Top Docs: Award-Winning Documentary Filmmakers

On the pod today, legendary director Allen Hughes (“ Menace II Society ”, “ Dead Presidents ”, “ The Defiant Ones ”) joins Mike to talk about his Emmy-nominated “Dear Mama”.  The series traces the legacy of Afeni Shakur, Tupac’s mother and once a member of the Black Panthers, on her son’s life and music.  Hughes’ series demonstrates how the many modes that Tupac worked in–party music, socially con...

She could turn the world on with her smile. But, for the “real” Mary Tyler Moore — one of the biggest television stars of the 1970s — what lay beneath that smile? In his engrossing and incisive documentary “ Being Mary Tyler Moore ”, filmmaker James Adolphus (“ Soul of a Nation ”, “ You Ain’t Got These ”) presents a three-dimensional portrait of MTM, placing her in cultural context and illustratin...

Director Lana Wilson says that in “Pretty Baby: Brooke Shields” she’s showing how Shields found her way from “object of beauty to becoming a human being.”  It’s a dramatic thesis, but one that Wilson brings to life in this Emmy-nominated documentary series.  After the original “Pretty Baby”, “The Blue Lagoon”, and the Jordache Jeans commercials, Brooke found herself in her 4 years of college–where...

It’s one thing to be a socially conscious pop musician; it’s an entirely different matter when that musician attempts to parlay his popularity in the music world into the political arena. For Afrobeat star Bobi Wine — whose personal and political journey is the centerpiece of the remarkable new documentary “Bobi Wine: The People’s President” — the stakes couldn’t be higher. His home country of Uga...

A young woman who gets into an argument over a drinking glass.  A student who is suspended from his university for calling out its exorbitant fees.  An activist who runs afoul of the government.  All–and many more–are accused of violating Pakistan’s blasphemy laws: some of the strictest on the planet, featuring death as their ultimate punishment.   But the director of “The Accused:  Damned or Devo...

 The letter “Z” seems innocent enough – until you see a Russian tank painted with that mark slowly turn its turret in your direction. For AP journalist Mstyslav Chernov, who, at the time, was covering the Ukrainian war from behind enemy lines in Mariupol, this was the moment when the Russians were closing in. As seen in his harrowing new documentary “20 Days in Mariupol”, in the period leading up...

Laura McGann’s “The Deepest Breath” is a film about two young people fated to meet despite their differences.  Alessia is driven from a young age to compete:  Holding her breath for minutes at a time in both the pool and the sea.  Stephen travels the world, torn between his desire to see new people and places and his longing for home, and a more conventional life.     But it’s also about the wisdo...

When Academy Award®-nominated, Emmy®-winning filmmaker Julie Cohen (“ RBG ”, “ My Name is Pauli Murray ”) came across the NBC News archival footage of sexologist John Money and his patient David Reimer, she knew that this story had legs. But what she couldn’t have anticipated is that this dark chapter in the history of gender identity would lead her toward what ultimately became her groundbreaking...

  Filmmaker Ryan White (“ Good Night Oppy ”, “ The Keepers ”) had no desire to make a documentary about ‘90s superstar Pamela Anderson. Not when the idea was first brought to him, anyway. But then, Pamela’s son urged him to at least meet his mother on Zoom. And that was all it took. Ryan quickly realized that the media image of Pamela as a two-dimensional blonde bombshell and attention-driven cele...

6 young adults on a boat ride home after a clambake.  It sounds everyday, even idyllic, but when the inebriated young scion of a local legal dynasty crashes the boat into a bridge, one of the young people loses her life.  And “The Murder Murders: A Southern Scandal” traces how the ramifications ultimately lead to a double murder, as well as revealed a longstanding pattern of widespread theft and p...

Meet The McNamara’s, the first family of big wave surfing. Garrett McNamara is one of the world’s premier big wave surfers; wife Nicole is a top big wave spotter; Nicole’s brother CJ rides the big waves, too. Now, son Barrel is (perhaps) on the path following in dad’s footsteps. If season 1 of HBO’s enthralling docuseries “!00 Foot Wave” was all about the pursuit of that illusive triple digit mile...

Judy Blume is alive and well.  While no longer writing books, at 85 she still bikes around the lively streets of Key West, stopping in to tend the book shop she bought a few years ago.  And she serves as the vivacious, charismatic center of “Judy Blume Forever”.   Directors Davina Pardo and Leah Wolchok sat down with Mike Merrill to discuss how their film centers Blume both within a coterie of aut...

