Doc Talk: A Deadline and Nō Studios Podcast

Description: Actor-writer-filmmaker Ntare Guma Mbaho Mwine joins us to discuss Memories of Love Returned, a documentary 20 years in the making. His film explores the work of an extraordinary photographer, Kibaate Aloysius Ssalongo, who created a lasting portrait of people in rural Uganda, an oeuvre unlike any other. In the episode, hosts John Ridley and Matt Carey also parse the Emmy nominations, spotlighting top contenders and most notable omissions.

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Award-winning filmmaker Reid Davenport's new investigative documentary Life After "exposes the web of moral dilemmas and profit motives surrounding assisted dying," suggesting that right-to-die laws are being used to encourage disabled people to end their lives. The director and his producer, Colleen Cassingham, join Doc Talk for a fascinating conversation around one of the most talked about films of the year.

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What films are gaining traction in the Oscar Best Documentary Feature race as we pass the mid-point of 2025? The Perfect Neighbor and Seeds leap out as early frontrunners, but it's a wide open race so far. We discuss the contenders that have emerged so far with journalist Lauren Wissot, contributing editor at Filmmaker magazine and Documentary magazine.

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As a 4K restoration of Hearts of Darkness: A Filmmaker's

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Doc Talk heads to DC/DOX where we speak with filmmaker Rob Petit about his stunning documentary Underland, which just screened at the festival. And we head to the 11th annual Bentonville Film Festival in Arkansas for a conversation with BFF President Wendy Guerrero.

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Lauren Greenfield, director of the FX documentary series Social Studies, joins the show to discuss what she discovered in her deep dive into the way high schoolers' lives are ruled by immersion into TikTok, Instagram, Discord and other social media platforms. Slut-shaming, bullying, self-marketing — it's all part of what some might consider a toxic stew. Social Studies is the winner of the breakthrough Nonfiction Series from the Gotham TV Awards and a leading Emmy contender.

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When Barbara Walters joined ABC news in 1976, she became the highest paid journalist in the U.S. – pulling in $1 million a year. That, not surprisingly, triggered a lot of resentment among her peers, none more so than her evening news co-anchor Harry Reasoner.

Overcoming envy and sexism and balancing a career and motherhood, Walters reached the pinnacle of her profession and stayed there, a story explored in the new documentary Barbara Walters: Tell Me Everything. The film directed by Jackie Jesko premieres Thursday evening at Tribeca Festival in New York.

The feature, which debuts on Hulu later this month, is the latest from Imagine Documentaries, the enormously successful nonfiction division of the production company founded by Ron Howard and Brian Grazer. On the latest edition of Deadline’s Doc Talk podcast, we explore the company’s upcoming docs and impressive slate of Emmy contenders with Imagine Entertainment President Justin Wilkes and Imagine Documentaries President Sara Bernstein.

Taking their cue from the Barbara Walters documentary subtitle – Tell Me Everything – Wilkes and Bernstein tell us everything: why Imagine got into documentaries, how the Barbara Walters project came about, how they work with estates and other stakeholders on celebrity biographies without surrendering editorial independence, and what they see as the future of branded content in the nonfiction and fiction spaces.

Imagine Documentaries won five Emmys last year for its film Jim Henson Idea Man, directed by Ron Howard. While the Television Academy has proven receptive to honoring documentaries about well-known people, the documentary branch of the Motion Picture Academy has demonstrated reluctance to do likewise. Wilkes shares his unvarnished thoughts about how the Academy could change voting rules to give celebrity-oriented documentaries a fair shake.

The Imagine execs also respond to a recent article in the Hollywood trade papers asserting that music and other celebrity films are “killing the documentary.” They don’t see it that way.

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 heads to the Croisette to speak with filmmakers and film participants who debuted their documentaries at Cannes: Raoul Peck on George Orwell; Eugene Jarecki on Julian Assange; U2's Bono on his new Apple TV+ film; Mariska Hargitay on her film about her late mother, Jayne Mansfield, and the makers of Slauson Rec, a documentary about Shia LaBeouf's stormy tenure leading a free theater company in L.A.

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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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