Top Docs: Award-Winning Documentary Filmmakers

Already famous as an actor, Rob Reiner made his directorial debut in 1984 with the landmark mockumentary “This Is Spinal Tap”, which kicked off a new subgenre and inspired countless references to turning the knob “up to 11.” But, it has taken 40 years for the legendary creative hyphenate (director of “Stand by Me”, “When Harry Met Sally”, “A Few Good Men” and many more) to direct his first “real”...

While we gear up for Season 4 of "Top Doc", we're sharing some of our favorite episodes of the past few years.  Today, we re-present a pod from October of 2021.   Ken and Mike welcome Kirsten (KJ) Johnson, who recently won Best Director for her groundbreaking film, " Dick Johnson is Dead ." This film is like no other film you’ll find in your Netflix queue. KJ’s boundary-pushing documentary uses th...

While we gear up for Season 4, we are sharing some of our favorite shows from the past few years.  Next up is "Summer of Soul", and our interview with director Amir "Questlove" Thompson.  Since we first aired this show in January of 2022, the film went on to win the Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature.   Ahmir “Questlove” Thompson joins us to talk about his Oscar-shortlisted “Summer of Soul...

While we gear up for Season 4, we thought we'd replay some of our favorite shows from the past few years.  Today, we’re presenting again our interview from September of 2022 with Daniel Roher regarding his film, Navalny, which depicts the Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny.  Since then, the film won the Academy Award for best Documentary.  Despite the attention brought by the film, in Februa...

To finish out Season 3, we're revisiting some telling moments from three of our most popular shows of the season: Laura McGann, "The Deepest Breath" Anna Hints, "Smoke Sauna Sisterhood" Fisher Stevens, "Beckham" The Presenting Sponsor of "Top Docs" is Netflix .

“Check Your Ego at the Door”. Those words were scrawled on a piece of paper and taped to the door of A&M Studios on the night of January 28, 1985. The story behind that command is the subject of director Bao Nguyen’s (“ Be Water ”) thoroughly captivating new Netflix documentary “The Greatest Night in Pop” about the once-in-a-lifetime event that drew dozens of the world’s biggest pop stars toge...

So much for campfire singalongs and Capture the Flag. Directors Amanda McBaine and Jesse Moss once again plunge into the world of summer camp for young politicians-in-training with “Girls State”, a riveting and exhilarating follow up to their Emmy Award-winning 2020 documentary “ Boys State .” The comparisons may be inevitable, but “Girls State” forges its own path with memorable characters, a com...

Many of the issues that plagued the young people of America decades ago–binge drinking, drunken driving, teenage pregnancy, smoking, to name a few–have greatly declined in significance.  But in their place we have witnessed a seemingly ever-deepening mental health crisis amongst our youth, one partly rooted, as our guests tell us, in a rise of anxiety.   The directors of “ Anxious Nation ,” Laura...

How much do you really know about Reality Winner, the veteran and NSA contractor who shared a document regarding Russian interference in the 2016 election with “The Intercept”, and then subsequently served several years in Federal prison as a consequence?     Sonia Kennebeck’s ( Enemies of the State , National Bird ) “Reality Winner” melds a host of timelines–before the arrest & after; during...

Joining us for the third year in a row, Variety’s Senior Awards Editor Clayton Davis breaks down this year’s Oscar races for Best Documentary Feature and Best Documentary Short and offers his predictions for who will be victorious at the 96th Academy Awards on March 10th. With the feature doc category taking on a very international flavor this year, what does Clayton think of how the process unfol...

We’ve saved the last of our live, in-person interviews at Sundance 2024 for the winners of the Sundance U.S. Documentary Competition Audience Award and overall Festival Favorite, the incredibly moving, tear-jerking, and, hopefully, policy-shifting documentary “Daughters”. Directors Angela Patton and Natalie Rae join Ken to discuss their world premiere screening and the life-changing organization “...

When Ranjit and his family turn to the Indian legal system to seek justice for his daughter who had been raped by three local young men, they face not only daunting odds from the system but deep resistance from their village.     Nisha Pahuja’s Academy Award-nominated film “To Kill a Tiger” traces the profound tension Ranjit experiences: on the one side is the promise of recent national legislatio...

Continuing our coverage of Academy Award-nominated shorts, Mike speaks with Sean Wang about his loving tribute to his grandmothers.  As he describes the film:  “Nǎi Nai is my grandma. Wài Pó is my grandma. Together they are a grandma super team that dances, stretches, and farts their sorrows away.”  Despite its seeming insularity, and its general mood of fun and mischief, the film opens up to beco...

