In this vHopeful Conversation, I sit down with filmmaker Poh Si Teng—Oscar‑nominated producer of St. Louis Superman, Emmy‑winning executive producer of Patrice: The Movie, and now first‑time feature director of American Doctor—to talk about why she stepped out from behind the scenes after two decades as a producer, commissioner, and executive to make an urgent, deeply personal film about three American physicians (Palestinian, Jewish, and Zoroastrian) who volunteer in besieged hospitals in Gaza and then carry their fight for patients to the halls of Congress. We discuss how she found these doctors and earned their trust; how her team worked with filmmakers inside Gaza at great risk; what she learned about courage, dissent, and speaking from the heart from Dr. Mark Perlmutter, Dr. Thaer Ahmad, and Dr. Feroze Sidhwa; and how her own journey—from Malaysia to American journalism, from Al Jazeera and IDA to Tiny Boxer Films—shaped her decision to stay in the United States and “fight as a filmmaker” in the face of war crimes, bipartisan complicity, and a media ecosystem that still treats Palestine as “too hot.”

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Transcript lightly edited. Podcast available on Dream of a Better World, & Apple, Spotify or wherever you listen

Vanessa Hope: I’m very, very excited to be joined by filmmaker Poh Si Teng, an Oscar‑nominated producer of St. Louis Superman, Emmy‑winning executive producer of Patrice: The Movie. She’s a former Al Jazeera documentary commissioner, ABC/Disney creative executive, IDA grants director, and New York Times journalist.

She is now making her feature documentary directorial debut with American Doctor, the film we are here to discuss, which is truly phenomenal. It follows three American physicians—one Palestinian, one Jewish, one Zoroastrian—who volunteer in besieged hospitals in Gaza and return home determined to fight for the patients and colleagues they left behind, carrying their battle from the front lines of war to the halls of Congress and confronting the collision of medicine, politics, and American responsibility. Poh Si Teng, it is such an honor to have you. Thank you for joining.

Poh Si Teng: Thank you so much for having me, Vanessa.

Vanessa: So you’ve spent two decades building a career as a producer, a commissioner, an executive. What was the moment when you knew you had to step out from behind the camera and direct American Doctor yourself?

Poh: You know, Vanessa, I’ll be honest with you, for the longest time I didn’t think that my voice was needed. I always thought my role is to serve other directors, to uphold their vision, and to try to help them make the best film possible.

But when the genocide started, and a year in, it just felt like nothing was happening, nothing was changing fast enough. And as you mentioned earlier at the top, I was a documentary commissioner for Al Jazeera English. So seeing colleagues that I respected being targeted and executed in Gaza, and then just seeing that nothing was changing—it really did something to me.

That’s when I thought: maybe all the roles that I’ve held in the past two‑plus decades, maybe they can come to some use in terms of experience, the people I had known and worked with, and maybe this was the time when I should stop just producing and start directing.

Vanessa: It was a very, very, very good choice.

Poh: You know, I was nervous though, because I think I’m a decent producer—I’ve done this for two decades—but can I make something in my own vision? I was definitely very nervous going into it.

But at the same time it was like, okay, I’m just gonna choose, all chips in, and fast‑forward to today we have the film.

Vanessa: I think you bring so much understanding and experience and compassion and empathy as a director. I was immediately struck, in early scenes of your film, with how you enter the frame and are in a little bit of a conversation with the Jewish doctor.

So I want to just set you up to share how you found these three doctors who are so moving to experience—both as physicians in Gaza and as human beings and family members in the United States. You find this balance between all of the roles that they play and how we see their lives intertwined and them interacting. It’s no easy feat.

So how did you do that—all of it? How did you find them? How did you convince them? How did you gain that personal, familial access and go into Gaza with them and film in the hospitals?

Poh: So, you know, I think when I wanted to make this film, I wanted to help myself, I guess, first and foremost. I live in New York, I’ve had all these different positions, I live and work and am a part of so many different communities. I have Jewish friends, Muslim friends, Palestinian friends, friends who are not from either community.

And it just felt like a year into the genocide, there was no more language to sort of speak truthfully to where I was and also wanting to be effective at the same time. And so I searched for people who could help me.

The first person I found was the Jewish doctor, Dr. Mark Perlmutter. This was sometime, I would say, October 2024, in the fall of 2024, and I remember seeing a news clip of a reporter interviewing him: “So Dr. Perlmutter, you just returned from Gaza. Why do you think there’s no ceasefire?” And Mark says, “There’s no ceasefire because politicians are [expletive] to lobby groups.”

And I was like, who is this guy who just doesn’t mince words, speaks from the heart?

Surely a few days later he was set to be the keynote speaker at a fundraiser for an organization raising funds for Palestinian children in New York. So I went to meet him.

In a room of mostly Palestinians, Muslim Arabs trying to raise funds for children’s relief, you had this white Jewish doctor. And when he spoke, everybody was quiet, and people were sobbing, weeping quietly. I remember the host of the evening telling him, “My brother, we will not forget what you have done for us.”

I introduced myself: “Mark, I am so‑and‑so, I’m a filmmaker, and I’d love to make a film.” And soon after, he introduces me to Dr. Feroze Sidhwa and Dr. Thaer Ahmad—the Zoroastrian doctor and the Palestinian doctor.

In the first weeks of speaking to them on the phone, I could just sense, wow, they are all so different. I also felt like, okay, I bet they don’t agree with each other a lot, but somehow they’ve come together. How are they able to navigate this moment together? That was sort of the beginning for me.

I made the film wanting to find the right language. From Thaer, the Palestinian doctor, I learned the importance of how to be strategic and political. From Mark—he’s much older than me, he’s 70 now—I learned, “Don’t waste time. Why waste time? Speak from your heart.” From Feroze, I learned that if you want to convince the most difficult of audiences, you have to do your homework.

Meeting the three of them and then having the privilege of being able to see their lives up close—all the challenges—was such a privilege, Vanessa, because they really opened up their doors to me. They didn’t hesitate. In fact, I think both Feroze and Thaer will say this—they’ve said this many times: they just didn’t think anyone would care.

Feroze has said to me many times, “I thought, sure, you can make a film, but nobody’s gonna care about this.” And Thaer, recently when we were in a Q&A, said, “You know, I just didn’t want to waste your time. I knew how much you were putting into it financially and I didn’t want to waste your time. I was worried you were wasting your time.”

And fast‑forward to today, I think it was really worth it. That was the beginning. They never hesitated.

I remember a scene which didn’t go into the film. Thaer was talking to his mother—this is the early days of filming—and he and his mom were having a conversation. He says, “You know, nobody cares about this. Only our community cares about this.”

I remember thinking to myself: they will. Maybe not right now, but they will.

After that I spoke to Thaer and I said, “You know, even if nobody cares, we do it for us. We do it for our children. And that’s all that matters. The rest is not in our hands.”

Vanessa: They’re amazing people and doctors, and obviously so are you. I mean, you all risk your lives to go into a war zone during a genocide, as you’ve said, and to help people on the ground. That is literally all you are doing—you’re helping, you’re saving lives.

And these are people who, as you just said, never intended to be on camera. They’re being asked to speak up now because there are so few people who have been bearing witness to what is actually going on on the ground who can do that. But your film is such a gift and made for all the right reasons and so, so moving.

Poh: You know, Vanessa, there is one thing. I didn’t have to risk my life. I will say this, because—how did we film in Gaza? I really want to share this with the audience.

