Top Docs: Award-Winning Documentary Filmmakers

It’s clear from the opening shot of “Being Eddie,” director Angus Wall’s (Oscar-winning editor of “The Social Network” “The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo”) enchanting Netflix documentary about comedy superstar Eddie Murphy, that being Eddie is a pretty good gig. The film begins with a thrilling drone shot that starts from inside the Moroccan-style courtyard of Eddie’s spectacular Beverly Hills mansi...

As Mike tells our guest, director Margaret Brown, when he heard that she had delivered HBO’s “The Yogurt Shop Murders” in the wake of what he considered one of the 21st-Century’s finest documentaries, “Descendant”,  his first thought was, “Oh, good for Margaret!  She’s doing some true crime, and she’s going to get paid.”   But he knew in his heart that because Margaret was the director, this would...

At the beginning of Giselle Bailey and Phil Bertelsen’s illuminating two-part HBO doc series “Seen & Heard: The History of Black Television,” the directors follow actress Tracee Ellis Ross, one of the leads of the successful sitcom “Black-ish,” to the set of “Jimmy Kimmel Live!” where she and co-star Anthony Anderson celebrate the show’s series finale after 8 seasons. The triumphant ending sta...

Mel Brooks is about to turn 100 years old! When Mel celebrates his upcoming birthday on June 28th, filmmaker Michael Bonfiglio, who has directed (along with Judd Apatow) a joyful and action-packed two-part HBO documentary about the legendary comic and filmmaker, might want to talk to the folks at HBO about changing the title of their film: “Mel Brooks: The 99 Year Old Man!” Otherwise, I’d advise n...

For a time, back in the ‘80s, actor Charlie Sheen was the hottest thing in Hollywood. But it didn’t take long for Sheen’s star turns in “Platoon” and “Wall Street” to morph into tabloid cover stories about his hard partying ways and bad boy exploits. In his highly engaging two-part Netflix series ”aka Charlie Sheen,” filmmaker Andrew Renzi (“Pepsi, Where’s My Jet?”, “Ready for War”) follows the mo...

Billy Joel, one of the most beloved and best-selling pop music artists of all-time, has finally achieved something that, up until now, has always eluded him: the opportunity to tell his side of the story. In their authoritative and insightful two-part HBO documentary “Billy Joel: And So It Goes,” directors and producers Susan Lacy and Jessica Levin (“Jane Fonda in Five Acts”, “Joni Mitchell: A Wom...

For her latest film, “Time and Water,” Academy Award-nominated filmmaker Sara Dosa (“Fire of Love”, “The Seer & the Unseen”) returns to Iceland, this time to cover the island nation’s other distinctive geologic feature besides its volcanoes: its majestic glaciers. Deeply embedded in Icelandic history, culture, and myth, these moving rivers of ice are now facing an existential threat due climat...

Of course, we all know who “Rafa” is — the tennis legend and sports icon Rafael Nadal, winner of 22 Grand Slam titles and an unfathomable 14 French Open trophies. But who is Rafael Nadal when the cameras (or, rather, all but one of the cameras...) are turned off? In director Zach Heinzerling’s (“Cutie and the Boxer”) much anticipated, just released 4-part Netflix docuseries “Rafa,” Zach’s watchful...

When Warren Jeffs, the “prophet” of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (FLDS), a Mormon fundamentalist group whose members practice polygamy, stopped communicating regularly from prison where he is serving a life sentence for child sexual assault, his followers were at a loss. But, as Rachel Dretzin depicts in her powerful, eye-opening four-part Netflix series “Trust Me...

Late in director Alexandria Stapleton’s 4-part Netflix series “Sean Combs: The Reckoning”, one of her subjects lays out what may be the documentary’s thesis:  While it may seem like Combs “went bad” well into middle-age, the signs were there well before–”it was a slow build.”   Stapleton deftly tracks Comb’s rise:  The son of a murdered father, brought up with music, clothes, and fantasy.  Startin...

In 1967, 3-year-old Mariska Hargitay — now, an Emmy-winning actor known to millions as Captain Olivia Benson on the long-running TV series “Law and Order: Special Victims Unit” — was in a terrible car accident. Her mother — the Hollywood icon Jayne Mansfield — and two others were killed instantly. The accident not only took the life of her mother but prevented Mariska from having any lasting memor...

For our 300th episode, we’re bringing you some of our favorite impactful moments from some of our most popular shows of Season 5: "Pee-wee as Himself" with Matt Wolf "Chef's Table: Legends" with David Gelb & Adam Bricker Anatomy of a Scene from "Martha" with R.J. Cutler "CHAOS: The Manson Murders" with Errol Morris "Yacht Rock: A DOCKumentary" with Garret Price See you in Season 6!   The Prese...

