Not much positive news tends to come out of Afghanistan, but a pocket of it shines through in one of this year's Oscar-nominated documentary shorts.
Learning to Skateboard in a Warzone (If You're a Girl), directed by Carol Dysinger, reveals a school in Kabul called Skateistan that offers kids the chance to study the…
Superlatives swirl around Bruce Franks Jr., the focus of the Oscar-nominated short documentary St. Louis Superman.
"I don’t know if I’ve ever met a human being quite as remarkable as Bruce, who just contains the sheer amount of talent but also this life force, this energy where just greatness seems to surround him,"…
When American Factory was announced on Monday as one of the five Oscar nominees for Best Documentary Feature, among the first to congratulate filmmakers Steven Bognar and Julia Reichert were Barack and Michelle Obama.
"Glad to see American Factory's Oscar nod for Best Documentary," the former president tweeted. "It's…
The documentary community is rallying around Syrian-born filmmaker Feras Fayyad, director of Oscar-shortlisted film The Cave, after he was denied a visa to enter the United States.
The International Documentary Association wrote to Secretary of State Mike Pompeo Friday, urging him to let Fayyad into the country to…
There are few cultural institutions in the United States to rival the importance of The Apollo Theater in Harlem. For going on a hundred years the 1,500-seat venue has showcased the foremost African-American talent, from Duke Ellington to Louis Armstrong, Aretha Franklin, Ray Charles, Richard Pryor, Marvin Gaye, and…
As Academy Documentary Branch voters ponder their nomination ballots, they have no fewer than three Neon features to consider on the Oscar shortlist—Honeyland, The Biggest Little Farm, and Apollo 11.
The latter film, directed by Todd Douglas Miller, became the top nonfiction box office hit of 2019, making more than…
How do you turn a 6,700-page government report into a gripping cinematic drama? That was the formidable challenge facing writer-director Scott Z. Burns for Amazon’s The Report, his true-life film on the investigation into the CIA's use of torture on terrorism suspects after the 9/11 attacks.
"The story of the…
For Paul Walter Hauser, playing the title character in Clint Eastwood's true-life drama Richard Jewell represented a rare opportunity. "I’ve never headlined a film before," Hauser, known for his character work in I, Tonya and BlacKkKlansman, said at Deadline's recent The Contenders New York event. "I’m usually the guy…
Jonathan Pryce had a leg up playing the leader of the world's Catholics in the Netflix film The Two Popes. Everyone tells him he and Pope Francis look identical.
"The day he was created Pope, yeah, the Internet was full of images of the two of us together, Pope Francis and me…Even one of my sons called me and, just to…
Most authors would jump at the chance to have their book adapted into a Hollywood film. But activist and attorney Bryan Stevenson, who wrote the memoir Just Mercy about his crusade to reform the criminal justice system, says he was prepared to walk away from any movie project that didn't meet certain standards.
"I’d…
Filmmakers Steven Bognar and Julia Reichert understand better than most how much things can change in a decade. In 2009 they released their Oscar-nominated documentary short The Last Truck, about the closing of a GM plant in Ohio. In 2019, they returned with American Factory, a feature documenting what happened to…
In the Alejandro Landes film Monos, armed children living in something close to a feral state run rampant in an untamed countryside. That may evoke thoughts of Lord of the Flies, but Landes revealed recently at Deadline's The Contenders New York that he had other references in mind.
"The main source of inspiration is…
