At this year’s edition, the Basque festival demonstrated why it prides itself on its political conscience, with many of its titles exploring displacement, justice, and environmental degradation
Published: November 5th, 2025
Manuel Betancourt (he/him) is the Assistant Editor of Documentary magazine. Born and raised in Colombia, Manuel is a regular guest on FilmWeek with Larry Mantle (LAist), whose work has appeared in Variety, the Los Angeles Times, the AV Club, the New York Times, BuzzFeed Reader, Vulture, Film Comment, Esquire, and the Los Angeles Review of Books, among others.
The venerable Swiss festival featured its usual boundary-pushing works alongside industry activities that showcased documentary’s capacity to adapt
Published: September 23rd, 2025
Venice’s robust nonfiction selection revealed filmmakers grappling with inheritance—of land, literature, trauma, and the weight of documenting lives in progress
Published: September 17th, 2025
Well-regarded as a champion of independent and alternative cinema, South Korea’s second-largest festival proudly tackles the contemporary political milieu
Published: July 29th, 2025
Our cover is dedicated to Heiny Srour, whose boundary-defying two feature films have been traveling the world after being restored in the last decade. Rintu Thomas goes long and personal on the filmmaking journey that led to her Oscar-nominated Writing With Fire (2023, co-directed with Sushmit Ghosh). Producer Tabs Breese profiles sound designers María Alejandra Rojas and Arturo Salazar. Rachel Pronger details how Katja Raganelli created over a dozen portraits of women filmmakers and artists through a mix of personal conviction and “rucksack” ingenuity. This issue carries three festival reports. Doc’s Kingdom, where writer Victor Guimarães found more questions than satisfying answers regarding how documentary should be listened to, as opposed to merely watched. Vladan Petković once again reports from CPH:DOX. And for the first time in Documentary, we cover Korea’s second-largest film festival, Jeonju. “Making a Production” profile focuses on a grassroots, activist, and membership-funded production company—PINKS. For “Legal FAQ,” we asked attorneys Dale Nelson and Victoria Rosales for tips for documentary filmmakers given the rapidly changing legal landscape for AI privacy and copyright in the U.S. And “Screen Time” continues with capsule-length reviews on notable new releases.
Articles featured in the print version will be published online between July and September 2025.
Luis González Zaffaroni is the executive director of DOCSP, an organization focused on the development of the documentary field in São Paulo, Brazil, since 2015. He was the founding director of DocMontevideo (Uruguay, 2009-2023), with a key role in the Latin American documentary community and its international promotion. Always connected with training and networking programs, he has been a consultant and adviser in more than ten countries for cinema agencies, funds, markets, and festivals.
Nathalie Seaver has a long history in film and has held creative development and production executive positions for scripted film and television at Universal Pictures, MGM, Warner Brothers, and Showtime. This narrative background informs her approach to elevated storytelling in her current role, nurturing and supporting documentaries at all stages of production as Executive Vice President at Foothill Productions. Their films have premiered at Sundance, Telluride, TIFF, Tribeca, Hot Docs, and the Venice Biennale and include several Oscar and Emmy Nominees.