Continuing our coverage of Academy Award-nominated shorts, Mike speaks with Kris Bowers (previously nominated for “ A Concerto is a Conversation ”)  and Ben Proudfoot (an Academy-Award winner for “ The Queen of Basketball ”) , directors of “The Last Repair Shop”.     The film sketches the stories–both representative of the Los Angeles workforce, as well as fascinating in their own right–of 4 repai...

The island of Kinmen is a small island with a potentially big problem. Situated just off the coast of China, but part of Taiwan, Kinmen would likely be the first line of defense should the Chinese government decide to invade Taiwan. Emmy-nominated director S. Leo Chiang, who was born in Taiwan, worked in China and also lived for years in the U.S., explores the complex relationship between place, i...

The fact that Arlo Washington, featured as the main protagonist in John Hoffman and Christine Turner’s inspiring documentary “The Barber of Little Rock”, is, indeed, a barber is almost beside the point. From owning one and then multiple barber shops, to founding the Washington Barber College and starting People Trust Credit Union, the first minority-owned financial institution in Arkansas, Arlo is...

A children’s book about Rosa Parks. A graphic adaptation of “The Diary of Anne Frank”. A Pulitzer Prize-winning book by a Nobel Laureate. These are but a few of the books that have been restricted, challenged, and banned in dozens of states across the U.S. In the new documentary “The ABCs of Book Banning” (directed by Sheila Nevins, produced and co-directed by Trish Adlesic, and co-directed by Naz...

Toward the end of this year’s Sundance Grand Jury Prize-winning documentary “Porcelain War”, one of the directors and main subjects of the film, Slava Leontyev, says, “Ukraine is like porcelain. Easy to break but impossible to destroy.” Slava, along with his wife, Anya, create beautifully crafted “porcelain beasts” that used to be their main professional focus. Since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine,...

Siouxsie and the Banshees. Ice-T.  Nine Inch Nails.  All were on the slated for the first Lollapalooza lineup in 1991.  But as Michael John Warren, director of the new 3-part Paramount+ series “Lolla: The Story of Lollapalooza,” tells us in our live interview at Sundance, his account of the history of the festival–first intended as a goodbye tour for Jane’s Addiction–is more than a trip down memor...

In the second of our live, in-person interviews at Sundance 2024, award-winning directors Brett Story (“ The Prison Landscape in Twelve Landscapes ”) and Stephen Maing (“ Crime + Punishment ”), along with Amazon Labor Union (ALU) president Chris Smalls, the film’s main protagonist, join Ken to discuss the world premiere of “Union”.   In this riveting, verité documentary, we meet Chris and other cu...

Kicking off our on-the-ground coverage of Sundance 2024, Julian Brave Noisecat and Emily Kassie join Mike to discuss their new film, “Sugarcane”.     In this film, they explore the legacy of the St. Joseph Mission, one of many segregated residential schools promulgated by the Canadian government and run by the Catholic Church.  The stories they tell are deeply personal (Julian’s grandmother attend...

Mixing the traditional documentary form with elements of Brechtian theatre, director Kaouther Ben Hania’s (“ The Man Who Sold His Skin , “ Beauty and the Dogs ”) Cannes-winning “Four Daughters” creates a highly intense and emotional experience — for both the audience and the principal characters.   Joining Ken on the pod, Kaouther discusses the challenges and breakthroughs of her hybrid approach....

In his vivid, pulsating new documentary, Oscar-winning director Roger Ross Williams (“Music by Prudence”; “ Life, Animated ”) puts his own creative stamp on Dr. Ibram X. Kendi’s best-selling book “Stamped from the Beginning” about the history of racist ideas in America.   Joining Ken on the pod, Roger describes how the racial reckoning of 2020 inspired him to make a film version of “Stamped”. What...

The Sundance Film Festival marks its 40th edition on January 18 - 28. To help get us ready for the big event, Basil Tsiokos, Sundance Senior Programmer, Nonfiction, makes his third visit to “Top Docs” to preview this year’s sure-to-be-killer documentary lineup. As the first Sundance under new Festival Director Eugene Hernandez, what are the new wrinkles of this year’s fest? What are some of the do...

Not just a movie about sound, but an interactive feast for the senses, “32 Sounds” is the latest in filmmaker Sam Green’s (“The Weather Underground”, “A Thousand Thoughts”) unique “live” documentaries. Inspired by the great 1993 film “ Thirty Two Short Films About Glenn Gould ”, the film delivers a heightened sensorial experience through an incredibly wide array of interviews, original footage, ar...