Top Docs: Award-Winning Documentary Filmmakers

This is it! The final Sundance Film Festival to be held in Utah is just around the corner. The 2026 Sundance Film Festival — the 42nd edition — runs from January 22 – February 1 in Park City and Salt Lake City, Utah (and online from Jan. 29 – Feb 1). Next year, this iconic event moves to Boulder, Colorado. To help get us fired up for the festival, we welcome back Basil Tsiokos, Sundance Senior Programmer, Nonfiction, to “Top Docs” to preview Sundance’s stellar documentary lineup. From among the 40+ feature documentaries having their world premieres at this year’s festival across multiple sections, Basil spotlights first-time feature filmmakers, as well as those returning with exciting new works. And don’t miss Basil’s take on this year’s Oscar Shortlist and predictions for the final nominees. With 9 of this year’s 15 Oscar-shortlisted feature docs having premiered at the 2025 Sundance Film Festival, you can bet that many of 2026’s most talked about documentaries will be making their debuts at Sundance. For more info about the Sundance Film Festival program, go to festival.sundance.org. Follow: @1basil1 on X, @sundancefest on X and @sundanceorg on Instagram @topdocspod on X and Instagram   The Presenting Sponsor of "Top Docs" is Netflix.

The premise of Rachel Grady’s and Heidi Ewing’s (“Jesus Camp”, “Norman Lear: Just Another Version of You,” Endangered) new Oscar-shortlisted documentary, “Folktales” is simple enough:  They follow three students at a post-high school program in Norway’s Arctic circle as they learn survival skills and dog sledding.  But by almost literally weaving in Nordic tales of the Fates, demonstrating the healing ties that grow between the students and the dogs, and exploring the profound wisdom proffered by two capable, insightful teachers (Iselin and Thor-Atle), Ewing and Grady provide a deep meditation on coming of age in the time of putatively frictionless lives and ubiquitous cell phones.   Rachel joins Mike on the pod to explain how she found joy in the challenges of shooting in darkened forests in polar winter--how in effect she “went to Folk High School too!”   And she shares the wisdom she garnered from Iselin and Thor-Atle as well:  Throughout our lives, doors open and close.   You can watch “Folktales” on streaming platforms including Amazon.   Follow: @rachelgrady on Instagram @heidewing on Instagram @topdocspod on Instagram and twitter/X   The Presenting Sponsor of "Top Docs" is Netflix.

In his new, Oscar-shortlisted “The Alabama Solution”, which he co-directed with Charlotte Kaufman, Andrew Jarecki ("Capturing the Friedmans", "The Jinx") focusses on inmates of the Alabama Department of Corrections who use contraband phones to organize dissent within the system, even sustained labor strikes, all aimed at improving the dramatically overcrowded, squalid, abusive, and even fatal conditions within the state’s 14 prisons.   To date, Alabama’s “solution” to these problems–and the attention it has drawn from the Federal DOJ– has been to build larger prisons that promise to provide no increase in the system’s number of beds, but do promise with their massive financial overruns to feather the beds of the governor’s friends and supporters.  Jarecki and Kaufman, in league with the prisoners they depict here, hope to change that.   You can watch “The Alabama Solution” on HBO Max.   Follow: @andrew.jarecki on Instagram @topdocspod on Instagram and twitter/X   The Presenting Sponsor of "Top Docs" is Netflix.

In her Oscar-shortlisted new documentary, “Seeds”, director Brittany Shyne depicts the lives of Black farmers in the South.  In a flexible verité style in which she doesn’t fear breaking the fourth wall, Shyne pays meticulous attention to the workings of farm life, focussing, as she notes to Mike, literally on the hands that do that labor.  But she sets the entire experience with a broader framework of the “maintenance of legacy and [what] that entails” within the “political and social structures” which inform the lives of these farmers. The resulting film becomes a meditation on relationships:  Between the members of the community, of course, but also between: people and the land; people and machines; people and animals; and between people and their own bodies and mortality.   Hidden Gem: “Handsworth Songs”   The Presenting Sponsor of "Top Docs" is Netflix.

You might assume that receiving a fellowship to Harvard University represents the culmination of a burgeoning academic career. But, as director Amber Fares (“Speed Sisters”) shows in the amusing opening scenes of her Sundance award-winning documentary “Coexistence, My Ass!,” when Noam Shuster Eliassi, the main participant in her film, receives such an honor, she has actually been invited by Harvard’s Peace and Divinity School to prepare material for her one-woman comedy show about the Palestinian/Israeli conflict.     Amber joins Ken on the pod to discuss Noam’s winding path from an Israeli cooperative village that is home to both Jews and Arabs to a dream job at the UN to finding her true voice as a comedian and activist. As we see throughout the film, and in a performance of Noam’s completed show that provides the narrative spine for the film, Noam faces hard truths, both on and off the stage. She brings a fresh perspective to an age-old conflict and to the everyday realities of post-Oct 7th Israeli society.   “Coexistence, My Ass!” has been named to this year’s Oscar shortlist in the Documentary Feature Film category.   Follow: @amber_fares on Instagram @topdocspod on Instagram and X   Hidden Gem: “We Are Pat”   The Presenting Sponsor of "Top Docs" is Netflix.