In the early morning hours of a typical spring day, a van marked “Immigration Enforcement” stops on a quiet street in a residential neighborhood; two men of color are snatched up for alleged immigration violations and hustled into the van. No, the location is not the U.S., and this is not 2026... Felipe Bustos Sierra’s (“Nae Pasaran”) gripping new Sundance documentary “Everybody to Kenmure Street”...

You may only know her from those few minutes in a dressing room where she was assaulted by Donald Trump, who has himself relentlessly lied about what happened there and slandered the woman who, after years of telling only those closest to her of his crime, finally sought justice–and won.  Repeatedly.   But Ivy Meeropol, in her new documentary, “Ask E. Jean” provides a much fuller story:  How E. Je...

What started out as a transactional exchange between Janay Boulos, a BBC journalist, and Abd Alkader Habak, a local activist and cameraperson in Aleppo during the Syrian war, later evolved into a mutual curiosity. Over time, texting, voice memos and phone calls became the currency of a deepening relationship... and eventually the two married and became film partners living in London. In their inte...

Joining us for the 5th year in a row, Variety’s Chief Awards Editor Clayton Davis is back on “Top Docs” to break down this year’s Oscar races for Best Documentary Feature and Best Documentary Short and to offer his predictions for who will walk away victorious on March 15th. With another close race on our hands, you don’t want to miss Clayton’s analysis and final picks.   And be sure to catch up o...

  Protestors silently bearing the pictures of children killed in Gaza: they hold no other signs, chant no slogans.     Hilla Medalia ("Leftover Women", "Prisoner X") speaks to Mike about her Oscar-nominated short documentary, “Children No More: Were and are Gone”, explaining how this act held weekly in Tel Aviv–where the images of the dead in Gaza are not regularly shown in the mainstream media–is...

While covering the devastating effects of the Russian bombing of Ukraine, documentary filmmaker/journalist Brent Renaud was shot and killed by Russian forces on March 22, 2022. He was the first foreign-born journalist killed in the war. Now, Brent’s filmmaking partner and younger brother Craig has made the harrowing documentary “Armed Only With a Camera: The Life and Death of Brent Renaud.”   Crai...

 ”Three donkeys are in an unnamed desert and they discover an abandoned astronomical observatory.  And the universe.”  That’s how Alison McAlpine (“Second Sight”, “Ghostmen of Skye”, "Cielo") describes her Oscar-nominated short documentary “Perfectly a Strangeness” to Mike.  In this wordless film, McAlpine uses the “fundamentals of cinema”– sound, movement, light, shadow, reflections – to craft a...

A day in the life of a women’s reproductive healthcare center is unlike any other. In this post-Roe world, potential danger lurks in the dark or right out in the open. In the tense and nuanced Oscar-nominated documentary short “The Devil Is Busy” (directed by Christalyn Hampton and Geeta Gandbhir), we follow Tracii, the head of security at an Atlanta women’s health clinic, as she goes through her...

In a special, in-person conversation from the 2026 Sundance Film Festival, director Judd Ehrlich (“Keepers of the Game”) joins Ken in Park City to discuss his new documentary “Jane Elliott Against the World,” which just had its world premiere in the festival’s U.S. Documentary Competition section.   In the opening scene of “Jane Elliott Against the World,” the film’s eponymous protagonist rather p...

Cop. Drug agent. Preacher. Marijuana activist. Cop buster.  Can this really be one man?   In their documentary “Never Get Busted”, David Anthony Ngo and Erin Williams-Weir follow the protean Barry Cooper.  In this special interview recorded live late last year at the Hot Spring Documentary Film Festival (where our own Ken Jacobson serves as Executive Director), David and Erin share the lives, love...

This is it! The final Sundance Film Festival to be held in Utah is just around the corner. The 2026 Sundance Film Festival — the 42nd edition — runs from January 22 – February 1 in Park City and Salt Lake City, Utah (and online from Jan. 29 – Feb 1). Next year, this iconic event moves to Boulder, Colorado. To help get us fired up for the festival, we welcome back Basil Tsiokos, Sundance Senior Pro...

The premise of Rachel Grady’s and Heidi Ewing’s (“Jesus Camp”, “Norman Lear: Just Another Version of You,” Endangered) new Oscar-shortlisted documentary, “Folktales” is simple enough:  They follow three students at a post-high school program in Norway’s Arctic circle as they learn survival skills and dog sledding.  But by almost literally weaving in Nordic tales of the Fates, demonstrating the hea...

In his new, Oscar-shortlisted “The Alabama Solution”, which he co-directed with Charlotte Kaufman, Andrew Jarecki ("Capturing the Friedmans", "The Jinx") focusses on inmates of the Alabama Department of Corrections who use contraband phones to organize dissent within the system, even sustained labor strikes, all aimed at improving the dramatically overcrowded, squalid, abusive, and even fatal cond...