In this interview, Iranian filmmaker Maryam Tafakory discusses how she abstracts and rewrites post-revolutionary Iranian cinema to reveal the queer
docs by women
In Tatyana Tenenbaum's Everything You Have Is Yours, we see dancer Hadar Ahuvia as she develops her performance by the same name, the culmination of years spent celebrating her own Jewish identity while also challenging Israeli tradition. After its theatrical run in NY, Documentary spoke to Tenenbaum about adapting her work in dance documentation to documentary, dance film tropes, and political activism in a nonverbal art form.
Joel DeMott, renowned cinema vérité filmmaker, died on June 13, 2025. DeMott is best known for her films Seventeen (1983), which she co-directed with Jeff Kreines, and Demon Lover Diary (1980). Alongside Kreines, DeMott created a model of intimate cinema vérité filmmaking that has inspired countless filmmakers.
In Made in Ethiopia, filmmakers Xinyan Yu and Max Duncan tackle a topical behemoth through the intimate lens of three women on the precipice of change. Made in Ethiopia explores the complexities of the characters’ search for prosperity, while also reflecting the filmmakers’ own quest for balance in telling a nuanced story. In a conversation with Documentary, directors Yu and Duncan discuss how they navigated these challenges.
Alanis Obomsawin is one of the most important artists in the history of Canadian cinema, a major influence both on the country’s mode of documentary filmmaking and on the way its film business incorporates the voices of people from the First Nations. In 2022, Richard Hill and Hila Peleg curated the exhibition 'Alanis Obomsawin: The Children Have to Hear Another Story.' We spoke with Obomsawin about the exhibition, her films, and her practices of listening and storytelling.
Maintenance Artist, directed by Toby Perl Freilich, is a fascinating look at Mierle Ukeles—an undeterred feminist and advocate for the working class who constantly defied labels. Just prior to the film’s documentary competition debut, Documentary caught up with Freilich to learn how she ended up collaborating with this unconventional and unusually empathetic character.
Documentary is happy to debut an exclusive clip from directors Vickie Curtis and Doug Anderson’s 'Comparsa'(2025). Is is the story of teenage sisters Lesli and Lupe in Ciudad Peronia, Guatemala as they rally other neighborhood teens to participate in a Comparsa, or series of performances similar to a carnival, to protest violence against women and children in their community.
Documentary is happy to debut an exclusive clip from longtime creative and life partners Beth Stephens and Annie Sprinkle’s Playing With Fire: An Ecosexual Emergency, the third film in the pair’s trilogy of queer environmentalist documentaries. Forced to evacuate a fire in the Northern California redwood forest sanctuary where Stephens and Sprinkle live, they channel their energy into their “ecosexual” art, a conceptual activist framework that reframes human relationships to nature to emphasize reciprocity. Playing With Fire premieres at Frameline, San Francisco’s LGBTQ+ film festival, this Friday.
Suzannah Herbert’s Natchez is a multilayered, character-driven look at the titular town in Mississippi (U.S.), which is wholly dependent on a declining industry. In this case, the manufacturing is of whitewashed tales that have turned into hardened history. For generations, Natchez has been financially dependent on its antebellum tourism industry, in which hoop-skirted docents in grand mansions regale visitors with, as one knowing character puts it, a “Southern construct” that’s “used to sell tickets.” Just prior to the film’s Tribeca Documentary Competition premiere, Documentary caught up with Herbert (Wrestle) to learn all about her stellar sophomore feature. Last week, Tribeca announced that Natchez won not only the best documentary feature prize but also special jury awards for cinematography (to Noah Collier) and editing (Pablo Proenza).
Documentary is happy to debut an exclusive clip from Edivan Guajajara, Chelsea Greene, and Rob Grobman’s environmental documentary We Are Guardians (2023), which kicks off a U.S. theatrical screening tour this Friday in Los Angeles. The film, produced by Academy Award winner Fischer Stevens’s Highly Flammable in collaboration with Appian Way, Leonardo DiCaprio’s production company, is a comprehensive examination of the ongoing deforestation crisis in the Amazon Rainforest.