You find out your husband of many years is cheating on you, but you still love him anddesperately want to keep your family together. What do you do? In Elizabeth Lo’s (“Stray”) remarkable documentary “Mistress Dispeller,” we are introduced to a heart broken Mrs. Li, who hires a mistress dispeller to end her husband’s affair and save her marriage.  Yes, it’s true: in modern-day China, mistress dispelling is an actual profession, and Teacher Wang has more business than she can handle.   Elizabeth joins Ken on the pod to discuss the fascinating world of mistress dispelling and how she and her creative collaborators managed to win the trust of Mrs. Li and the other players in this doomed love triangle. From the time Teacher Wang “injects herself organically” into the threesome until the film’s inevitable dénouement, we can hardly believe the access we have to such an enthralling domestic drama unfolding in real-time. But as lies and deceptions give way to a final confrontation, the filmmaking itself remains steadfast, as real and beautiful as it gets.   “Mistress Dispeller” has been named to this year’s Oscar shortlist in the Documentary Feature Film category. The film is available for rent on Apple TV.   Follow: @elizabethbklo on Instagram @topdocspod on Instagram and X   Hidden Gem: “Gunda”    The Presenting Sponsor of "Top Docs" is Netflix.

When Tig Notaro suggested to filmmaker Ryan White that he make a documentary about Tig’s friend, the poet Andrea Gibson, two words gave Ryan pause: “cancer” and “poetry.” He wondered who would fund (and watch) such a documentary. But, to Ryan’s great surprise, as evident in his deeply moving, funny and highly engaging documentary “Come See Me in the Good Light,” following Andrea and their wife, the writer Megan Falley, during some of the hardest moments of their lives ended up producing a film full of joy and humor, not to mention a final poetry performance worthy of a rock star.   Ryan joins Ken on the pod to discuss his initial foray to Andrea and Megan’s home in Colorado and the enveloping family atmosphere that lovingly entangled him and his crew throughout the making of this extraordinary documentary. For Ryan, who has directed approximately one documentary a year for the past 15 years, this was the one that ended up being his most personal and favorite project. When Andrea overcomes the ravaging effects of ovarian cancer long enough to perform a final show, the audience roars its approval and, in the spirit of one of Andrea’s remarkable poems, we are all left with goosebumps.   “Come See Me in the Good Light” has been named to this year’s Oscar shortlist in the Documentary Feature Film category. The film is available for streaming on Apple TV.   Follow: @white815 on Instagram and @ryanwhiteIV on twitter @topdocspod on Instagram and X   Hidden Gem: “Predators”    The Presenting Sponsor of "Top Docs" is Netflix.

There are power couples… and then there is Juma Xipaia and Hugo Loss. As illustrated in Richard Ladkani’s (“Sea of Shadows”) riveting, urgent, and Oscar-shortlisted documentary “Yanuni,” the two are fierce defenders of the Amazon rainforest engaged in a life-and-death struggle against illegal mining operations that threaten the existence of Brazil’s Indigenous territories.   Richard joins Ken on the pod to discuss how he was first introduced to Juma — who, in 2016, became the first female chief of the Xingu peoples — and their subsequent filmmaking collaboration that included many unpredictable twists and turns. Not least among the surprises was Juma’s transformation from protest leader to government official when newly elected Brazilian President Lula da Silva tapped her to lead an initiative to promote Indigenous rights. Meanwhile, Hugo is put in charge of a special operations unit whose dangerous missions involve identifying and destroying illegal mining operations in protected Indigenous areas. Together, Juma and Hugo’s love of the forest can only be matched by the birth of their daughter Yanuni, who is destined to carry their fight into the next generation.   Follow: @richardladkani on Instagram @topdocspod on Instagram and X    The Presenting Sponsor of "Top Docs" is Netflix.

Pavel “Pasha” Talankin may seem like just another primary school events coordinator, but when he is forced by Vladimir Putin’s new dictates to not only implement a pro-war curriculum but to record teachers delivering its absurd, self-contradictory nonsense, he decides to use his camera to document the effects of the war in Ukraine and the propaganda war at home on his community, and especially his students.    David Borenstein (“Dream Empire”, “Can’t Feel Nothing”), who along with Pasha co-directed the Oscar-shorlisted “Mr. Nobody Against Putin”, joins Mike to talk about how he came to work with Pasha through a casting call as well as the importance of tone in a movie filled both with humor as well as off-screen carnage.  And they speak too of one of the best villains in documentary film:  Pavel (no “Pasha” he!) Abdulmanov, the school history teacher who delivers Putin’s pablum with enthusiasm and who wishes he could’ve met the worst of the worst of Stalin’s henchmen, notably the infamous torturer, Lavrentiy Beria.   Hidden Gem: “The Mountains”   Follow: @davborenstein on Instagram @topdocspod on Instagram and X

It took 20 years of asking by an Oscar-winning filmmaker, but famed investigative reporter Seymour Hersh finally said, “Yes.” The result is "Cover-Up", a revelatory new documentary portrait of Hersh’s fascinating life and career by Academy Award-winning filmmaker Laura Poitras (“Citizenfour”) and Emmy Award-winning filmmaker Mark Obenhaus (“Steep”).   Joining Ken on the pod, Mark (who jointly directed the film with Laura) discusses the origins of his professional relationship with Hersh and why the stars finally aligned for Hersh to agree to the project. With a career going back to the 1960’s, Hersh virtually invented the idea of the modern investigative reporter. He sniffed out the facts of the horrific My Lai massacre by U.S. soldiers in Vietnam and exposed the top brass’ scandalous cover-up. Following My Lai, Hersh went on to expose cover-ups in Watergate that became front page news in the “New York Times.” Years later, during the Iraq War, Hersh’s reporting would again expose high-level cover-ups, revealing the graphic details of torture committed by the CIA and the U.S. Army at Abu Ghraib prison. “Cover-Up” also addresses Hersh’s shortcomings as well. Time and again, Hersh’s work and sources have exposed abuses of power at the highest level of the American government. It turns out that the full story was well worth waiting for.   Hidden Gem: “Seeds”   Follow: @mark_obenhaus on Instagram @topdocspod on Instagram and X    The Presenting Sponsor of "Top Docs" is Netflix.