'Life Itself' Opens July 4 through Magnolia Pictures.
Biographical Docs
When making Deepfaking Sam Altman (2025), documentary director Adam Bhala Lough (Telemarketers) found himself in deep doo doo. Despite months of trying, he still hadn’t gotten access to an interview with Sam Altman (CEO of OpenAI) for a film Lough had promised about AI. So he took a page from Altman’s own MO. The resulting film follows Lough setting about on his journey, working with deepfakers in India, meeting with lawyers, and ultimately spending a lot of time chatting and bonding with the resulting AI chatbot, called SamBot. For this edition of The Synthesis, we spoke with Lough about the film, his use of AI, and its implications for documentary.
On April 27th, Pope Francis was scheduled to officially canonize the first saint from the Millennial generation. Before his untimely death from leukemia at age 15, Carlo Acutis (born 1991), had combined his enthusiasm for computers and his fervent Catholic faith by creating websites to document miracles. The film was produced by Castletown Media, which has in recent years found box office success in partnering with Fathom Events to release films touching on Catholic themes. Jesus Thirsts, for instance, was one of last year’s biggest nonfiction hits. We spoke with Castletown executive director Tim Moriarty, who co-directed and produced Roadmap to Reality, about the film, its funding, its release strategy, and how the Pope’s death has impacted the company’s plans.
The narrative content division of independent music rights company Concord develops unique fare in a sea of music documentaries: Although any project about Stax Records or featuring their music would legally and logistically require Concord to be involved, 'Stax: Soulsville U.S.A.' is unique in that it actually originated from the company itself. Officially launched in 2021, Concord Originals produces and develops projects based upon the million copyrights the company owns and represents, such as the music of Creedence Clearwater Revival, Rodgers & Hammerstein, and Cyndi Lauper.
In its work with superstar athletes, Gotham Chopra’s full-service documentary studio maneuvers through tricky questions of access and creative control: Seven projects in production. Dozens more in development. And in the summer of 2024, three high-profile series about game-changing athletes: In the Arena: Serena Williams on ESPN+, Simone Biles Rising on Netflix, and Welcome to the J-Rod Show on FS1. Religion of Sports (RoS) is on a roll, having achieved a scale and consistency quite remarkable for a documentary production company.
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.
After presenting A Brief Excursion in 2017, Igor Bezinović returns to Rotterdam to showcase his latest documentary, titled Fiume o Morte!, in the Tiger competition. The Croatian director uses dramatic reconstructions and nonfiction interludes to explore the complex figure of Italian poet, playwright, and army officer Gabriele D’Annunzio (1863–1938). In his conversation with Documentary, Bezinović unpacks the making of his long-gestated project, its peculiar aesthetic choices, its ambitions, and its worryingly timely connections between past and present.
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.