Another glamorous Cannes Film Festival has ended, after an exciting fortnight on the Côte d’Azur that drew the likes of Tom Cruise, Jennifer Lawrence, Emma Stone, Scarlett Johansson, Robert Pattinson, Denzel Washington, Paul Mescal, Kristen Stewart, and many others.

Stars of documentaries also turned up: Shia LaBeouf, whose exploits as founder of a free theater company in L.A. are chronicled in Slauson Rec, and Julian Assange, focus of the documentary The Six Billion Dollar Man. The latter film, directed by Eugene Jarecki, won a Special Jury Prize marking the 10th anniversary of the L’Oeil d’or award, which goes to the top documentary at Cannes. Imago, directed by Chechen filmmaker Déni Oumar Pitsaev, took the 2025 L’Oeil d’or prize.

For the first time, Deadline’s Doc Talk podcast traveled to Cannes to record interviews and to moderate a panel at the American Pavilion. Today’s episode of the show is built around our AmPav discussion on the state of the documentary industry which featured panelists Vanessa Hope (director of Invisible Nation); Joe Tufano, VP of Distribution at Submarine Entertainment, and Catherine Quantschnigg, Producer, Sales at Noah Media Group.

Tufano explains how documentary filmmakers are increasingly moving to a territory-by-territory approach to sell their features in the absence of acquisitions for worldwide distribution. Hope tells us why she considered going the self-distribution route in the U.S. for her award-winning film that explores Taiwan as it contends with almost daily threats from mainland China. And Quantschnigg reveals how the distribution landscape has changed dramatically in only a few years since Netflix acquired Noah Media Group’s acclaimed film 14 Peaks: Nothing Is Impossible.

That’s on the latest edition of the Doc Talk podcast, hosted by Oscar winner John Ridley (12 Years a Slave, Shirley) and Matt Carey, Deadline’s documentary editor. The pod is a production of Deadline and Ridley’s Nō Studios.

Listen to the episode above or on major podcast platforms including Spotify, iHeart and Apple.

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Doc Talk travels to Millennium Docs Against Gravity in Poland, where we speak with artistic director Karol Piekarczyk about what has become one of the biggest and most prestigious all-documentary festivals in the world. We also visit with Northern Irish filmmaker Mark Cousins, who conducted a special "anti-masterclass" at MDAG.

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Stanley Tucci joins us to discuss his new National Geographic documentary series Tucci in Italy, which finds the acclaimed actor exploring the country's immensely rich culinary traditions, from trippa to lardo, hay soup and barbecued mutton. 

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Oscar-winning director Ahmir "Questlove" Thompson explores the brilliance of Sly Stone in Sly Lives! (aka the Burden of Black Genius), his Emmy-contending documentary feature. The Summer of Soul filmmaker joins us to talk about Sly's incredible contributions to music, and the mystery behind the one-time superstar's career and personal implosion.

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MSNBC is airing the six-part documentary series David Frost Vs, built around some of the most extraordinary interviews conducted over a 50-year period by David Frost, the legendary British journalist and entertainer. We speak with executive producer Wilfred Frost, one of David's sons, about his dad's tête-à-têtes with Richard Nixon, Elton John, Muhammad Ali, John Lennon, Yoko Ono and more.

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Filmmaker Miranda Yousef joins us to discuss her documentary Art for Everybody, which enjoys a 100 percent critics approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes. It's the story of self-styled "Painter of Light" Thomas Kincade, who made a mint selling kitschy scenes of cozy cottages. Kinkade marketed himself as a devout Christian, but as the film reveals, beneath all that light lurked a dark side.

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Oscar-winning filmmaker Alex Gibney joins us to discuss his new HBO documentary double feature The Dark Money Game, an investigation in two films of the pernicious influence of untraceable money in our politics. The first film, Ohio Confidential, uncovers a massive dark money scandal in the Buckeye State, while the second film, Wealth of the Wicked, digs up the roots of dark money going back to the 1970s.

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Filmmakers Stanley Nelson and Nicole London explore We Want the Funk!, a joyous documentary about a genre of music that compels people to dance from beat one.

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Doc Talk heads to CPH:DOX in Copenhagen, where we speak with Oscar-winning Ukrainian filmmaker Mstyslav Chernov, winner of the festival's F:ACT Award for his new documentary 2000 Meters to Andriivka. We also visit with CPH:DOX artistic director Niklas Engstrøm, who talks about Europe's alarm over Pres. Trump "trying to change the world order."

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Filmmakers Ben Braun and Chiaki Yanagimoto discuss their documentary AUM: The Cult at the End of the World, an exploration of the Japanese religious movement and doomsday cult responsible for a fatal terror attack on the Toyko subway.

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