Latest in National Geographic

When New York City became the epicenter of the country's Covid outbreak in 2020, many residents—those of means, anyway—fled to second homes or other points far from the city. But not New York-based filmmaker Matthew Heineman. He suited up in PPE on the frontlines of the Covid battle. The Oscar-nominated director…

The First Wave director Matthew Heineman said his Covid documentary was both frightening and inspiring. Heineman followed medical personnel at Long Island Jewish Medical Center in the Queens borough of New York for four months in 2020. He spoke at Deadline’s Contenders Film: Documentary event about the experience. "I…

Becoming Cousteau director Liz Garbus said her documentary about ocean explorer Jacques Cousteau shows that he recognized the dangers of climate change decades ago. Garbus spoke with Deadline's Matthew Carey at Contenders Film:  Documentary. "We saw him start talking about it as early as 1971," Garbus said. "When he…

EXCLUSIVE: Tragedy struck in the Tibetan Himalayas on October 5, 1999, when an avalanche claimed the life of two Americans, including Alex Lowe, a mountaineer considered perhaps the foremost climber in the world. It was an incalculable loss for the climbing community, but something worse for the family Lowe left…

Death is a common theme, it seems, in each of the six-part limited documentary series National Geographic previewed at Disney+ Day. “There is a real risk you could die,” one expert tells Chris Hemsworth in the trailer for the actor’s sojourn into biohacking and self discovery, Limitless. The series follows…

EXCLUSIVE: Over his 87 years of life, Jacques-Yves Cousteau was variously an officer in the French navy, a pilot, an inventor, an author, an ocean explorer, and filmmaker. It's in the latter two roles that he is best remembered, plying the seas aboard his beloved Calypso, documenting the exotic world beneath the…

Free Solo filmmakers Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi and Jimmy Chin dealt with a mountain of challenges as they worked on their latest white knuckle documentary, The Rescue. The National Geographic release tells the gripping story of the attempt to rescue 12 young members of a Thai soccer club and their assistant coach who…

Filmmaker Max Lowe was just a kid when his father, the mountaineer Alex Lowe, was killed in an avalanche while climbing in the Tibetan Himalayas. It was a private family tragedy, and yet a public story—Lowe's death made headlines around the world because he was considered perhaps the greatest mountain climber of his…

“Anthrax spores do not just die — they settle. They lie in wait.” That chilling reminder leads the first trailer for The Hot Zone: Anthrax, National Geographic’s series about the wave of terror that gripped the country 20 years ago. In the weeks after the 9/11 attacks, several news-media offices and some prominent…

In the summer of 2018, a story out of Thailand seized the world’s attention: 12 boys who were members of a soccer club and their coach became trapped in a flooded cave, and there was very little hope of rescuing them. British amateur cave divers, a team of American military personnel and Thai Navy SEALS joined forces…

Filmmaker Liz Garbus is nominated for an Emmy this year for directing an episode of the Hulu dystopian drama The Handmaid's Tale, but she isn't abandoning her work in documentary. Garbus's latest nonfiction film, Becoming Cousteau, holds its international premiere at TIFF following an unveiling earlier this month at…

It was always going to be very difficult for documentary filmmakers Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi and Jimmy Chin to equal their sweaty palms masterpiece Free Solo, but they come close enough with The Rescue. Unlike their 2018 Oscar-winner, which focused on one dare-devil climber's attempt to scale something close to a…