Prolific documentary essayist Charlie Shackleton’s latest film focuses on one of America’s most notorious criminals, the Zodiac Killer. Or rather, it’s a film about the documentary he would’ve made about the serial killer, had he been able to secure the rights to California Highway Patrol Officer Lyndon E. Lafferty’s 2012 true-crime book, The Zodiac Killer Cover-Up. As he describes the project that didn’t materialize, Shackleton pokes fun at the tropes that have come to define modern true crime shows. For Documentary, Shackleton spoke about weighing art against artifice and the ethical considerations of true crime.
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Noam Shuster Eliassi’s standup comedy show “Coexistence, My Ass!” is now the basis for a documentary of the same name, Coexistence, My Ass!, in which Lebanese Canadian filmmaker Amber Fares follows her through the COVID-19 pandemic, the anti-corruption protests in Israel, and the aftermath of the October 7th attack and Israel’s brutal retaliation in Gaza. Ahead of the film’s premiere at Sundance, we sat down with Fares over Zoom to discuss its long filming process and how October 7 shifted the tenor of the project.
For 15 years, Amy Berg wanted to make a film on Jeff Buckley. The joy of watching It's Never Over, Jeff Buckley then resides in witnessing Berg’s commitment to telling a known story and using rare archives, of the singer’s aching voice in elaborate voice messages he sent his loved ones. The film premiered at the Sundance Film Festival and after, Berg spoke to me about the making of the documentary and whether her love for the artist altered in the process.
Isabel Castro’s sophomore feature centers the family band that catapulted Mexican American singer Selena into pop stardom. Given voice as never before through “hundreds, potentially thousands” of hours of archival footage, Selena Quintanilla constantly gushes about her band—sister Suzette on drums, brother A.B. on bass/producing duties, eventual husband Chris on guitar, and parents Marcella and Abraham as just about everything in between—as the key to her fame. I spoke with Castro a week before her film’s Park City debut, which was yesterday. We discuss the herculean process of combing through the Quintanillas’ archives, paying homage to Gregory Nava’s 1997 biopic and the filmmaker’s favorite Selena song.
In Third Act Tadashi Nakamura trains his lens on his father, Robert Nakamura, who is regarded as the “godfather of Asian American media.” Robert has played a key role as one of the first Japanese American filmmakers to represent the Japanese American experience through his films and images. Now in the third act of his life, he has decided to share his own. The documentary recently premiered at Sundance as part of the U.S. Documentary Competition. I spoke with Tadashi to understand how he went about shooting the film and if the process of filming Robert Nakamura was a veiled act of delaying grieving for his father.
Located only 200-odd miles from the Arctic Circle, Pasvik Folk High School in Norway offers teenagers on the precipice of adulthood an opportunity to get some distance from the fast-paced demands of modern society and immerse themselves in snowy survivalism. Longtime collaborators and co-directors Heidi Ewing and Rachel Grady (Jesus Camp, Detropia) follow three students—the ever-determined Helge, socially awkward Bjorn Torne and keenly sensitive Romain—throughout the school year. While rooted in the filmmakers’ interest in unconventional educational institutions, FOLKTALES also marks one of their most ambitious projects yet, which necessitated a dozen two-day trips from New York to the remote Norwegian wilderness over a nine-month shooting period. Ewing and Grady spoke with me over Zoom the week before FOLKTALES premieres in Park City. Below, they shed insight on the origins of this project, the magic of finding one’s “dog twin” and embarking on a five-day shoot to secure the film’s poetic final shot.
To Catch a Predator (2004–2007), a periodic segment on the TV newsmagazine Dateline NBC, was one of the biggest nonfiction sensations of the 2000s. The new documentary Predators, recently premiered at the Sundance Film Festival, examines this and other ethical issues around the program. In particular, the film scrutinizes the host of copycat media operations that have arisen over the years, as well as the show’s broader influence on the true crime genre. Ahead of the premiere, we sat down with director David Osit over Zoom to discuss To Catch a Predator and its modern fan community, finding all the materials used in Predators, and the delicate balancing act involved in incorporating so much raw footage.
At the start of Violet Du Feng’s Sundance-debuting The Dating Game we learn that, due to the former one-child policy, China now has 30 million more men than women, an eye-catching number that presents dire implications for the country. But behind the cold facts are flesh and blood human beings—and potential clients for a dating coach named Hao. While the doc is specific to China, it’s also universal in its critique of how capitalism, consumerism, and social media collide to create a generation that assumes everyone is faking who they are and therefore concludes that they too must “fake it to make it.” A week before the film’s World Cinema Documentary Competition premiere today, Documentary reached out to Feng, whose Peabody and Emmy-nominated Hidden Letters (2022) tackled gender stereotypes from the female side. This interview has been edited.
Aaron Bear is an award-winning filmmaker whose work is defined by a rare combination of deeply empathetic storytelling and a relentless commitment to amplifying marginalized voices. His most recent documentary, Yes I Am: The Ric Weiland Story (2021), won the prestigious 2024 GLAAD Media Award, cementing his place as one of today’s most impactful and visionary documentarians. Known for his ability to capture the raw, unfiltered essence of his subjects, Aaron’s films go beyond surface-level narratives, delving into the humanity and complexity that often go unseen. Aaron’s career is marked by influential partnerships and creative leadership with having directed the 2016 groundbreaking Trans documentary Finding Kim and producing the upcoming 2025 short documentary Shelly's Leg - about the legacy of legendary and Seattle's very first gay bar.
Another year, another Sundance. This second edition under festival director Eugene Hernandez doesn’t portend many changes from last year’s. The big news is that the day before the festival’s opening night, Participant Media pulled Khalil Joseph’s BLCKNWS: Terms & Conditions from the lineup due to Joseph’s alleged additional edits after the film was delivered to its financier in fall 2024. In Variety , sources say the changes were “a minute” long, and a “Sundance spokesperson said the festival was ‘deeply disappointed to have been informed this evening by Participant that they are pulling