In the early days of filming, I was filming the three doctors in the States and they were getting ready to go into Gaza. Dr. Perlmutter—Mark—he’s the eternal optimist. He’s like, “I will train you as my scrub nurse and take you into Gaza.”

I’m like, first of all, we know who controls the borders. Anybody who does a cursory Google search of my name will know—your bio that you read—I am not a legitimate scrub nurse, Mark. This is never gonna happen.

It’s not just that they don’t let people in; they also turn away so many medical workers because we’ve been speaking out. I knew there was no way I was gonna get under the radar.

So that’s the question: how do we film this? Fortunately, I was a documentary commissioner at Al Jazeera English and I’d been dying to work with my very dear friend, producer Reem Haddad. We were both documentary commissioners for Al Jazeera, covering different regions. I heard that Reem was leaving Al Jazeera and I was like, here’s my chance to work with my buddy.

My buddy, my bestie, worked with this incredible team—two people: Mohammed Sawwaf, our co‑producer, and Ibrahim Al‑Otla, our director of photography in Gaza. Just these two men. I saw their work for another film, a short doc that was made at the end of 2023—amazing vérité—and I was like, “Reem, I want to work with them. Can we work with them?”

They were the ones who filmed inside Nasser Medical Complex at great risk to themselves, while there was a blockade, while they and their families were literally starving. So I just wanted to share that.

Vanessa: Wow. I mean, it’s so, so powerful. It’s such a moving inside view of all that you’ve described: the obstacles to get into Gaza, the obstacles when you’re there working in a hospital, the challenges for every family member when these three doctors go off and they’re doing their work in a war zone.

I’m glad that you were not in the war zone, actually. I mean, that’s a whole other level of training.

Poh: Yeah. You know, and I say this—I think I’m quite experienced. I was a journalist, I was a documentary commissioner, I did safety and security protocols for my teams that have filmed in different parts of the world, conflict regions. Even the fundraising aspect—I was a grants director, I know how to raise money.

But somehow, I guess maybe in hindsight, it was crazy for me to think that this was easy—that I could do it easily. It was a lot harder than I thought.

I did do it, with my friends, with all my colleagues from eight different countries. We pulled it together, our team. But it was definitely a lot harder than we thought and it still remains so hard for our team in Gaza.

Vanessa: Yeah. So you’ve spoken to how standing up for innocent lives should not be controversial, and yet this is a film that will be seen as “too hot” or controversial for many people because it’s about Palestine.

I’m impressed both that you were able to make it and now also in getting it distributed, getting it out. But in the creative process, I feel you have tremendous sensitivity and insight and awareness about the choices you make—how you’re allowing these doctors to speak to what’s going on and understanding what their families are going through.

Was that in your mind from the beginning, or did it develop as you got to know each doctor and learn from them and they were learning from each other?

Poh: I think I just wanted the tools to be able to navigate and to get this privilege of seeing doctors who were literally on the front lines, and to get to see what they and their families and their communities were going through.

It taught me a lot. It also taught me a lot about my own biases. I’ll share that, even after making the film, I can only imagine what it’s like for Thaer, who’s a Palestinian doctor, and for the community and my friends who are Palestinian.

I guess it didn’t occur to me how hard it would also be for Mark. I knew it was gonna be hard for him, but I didn’t realize it until I made the film and saw just how pummeling it can be for him to stand up, and how lonely it is.

So I definitely thought, in my mind, it’d probably be easier for him—“his people aren’t the ones being genocided”—but in many ways I was wrong. From Mark I learned so much about what I thought, in terms of how to navigate.

Mark taught me a lot of surprising lessons because he’s obviously a lot older than me. I would tell Mark sometimes, “Hey man, have you ever thought maybe, you know, think longer‑term, or maybe phrase it this way?”

Mark, if you watch the film, says a lot of un-doctorly things. He doesn’t have any filters. That’s why we love him so much. When I would say, “Have you thought of phrasing things differently?” he would say, “I’m 69, I have no time. And you shouldn’t waste your time either.”

And I’m like, you know what, you’re right. Why can’t I speak from my heart? Why do I have so many challenges saying what needs to be said?

But I also realize—I’m from a minoritized community. I am barely five feet. So I have all these things. But sometimes you don’t have to be that scared and that worried. Mark taught me that.

Vanessa: That’s beautiful. You’re making me think of a few scenes with Mark—who’s the Jewish doctor, just to remind people—that again, I feel your choices were not only sensitive and thoughtful but welcoming to audiences.

You are an ideal director to help audiences feel comfortable wading into this minefield of a subject because you often choose—for example, there’s a good scene in Gaza when Mark, and I believe it’s the Zoroastrian doctor, Feroze, are finished with a CNN interview. Or maybe it’s just Mark who had to be on camera and Feroze is sitting next to him as his friend and support.

The interview’s over, but you’re still rolling, the camera’s on, and Mark is just like, “My God, did I just blow that interview because I’m so emotional and I lead with my heart?” And then he says to Feroze, “That’s why we’re a good team, ’cause you’re more intellectual or strategic about it.”

To show us that behind the scenes is comforting. It’s so human. And you do it at the very beginning with Mark too. I was thinking of that scene early on where he wants to show you photos on his laptop of dead children in Gaza, and you say, “No, no, I’m gonna protect their dignity, I don’t want to show that.” And he’s like, “What? You have to. One, I’ve cleared it all, and two, there’s no time.”

As you’ve just said again, there’s no time. There’s no time to stop now because… (I’m gonna get emotional, hold on).

Poh: From Mark I learned it’s important to feel all the feelings. So often we hold back, we hold back our emotions because it’s seen as a weakness.

But no—when it’s channeled in the right way, it is a source of strength. Talking about this, I mean…

Everything in the film, there are challenges I’m confronted with: who gets to say what, how media is treating the subject matter and, in this case, pummeling the doctors in many ways, being unfair or unkind to them.

I say this as somebody who was in journalism, who was a journalist for so long and worked for all the entities.

And then, you know, the exchange between Mark and Feroze—I have learned over the past two decades in my professional career: when you have a diverse team and teammates who are different from you, you can better handle situations and go forth together. You balance each other out, listen to each other. That was the relationship between Mark and Feroze.

That first scene you talked about—I actually cut that scene initially for myself. It is the second day I’m filming with Mark in early January, and he’s hesitant in showing what he’s showing me visually on his computer. And then he sort of scolds me, and I deserved it.

I’m glad the camera is not facing me; it’s facing him, because I’m actually crying—I’m so ashamed. It’s such a delicate balance of how much you show. You show too much and it’s gratuitous. You show too little and it’s not real.

I remember having this scene for myself. In the early days when you’re trying to raise funds for a documentary, you have scene selects and we would always—our team—we would show a scene on Zoom to potential funders, stop, talk about it, show another scene, talk about it.

This was the first scene that I’d shown potential funders. I remember showing it to one potential funder: show it, stop, and he said, “After seeing that, I guess I’m gonna have to watch your whole movie.” And I said, “I guess you do.” So that was why it stayed.

Vanessa: Wow. That’s the scene with the photographs of dead children on Mark’s laptop. So powerful.

I wonder, since this is really a lot about truth and the courage to dissent and take responsibility, I like how you frame it too as Americans—because obviously our government is funding this genocide, providing weapons to Israel.

