Latest in MTV Documentary Films

Towards the end of his life, when Eli Timoner's weakened body was failing him, he called his daughter, the filmmaker Ondi Timoner, and told her he was ready to go. "If they can give me goodbye powder, I'd take it," he said. "I just want to be in the ground." He pleaded with Ondi, "Help me go there…

The impulse to make art was so strong in Jesse Krimes that even behind the bars of a federal prison he found a way to create stunning works, often using prison bedsheets as his canvas. "When you go into prison you quickly come to realize that everything that exists in your life can be taken…

EXCLUSIVE: When you're an artist incarcerated in a penitentiary, it's not as if the warden will provide whatever you need to paint, like, "Grab all the pigment and palette knives you want." Jesse Krimes, while serving time in federal prison, not only devised a way to secretly make art using available materials like…

The U.S. is not the only country with growing income inequality. The same is true of China, a phenomenon explored in the Oscar-nominated feature documentary Ascension, from MTV Documentary Films. Jessica Kingdon's film examines the vast tide of humanity at the bottom of the economic scale, flowing into cities to take…

In just a few days the Winter Olympic Games begin in Beijing, a massive event China will use to present an idealized image of itself to the world. For a truer picture of China, in all its complexities and contradictions, ignore the Olympic pageantry and check out the documentary Ascension. The Oscar-shortlisted film…

EXCLUSIVE: Between 1880 and 1968, over four thousand African American people were lynched in the United States, according to multiple independent investigations. "Terror lynchings were horrific acts of violence whose perpetrators were never held accountable," states a report by the Equal Justice Initiative. "Indeed…

EXCLUSIVE: Ascension keeps rising as awards season advances. The documentary directed by Jessica Kingdon earned a Film Independent Spirit Award nomination today as Best Documentary, after snaring a Producers Guild Award nomination last week. Ascension competes in five categories at next month's Cinema Eye Honors…

Filmmakers behind the documentary Sabaya are rebutting a published report claiming they failed to properly obtain consent from some of the victims of sexual enslavement who appear in the award-winning film, about Yazidi women and girls seized by ISIS fighters in Iraq. "Director Hogir Hirori and I have received…

Two years and four months after MTV launched the MTV Documentary Films division headed by Sheila Nevins, the former longtime president of HBO Documentary Films, the unit landed its first Emmy Award with 76 Days.  The film, produced by Hao Wu and Jean Tsien, on Sunday during the Creative Arts Emmys won the Exceptional…

For a film that almost didn't get made, 76 Days has racked up an impressive number of awards. The documentary directed by Hao Wu, Weixi Chen and a Chinese filmmaker who remains anonymous, and produced by Wu and Jean Tsien, earned a spot on the Oscar shortlist earlier this year, claimed the Audience Award at AFI Fest…

There are many poignant moments in 76 Days, Hao Wu's moving documentary about medical workers in Wuhan, China and the patients they treated as the city went through lockdown last year over Covid-19. For producer Jean Tsien, one moment in particular stands out. "The first scene…with the nurse [who] lost her father…That…

Skye Fitzgerald’s experience making films about human rights issues in the Middle East prepared him for one practical aspect of making Hunger Ward. “There was only ever going to be one way we were going to be able to shoot this film, and that was by being really, really small,” the director said during a session at…