Latest in Evgeny Afineevsky

As a documentarian Evgeny Afineevsky has spent years immersed in turbulent conflict zones, in the Middle East and in Eastern Europe. His 2015 Oscar-nominated film Winter on Fire: Ukraine's Fight for Freedom, put him in the middle of the Ukrainian Revolution. "I witnessed positive things [in Ukraine]–unity in Maidan…

Evgeny Afineevsky called his Pope Francis documentary Francesco a "healing moment" during a Discovery+ panel for the feature film at Deadline's Contenders Documentary. He also said Pope Francis' leadership inspired him during the Covid pandemic. "I think specifically coming out of the pandemic and coming out of a lack…

EXCLUSIVE: A group of 200 refugees and immigrants, some newly arrived from Afghanistan, attended a special Vatican screening of the discovery+ documentary Francesco Monday night, and later met with Pope Francis himself. "When the movie finished he was downstairs waiting for them," Oscar-nominated director Evgeny Afinee…

The head of Discovery+ is bullish on high-end nonfiction content. "We’re investing in premium documentaries, a genre that we know our subscribers want more of," Lisa Holme, group SVP of content and commercial strategy for Discovery, said Thursday at the streamer's Winter Press Tour presentation. She added, "That…

Pope Francis is coming to Discovery+ in time for Easter. The subscription streamer said Wednesday that it has acquired Evgeny Afineevsky's documentary Francesco, an exploration of the pope's ministry and moral leadership in a time of surging right-wing populist movements, a worldwide refugee crisis, and the Covid-19…

It's the rare documentary film premiere that triggers worldwide headlines, but that's what has happened with Evgeny Afineevsky's Francesco. The film about Pope Francis debuted at the Rome Film Festival today and first the Catholic press and then secular media picked up on something the pope told Afineevsky in the…

Oscar-nominated documentary filmmaker Laura Nix was supposed to board a flight to Copenhagen today, en route to the CPH:DOX festival to pitch her latest project. But the COVID-19 pandemic abruptly forced that event to shift online only, one of countless ways the coronavirus emergency is impacting the documentary…

Oscar-nominated filmmaker Evgeny Afineevsky logged countless miles to make his latest documentary, Cries from Syria—with the passport stamps to prove it. "[I] was in Jordan… Lebanon and Bekaa Valley, Hezbollah territory," he tells Deadline of the places where he shot material for the film. "I was in all European…

“This movie is a lot about kids. It's a younger generation that was born, and in their first steps, they're going into the war,” Oscar-nominated director Evgeny Afineevsky says, reflecting on his Syrian Civil War documentary Cries from Syria. “Their first toys are guns. It's amazing, their spirit, these kids. This…

As Donald Trump’s presidency tries once more to pass legislation designed to restrict travel to the U.S. for citizens of some Muslim-majority countries, HBO Documentary Films gears up for the March 13 launch of Evgeny Afineevsky’s Sundance-premiering Cries From Syria, which takes a comprehensive and unflinching look…

The champagne will be on ice for Netflix’s doc team this year, as their two runs at Oscar both made the nominees list: Liz Garbus’s What Happened, Miss Simone? and Evgeny Afineevsky’s Winter on Fire. For Afineevsky, it means trading the hostile conditions of the Maidan revolution in Ukraine in 2013/14 for the red…