Wisdom of Happiness executive producers Richard Gere and Oren Moverman join us for a conversation about their documentary focusing on the Dalai Lama's insights into finding happiness in a world that seems full of chaos and uncertainty. Gere tells us how a technique borrowed from filmmaker Errol Morris helped transform the film into "pure magic."

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Doc Talk heads to San Francisco for SFFILM's Doc Stories festival, where we speak with SFFILM Executive Director Anne Lai and Director of Programming Jessie Fairbanks. We also visit with young filmmaker Tasha Van Zandt whose documentary A Life Illuminated closed the Doc Stories festival.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

We report from the 34th Hot Springs Documentary Film Festival in Arkansas, the longest running nonfiction cinema festival in North America. Festival Executive Director Ken Jacobson joins us to talk about highlights from this year and the festival's Filmmaker Forum, which confronted a crisis in documentary filmmaking after the defunding of a key entity that supports PBS. And we talk with Natchez director Suzannah Herbert and producer Darcy McKinnon about their award-winning film, which screened at HSDFF.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

We visit with a couple of emerging filmmakers -- Paige Bethmann, director of Remaining Native, and Juanjo Pereira, director of Under the Flags, the Sun. Bethmann's film centers on a teenage Indigenous athlete, Ku Stevens, who dreams of running track for the University of Oregon, a goal that would take him away from the Nevada reservation where he grew up. Pereira's film reframes archive footage to explore the military dictatorship of Gen. Alfredo Stroessner, who ruled Paraguay from 1954 to 1989. We recorded both interviews at the Camden International Film Festival in Maine, where Pereira and Bethmann screened their impressive work.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Two new Oscar-contending documentaries explore the peril of conflict photojournalism: Love+War, directed by Chai Vasarhelyi and Jimmy Chin, and Armed Only with a Camera, directed by Craig Renaud. Love+Warfocuses on Pulitzer Prize-winning photographer Lynsey Addario who has captured unforgettable images from Ukraine, Iraq, Afghanistan and other war zones, while trying to balance her work life with raising two kids with her husband. Renaud shares the story of his brother, journalist, documentary filmmaker and photographer Brent Renaud, who was killed in an ambush by Russian soldiers in Ukraine while documenting the war and displaced people.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Oscar-nominated filmmaker Raoul Peck discusses his new film Orwell: 2+2=5, about 1984 author George Orwell. We caught up with him at the Camden International Film Festival, one of the most important events on the calendar for the documentary community. At Camden, we also visited with the leaders of the Points North Insitute which puts on the festival: Executive Director Elise McCave and Artistic Director Sean Flynn. They share their perspective on the state of documentary film.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Director Mike Figgis made the most of his opportunity to follow Francis Ford Coppola as the octogenarian filmmaker poured heart and soul, not to mention tens of millions of dollars, into making his 2024 narrative feature, Megalopolis. Figgis tells us what he observed behind the scenes as Coppola attempted to bring his cinematic vision to life, beset by creative issues that led to firings and resignations, and conflict with one of his principal actors, Shia LaBeouf. 

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Doc Talk ventures into the disturbing territory of The Yogurt Shop Murders with director and executive producer Margaret Brown, her first foray into the true crime genre. The HBO series examines the shocking execution-style slaying of four teenage girls in 1991 in an Austin, Texas frozen yogurt store, a shocking crime that remains unsolved. Brown tells us about the impact of the documentary on friends and family of the young victims, and how making it deeply affected the filmmaker and her crew.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

German director Andres Veiel joins us to discuss his expected Oscar-contending documentary Riefenstahl, about Leni Riefenstahl who was known as Hitler's favorite filmmaker. After World War II  Riefenstahl tried to play down her role in furthering Nazi ideology through her 1930s films including Triumph of the Will and Olympia, claiming she was just an artist who had taken on assignments from Hitler and his minister of propaganda, Joseph Goebbles. But Veiel digs into Riefenstahl's archive, including drafts of her memoir, audio tapes and other sources to reveal she was very much in sync with what Hitler stood for.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Ahead of the 50th Toronto International Film Festival kickoff on Thursday, we get a preview of the documentary lineup from doc programmer Thom Powers. He tells us about the Paula Deen film by Bill Corben, Michèle Stephenson's True North, two-time Oscar winner Ben Proudfoot's feature documentary and much more. He also shares insights on his new book, Mondo Documentary, a collection of his TIFF program pieces from his 20 years with the festival.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices