Latest in The Contenders

Deadline’s annual Contenders Film event is coming on the weekend of January 23-24, a virtual extravaganza of awards-caliber films — 49 in all — that is a must-stop this very different Oscar season. With a livestream beginning at 8 a.m. PT both Saturday and Sunday, the crème de la crème of contenders will be showcased…

Deadline on Monday launched streaming sites for its first two Contenders awards-season events that took place over the weekend: Contenders International and Contenders Documentary. Click here for Contenders International videos. Click here for Contenders Documentary videos. On Saturday, Contenders International…

UPDATED with video: The pressure was on when directors Jesse Moss and Amanda McBaine set about making Boys State, their film documenting an annual exercise in Texas that gives high school boys the chance to practice democracy in action. Why? The program lasts just six days. "We’re used to shooting documentaries over…

UPDATED with video: The California town of Paradise was home to about 26,000 people in November 2018 when a catastrophic wildfire reduced most of the town to ash. Ron Howard's National Geographic documentary Rebuilding Paradise begins with footage of the community in flames. "That opening sequence is far more…

UPDATED with video: No one can say filmmaker Bryan Fogel doesn't enjoy a cinematic challenge. He exposed Russia's secret sports doping program in the Oscar-winning documentary Icarus and in his latest, The Dissident, his focus is getting to the bottom of how and why Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi was killed in the…

UPDATED with video: Qandeel Baloch, the subject of MTV Documentary Films' A Life Too Short, became a new kind of celebrity in her native Pakistan. Beautiful and outspoken, she challenged the norms of her society by daring to post semi-nude photos of herself and to voice provocative opinions. "She was this huge social…

UPDATED with video: Politics and Covid-19 have been intertwined ever since the novel coronavirus emerged in Wuhan, China a year ago. But when director Hao Wu made 76 Days, his harrowing film documenting hospital workers and Covid patients in Wuhan as the city went through lockdown, he left political questions…

UPDATED with video: For more than 20 years, former music industry executive Drew Dixon held onto a corrosive secret. The HBO Max documentary On the Record, directed by Kirby Dick and Amy Ziering, reveals how Dixon made the painful decision to come forward with allegations that she had been raped by her boss at Def Jam…

UPDATED with video: For his documentary Notturno, Italian director Gianfranco Rosi did the unthinkable—spend most of his time in the field without a camera. "I remember my producer saying, ‘Are you crazy? …If something important happens you’re going to miss it!'" he recalls at Deadline's Contenders Documentary…

UPDATED with video: Neon's documentary Totally Under Control paints a devastating picture of the Trump administration's response to the Covid-19 pandemic. "There are moments that we look at in the film where the administration could have sort of righted the ship, released more funds, released the Defense Production…

UPDATED with video: The Neon documentary The Painter and the Thief begins with a surprising "meet cute." After two paintings are stolen from artist Barbora Kysilkova in Oslo, Norway, she encounters one of the suspected thieves in court. Instead of feeling angry at the accused, Karl-Bertil Nordland, he excites her…

UPDATED with video: Russian-born director Viktor Kossakovsky says it was a monumental struggle to make his documentary Gunda, starring the title character: a sow raising her litter of piglets on a farm in Norway. "I spent 20 years to find a producer," Kossakovsky reveals during the panel for the Neon film at…