How do you find your courage to dissent as a filmmaker, a mother, an American? You’ve spoken to it as a journalist and as a filmmaker a little bit. Are there other layers or levels to where you have this bravery and willingness to speak up and really show people how to find the same kind of courage that you have?

Poh: You know, I wasn’t born in the United States. I was born and raised in Malaysia. I came to the US twenty‑some years ago as a college student, when I was 18, 19, to San Francisco to study journalism.

From Malaysia, my background—the people there are very generous, and it taught me a lot about the importance of being generous. But it’s really in the United States that I learned how to dissent and how to fight for what really matters.

There was such a foundational aspect of my formative education from when I was 19 in college. I was a journalism student, so I worked in different newspapers across the country. I could see all these different movements. At that time it was also the Iraq War.

I feel like I really came into that voice because of a lot of mentors—journalism mentors, leaders who are people of color, Indigenous, Black, Latina, and professors. They helped me understand what’s special about the United States and that I belonged here.

So with the first Trump administration and now we’re talking about a second term, a lot of my friends and peers—and I don’t fault them—but the immediate thought is, “I’m out of here. I’m gonna leave. I can’t deal with this.”

Okay, I get it. I understand that. I know not to fault anybody; everybody has their own reasons. But for me, I feel I have benefited beyond my wildest imagination. No other country could have provided me everything that the US has.

So it almost feels like, yes, I should stand here and I should fight, and the only way I know how to fight is as a filmmaker. So I’m gonna make this film. All the lessons from the past two decades—that’s what I bring.

Vanessa: Yeah. I feel the same way. We thought about leaving when Trump won again—the vast, unbelievable levels of corruption in every possible way, and so overt about it.

But it feels much better to stay and fight and stand for what’s good in this country and the people who are here. It feels hard to actually be away from it.

Poh: In making this film, I learned a lot of lessons. There are a lot of things that are obviously not in one’s control. But there is so much that is in one’s control—and that is our own actions.

Making this film was hard and everybody said it could not be done. What I did and what the team did was: let’s focus on what we can do now and see how far we can go. That’s what we did. We finished the film in a year.

There’s so much. It’s important to think short‑term, medium‑term, long‑term. It’s important to plan. But when you’re in the midst of so much horror everywhere you turn, sometimes you focus on what you can do now. And that helps us through.

Vanessa: Yep. In fact, you take this film— all three doctors go to the halls of Congress, right? I wonder how that felt. The ability to respond to first‑hand testimony from these doctors who’ve just come back from Gaza versus stonewalling them or shutting them out—how did that all feel to you?

Poh: When I think about it, it’s pretty incredible. In terms of the timeline and how much has changed in society: we’ve been on the road for seven, eight months, and we made the film in a year.

If you go back to Christmas 2024, when we started the film, into January—it was really bleak. The doctors rolled up to Capitol Hill trying to knock on doors in January 2025. This was just last year. All doors were shut to them. Everybody ran away. It was depressing. There was so much despair.

Fast‑forward to today. Just last month, in July, over a hundred Democrats voted to block billions of dollars of military aid to Israel. That is a seismic shift. Something is happening.

A lot of my documentary peers tell me, “Your timing couldn’t be more perfect.” And I think back: when we started, it felt like nothing was moving. It felt like we might not even see this day where we are now.

Of course, still so much needs to change. The ground situation in Gaza, what is happening with settlers going in and attacking people alongside the Israeli military in the West Bank—that is very real. It feels like every time there’s something terrible, the next day something even worse happens.

So there is a certain kind of urgency. But as a society as a whole in the United States, people have shifted, and that gives us a lot of hope.

Vanessa: And you feel that this work—so profound and excellent at countering all the dehumanization of Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank—can break through somehow?

There are so many friends of Netanyahu with so much money and power in this country—from Trump to Ellison. Do we not worry about them and just worry about the majority?

Poh: You know, it’s interesting, that’s brought up a lot, and Thaer talks quite a bit about the film helps with the fight against the dehumanization of Palestinians. Those are his words.

I never thought of that. I’ll be really honest with you. I just wanted to make a film so that we could see Thaer, Mark, and Feroze for who they were and are. That is all.

I just wanted it to be as real for audiences as it was real to me—the good, everything, the strides that they made, and all the pummeling and challenges that they faced. And then leave it up to the audience. That was all.

It didn’t occur to me, “I’m gonna make this film for so‑and‑so, or to counter so‑and‑so.” I just wanted to make the film to be able to navigate and help myself, and maybe it can help other people navigate this time.

And also just hold up a mirror mainly to myself: What am I doing? I have a daughter who’s five years old. When she’s older, she’s going to be asking—our children, our grandchildren are going to be asking—“What did you do, Mom, Dad, Grandpa, Grandma, at that time?”

I just want to have an answer. And the answer is that we tried.

Vanessa: Yeah. So you began filming Christmas 2024 in the wake of October 7th and all of the escalating violence that followed. You’ve spoken to the training for being a filmmaker or a journalist in a war zone, and the doctors no doubt have their training too.

But as the director of this film, which is so much vérité, I wonder how you were able to take care of your team and your subjects through the process of making the movie.

Poh: You know, this film is about three very good men, but it’s made by a core team of three women. So much of it I owe to my producers.

Kirstine Barfod is a Danish producer, incredible. She was nominated for the Oscars in 2020 for The Cave, about a Syrian doctor in Eastern Ghouta. So she likes doctors in war zones—we have that in common. She had the experience to look after and make sure things are on track.

Then there is Reem Haddad, our other producer, who has the biggest heart. Not only is she really good at producing, but she also does all the emotional housekeeping. Anybody who’s a director here knows: when the director is focused, we can be a little nuts. “It has to get done, it will get done no matter what.” Somebody needs to do the emotional housekeeping, and Reem really looks after the team.

So much of it is the team. I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention two other people. The reason I share this is because this is how we do something together that’s very, very hard.

It could not have been possible without Simon Kilmurry, our executive producer. Simon is such a very firm but steady guy. When I have concerns, when our team has concerns, Simon says, “Keep going. You’re on the right path,” because you worry. There’s so much anxiety and fear around this subject matter.

And then Hamza Ali, our other executive producer, co‑founder of Watermelon Pictures. He came in six, seven months into the making of the film when nobody really was interested to support it financially at all—at all. He really gave me the confidence as a director.

He said, “We support you.” Because of Hamza Ali, his brother Badie Ali, and Watermelon Pictures, our film now has the wings to fly, and hopefully the message can go further. That is really the main reason. We just want the message of what the doctors have seen—what their colleagues in Gaza told them to tell Americans, to tell everybody in the western part of the world—to get out.

Vanessa: In addition to this wonderful producing team you’ve just described, you yourself have sat at multiple nodes of the documentary ecosystem—IDA, Al Jazeera, ABC/Disney, now your own Tiny Boxer Films.

Are you able to mobilize a network on behalf of American Doctor to help get it out? Watermelon Pictures must be involved in the distribution, no doubt. But you can imagine so many distributors being afraid that it’s “too hot” or too controversial—when it’s the most urgent kind of story and the most basic human thing to speak up for the most vulnerable when it’s hardest.

Poh: All the experience combined in the past two decades has really helped me and my team navigate this moment and also steer us away from making mistakes. We’re very careful in who we bring onto the team, because we have to be 100% on the same page about things.

Yes, our backgrounds may be different—and they should be different. We should be diverse enough that we can see different opportunities and different challenges. But we have to be on the same page about the fundamentals.

