The long and winding road to the Oscars culminated in triumph for No Other Land as Best Documentary Feature and The Only Girl in the Orchestra as Best Documentary Short.
On the new episode of Deadline’s Doc Talk podcast, hosts John Ridley and Matt Carey react to the Academy Awards on Sunday night. No Other Land, set in the occupied West Bank, brought the first ever Oscar win to Palestinian filmmakers – Basel Adra and Hamdan Ballal – who made the documentary in tandem with Israeli filmmakers Yuval Abraham and Rachel Szor.
As they headed to the stage to receive their awards, the filmmakers were greeted effusively by an Oscar-nominated star wearing a Free Palestine pin (we reveal who). In their acceptance speeches, Adra and Abraham spoke fervently for Palestinian rights and against U.S. policy in the region, which they said was blocking a path to peace. We discuss the political climate in which No Other Land surged to frontrunner status and how it overcame an apparent late charge from Porcelain War, the documentary feature set in Ukraine. And we get into the film’s prospects for earning official U.S. distribution – it self-distributed en route to the Oscars.
On the new Doc Talk episode we also turn our attention to one of the most acclaimed documentary festivals in the U.S: True/False, headquartered in Columbia, MO. The festival’s artistic director, Chloé Trayner, tells us how “joy and playfulness” have become integral to the True/False identity, and why the cinematic showcase favors “authored” work over less distinctive approaches to the documentary form.
That’s on Doc Talk, hosted by Oscar winner Ridley (12 Years a Slave, Shirley) and 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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