In 2003, a group of eight artists covertly built a living space in an unused part of the parking structure for Providence, Rhode Island’s gargantuan Providence Place shopping mall. Upon the apartment’s discovery in 2007, it became a brief local news sensation, before the story was largely forgotten. Jeremy Workman has brought the group back together to tell the tale in his documentary Secret Mall Apartment. We sat down with Workman for a call to discuss the unusual art project, the footage his subjects captured, and how he gained their trust to make the documentary after they’d denied other filmmakers for years.
Interview
No summary could ever do justice to what Belgian filmmaker Johan Grimonprez has created through his audiovisual-textual collage Soundtrack to a Coup d’État (2024). The year 1960, famously called the “Year of Africa,” serves as the political, social, and cultural matrix on which Grimonprez builds his manifold narrative—moving back and forth in time and space, layering sound, image, and text with texture and depth. Now an Oscar nominee, the documentarian comes well-prepared, armed with the quintessential skills of an avid researcher and a seasoned orator, opening new tabs in our minds with each question while anticipating potential criticisms with humility and curiosity. Documentary magazine sat down with Grimonprez to discuss Soundtrack to a Coup d’État in his format of choice: a dialogue.
Makarenko, a public school in the Parisian suburb of Ivry-sur-Seine, is the subject of Elementary , the latest vérité study from renowned French
APA members Debra McClutchy and Eugen Bräunig are eager to discuss the comprehensive new guidelines they’ve co-authored, “Working with Archival Producers.” From breaking down their roles during various stages of production to ideal onboarding scenarios, the document is, first and foremost, a means to advocate for a tangible job description and reasonable workloads. Despite the desire to establish concrete parameters for this work, there is also ample room for adjustment. In our conversation below, McClutchy and Bräunig discuss how they came to co-author this new guideline, how it complements the APA’s previous document on GenAI best practices, and member feedback.
Oleksiy Radynski is one of the most fascinating figures in contemporary Ukrainian cinema. Since his early shorts, Radynski has worked in observational documentary and archival footage. In films like his feature-length debut Infinity According to Florian (2022), he explores culture, historical memory, and community, particularly within Kyiv’s urban landscapes. The full-scale invasion shifted Radynski’s focus more decisively towards found footage, as he became increasingly engaged in the recovery of previously forgotten Ukrainian cinema. Ahead of its world premiere, Documentary spoke with Radynski about Special Operation’s challenging production, the semiotics of surveillance cameras, and the depiction of imperialism through landscapes.
Largely composed of artful, meditative shots that relish in quotidian minutiae—meal prep, bathtime, daily prayer—Sam Abbas’s Europe’s New Faces is a striking and emphatically humanizing portrait of African migrants residing in a specific Paris squat. Though the film’s 159-minute runtime seems somewhat daunting on its face, the filmmaker’s eye for exquisite detail quickly quiets the viewer’s roving mind. Below, our conversation covers his initial encounter with Parisian squats, how he acquired access to shoot an emergency C-section, and the process of enlisting The Beast and Nocturama director Bertrand Bonello for the score.
Angelo Madsen’s (North By Current) newest film, A Body to Live in, is an ode to body piercer, performance artist, and photographer Fakir Musafar (1930–2018). Madsen, who befriended Musafar in the last 14 years of his subject’s life, utters offscreen near the end of the film that he wishes he had begun this project when the founder of the “Modern Primitive” movement was still alive, to speak with Musafar directly about his westernization of Indigenous spirituality from a contemporary perspective. Both a critique and love letter to the divisive “Gender Flex” symbol, A Body to Live In is a sonic immersion of what it means to find community and be human. Ahead of its world premiere at True/False, Documentary chatted with Madsen over Zoom to discuss his friendship with Musafar, respect for Musafar’s legacy through a critical lens, and the difficulties of financing and marketing “niche” trans stories.
Lisa Jackson is an Anishinaabe documentary maker working across multiple genres—film, XR, and installations—to share Indigenous stories and knowledge. Her most recent work, Wilfred Buck’s Star Stories, is a dome presentation bringing to life four star stories, gathered and told by renowned Cree astronomer, star knowledge expert, and author Wilfred Buck. It also features excerpts from her 2024 documentary Wilfred Buck, which explored the astronomer’s life, work, and philosophy. Documentary talked to Jackson about creating for different genres, reciprocity, and using technology in the context of sharing Indigenous knowledge. Star Stories, created in collaboration with the Macronautes, premieres at the 2025 Berlinale in the Forum Expanded section.
In The Dialogue Police , protests, Quran burnings, and political gatherings take center stage. This timely doc, helmed by veteran Susanna Edwards
In October 2023, as part of the series Making a Production, Documentary profiled the London-based production company Grain Media. As a small independent production company focused exclusively on documentary, they were managing to succeed, with difficulty, in a very challenging climate for documentary. At the end of 2024, the company’s Netflix documentaries The Lost Children and Buy Now: The Shopping Conspiracy achieved global prominence. At the same time, the company had to make its first redundancies, letting go of a handful of its long-serving staff. Documentary caught up with Grain’s founder and head Orlando von Einsiedel to discuss the ups and downs of the last year, and how they reflect what is going on in the global documentary industry.