What started out as a transactional exchange between Janay Boulos, a BBC journalist, and Abd Alkader Habak, a local activist and cameraperson in Aleppo during the Syrian war, later evolved into a mutual curiosity. Over time, texting, voice memos and phone calls became the currency of a deepening relationship... and eventually the two married and became film partners living in London. In their intense and gripping new Sundance documentary “Birds of War,” Janay and Habak create a moving assemblage of personal archival material and devastating wartime news footage that tells a universal story of war and love through a unique personal lens.

Following their film’s world premiere in the Sundance World Cinema Documentary section, Janay and Habak joined Ken in his Sundance Park City podcast studio (i.e. condo) for a lively in-person conversation. From the trauma of Habak’s last days in Syria to Janay’s emotional return to Lebanon to cover a burgeoning rebellion, the twists and turns of their individual journeys are just as unpredictable as the love that brought them together.

The Presenting Sponsor of "Top Docs" is Netflix.

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Joining us for the 5th year in a row, Variety’s Chief Awards Editor Clayton Davis is back on “Top Docs” to break down this year’s Oscar races for Best Documentary Feature and Best Documentary Short and to offer his predictions for who will walk away victorious on March 15th. With another close race on our hands, you don’t want to miss Clayton’s analysis and final picks.

And be sure to catch up on all of the Oscar-nominated films in the documentary feature and shorts categories by listening to our “Top Docs” interviews with all ten of the nominees.

Clayton Davis is Variety’s Chief Awards Editor. He is also host of Variety Studio: Actors on Actors and the Variety Awards Circuit podcast. He's been an awards, film and television analyst and critic for more than 15 years and has co-hosted the Oscars Pre-Show on ABC. Clayton is also co-founder and president of the Latino Entertainment Journalists Association and is a board member of the Critics Choice Association.

The Presenting Sponsor of “Top Docs” is Netflix.

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Protestors silently bearing the pictures of children killed in Gaza: they hold no other signs, chant no slogans.  

Hilla Medalia ("Leftover Women", "Prisoner X") speaks to Mike about her Oscar-nominated short documentary, “Children No More: Were and are Gone”, explaining how this act held weekly in Tel Aviv–where the images of the dead in Gaza are not regularly shown in the mainstream media–is intended less as sheer defiance than it is a call for opening a dialog.  The film’s culminating images of the mute participants buffeted with abuse, as well experiencing the heartfelt anguish of their opponents’ own losses and traumas, can be read both tragically as well as hopefully.

The Presenting Sponsor of “Top Docs” is Netflix.

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While covering the devastating effects of the Russian bombing of Ukraine, documentary filmmaker/journalist Brent Renaud was shot and killed by Russian forces on March 22, 2022. He was the first foreign-born journalist killed in the war. Now, Brent’s filmmaking partner and younger brother Craig has made the harrowing documentary “Armed Only With a Camera: The Life and Death of Brent Renaud.”

Craig joins Ken on the pod to discuss Brent’s extraordinary career, the lasting impacts that Brent had on those he encountered while shooting in hot zones and other places of trauma around the world, and how he chose to honor Brent by picking up a camera in the aftermath of personal tragedy. With this remarkable film, Renaud Brothers Films lives on as a powerful reminder of all that can be accomplished when journalists and filmmakers do their incredibly valuable and dangerous work — and all that can be lost in a fleeting moment.

“Armed Only With a Camera: The Life and Death of Brent Renaud” is nominated for an Oscar for Best Documentary Short. It can be streamed on HBO MAX.

The Presenting Sponsor of "Top Docs" is Netflix.

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 ”Three donkeys are in an unnamed desert and they discover an abandoned astronomical observatory.  And the universe.” 

That’s how Alison McAlpine (“Second Sight”, “Ghostmen of Skye”, "Cielo") describes her Oscar-nominated short documentary “Perfectly a Strangeness” to Mike.  In this wordless film, McAlpine uses the “fundamentals of cinema”– sound, movement, light, shadow, reflections – to craft a “conversation” between the muscular, visceral donkeys and the advanced, technological observatory.  The resulting 15 minutes are a rare amalgam of mundanity and profundity, one which will make you see living creatures, man-made objects, and even the night sky anew.

The Presenting Sponsor of "Top Docs" is Netflix.

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A day in the life of a women’s reproductive healthcare center is unlike any other. In this post-Roe world, potential danger lurks in the dark or right out in the open. In the tense and nuanced Oscar-nominated documentary short “The Devil Is Busy” (directed by Christalyn Hampton and Geeta Gandbhir), we follow Tracii, the head of security at an Atlanta women’s health clinic, as she goes through her routine to ensure that no physical harm comes to those seeking care or dispensing it.

