Some of the top documentary filmmakers in the world soon will be packing their bags for Toronto, preparing for a curtain call at one of the world's most important cinematic events. The 51st edition of the Toronto Film Festival again features a dynamic roster of documentaries, ranging from…

Director Rebecca Miller calls Martin Scorsese "the maestro," and who would disagree with that? Scorsese has been making cinematic masterpieces for many decades now – Taxi Driver, Raging Bull, GoodFellas, Casino, The Departed, The Wolf of Wall Street, to name only a few. Miller explores the…

For over 75 years, Mel Brooks has been making people laugh. Hard. He's brought to the screen Mongo, Lili Von Shtüpp, the grandson of a certain mad scientist (aka Young Frankenstein), Frau Blücher ("A little Ovaltine, perhaps?), Louis XVI ("It's good to be the king"), Max Bialystock, Leo Bloom…

Just after he turned 100, David Attenborough achieved the extraordinary. The famed naturalist and author earned not one but two Primetime Emmy nominations for Outstanding Narrator this year, one for the Netflix documentary A Gorilla Story: Told by David Attenborough, the other for the National…

What is Iceland without ice? That question, once unimaginable, has become urgent as climate change shrinks the country's glaciers to the vanishing point. The Nordic nation has already bid farewell to dozens of its smaller glaciers – the first to go being Okjökull (also known as Ok glacier), in…

Kartemquin Films has always been guided by the motto "Democracy through Documentary," as author Patricia Aufderheide notes in her book Kartemquin Films: Documentaries on the Frontlines of Democracy. For generations, the Chicago-based institution has been producing some of the most lauded and…

For much of her adult life, poet Mary Oliver pursued her métier in relative obscurity, publishing well respected if modestly selling volumes of her work. Then, in 1984, she won the Pulitzer Prize, and that changed everything. Oliver in her last three decades became a rare celebrity poet…

It's shaping up as another open-ended race for Best Documentary Feature at the 99th annual Academy Awards. As we move deeper into 2026, no single film has emerged as a clear frontrunner, but there are plenty of contenders even before potential candidates premiere at the Venice Film Festival…

In the 1970s and '80s, public access TV on New York City's cable system was something to see. It had everything: comedy, curious characters, cutting-edge music, pioneering gay shows, the odd cameo by Mick Jagger, Keith Richards and artist Jean-Michel Basquiat. Oh, and a lot of sexually explicit…

DC/DOX, which just wrapped its fourth edition, gives the nation's capital what it deserves – a first-rate nonfiction film festival. Not only is D.C. a major metropolitan area, of course, but so many prominent documentaries on pressing social and political issues connect directly to decisions made…

The feet. Martha Graham did not stick her dancers into dainty ballet slippers. No, her dancers and Graham herself in performance, went barefoot. And the foot was flexed – taut and expressive – not elegantly pointed as in classical ballet. This is just one of the ways Graham revolutionized what…

Germany's Alexander Zverev is the newly crowned men's singles champion at the French Open, securing his first title on the red clay of Roland-Garros over the weekend. Only 13 more to go for him to equal Rafael Nadal's French Open wins. Rafa's 14 titles at Roland-Garros is the single most…