Top Docs: Award-Winning Documentary Filmmakers

It’s easy to glibly identify what’s happening as “Orwellian”:  that we live in an era of “newspeak,” that we have reached the point at which the depths of the surveillance state of 1984 seems all too possible, maybe even already here. But in his new “Orwell: 2 + 2 = 5”, Raoul Peck (“I am Not Your Negro”, “Exterminate All the Brutes”, “Ernest Cole: Lost and Found”) digs much deeper into these possibilities, demonstrating how Orwell’s words resonated throughout the first half of the 20th century, only to become all that much relevant in our own day.   Drawing widely from Orwell’s corpus--not just the later novels, 1984 and Animal Farm but from earlier work and Orwell’s essays as well--Peck gives us a sense of a mind at work, seeking to bring together art and politics to reveal his world’s contradictions.  And by fashioning as a spine to the film Orwell’s final months on the remote island of Jura as well as in sanitariums and hospitals and tuberculosis destroyed his lungs, all while striving to finish his final novel, 1984, Peck creates a sense of the mortal urgency facing Orwell then and us now.   “Orwell: 2 + 2 = 5” is now playing in theaters.   Follow: @topdocspod on Instagram and X/twitter   The Presenting Sponsor of "Top Docs" is Netflix.

It’s that time of the year! The Hot Springs Documentary Film Festival 2025 runs from October 10-18th.  Ken, who, in addition to his Top Docs duties serves as the Executive Director of the Festival, joins Mike to talk about some of his picks for the Festival including: “Lost Wolves of Yellowstone” “The Cowboy” “Move Ya Body:  The Birth of House” “Armed Only With a Camera:  The Life and Death of Brent Renaud” “The Perfect Neighbor” “Welded Together” “The Baloonists”   And… On October 12th at 2:30, Join Ken and Mike and director Joshua Seftel for a very special live Top Docs featuring Johua’s short, “All the Empty Rooms.”   For more info:  https://hsdfi.org/   The Presenting Sponsor of "Top Docs" is Netflix.

As director David Osit describes his new film, “ ’Predators’ peels back the story of the TV show ‘To Catch a Predator’, which ensnared potential sex predators in a television hidden-camera sting operation and explores the fallout from the show and the legacy of journalism as entertainment that it helped create.”     “Predators” (MTV Documentary Films) is now playing in select theaters, with more added every week.   Hidden Gem:  Look into My Eyes.   Follow: @dosit on Instagram and @davidosit on X/twitter @predatorsfilm on Instagram @topdocspod on Instagram and X/twitter   The Presenting Sponsor of "Top Docs" is Netflix.

In honor of Matt Wolf's big wins at the Emmys this year--not only for "Pee-wee as Himself" as Best Documentary Feature, but for his own win as director of that documentary as well as picture editing for Damian Rodriguez--we are re-releasing our interview with him at Sundance earlier this year.   As Director Matt Wolf shows in his  insightful and fun 2-part HBO series “Pee-wee as Himself”, in Pee-wee, Paul Rubens found a persona that allowed him to both reveal and yet hide some core truths about who he was.     Fascinated with television and show business since he was a boy, Rubens combined elements of his childhood’s pop culture with the art world of Southern California in the 70s and early 80s to craft a character that would both conquer the then punkish milieu of Melrose Avenue as well as create a nationally televised children’s TV show.  To achieve this, Wolfe delineates how Rubens deliberately foreclosed both his potential love life as well as cast aside long-held friendships.  Wolfe’s series demonstrates both the costs as well as the benefits of outsized talent and ambition.   You can watch “Pee-wee as Himself” on HBO and HBO Max starting Friday, May 23rd.   Follow: @mattpwolf on Instagram @topdocspod on Instagram and X    The Presenting Sponsor of "Top Docs" is Netflix.  

It’s Primetime. Yes, the Primetime Emmys are here, and we’ve got you covered. Culminating our “Top Docs” podcasts featuring the leading contenders for in the documentary categories, we talk to The Hollywood Reporter’s Executive Editor of Awards Scott Feinberg who breaks down the 2025 Emmy nominees in all the major documentary categories, including Outstanding Documentary or Nonfiction Special; Outstanding Documentary or Nonfiction Series; Exceptional Merit in Documentary Filmmaking; and Outstanding Directing.   The 77th Creative Arts Emmy Awards, including all the major doc categories, will be held on September 6 - 7.   An award-winning columnist and podcast host (“Awards Chatter”), Executive Editor of Awards Scott Feinberg has led The Hollywood Reporter’s awards coverage since 2011. He is best known for his “Feinberg Forecast,” through which he assesses the standings of various showbiz awards races, and for Awards Chatter, the interview-centric podcast that he started in 2015.   Follow: @scott_feinberg on Instagram @topdocspod on Instagram and X/twitter   The Presenting Sponsor of "Top Docs" is Netflix.  

