Doc Talk: A Deadline and Nō Studios Podcast

We report live from the 40th IDA Documentary Awards in Los Angeles, interviewing winners as they come off stage, including Shiori Ito (Black Box Diaries), the Queendom team, Career Achievement Award winner Dawn Porter, and Curated Series winner Lois Vossen. And we speak with the IDA's executive director, Dominic Asmall Willsdon, about the state of the documentary field. Learn more about your ad ch...

No Other Land, set in the occupied West Bank, has emerged as a frontrunner for the Oscars, winning awards around the world including a slew in the past week alone. We speak with Yuval Abraham and Basel Adra, half of the Israeli Palestinian collective of filmmakers behind the documentary. Their film, which has attracted praise and controversy, depicts life for Palestinian villagers who face threats...

Japanese journalist Shiori Itō investigates her own sexual assault in the Oscar-contending documentary Black Box Diaries. She joins Doc Talk to discuss how her case changed rape laws in Japan and how she made the transition from objective journalist to first-person storyteller. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Filmmaker Jeff Zimbalist joins us to discuss his Oscar-contending Netflix documentary Skywalkers: A Love Story. This is the story of a young Russian couple who have made a career of illegally climbing to the top of extraordinary tall structures, including the 118-story Merdeka in Malaysia, and then photographing themselves doing balletic poses in the sky. Doc Talk co-host John Ridley calls it the...

Renowned documentary filmmaker R.J. Cutler discusses his two Oscar-contending documentaries – Elton John: Never Too Late, and Martha, the latter film about businesswoman, entrepreneur and lifestyle doyenne Martha Stewart. Cutler responds to Stewart’s, at times, harsh criticism of his film. She's campaigning for Netflix to create a "second version" of the documentary that's more to her liking. Lear...

We welcome Johan Grimonprez, director of the award-winning documentary Soundtrack to a Coup d'Etat. The Belgian filmmaker explains how he synched complex geopolitical history from the late 1950s and early '60s to the music of jazz giants like Louis Armstrong and Dizzy Gillespie. His dizzying achievement exposes the plot by the U.S., the UN secretary general, and Belgium to assassinate charismatic...

For our second episode recorded live at SFFILM's Doc Stories festival, we speak with director Kevin Macdonald about his documentary One to One: John & Yoko, examining a remarkable year-plus in the lives of the famous couple after they moved to New York. And we climb into the time machine to explore 1970s bizarro radicalism with director Robinson Devor and producer Jason Reid of Suburban Fury, a do...

Doc Talk heads to San Francisco for the 10th anniversary of SFFILM's Doc Stories festival. We speak with SFFILM Executive Director Anne Lai and Director of Programming Jessie Fairbanks, as well as the filmmakers behind a stunning film in the program, Arepas en Bici.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The hosts of Doc Talk and the ElectionLine podcast get together for an unprecedented summit. On the agenda — debating the best political documentary ever, and why conservatives can't seem to make a decent documentary. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Director Matt Tyrnauer and Democratic political strategist James Carville join us to talk about the entertaining and timely documentary Carville: Winning Is Everything, Stupid. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

We’re in the field at the Toronto International Film Festival, interviewing makers of some of the biggest documentaries to play at TIFF, including The Last Republican, The Last of the Sea Women, Ernest Cole: Lost and Found, and music-themed docs on Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band, Paul Anka, and Pharrell Williams. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Doc Talk goes inside the 20th Camden International Film Festival in Maine, speaking with Artistic Director Sean Flynn and filmmakers Petra Costa ('Apocalypse in the Tropics') and Elizabeth Lo ('Mistress Dispeller'). Camden has emerged as one of the most important all-documentary festivals in the world. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In Seeking Mavis Beacon, director Jazmin Jones and her filmic collaborator Olivia McKayla Ross try to solve a cyber mystery: What became of the elegant Black woman featured on the cover of a groundbreaking learn-to-type software program? The young sleuths discuss the complex cultural truths exposed by their quixotic quest. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Thom Powers, chief documentary programmer at the Toronto International Film Festival, joins the show to talk about the nonfiction lineup of this year's festival. How do you cut more than 900 submissions down to a final list of 21? Powers explains, and he shares his thoughts on the most buzzworthy titles soon to bow in Toronto. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Doc Talk travels to Europe to speak with the creative director of Sheffield DocFest, the U.K.'s top all-documentary film festival, and the leaders of Sunny Side of the Doc, the biggest documentary marketplace that unfolds in La Rochelle, France. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hosts John Ridley and Matt Carey react to the Emmy nominations in the documentary categories, and Oscar-nominated filmmaker Lucy Walker discusses her towering new film Mountain Queen: The Summits of Lhakpa Sherpa.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

What are the top Oscar-contending documentaries so far this year? Co-hosts John Ridley and Matt Carey look at the state of the race seven months into 2024. Films from Netflix, MTV Documentary Films, National Geographic, and Warner Bros. Discovery are in the mix, along with several docs that, so far, lack U.S. distribution. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Extraordinary artist Chiura Obata is the focus of the new documentary Obata's Yosemite, which explores his depiction of the national park through landscape paintings. Director Adam Prieto joins Doc Talk along with Kimi Hill, Obata's granddaughter. Hill tells us how Obata survived internment in a U.S. concentration camp for Japanese Americans during World War II, founding an art school for fellow d...

Oscar-winning filmmaker Alex Gibney discusses his Emmy-contending two-part documentary In Dreams: The Music of Paul Simon. And he talks about his upcoming film on Elon Musk, including the nasty name Musk called him after the business tycoon heard about the project.   Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Director Prentice Penny breaks down his Hulu documentary series Black Twitter, a three-part examination of how Black users of Twitter transformed the platform into a forum for humor, community, and a rallying point for social justice. And he ponders the fate of the social media site under chaotic ownership of Elon Musk. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Schitt's Creek star and beloved comedic actor Eugene Levy stops by Doc Talk to discuss his Emmy-contending nonfiction series The Reluctant Traveler, which finds him circumnavigating the globe despite being an admittedly adventure-averse individual. Executive producer-director David Brindley joins the conversation, revealing what travel activities Levy could not be convinced to do, and a few he sur...

Oscar-winning filmmaker Ron Howard discusses his new Disney+ documentary Jim Henson Idea Man, about the late Muppets creator and filmmaker's extraordinary life and career. And Howard shares his thoughts about working with John Candy, subject of an upcoming documentary, and he pays tribute to the man who got him his start in directing -- Roger Corman.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaph...

Sundance, Hot Docs and other film festivals in North America are facing significant challenges post-pandemic. Sundance is even considering a move out of its long-time home in Park City, Utah. Joining us to talk about what's going on with festivals are Ken Jacobson, executive director of the Hot Springs Documentary Film Festival in Arkansas, and Anne Lai, executive director of SFFilm. Learn more ab...

Our guest is Oscar-nominated filmmaker Yance Ford, director of Power. The documentary, premiering on Netflix this week, tackles policing in America – the origins of the institution and how police today preserve the existing order of society. Ford argues police power in this country is vast and largely unregulated. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Doc Talk goes live from the Milwaukee Film Festival with Debra McClutchy, archival producer of Swamp Dogg Gets His Pool Painted and Oscar-nominated co-director of The Martha Mitchell Effect. And we discuss redemption and the power of music with JJ'88, protagonist of Songs From the Hole, and producer Richie Reseda. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices