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For the 10th year in a row, the SCAD Savannah Film Festival, the 26th edition of which ran from October 21 to 28, was the place to be for documentary makers and documentary enthusiasts – specifically on October 25, when The Hollywood Reporter presented and your humble correspondent presented the fest’s Docs to Watch panel, which brings together the directors of up to 10 of the year’s best documentaries.
Over the past nine years, 45 films have been nominated for the Best Documentary Oscar, 19 of which were first highlighted as Docs to Watch. And in seven of those nine years, one of the Docs to Watch won the Oscar for Best Documentary Film: 2015 Amy2016 PB: Made in America2017 Icarus2018 Free Solo2019 American factory2021 Summer of the soul and 2022 Navalny. (The other two eventual winners – 2014 Burgervier and 2020 My octopus teacher – were not shown in time to qualify for Docs to Watch.)
As you can see for yourself in the video at the top of this post, nine filmmakers appeared on the Docs to Watch panel, where they discussed the origins of their projects, the challenges they encountered along the way, and how they and their subjects have been affected by the process of making and releasing the film:
On behalf of PBS 20 days in Mariupola film about a team of Ukrainian journalists for the Associated Press who continue to work during the Russian invasion of their country to show the world what is happening in a city under siege, Mstyslav Chernov
On behalf of Netflix American Symphonya film about musician Jon Batiste who experiences his greatest professional success while his wife faces her greatest personal challenge, an Oscar nominee for Best Documentary Feature for 2015 Cartel country, Matthew Heineman
On behalf of Roadside’s Beyond utopiaa film about a South Korean preacher and some desperate people he tries to help escape from oppressive North Korea, Madeleine Gavin
On behalf of Netflix The deepest breatha film about star and star-crossed deep-sea divers, Laura McGann
On behalf of MTV’s The eternal memorya film about Augusto Gongora and Pauli Urrutia, a prominent Chilean man and woman, as Augusto descends into the fog of Alzheimer’s and Pauli cares for him, an Oscar nominee for Best Documentary Feature for 2020 The mole cop, Maite Alberdi
On behalf of Magnolias Kokomo Citya film about the lives of four black transgender women who have done sex work and are open about their experiences and dreams, D. Smith
On behalf of Nat Geo’s The missiona film about the efforts of a young evangelical missionary determined to connect with one of the world’s most isolated indigenous peoples, on behalf of himself and his co-director Amanda McBaine, Jesse Moss
On behalf of Amazon Silver Dollar Roada film about a black family in North Carolina whose ancestral lands are taken from them through a legal loophole, an Oscar nominee for Best Documentary Feature for 2016 I’m not your nigger, Raoul Peck
And on behalf of Apple Still: A Michael J. Fox Moviea film about the life and struggles of the beloved actor of the same name who was struck by Parkinson’s disease at a young age, an Oscar winner for 2006’s An uncomfortable truth, Davis Guggenheim
Unfortunately, Roger Ross Williams (an Oscar winner for best short documentary in 2009 Music by Prudence and an Oscar nominee for Best Documentary Feature for 2016 Life, animated), the director of a tenth film chosen as one of this year’s Docs to Watch (Netflix’s Stamped from the starta film about the history of anti-black racism in America) had to cancel his performance due to illness.
Before the panel, the fest presented a special honor: the inaugural Rising Documentarian Award Travon Free and, in absentia, his directing partner Martin Desmond Roe. The film team is best known for the 2020s Two distant strangers, which won the Oscar for Best Live-Action Short Film. But they followed that by releasing two critically acclaimed documentaries over the past two years via HBO, the 2022 short documentary 38 in the gardenabout basketball star Jeremy Lin and the rise of anti-Asian hate in America, and the 2023 documentary BS Highabout a con artist who organizes a football team on behalf of a high school that doesn’t really exist, and ends up playing a high school powerhouse in a game broadcast on ESPN.