Christalyn and producer Rose Arce join Ken on the pod to discuss the intense stress facing Tracii, her colleagues, and the clinic’s patients (referred to as “guests”), many of whom have traveled hundreds of miles for an appointment at one of the few remaining abortion providers in the region. Over the course of the film, we learn more about Tracii, the difficult decisions she has had to face, and the role that religion and a forgiving God play in her life. Countering the shrill voices of the male anti-abortion protestors outside, Tracii’s simple acts of kindness transform an average day into something extraordinary.

“The Devil Is Busy” has been nominated for the Oscar for Best Documentary Short. It can be streamed on HBO MAX.

The Presenting Sponsor of "Top Docs" is Netflix.

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In a special, in-person conversation from the 2026 Sundance Film Festival, director Judd Ehrlich (“Keepers of the Game”) joins Ken in Park City to discuss his new documentary “Jane Elliott Against the World,” which just had its world premiere in the festival’s U.S. Documentary Competition section.

In the opening scene of “Jane Elliott Against the World,” the film’s eponymous protagonist rather provocatively calls herself a “bitch” — actually, an acronym for “Being in Total Control, Honey.” As a teacher in a rural Iowa school in the 1960s, Jane devised a provocative social experiment called “Blue Eyes/Brown Eyes” intended to make her students understand what it feels like to be an oppressed minority based on outward appearance. The effect on her students was immediate and profound, and the experiment reverberated across the country, making Jane famous. Judd describes getting to know Jane and learning from her daughters how, growing up, Jane’s full-time anti-racism activism took its toll on the family. Now 92, Jane shows few signs of slowing down. She may not be in total control, but, to anyone who tries to stand in her way, be forewarned.

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The Presenting Sponsor of "Top Docs" is Netflix.

Cop. Drug agent. Preacher. Marijuana activist. Cop buster.  Can this really be one man?  

In their documentary “Never Get Busted”, David Anthony Ngo and Erin Williams-Weir follow the protean Barry Cooper.  In this special interview recorded live late last year at the Hot Spring Documentary Film Festival (where our own Ken Jacobson serves as Executive Director), David and Erin share the lives, loves and ever-shifting mission of a man who despite constantly changing, continually seems rooted in an authentic calling.  And they explore with him a legal system deeply compromised by misaligned incentives and financial corruption.

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The Presenting Sponsor of "Top Docs" is Netflix.

This is it! The final Sundance Film Festival to be held in Utah is just around the corner. The 2026 Sundance Film Festival — the 42nd edition — runs from January 22 – February 1 in Park City and Salt Lake City, Utah (and online from Jan. 29 – Feb 1). Next year, this iconic event moves to Boulder, Colorado. To help get us fired up for the festival, we welcome back Basil Tsiokos, Sundance Senior Programmer, Nonfiction, to “Top Docs” to preview Sundance’s stellar documentary lineup.

From among the 40+ feature documentaries having their world premieres at this year’s festival across multiple sections, Basil spotlights first-time feature filmmakers, as well as those returning with exciting new works. And don’t miss Basil’s take on this year’s Oscar Shortlist and predictions for the final nominees. With 9 of this year’s 15 Oscar-shortlisted feature docs having premiered at the 2025 Sundance Film Festival, you can bet that many of 2026’s most talked about documentaries will be making their debuts at Sundance.

For more info about the Sundance Film Festival program, go to festival.sundance.org.

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The Presenting Sponsor of "Top Docs" is Netflix.

The premise of Rachel Grady’s and Heidi Ewing’s (“Jesus Camp”, “Norman Lear: Just Another Version of You,” Endangered) new Oscar-shortlisted documentary, “Folktales” is simple enough:  They follow three students at a post-high school program in Norway’s Arctic circle as they learn survival skills and dog sledding.  But by almost literally weaving in Nordic tales of the Fates, demonstrating the healing ties that grow between the students and the dogs, and exploring the profound wisdom proffered by two capable, insightful teachers (Iselin and Thor-Atle), Ewing and Grady provide a deep meditation on coming of age in the time of putatively frictionless lives and ubiquitous cell phones.

Rachel joins Mike on the pod to explain how she found joy in the challenges of shooting in darkened forests in polar winter--how in effect she “went to Folk High School too!”   And she shares the wisdom she garnered from Iselin and Thor-Atle as well:  Throughout our lives, doors open and close.

You can watch “Folktales” on streaming platforms including Amazon.

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The Presenting Sponsor of "Top Docs" is Netflix.