So I think it helped having this diverse work experience. In terms of Watermelon, I mean, I’m excited. The film’s rolling out in so many theaters across the country. I wouldn’t have dreamt, at the start of making this film, that this was gonna happen for this subject matter.

Because everybody, Vanessa, told me it’s not possible. Everybody ran away. All the funders ran away, all the program officers—you know what it’s like. And they’ll say “institutional risk.”

What I will say to filmmakers listening is: it is no small thing when somebody backs you when you’re not “there” yet. Six, seven months in, when Watermelon Pictures and Hamza Ali said, “We’re going to support your film, we’re going to support you,” it is a lot.

I would say to everybody: ride with the people who backed you early on. This is not to say that we didn’t get other offers coming out of Sundance—we did. But for me, it went back to that: who was there when it was the hardest? We will ride together.

We’re so proud to roll out our film with Watermelon distributing us come August.

Vanessa: Amazing. So your film is coming out August 14th, is that right? We’re gonna share all of the information on where people can find the film and go to a theater and see it.

Are there any takeaways you hope viewers—maybe especially Americans paying taxes who may feel distant from Gaza—will think about, or actions they might take, after viewing your film?

Poh: So many thoughts, but I’ll simplify it. It’s helped me a lot, and in the past seven months we’ve shared the film with different audiences. I think it’s fair to say everybody feels like it’s given them some language to navigate this moment.

I hope, for those who are going to watch it, that it will do that for you too. I have to say, in making it and then in rolling it out, I don’t know—I’m a different person now.

When I started, I wanted to run away from the world. I was just so full of despair. Then came rage. Now, having been on the road with the film, with Thaer and Mark and Feroze, there is a way forward now, and there’s no stopping it.

Vanessa: Beautiful. So beautifully said.

Well, thank you so much, Poh. Thank you for your time and this incredible movie, and I hope everyone has a chance to see it and share it and spread the word.

Poh: Thank you so much for having me, Vanessa.

DIRECTOR AND PRODUCER

Poh Si Teng is the producer of the Oscar®-nominated ST. LOUIS SUPERMAN and Emmy® Award–winning executive producer of PATRICE: THE MOVIE. She is a former creative executive for ABC/Disney, documentary commissioner for Al Jazeera, IDA grants director, and New York Times journalist. She is the founder of Tiny Boxer Films, which produces non-fiction feature docs, and docu- and unscripted-series for the US and global majority markets. AMERICAN DOCTOR marks her debut as a feature documentary director.

American Doctor

will have its theatrical debut, thanks to Watermelon Pictures, in New York City on August 11 with Susan Sarandon moderating, and roll out to Los Angeles, Toronto, San Francisco, Chicago and select theaters across North America.

Join them in theaters with friends and family for special scerenings and Q&As

8/14: NY at Angelika Film Center

8/21: LA at Laemmle Royal

8/28: LA at Laemmle Glendale,

SF at The Roxie Theater,

Marin at Smith Rafael Film Center, and

Oakland at The New Parkway

For the most up to date info / ticketing you can visit the film website HERE.

and her company shot, directed, designed and published this “interview” with me back in June of 2015. It’s fun how they really snazzed it up!

Things change in ten years… don’t they?

I originally published it here.

Transcript:

“How is the film industry going to learn to support the artists who are willing to take risks, are committed to their own audience and advancing the language of cinema?

But now, through technology, we can change that equation. Barriers to entry have dropped. Barriers to distribution have dropped. Because I definitely believe that there are titles that have value that draw people (to them). What Hollywood and the film industry have never done well is match people to titles that they will respond to.

The film industry have never empowered the artist in that equation or said “You have to think through the life cycle of your film, how you keep it relevant in this day and age.” As we start to get hip to that, we see that we are free from the mass market dictates.

We don’t have to make our work for everybody. We can go into the niche audiences — but on a grand scale. We can unite people around their common values. And we can reward them for the activity they care most about.

It’s a double anchor because the audience has to say “this IS the culture that I want and I am voting for it with my dollars. I expect you to deliver something that is more than a product. I expect you to deliver an experience to me.”

And that’s where I see our business going: we stop making products and we deliver relationships and experiences.”

Want some more of the same thing? Ondi did this one too!

It was originally published here.

Take Your Film To Where The Audience Already Is

Transcript:

“Filmmakers, Hollywood, The Industry, rarely know whom their audience is. We do it so ass-backwards: we make a movie and we think it is so wonderful that people all over the world will come to see it. Wouldn’t it be a hell of a lot easier if all we did was take our movies where people are already gathered?

I certainly think that beautiful movies work: they compel us talk about them afterwards. When you go to film school, it is often taught as preproduction, production, post-production, distribution, and marketing. But the experience of what cinema is begins much earlier.

What it the point (moment) of discovery? It is the beginning of that narrative when you begin to think about that story, when you are primed in someway to do it.

I am incredibly excited about what the future holds for film lovers. There’s silent. There’s experimental. There is ephemeral. It is cult. It is action. There is independent. There is classic cinema. It is english language. Japanese. It is EVERYTHING.

And through that people become passionate advocates for what they want and community develops.

Isn’t that kind of the idea of what creating a community, be it online or in the physical world, is? That by working together, you can get the things that you want, and have a better experience from it?“

1

How effin’ cool are these guys?!!!

Allow me to say this one more time…

Norman Eisen is my hero. And Mark Ruffalo ain’t no slouch either!

And gosh darn it, they are not alone!

Benedict, Alan, and Benedict! Thank you! Add on SAG/AFTRA’s statement in opposition to the (illegal0 merger, and the good name of actors might be restored globally again. We all have a duty to protect our industry, and it is a bit of a thrill to hear them speaking up.

“We have watched, with growing alarm, what consolidation does to the breadth and depth of the work we produce: independent film acquisitions at the leading independent film festival Sundance fell by half between 2019 and 2025. Award-winning documentaries – films that won Oscars and topped festival juries – have struggled to find commercial distribution because they touched subjects the remaining handful of buyers found inconvenient. Every merger of this kind narrows the funnel through which stories can reach audiences.”

And this team UK is on the move and getting stuff done. Another front on this war has been opened!

“They also put forward the argument that for the first time the CNN and CBS News archives, two of America’s most historically significant broadcast news archives, will be under a single owner, “directly impacting UK documentarians’ ability to tell diverse stories.”

This issue about the control of documentary archives is a big one… and needs to be discussed a lot more.

2

Can we clone Marjan & Jax and have a better world?

More heroes in my book!

You should be able to check it out here if you missed it.

And a big shout out to Alvaro M. Bedoya too for this piece in The New Republic. THIS battle is truly the fat cats against everyone else. Monopoly and media consolidation only benefit the billionaire class. Everyone else suffers.

Fortunately this team is BETTER than Avengers. No assembly required… Heroes all.

3

In many ways, The Ellisons can blame themselves

But who ARE the other The BlockTheMerger BLOCKERS?

Spencer Pratt for one, but Bonta ain’t and he nails Pratt.

Look out, cuz he could be coming for you next, fat cats!

4

Victory is sweet… even if it just one step in a longer process

And it is getting some folks ready to say what they really feel…

If you are wondering why the above might be true… read this:

“But until then the two companies are stuck -- somewhat in limbo -- given that WBD agreed in principle for the deal.

This means that currently, WBD cannot operate independently. In addition, WBD cannot make new acquisitions -- or some content and distribution deals -- without Paramount’s consent. And if WBD wants to hire new executives, itneeds approval from Paramount.

So a whole year of operations for WBD has the potential to become a stagnant state of affairs. Solving those legal challenges is key to moving forward.”

From: https://finance.yahoo.com/media-advertising/articles/merger-delays-does-wbd-potential-130000801.html

And yeah, the AGs are not going to let up…

5

So where will this all lead?

Well, it is seeming like the odds are turning against the merger…

Kara Swisher also has said she does not believe it will happen. What else do you need to know which way this is going?

And to think some once thought it was a “done deal”.

They may have the money; but we have the many!

And in case you forgot, or never learned it in your travels, please remember the 12 AGS just need to prove that this merger will substantially injure competition in a given market. And SCOTUS has already stipulated, for example, that a merger that gives a company a 30% share in a market is presumptively anticompetitive. And Warnermount will have more than that.

Read up on your anti-trust law here: https://www.justice.gov/d9/2023-12/2023%20Merger%20Guidelines.pdf

Done deal? Yeah, not quite. Not even close.

Bonus!

And it goes further too…

https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2026-07-27/the-ellisons-discover-the-hard-way-that-trump-is-the-anti-midas

And if that doesn’t get ‘em, maybe the AI bubble will…

“A year and a half after his triumphant trip to the White House, Ellison may be poised to become something else: a cautionary tale. David has slowed his stop-at-nothing effort to push through his deal to acquire Warner Bros. Discovery in the face of a lawsuit from a group of state attorneys general. Ellison is personally worth about $55 billion less than he was on the morning he flew to Washington, and more than $200 billion less than he was at his peak in September. Oracle has pushed the limits of the credit market and is facing steeper interest rates from lenders, and its credit rating has been downgraded to a notch above “junk” status.”

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“Sell Your House” is about the production and distribution journey of a successful indie film called “The Last Stop in Yuma County” that was funded when writer/director Francis Galluppi convinced his best friend, James Claeys, to sell his house to fund their movie. “Sell Your House” is a movie about a movie that follows not just their production and distribution journey, but also the pressures that puts on their friendship.

Being friends with Francis is the closest I’ve ever been to somebody successful. He just wrapped production on a new Evil Dead movie. He’s met with everyone in Hollywood. You will be hearing his name a lot in the next ten years. But before all the success, Francis was just my friend across town with his own bad filmmaking habit. I would come over and we would watch a movie together or we would help each other on set whenever one of us was in production. Then he wrote “Last Stop.”

When James sold his house to fund “The Last Stop in Yuma County” he and Francis were going to make movies independently together forever. The plan was to retain creative control by financing themselves, find a distributor, sell their film, and use the MG (minimum guarantee) to fund the next project. But after they sold their film, their distributor did what they all do they misrepresented the film in the marketing, and underdelivered on their promises.

So far, their distributor has made about $3,000,000 for “Last Stop.” By all accounts, that’s pretty good, but it was at the cost of the artistic integrity of the marketing and James was not ok with that. On the other hand, Francis was willing to compromise on the marketing as long as it didn’t affect the film. This created a rift between James and Francis. To make matters worse, Francis was offered a dream job to write and direct the afore mentioned “Evil Dead” film. You can’t fault Francis for taking that opportunity. He had worked on “Last Stop” for three years after quitting his job with a wife and two kids and was $150,000 in debt. I would have taken the dream job too. I mean, was he supposed to wait till James finally made his money back? He still hasn’t four years later.

In my opinion, the root of this conflict is the distribution system. As has been expressed on this Substack before, the indie film distribution model is broken for many different reasons. But while people smarter than me are attempting to fix it, those of us with finished films are still faced with distribution decisions. I’m going to provide three distribution case studies, one for traditional distribution, one for hybrid distribution, and one for self-distribution and I’m going to explain the positives and negatives of each. The hope is that this will help us see what needs to be fixed and help people choose the best of the worst model for their specific film.

Case Study 1: “The Last Stop in Yuma County” - Traditional Distribution Model

It’s midnight on February 23, 2025. I’m standing outside a bar getting yelled at by James, the guy who sold his house to finance “Last Stop.” We just had a test screening for “Sell Your House” which both James and Francis attended. I’ve been out here with James for an hour, trying to make things right.

“I invested in a career with you guys! You guys don’t fucking care what happens to me!”

James tends to lump me in with the “Last Stop” team because I’ve been friends with Francis for a long time and I’ve been filming their story since day 1 of production. I’ve never tried to convince him otherwise because my doc opens a wound every time he watches it, and honestly, I feel a little guilty about it.

“Dude, James,” I plead, “we care. We all love you. This is a situation created by the system you agreed to when you signed with your distributor.”

James turns away and fights back tears. “It just fucking hurts. You all got yours.”

I’m desperately trying to figure out how to reason with him. “All your money is tied up in your investment with “Last Stop.” People aren’t asking you to get involved in their projects because they know you haven’t made your money back, but that’s nobody’s fault. None of us are doing this to you.”

“Fuck you, man!”

“Dude, I’m not saying we don’t want you to be involved in future projects. I’m saying you’re limited by this system where the distributor gets paid first. You need money to make money but you currently have no money.”

James continued to yell at me for another half an hour and I didn’t blame him. I’d be upset too if I sold my house, the film I sold it for actually turned out to be successful, and I wasn’t able to share in the success that everyone else was enjoying. The other producers were taking meetings and booking other gigs. The cinematographer was shooting a new project with Kevin Bacon. And Francis’ career was being launched into the stratosphere. Meanwhile, James was left empty handed. For investors like James, no money equals no opportunities. It must be frustrating to have done everything right and not be allowed to continue doing the thing you succeeded at.

To my understanding, “Last Stop” has made about three million dollars gross. By my calculations, James should have seen about $500,000 (he invested about a million). He’s only seen a tenth of that. Francis got what he wanted: A career. Aside from “Evil Dead” he has sold three other projects that I can’t talk about that have A list actors attached. Francis didn’t make any money from “Last Stop,” but he got a career. I think James could have harnessed the success of “Last Stop” into something besides a death spiral, but he is very fixated on not being able to work with Francis in the immediate future. I think that’s what hurts him the most. He invested in a future with Francis, but the future took Francis away from James. Again, not Francis’ fault. That’s just how the system works.

Unfortunately, this is an all too common story. The distributor recoups their advance and marketing costs and if you don’t have a marketing cap, which I don’t think “Last Stop” did, those recoupments can last for years. I’m not totally sure what the financial details are, but I know that James has only made $50,000 back on his million dollar investment and Francis will likely never see a dime. They both took a huge risk making “Last Stop” and it did really well. But if something is successful shouldn’t you be able to get paid for it? Apparently, not. Apparently, the last person who comes in, the distributor, gets paid first and then has control over the creative accounting that screws the people who took the biggest risk.

Obviously, this model is flawed. If good filmmakers can’t make any money then they can’t keep making movies. Francis got lucky and is now making money on bigger films, but that almost never happens and many filmmakers suffer the same fate as James. So the distribution system is making it impossible for good filmmakers to continue providing them a product that sells because they’re too broke to make a second movie. This not only hurts the filmmakers and investors, but also the distributors. But it cannot be ignored that “Last Stop” launched Francis’ career and made more than the budget. Would Francis have been successful were it not for their distribution deal?