Welcome to the 2025 Toronto International Film Festival (September 4 – 14), home of the big anniversary! This year’s edition of one of the world’s great film festivals marks TIFF’s landmark 50th anniversary. In addition, renowned curator and all-around documentary powerhouse Thom Powers (host of the Pure Nonfiction podcast) celebrates 20 years as the festival’s lead documentary programmer.   Thom returns to “Top Docs” to spotlight TIFF’s extraordinary documentary lineup that will no doubt set the table for the rest of the year in international nonfiction cinema. Running the gamut from established directors to breakthrough newcomers; serious topics to lighthearted fare; cinematically challenging work to crowd pleasers, TIFF’s got ‘em all. In addition, in a special treat, Thom tantalizes us with his terrific new book, “Mondo Documentary” — hot off the press — which shares his perspectives on more than 350 films that he has presented to audiences over the course of his 20 years at TIFF. We also dive into the book’s revelatory introductory essay, “How Did I Get Here.” If life is a journey, sometimes it’s fitting to break out the champagne and celebrate those milestone anniversaries.   Thom’s new book “Mondo Documentary” is available directly through Pure Nonfiction Books: https://purenonfiction.stck.me/book/1166355/Mondo-Documentary   Follow: @thompowers1 on Instagram @topdocspod on Instagram and X/twitter   The Presenting Sponsor of "Top Docs" is Netflix.

  Today we are repeating one of our favorite conversations.  Mike spoke with the filmmakers of "Sugarcane" at Sundance 2024.  They would go on to win the Grand Jury award for Directing at that festival, and then would be nominated for the 97th Academy Awards last year.     If you enjoy this conversation, you may want to check out our "Anatomy of a scene from Sugarcane."   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 run by the Catholic Church.  The stories they tell are deeply personal (both Julian’s grandmother and father attended St. Joseph’s) as well illustrative of a wider history of abuse within the schools.  As they explain, they deploy and reshape various filmic conventions–the Western, archival, the travel doc–in innovative ways to do justice to the lives and stories of their subject.  The result is a many-layered testament to survival despite deep, still ongoing pain.   Thanks to Amos Cochran of Edit/Score for hosting our 2024 Sundance interviews.  Edit/Score is a new music library with an innovative approach to finding music for your film. Listen to the library and learn more at editscoremusic.com  The Presenting Sponsor of Top Docs is Netflix.   Follow: @emilykassie on Instagram & twitter @jnosiecat on Instagram & twitter @topdocspod on Instagram and twitter

Acclaimed photographer and filmmaker Lauren Greenfield (“The Queen of Versailles”) is drawn time and again to overlapping and powerful themes like addiction, wealth, consumerism and celebrity culture. Now, with her first doc series “Social Studies” — a fascinating 5-part exploration of the tight grip that social media has over Generation Z — Lauren unpacks these interrelated themes in the context of the online social interactions that have taken over young people’s lives.   Lauren joins Ken on the pod to discuss how the end of the covid pandemic inadvertently created an opportune moment to begin following a diverse group of young people in Los Angeles and their lives on social media just as they were preparing to return to in-person classes for the first time in a year-and-a-half. Combining observational footage, interviews with young people and their parents, roundtable discussions, and clips of her participants’ social media feeds, “Social Studies” delves into the pitfalls, as well as the positive aspects, of social media. When we reach the end of the series, the film’s participants confront an inescapable dilemma: should I or shouldn’t I delete my social media apps?   “Social Studies” is available for streaming on Hulu. The series is nominated for the Primetime Emmy for Outstanding Documentary or Nonfiction Series.   Follow: @greenfield_lauren on Instagram and @lgreen66 on X @topdocspod on Instagram and X    “Top Docs” is now on YouTube!   Hidden Gems: “The Painter and the Thief” “Mr. Nobody Against Putin” “The Kingmaker”   The Presenting Sponsor of "Top Docs" is Netflix.

Did Sly blow it?  As part of continuing Emmys coverage, we are joined by Ahmir “Questlove” Thompson and Joseph Patel, the director and producer of “Sly Lives! (aka the Burden of Black Genius)” (as well as the same for the 2022 Oscar Winner “Summer of Soul”) to discuss the life and career of Sly Stone, whose interracial and multigendered band drew upon the stew of musical influences of the early 60’s Bay Area to create an innovative new sound.   The story as it’s commonly told:  Once Sly gained widespread fame after playing Woodstock, he moved to Bel Air and adopted a nonstop drug-taking party lifestyle that would diminish his genius.  But as Thompson and Patel explain, the truth is much more complicated.  Ultimately, they show that Sly–who passed away just this summer–served less as a cautionary tale, than as an emblem of genius and inspiration for a host of artists in rock, funk, hip hop and more.   Watch “Sly Lives!” on Hulu.   The Presenting Sponsor of "Top Docs" is Netflix.

Continuing our coverage of the 2025 Emmy Awards, Mike is joined by Peter Ettedgui and Ian Bonhôte, directors of "Super/Man: The Christopher Reeve Story" and nominees for Outstanding Directing For A Documentary/Nonfiction Program (the film received three other Emmy nominations as well ).  In sketching their portrait of Christopher Reeve, who embodied the superhero in a series of films beginning in 1978, Ettedgui and Bonhôte anchor their story with Reeve’s tragic fall in 1995, one which left him paralyzed.  They then interweave the twinned stories of Reeve’s rise to fame (as well as the discontents that followed) with that of the decade of his life that followed the fall.  The effect of this intricate narrative braiding reinforces the message delivered to Reeve by his wife Dana in the days after the fall:  “You are still you.”  The movie becomes a testament to the continuity of spirit in the face of physical challenge, as Reeve not only faces his personal demons, but becomes a full-throated advocate for those that share his condition.   Super/Man can be seen on HBO Max in the US and Sky in the UK.    Hidden Gems: “Apocalypse in the Tropics” “Grand Theft Hamlet”   The Presenting Sponsor of "Top Docs" is Netflix.