In the deluge of recent documentaries made by streaming platforms, it appears that production timelines have sped up in an attempt to fuel the conversation surrounding the topics they portray. For example, we’ve been privy to two documentaries about Aaron Carter, the little brother of Backstreet Boy Nick Carter and a pop star in his own right, since his untimely death from accidental drowning in 2022: the first was ABC News Studio’s The Little Prince of Pop (streaming on Hulu) six months later, and Investigation Discovery’s 2024 docuseries Fallen Idols: Nick and Aaron Carter , which also
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Laurie Townshend’s A Mother Apart allows Staceyann Chin to tell the story of her abandonment by her mother, Hazel. Chin proudly identifies as Caribbean, Black, Asian, lesbian, a woman, and a resident of New York City, as well as a Jamaican national who has spent her entire career speaking candidly about her own life. In our interview, we talked about the genesis of the film, shooting remotely during the pandemic, mothering oneself, and the ethics of care while working on A Mother Apart.
Berry Hahn is a French-Malagasy sales agent, independent consultant, and international liaison. Previously, she was a film programmer and documentary producer. A Getting Real fellow (2024), she is also a Realness Institute alumna and participated in U30 (2023) with Locarno Pro and the Southern Africa-Locarno Industry Academy (2021). Berry is a member of the European Film Academy, Documentary Association of Europe, and International Documentary Association. IDA: Please tell us a little about yourself, your profession, or your passion. My nickname is Berry, although my full name is Bérénice. I
About a Hero is set to have its world premiere as the opening film at IDFA tomorrow. It’s based on a script generated by an AI trained on Werner Herzog’s interviews, voiceovers, and writing. The resulting film, full of ironic self-reflection, explores themes of originality, authenticity, common sense, and the human soul in an era shaped by machine-human relationships. The filmmakers employ a variety of AI tools—from scripting to voice synthesis to image experimentation. The film is also intercut with documentary interviews with various artists about AI. We spoke with Piotr Winiewicz, the film’s director, in advance of the film’s premiere over Zoom and email.
Tallinn Black Nights will be celebrating its first documentary competition, Doc@PÖFF, featuring 11 titles—all of them international or world premieres. Ahead of the festival, running this year from November 8-24, I spoke to Marianna Kaat, curator of this brand-new section. Kaat is a prominent documentary director and producer in Estonia and founded her own firm, Baltic Film Production, in 1998. Alongside filmmaking and programming, she wears many other hats, including that of documentary lecturer at Tallinn University’s Baltic Film and Media School. In this interview, Kaat unpacks the line-up of this year’s competition, its raison d’être, and the work she has carried out with her fellow programmers.
Congratulations to the IDA grantees premiering at IDFA and DOC NYC this month! Be sure to catch their screenings if you happen to be in attendance at these festivals.
As a great-grandchild of Armenian genocide survivors uprooted from their indigenous lands, director Sareen Hairabedian carries a deeply personal connection to experiences of displacement and exile. This familial history of survival and loss has echoed through her work, informing her recent directorial focus on Nagorno-Karabakh, where ethnic Armenians continue to fight for their identity and self-determination amid a relentless cycle of conflict. In her assured debut feature, My Sweet Land , the filmmaker portrays this experience of limbo by turning her lens toward an 11-year-old ethnic
I first encountered the work of Milo Rau back in 2020, when his reimagining of the story of Jesus, The New Gospel, premiered in Venice. Set in the Italian town of Matera, where both Pasolini’s The Gospel According to St. Matthew and Mel Gibson’s The Passion of the Christ were likewise shot, the project was an on-the-ground collaboration with local residents, specifically African migrants locked in a real-life battle for human rights. Blurring fact and fiction, the film notably featured Enrique Irazoqui (Pasolini’s Jesus) and Maia Morgenstern (Gibson’s Mother Mary) alongside newcomer Yvan
Welcome to The Synthesis, a new monthly column exploring the intersection of Artificial Intelligence and documentary practice. Over the next year, co-authors shirin anlen and Kat Cizek will lay out ten (or so) key takeaways that synthesize the latest intelligence on synthetic media and AI tools—alongside their implications for nonfiction mediamaking. Balancing ethical, labor, and creative concerns, they will engage Documentary readers with interviews, analysis, and case studies. The Synthesis is part of an ongoing collaboration between the Co-Creation Studio at MIT’s Open Doc Lab and WITNESS.
Fundraising for films is notoriously time-consuming and opaque. It can often seem like the dull but necessary part of making a film, a chore that some filmmakers worry about only after their film is already shot, when they realize they have to pay for finishing or recover costs. Others need start-up money to even get started. With sales growing more and more tenuous and grants being ultra-competitive, we look to learn from documentarians who recently funded their projects through donations and other more grassroots means. Documentary spoke with five projects in IDA’s Fiscal Sponsorship Program