Case Study 2: “Stolen Kingdom” - Hybrid Distribution Model

I’m at another bar, this time in L.A. two months ago. I’m talking to Josh Bailey, the director of “Stolen Kingdom,” a documentary about the black market of Disney memorabilia that gets stolen from rides at theme parks around the world. They’re in the middle of a road show and just finished a screening at Brain Dead in L.A.

“I hate to say it, but you look tired, buddy!” I smile to soften the blow.

Josh slumps onto the table behind his beer, “no man, I’m so alive. Life on the road is awesome!” He closes his eyes pretending to fall asleep.

I chuckle. “How’s your distributor working out?”

Josh sits back up. “I mean, we wouldn’t have this without them. They’ve breathed new life into the project for sure. But we’re only a week in. Three more to go.”

Part of me feels bad for Josh, but another part of me is a little envious of their success. To me, they’ve made it! And this is just part of the job! At the same time, I’ve worked on the road and know how exhausting it can be, especially when things go wrong.

“Don’t worry though. This indie documentary nobody’s ever heard of about a subject matter that isn’t important is going to make us all filthy rich and it’ll be totally worth it and I don’t regret any of my life choices.”

I hold up my glass. “Here’s to financial irresponsibility.”

Clink.

“Stolen Kingdom” did a year and a half of film festivals and art house screenings before signing with a brand new distributor that just came on the scene. This particular distributor was open to taking a smaller percentage of the profits and not recouping marketing costs in return for help with an in person road show and social media marketing. On paper, the road show was a big success. They made about $75,000.00 over one month. Despite the numbers, the tour was a slog. The “Stolen Kingdom” crew was on the road for a month without a break, very little money, and questionable quality in hotels. After the tour, the “Stolen Kingdom” guys explained to me that they had a lot of trouble getting in touch with their distributor who was spread very thin.

There seems to be new distributors popping up every day, and some of them are doing some really great things! The fact that “Stolen Kingdom’s” distributor isn’t recouping marketing costs is unprecedented. They also raised money for the tour through a sponsor which is also an unconventional but smart approach. That said, new distributors often don’t have enough manpower to realize everything they envisioned. So the filmmakers are forced to fill in the gaps. This requires time and effort from the filmmakers and, in the case of “Stolen Kingdom,” caused some stressful situations on the road. Despite the stress, at the end of the day, “Stolen Kingdom” is on a very successful road to financial success and the producers have already been able to partially repay their investors.

Case Study 3: “Sell Your House” - Self Distribution Model

“Bill, I want to introduce you to Eric Foss. He made a great documentary called ‘Sell Your House.’”

It helps to know charismatic people with good looks at film festivals. Staley stands smiling as I shake Bill’s hand.

“Yeah, I remember you, Eric. We spoke briefly yesterday about your film. The one about the guy selling his house to finance a film, right?”

“Yessir! Super nice to meet you again. Yeah, I’m just trying to learn as much as I can about distribution because we are trying to decide what do to. I mean no disrespect, but we are considering self-distribution, but at the same time I’m starting to realize how much work it is.”

Bill is the head of a pretty big distributor. He probably doesn’t like hearing filmmakers talk about self-distribution. He’d rather me faun over him and tell him why we should work together.

Bill rolls his eyes “I think the narrative is getting really confusing for filmmakers right now with Markiplier and Curry Barker. They already had these huge audiences built in. That takes a lot of time and not everyone can pull that off.”

“Yeah, I’m learning that. Finding an audience isn’t easy.”

Bill goes on to explain how they work WITH filmmakers to create a custom marketing plan for every film. He started working in distribution because he loves indie film and he really cares about it. I then proceeded to backpedal and explain that I’m not anti-distributor by any means. I left out the fact that I cast the distributor as a villain in my documentary.

“I’m coming to your screening,” Bill says with a smile.

“Oh awesome!”

I’m not sure if he actually came, but I found myself putting myself in his shoes during our screening the next day and realizing he would probably be pretty insulted. Whoops.

Half of “Sell Your House” is about distribution, and because James got screwed by their distributor, we are not very nice to distributors in our film. Because of that, we are not expecting distributors to be very excited to distribute our documentary. Being aware of that, we are developing a full self-distribution model with our co-production company Rabbit Foot Entertainment. There are three steps to this process: Audience building, physical screenings, and a VOD release. Audience building starts at film festivals and is completely word of mouth. I have been messaging and meeting every filmmaker at every festival we have been to so far, meeting every festival representative I can, and trying to start conversations with industry professionals like Bill. I also have been trying to utilize social media. I try to post every day which is its own full time job.

For our physical screenings, we are going to start with an educational film school tour. We think every film student should know how distribution works and our film is a good way to provide a spoonful of sugar to help the medicine go down. We will then use the buzz from those screenings to lead us into a road show, very similar to what “Stolen Kingdom” did. Finally, we will end with a TVOD release using an aggregator which costs about $3000.00 but that anybody can do.

The sacrifice I make for this model is that I have to work full time to market our project without getting paid for the rest of the year. I’ve turned down $50,000.00 of work so far and expect to turn down another $25,000.00. By the beginning of next year, my bank account is going to be empty, but I hope that 9 months of commitment (I started in March) will be enough to help us find a paying audience. Financially, it is going to hurt, but I’m willing to take the risk. Otherwise, I’d feel like I was fumbling at the ten yard line on something I’ve invested four years of my life into.

Another problem is that we don’t really have the experience or connections to do this easily. It takes us much longer to get things done than it would for a competent distributor. We are kind of building an airplane while trying to fly it. But, at the end of the day, we have complete control over our own fate and we don’t have to split the profits with anybody.

The Takeaway - TLDR

All of these models have benefits, problems and compromises.

With Traditional distribution, the benefit is that somebody who has done this before is doing the work for you which frees you up to keep making movies and leaves you in the hands of an expert. The problem is you might not see any money because of recoupments, and you may have to compromise on your creative freedom, especially in the marketing.

With the hybrid model, the benefit is creative freedom and extra help, but the problem is the amount of work required from the filmmakers. Furthermore, there is a compromise with trusting a smaller company because they likely have limited resources and experience.

With the self-distribution model, the benefit is complete creative freedom and control, but the problem is you have to do everything yourself. You are unlikely to have the experience, time and resources necessary to accomplish everything you envisioned. You will be forced to compromise by making choices on what to prioritize because there simply isn’t enough time in the day or financial resources to do everything yourself.

Conclusion

So what in the flying fuck do we do? Is there no good solution? Should we give up? Probably, but if we were going to quit we’d probably have done it a long time ago. Maybe the answer is this NonDē thing you guys won’t shut up about. But like most good things, the NonDē model is going to take a long time to develop into something actionable.

The NonDē movement isn’t going to build itself. We all have to show up and we all need to contribute ideas. What would happen if every nonde filmmaker posted about another nonde film every week? What would happen if we made free marketing content for our local indie theaters? What would happen if we started building systems and structure around these ideas that make them actionable (nonde 50 seems to be starting to do that).

Yes, we are all really busy making our movies. But what if every filmmaker who is talking shit about the distribution system devoted one hour a day to developing a solution? If we did that, maybe in 5 years there would be a path forward that didn’t require the above three bad options. But what do I know. I’m just a reality TV camera operator with an anxiety disorder.

Please feel free to talk shit in the comments or tell me how wrong I am via DM.

