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Across America, but most pervasively in small industrial towns across the country, decades of excessive opioid prescriptions have led to a national epidemic of heroin overdoses. In no place is this struggle on view more pointedly than in Huntington, West Virginia, an Appalachian city with an overdose rate 10 times the national average. When a film focuses on one of the nation's most vilified drugs, how can a filmmaker break through the cynicism and judgment audiences often place on those unable to free themselves from its grasp? One way is the road taken by Peabody Award-winning filmmaker

Academy Award nominated documentary Last Men in Aleppo; its director, Feras Fayyad and the protagonists in the film, The White Helmets, are under a sustained and withering online disinformation attack from a legion of Russian, pro-Russian and pro-Assad trolls. This smear campaign, similar to one waged against the Oscar-winning The White Helmets in 2017, labels Fayyad a terrorist sympathizer, a spy, a liar and much worse. In addition, The Guardian's Olivia Solon, who recently reported on the campaign, is now a target herself. We also received word today that the U.S. has denied the visa for one

Screen Time is your curated weekly guide to excellent documentaries and nonfiction programs that you can watch at home. Newly streaming at Independent Lens is Stanley Nelson's Tell Them We Are Rising: The Story of Black Colleges and Universities, which tells the powerful story of the rise, influence and evolution of HBCUs. Newly streaming at HBO is Kate Davis' Oscar-nominated short Traffic Stop, which tells the story of Breaion King, a 26-year-old African-American school teacher from Austin, Texas, who is stopped for a routine traffic violation that escalates into a dramatic arrest. Newly

Since IDA's DocuClub was relaunched in 2016 as a forum for sharing and soliciting feedback about works-in-progress, many DocuClub alums have premiered their works on the festival circuit over the past year. In an effort to both monitor and celebrate the evolution of these films to premiere-ready status, we reached out to the filmmakers, as they were either winding their way through the festival circuit, or gearing up for it. In this edition of "The Feedback," we spotlight Lisa F. Jackson and Sarah Teale's Patrimonio, which they presented at DocuClub NY in October 2017. We caught up with

Essential Doc Reads is a weekly feature in which the IDA staff recommends recent pieces about the documentary form and its processes. Here we feature think pieces and important news items from around the Internet, and articles from the Documentary magazine archive. We hope you enjoy! At The New York Times, Anna Holmes writes about biracial identity and the experience of the "Loving Generation," the subject of a new documentary series from Topic. But after you're accepted, then what? What does it mean that many prominent self-identified black people in America today were born to a white parent

For decades now, the Emmy and Peabody Award-winning team of Kate Davis ( Girltalk; Southern Comfort) and her producer and sometime co-director David Heilbroner ( Stonewall Uprising) have been giving voice to marginalized communities by listening closely to individuals, allowing their characters to express their own complicated truths—and thereby correcting the easy stories too often assigned to them by the media at large. And now with their latest Oscar-nominated short, Traffic Stop, the duo have turned their lens—and once again upended accepted narratives—on the hot topic of police brutality

Since IDA's DocuClub was relaunched in 2016 as a forum for sharing and soliciting feedback about works-in-progress, many DocuClub alums have premiered their works on the festival circuit over the past few months. In an effort to both monitor and celebrate the evolution of these films to premiere-ready status, we reached out to the filmmakers, as they were either winding their way through the festival circuit, or gearing up for it. In this edition of "The Feedback," we spotlight director Alina Skrzeszewska's Game Girls, which she presented at DocuClub LA in January 2017. We caught up with

February 15, 2018 (Los Angeles, CA) - Today, the International Documentary Association announced the appointment of Kevin Iwashina as the new President of the Board of Directors, replacing Marjan Safinia, who termed out this year. "I could not be more honored to be appointed the President of the IDA at this critical moment in documentary film,” says Iwashina. “Technology is expanding access to non-fiction storytelling in long form, series and audio formats and my new role at the IDA will ensure that we are maximizing our resources around advocacy and education to support the art form of the

By Caty Borum Chattoo and Will Jenkins Center for Media & Social Impact Contemporary social-issue documentary films are available to the public through multiple forms of distribution, well beyond TV and theaters. On the local level, community screenings often present the most strategic route and opportunity to engage with the public and policymakers. For filmmakers and film strategy teams who aim to raise awareness of an issue, or even to help change it through public policy—that is, creating, changing and enforcing laws—the greatest potential for momentum is often found within town and city

Screen Time is your curated weekly guide to excellent documentaries and nonfiction programs that you can watch at home. Premiering tonight, Monday February 12 on HBO is Rebecca Cammisa's Atomic Homefront, which probes the devastating impact of the illegal dumping of radioactive waste in North St. Louis communities, and the moms-turned-advocates fighting for answers. Premiering tonight on POV is Craig Atkinson's Do Not Resist, a vital and influential exploration of the rapid militarization of the police in the United States. The film won the Best Documentary Feature award at the 2016 Tribeca