Nothing could be more sterile – or more frightening – than a cold, spare interrogation room. Victims and suspects alike are brought into these spaces where they are questioned by police and videotaped for later use as evidence. But what happens when the victim, even without realizing it, becomes the suspect – and the suspect becomes the lead witness? This is the disturbing truth uncovered in Nancy...

The quest for a lifelong mentor can be as tough a mountain to climb as, you know, a really big mountain. If you are Oscar®-winning filmmaker and world-class climber Jimmy Chin, not only do mountains and mentors play a huge role in your life, but, in the case of Jimmy and his Oscar-winning creative/life partner Chai Vasarhelyi, they are also at the center of their fascinating and deeply personal ne...

Miami Beach in the early ‘60s was a magnet for dreamers, the idle rich, and the young-and-restless. It was also an irresistible draw for a young, handsome California surfer named Jack “Murf the Surf” Murphy who quickly took Miami Beach by storm… and then just took it. Joining a high-flying crew of brash jewel thieves, Murphy and his accomplices made off with thousands in stolen gems. The crooks la...

In her feature documentary directorial debut, Sierra Urich follows women of three generations as they search for the meaning of “home”.  Torn between the past in Iran and the present in New England, the women navigate their family’s complicated legacy through art:  Video, painting, and song.  And they maintain and build the relationships between them through freighted words, both direct as well as...

Van Jones loves to talk. Or so it would seem to those who have closely followed the progressive CNN commentator’s frequent on-air rebuttals to Donald Trump’s words and deeds in recent years. But Jones is even more keen on the idea of action — specifically, action on the issue of prison reform, his driving passion for decades. Instead of spending the Trump presidency exclusively on the sidelines, J...

Like a classic sole meunière that pairs a beautiful filet of sole with a dash of butter and lemon, director Laura Gabbert’s films (“ City of Gold ”) match glorious portraits of food with a brilliant and uniquely qualified storyteller. In the case of her new documentary “Food and Country”, which premiered at this year’s Sundance Film Festival, Laura partners with food icon Ruth Reichl who embarks o...

Her books have sold tens of millions of copies, and in the 70s and 80s she strode widely across the cultural landscape of everything from talk shows to college tours.  As Nicole Newnham (Oscar-nominated for “ Crip Camp ”) demonstrates in “The Disappearance of Shere Hite,” Hite’s persona was highly constructed, and nearly cinematic in its vision and specificity.  But Newnham also makes a strong cas...

In “Nam June Paik: Moon is the Oldest TV” director Amanda Kim tells the story of the visual art pioneer.  Kim traces Arnold Schoenberg and John Cage influence not only Paik’s musical art, but his visual work as well.  She shows how the poor reception by German critics to his early experiments with televisions drove him to NYC, where he found himself working with some of the luminaries of downtown...

“And the Oscar® goes to…” Variety’s Senior 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 12th. With his encyclopedic knowledge of the Oscars and his finger-on-the-pulse of the overall Awards season, Clayton takes us through each o...

A man, alone, on a desolate beach.  Armed and mumbling into a recording device in a soundscape of wind and waves. As director Evgenia Arbugaeva (co-director, her brother Maxim Arbugaev) tells Mike, the initial images of the Oscar-nominated short “Haulout” deliberately create solitude and quiet before the sudden arrival of nearly 100,000 stressed-out walruses:  with Arctic ice no longer ensured, th...

It says something about filmmaker Jay Rosenblatt that if you go to his website ( jayrosenblattfilms.com ) and click on “Contact”, the page guides you to “16mm / 35mm rental information”. Jay is that kind of filmmaker — for over 40 years, he’s been making personal, finely crafted documentaries that, regardless of format, have the look and feel of a bespoke 16mm film. Following the success of last y...

“Stranger at the Gate” charts one man’s delusion:  That his neighbors are not the peace-loving, hard-working people they seem to be, but actually dangerous radicals deeply embedded in America’s heartland.  But it also subtly portrays a more universal phenomenon of dehumanization–and then offers a hopeful example of where respect and love were able to provide a remedy. Director Joshua Seftel sat do...

It’s an age-old query:  Can humans live in harmony with other creatures on the planet?  On their way to speaking to this question, in  “The Elephant Whisperers” director Kartiki Gonsalves and producer Doug Blush show us the beauty, intelligence, and even danger of the creatures who share our world. Kartiki and Doug joined Mike to talk about their Oscar-nominated short documentary.  They tell Mike...