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In this vHopeful Conversation, I sit down with Academy Award–nominated, Primetime Emmy–winning director Rory Kennedy to discuss her new Netflix documentary, Queen of Chess, about Hungarian prodigy Judit Polgár and her battle against a male‑dominated elite chess world. We explore Polgár’s radical upbringing in communist Hungary under her father’s “genius is made, not born” experiment, the structural and psychological misogyny she faced from legendary players, and how her mantra — “go back to the board and play your best” — transformed discrimination into historic victory. Rory reflects on crafting a punk‑inflected, edge‑of‑your‑seat sports documentary from sixty‑four squares through dynamic music, graphics, and rich archival footage, all while threading in Cold War geopolitics, poverty, and family intimacy. Our conversation links Polgár’s story to current attacks on women’s sports and Title IX in the U.S., the broader fight for gender equity, and the importance of voting and vigilance, and situates Queen of Chess within Rory Kennedy’s larger body of political and social‑justice documentaries and our belief that documentary cinema deserves to stand alongside fiction at the top of the awards landscape.

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Transcript lightly edited. Podcast available on Dream of a Better World, & Apple, Spotify or wherever you listen

Vanessa Hope I am incredibly excited to be joined by Academy Award–nominated, Primetime Emmy–winning documentary filmmaker Rory Kennedy, who is a phenomenal filmmaker. Her work has explored politics, justice, and the human stakes of power with intelligence and emotional force. She’s the youngest child of Robert F. Kennedy and Ethel Kennedy, and has directed and produced more than 40 films. That includes American Hollow, Ghosts of Abu Ghraib, Last Days in Vietnam, Downfall: The Case Against Boeing, and Ethel. Her latest feature, Queen of Chess, which we’re about to discuss — it premiered at the 2026 Sundance Film Festival and is now on Netflix — brings her rigor to the story of Judit Polgár, the Hungarian prodigy who took on the male‑dominated world of elite chess.

With visual energy, music, and a rebellious spirit, the film feels as alive, defiant, and exciting as its subject. And Rory is the perfect filmmaker to tell this story. Rory, thank you so much for joining.

Rory Kennedy Thank you for that fantastic introduction, Vanessa.

Vanessa You’re so welcome. You are so deserving.

So, Queen of Chess tells the story of Judit Polgár, who is not just a prodigy but a girl taking on an entire male‑dominated system and sport. When did you first realize that this could be more than a sports documentary, and about so much more — power, gender, resistance?

Rory Well, it was interesting, because Mark Bailey and I — who’s my partner — were approached by a producer who had reached out to us and asked if we might be interested in telling the story of Judit Polgár, and we said, “Well, who is Judit Polgár?”

And then of course we learned that she was the number‑one female chess player and had held that position for almost twenty‑six years. She was the only woman to ever become a grandmaster. She was the youngest grandmaster, beating Bobby Fischer’s record, beating Kasparov’s record.

And you know, I don’t play chess regularly. I know how to play chess, but I knew who Bobby Fischer was and of course Kasparov, yet I had never heard of Judit Polgár. So we dug into her story and were just blown away that we didn’t know this person.

There was so much nuance and so many layers. She had grown up in communist Hungary.

Vanessa Yes.

Rory There were so many blockades for her to be successful and she just, with a sense of purpose and fierceness, broke through them one after another, blowing away all sorts of expectations and all sorts of resistance to her success.

It felt to us to be a really dynamic story and one that deserved to be told, and there was such rich archive to help us tell the story. As we dug into it, we pretty early on got hooked and really felt like, this is a story we need to tell.

Vanessa Yes. In the U.S., Jill Filipovic, this journalist friend, recently wrote a piece about the war on women’s sports in the U.S. Title IX is under attack because conservatives are saying that sports make women less deferential, less oriented toward motherhood and “traditional female grace.” And so there’s a whole new proposal to functionally dismantle Title IX that’s a little bit horrifying.

So this story is so relevant to this country. And I feel like one of the things I love so much about your film is the spirit — the music, the pacing, the sense of exhilaration and rebellion running through it from start to finish. I wonder how, as a director, you thought about shaping the tone so that chess feels cinematic and emotional and almost punk in its energy.

Rory Yeah, we did have a bit of a punk score in there, which was fun. When I was reading about Judit’s story, I was on the edge of my seat: Is she going to beat this champion? Is she going to win in this contest?

It’s interesting, because you think, “Okay, chess — pieces on a board, right? How is that actually exciting?” But then when you learn what the stakes are, and how one move can change everything, and how much they’re thinking so many moves in advance, and what’s going on in Judit’s head, I found it to be a very edge‑of‑your‑seat sports documentary.

So we did — and you had mentioned it being a sports documentary — we did strive to make it along those lines. And at the same time, we wanted to layer in this nuance of growing up in communist Hungary, growing up in poverty, people really resisting her because she was a woman, and growing up in a society where they really didn’t like people who did things differently than everybody else.

And the parents kind of had their own interesting story, where the father had an idea that geniuses were created, they weren’t born — that you had to create the circumstances. He married a woman who was willing to prove his experiment.

When Judit’s oldest sister was five years old, he said to her, “Okay, what do you want to do? You’re good at math and you’re good at chess,” and she had just found some chess pieces in the house. He asked, “What do you want to do for the rest of your life?” And she said, “I don’t know — chess, I guess, that’s fun.”

So the oldest sister started with chess. Then there were two other girls born to the family, Judit being the youngest. They all grew up in this environment to prove that if you do the same thing over and over again from a very young age and make it fun, you can be the very best.

As a result of this, the government came in; they tried to throw the parents into prison. They tried to throw them into a mental hospital. And Judit was a part of this. She would go to chess contests and she’d be thrown out because she was the only girl. She was five, six years old and she was just beating older man after older man after older man.

It’s extremely satisfying to watch, because it’s this unstoppable champion who is so driven, has such guts, and also has a sense of humor and a warmth about her that just adds to the whole story. So we were thrilled to tell this story and to try to add some stylistic dimension to it — like the punk score — and also the graphics, to keep it really engaging and lively.

Vanessa It is, and it’s so unquestionable, her talent, when you see her as such a young girl playing all these older men, as you said, with guts and confidence and just a sense of the game. You really make the game edge‑of‑your‑seat sports and it’s so fun to watch and learn from.

Rory It was exciting for us because — I don’t want to reveal too much about the film, but as you know, having watched it — there’s a pretty intense moment with Kasparov where she plays him. It’s a kind of seminal moment, and one that people in the chess world are very aware of.

I didn’t know anything about it, but we were amazed that we were able to find footage that captured that moment. It’s pretty dramatic to watch it in the film and see how it plays out, what the implications are, and how that narrative between Judit and Kasparov begins in this moment and then develops over time — how it changes, and the excitement and thrill of their relationship and their competition with each other, but then of course also a growing friendship.

So there are lots of unexpected twists and turns in her story and consequently in the film, that I hope make it enjoyable to watch and entertaining.

Vanessa Yeah. You captured that. It is so enjoyable to watch and entertaining. And we won’t give away this important moment of competition in the rivalry between Judit and Garry Kasparov, but it is remarkable that you get him in interview, that you show what happened, and that we see their evolving relationship exactly as you described, in amazing archive. There is a real friendship.

But I wonder, as a filmmaker and storyteller, how you came to understand the way misogyny operates in these elite sports like chess — not just structurally, but psychologically. You really show us that, and the interviews go right there.

