Disney+ unveiled the official trailer for Gillian Jacobs-directed documentary film More Than Robots, set to premiere at the SXSW (South by Southwest) Film Festival on March 14, 2022. On Friday, March 18, the documentary will stream exclusively on Disney+.
The timely documentary Imagining the Indian: The Fight Against Native American Mascoting co-directed by Aviva Kempner and Ben West (Cheyenne) will make its world premiere at California’s American Indian & Indigenous Film Festival. The festival highlights the best of current films from American Indian filmmakers, producers, directors, and actors working through Indian Country. Imagining the Indian will close out the Festival on Sunday, April 3, 2022 with a screening, Q&A, and post-screening reception.
HBO documentary Icahn: The Restless Billionaire directed by Bruce David Klein, explores the fascinating contradictions at the heart of the famed financier, Carl Icahn. Amassing close to $20 billion dollars over the last half century and at the forefront of some of the most legendary business deals of our times, Icahn, often referred to as the “Lone Wolf of Wall Street,” is a feared negotiator and master strategist in the art of corporate takeovers and investments. A polarizing figure described as both an activist investor and a ruthless corporate raider, Icahn rose from modest beginnings in Queens to become one of the richest men in the world, embodying the American Dream, whose impact on companies, products, CEOs, stock markets, and capitalism itself is vast. Yet, he openly criticizes corporate excess and the huge wealth inequality gap. In his own words and with commentary from family members, journalists, and fellow titans of industry, Icahn: The Restless Billionaire probes Icahn’s humble roots, his business acumen, and his obsessive drive to stay atop America’s corporate hierarchy.
Showtime acquired Nothing Compares directed by Kathryn Ferguson (Taking the Waters, Space to Be), the documentary charting Sinéad O’Connor’s phenomenal rise to worldwide fame and examines how she used her voice at the height of her stardom before her iconoclastic personality led to her exile from the pop mainstream. Focusing on Sinéad’s prophetic words and deeds from 1987 to 1993, the film presents an authored, richly cinematic portrait of this fearless trailblazer through a contemporary feminist lens.
Inspired by David Blight’s Pulitzer Prize winning biography, “Frederick Douglass: Prophet of Freedom” and executive produced by scholar Henry Louis Gates, Jr., the HBO documentary Frederick Douglass: In Five Speeches brings to life the words of our country’s most famous anti-slavery activist.
President Barack Obama and Michelle Obama’s production company, Higher Ground and Netflix acquired the documentary Descendant& which won the U.S. Documentary Special Jury Award: Creative Vision at the 2022 Sundance Film Festival.
CNN Films and TIME Studios have teamed with Academy Award®-nominated and Emmy® Award-winning filmmakers Betsy West and Julie Cohen (RBG, Julia, My Name is Pauli Murray) for Gabby Giffords Won’t Back Down, a tender yet raw documentary about former U.S. Representative Gabrielle Giffords’ remarkable perseverance following a horrific 2011 assassination attempt that left her with partial paralysis and the language impairment, aphasia. Home movies taken at the hospital, and current-day cinema verité filming, show Gifford’s painstaking and miraculous recovery from a gunshot to her head, and her path to becoming one of America’s most effective advocates for gun violence prevention. The filmmakers also capture a remarkable love story. Nine years after Giffords’ husband Mark Kelly gave up his job as a NASA astronaut to support his wife’s recovery, cameras follow an exuberant Gabrielle Giffords on the 2020 campaign trail supporting Kelly’s successful run for the U.S. Senate for Arizona. Production of Gabby Giffords Won’t Back Down is near completion.
Greenwich Entertainment released the official trailer for Mau, the documentary on the life of world-renowned designer Bruce Mau that world premiered as the opening night film of Architecture & Design Film Festival NY 2021.
Neon released the official trailer for Terror Contagion, Laura Poitras’ Oscar shortlisted short documentary on the Israeli cyberweapons manufacturer NSO Group and its use of Pegasus malware.
Navalny, Daniel Roher’s revealing documentary thriller about Russian opposition leader and anti-corruption activist, Alexei Navalny has been added to the lineup of the 2022 Sundance Film Festival. The film is now the tenth and final film in the U.S. Documentary Competition section and will World Premiere on January 25, 2022.
The new official trailer debuted for Worst To First: The True Story of Z100 NYC, the documentary about the birth of America’s most iconic radio station, Z100, and how the legendary Scott Shannon took it from Worst to First. Produced by Elvis Duran, the top rated morning radio personality in America, the film includes an all star cast of musical legends including Clive Davis, Nile Rodgers, Joan Jett, Jon Bon Jovi, Debbie Gibson and many more. Worst To First will be released nationwide on VOD on February 11.
