbuster film directed by Steven Spielberg. Nat Geo partnered with Spielberg’s Amblin…

Pubcasters unite! France Télévisions and BBC Studios have struck a long-term strategic partnership to co-create factual shows. The pair unveiled the deal at Sunnyside of the Doc in La Rochelle, France, today. It came into effect in April and means France Télévisions gets a first look at co-production…

Danish film and TV company Zentropa, the more recent credits of which include Nikolaj Arcel’s historical drama The Promised Land and Lars Von Trier’s drama The Kingdom, is moving into documentary. The company has unveiled the launch of Zentropa Documentary, which will be headed by award-winning…

EXCLUSIVE: Fremantle has picked up global distribution rights to Hell Jumper, the BBC’s upcoming doc series about a British aid worker who died in Ukraine. Produced by Clarkson’s Farm maker Expectation and revealed by Deadline last year, Hell Jumper uses first-person footage to follow a group of…

EXCLUSIVE: Limonero Films has acquired worldwide distribution rights to Blue Carbon, an innovative environmental-themed documentary produced by MAKE Waves Media that features the participation of Grammy-nominated music producer and DJ Jayda Guy, Wu-Tang Clan’s RZA, and Brazilian musician Seu Jorge…

Steve Martin is a man of many dimensions, and two pieces – at least to judge from director Morgan Neville's documentary about the comedy icon. Steve! (Martin) a Documentary in 2 Pieces, streaming on Apple TV+, splits the story in half, with piece 1 exploring Martin's youth in Orange County, Calif.…

Some ideas are outlandish enough to change everything. This is especially the case for one of the world's most famous and culturally impactful musical festivals, Lollapalooza, birthed in 1991 as a farewell for Jane's Addiction frontman Perry Farrell. The festival quickly became a traveling showcase of…

When veteran documentary filmmaker Irene Taylor met Celine Dion via Zoom in winter 2021 about the prospect of doing a documentary chronicling Dion’s life and career, she had no idea where this would ultimately take both the subject and the director. In fact…

As a screenwriter, David E. Kelley is used to injecting social commentary into his material — not unlike the way the ancient Greeks entered the city of Troy. But when the creator of shows like The Practice, Big Little Lies and Ally McBeal made his foray into documentary filmmaking – with the ocean…

The massive earthquake that struck Turkey and Syria in February 2023 produced catastrophic damage and loss of life – killing more than 55,000 thousand people and leveling huge swaths of cities. Perhaps most devastating of all was the knowledge that the destruction didn't need to be so extreme. Poor…

EXCLUSIVE: Dial Tone Films, the production company of director-producer Celia Aniskovich, is joining forces with The New Yorker Studios on a documentary series that will explore the still-unraveling events surrounding the death of teenager Preston Lord near the wealthy community of Gilbert, Arizona in…