Rory Yeah, I mean, it’s interesting because throughout the film you really hear first‑hand how these chess champions, like Bobby Fischer, would say things like, “Women just aren’t made to play chess.” They’d say women don’t have the smarts or the intelligence that men have. Others say it’s too challenging for women to sit in one place and be able to focus for that long.

Still others are very dismissive of Judit. She talks about how, when she would beat these world champions — which she did again and again and again — they would always say, “I just had a bad day.”

Like they couldn’t acknowledge that they were beaten by a woman fair and square. It was always, “Well, she’s very lucky,” or “I had a bad day.”

Despite all that — and then there’s that scene in the film where she’s at a very prestigious tournament and the norm is, after you play, you shake the hand of your opponent, whether you win or lose — she was beating one player after another and they would stand up and walk away and wouldn’t shake her hand. We see this in the footage.

It’s pretty revelatory, and one of the things I had mentioned that drew us to this film is the archive and how rich it is, because we’re not just telling people these things happened. You hear it from Bobby Fischer — you hear his words. You see people not shaking her hand. You see people cheating against her.

For a lot of people who’ve had these kinds of experiences — whether it’s women in sports or in other environments or professions — it’s enormously relatable. Audiences, from what I’ve heard, really connect to that part of the story.

Vanessa Do you think it was COVID and every single person on the planet watching The Queen’s Gambit at the same time, or is there something inherent in chess that just makes it so popular and watchable? Why is it such a compelling sport to watch, do you think?

Rory I think when you start to understand chess — and we tried to really break it down, particularly because I, Mark, and our team largely didn’t play chess — we had to make a movie that made sense to us.

Vanessa I love that. Yeah. I don’t play either, and I learned so much about the game from your film. I loved all your graphics, I loved all of that.

Rory Thank you. We really tried to break it down so everybody could understand it and have it be accessible. But when you do understand how the moves work and what the stakes are, I think it’s very hard not to be pulled into the game.

They use so many metaphors: it’s a battle, it’s a fight, it’s enormously technical, it’s mathematical, it’s philosophical, it’s spiritual. It operates on so many levels, and yet it’s sixty‑four squares on a black‑and‑white board, with people just moving pieces, right?

It’s interesting — the juxtaposition of the simplicity of it and the visual element of it, which of course is so important in filmmaking, and then, how do you translate all of those layers? That challenged us, as you can imagine. “How do you do that? This is going to be really, really hard.” But it challenged us in a way that was fun and exciting and pushed the limits of our creative process to really make this fun and dramatic.

I’ll take some credit, but I had a fantastic team of editors, and Mark Bailey as the writer–producer. Kevin McAllister was in there as well. We had wonderful editors — Azin Samari and Jesse Overman — and we partnered very early on with Netflix to make this film, and the executives there also really contributed.

So it was all of us really pushing. We all shared a similar vision, which was great — to get everybody on the same page. Then it was about, how do you deliver this? What can we do with music? What can we do with graphics? What can we do with storytelling? How do we bring these characters alive? How can we use archive in interesting ways and really push this to be engaging and fun, and help people understand what the stakes are, even people who’ve never played chess before?

That was an exciting challenge.

Vanessa Yeah. And as you said, there are so many stakes and layers because you’re also moving us through Cold War Hungary and a changing Europe and this global chess world. This is countries against countries who are playing. But you never lose the intimacy with Judit and her family and her father’s unique experiment. You manage this balance.

I wonder if you thought at all about what we can learn in the U.S. — women who play sports or who care about not losing Title IX — from Judit’s story. Because on this intimate level you share, she was under a certain level of control with her father, but she also evolves as a person and ends up seeming to have a great life.

So I wonder what people in this country who are concerned about what’s happening here might take away from watching your amazing film.

Rory Yeah. Well, listen, I think — of course you can imagine I’m engaged with the stakes of the election. In terms of the bigger issues of Title IX and the assault against women in this country over the last couple of years, I think that people can vote and look at who’s making these decisions, and whether those decisions are in the interests of women and of our children — girls and boys, for that matter.

So I think it’s important for people to be monitoring and aware of what’s happening, not just in sports but in other areas, in terms of the treatment of women and the fairness of what is accessible for women. That’s my larger feeling. We’ve got an election coming up that’s very important, as we all know. Focusing on that and voting and doing what you can is hugely important.

That aside, in terms of watching this film, I think what you’ll find, for people who haven’t seen it, is that what Judit’s father would say to her over and over again when she was up against situations where she was treated unfairly because she was a woman was: “Go back to the board and play your best. Go back to the board, play your best.”

Vanessa Thank God she kept winning. Thank God she kept winning.

Rory Exactly. She just kept at it. She wouldn’t go down the rabbit hole of “This is unfair, this person did this, da‑da‑da.” She was just like, “I’m going to play,” and then she kept winning over and over again.

At some point they couldn’t deny it. They couldn’t keep saying, “Well, you’re just lucky,” or “I had a bad day.” When she breaks through and she’s the youngest grandmaster — you can’t really dismiss that. When she’s the only woman who’s ever become a grandmaster, the only woman who’s been in the top fifty chess players in the world, it just becomes undeniable.

When you see her success — and she points this out in the film — she actually has a lack of resentment and a deep understanding of why she faced that level of pushback and, arguably, discrimination. In fact, none of these men had ever seen a woman be so successful. Just the fact that she was so successful, more than anything, made them challenge their assumptions.

Vanessa Yes.

Rory It’s very hard when you’re given no resources. There’s a contrast between the support that Kasparov was given in Russia, in his town, where he had all of the best people training him. He got all the resources. He was able to fly all over the world at a very young age.

Meanwhile, she wasn’t allowed to leave Hungary or communist Europe. She wasn’t able to engage in these big tournaments. They grew up in poverty, so they spent all of their resources getting a makeshift group of trainers to come in. Then the father learned how to play chess in order to train the kids. They had a library of books and they read the books on how to learn.

When you contrast that with the support that the men were given, it’s kind of stunning that she was that successful.

Vanessa It’s stunning, it’s inspiring, it’s so well told, and I’m so happy it’s you who told this story. Do you have any last thoughts on your whole body of work — all the documentaries you’ve made — and where this may sit in that body of work for you?

Rory Well, thank you for saying that, Vanessa. I’ve really enjoyed speaking with you today. This is a special film for me, and it was great to be on the journey with it and go with Judit to Sundance and have her be there — to see how young people, young girls and boys in particular, are so moved and motivated by her story.

We had a chance to show the film to students in Utah, and they just thought she was so cool. They were so psyched and gave her a standing ovation. It was so sweet to see how much her story is and continues to be motivating for other people. I really love that legacy.

Recently, it was fun because a couple of weeks ago she was asked by the head of the government in Hungary to run for president. She ended up declining, but I love the recognition she’s getting and the acknowledgement of everything she’s done in her life. It’s fun to find somebody whose story really wasn’t told, to elevate them, to see them go off in the world.

Not that she hasn’t already gone off in the world, but to just help emphasize and buoy and support her story and get it out there, and see how it can impact others, is enormously satisfying.

Vanessa Yes, and I’m just going to say this. I listened to your interview at Sundance and I loved the way you talked about how Sundance not only started your career because your first film went there and succeeded, but that you appreciate that Sundance has always treated documentaries on the same level as fiction films.

The larger world has confusion about this, that documentaries are somehow “less than.” I’ve spoken to filmmakers who’ve described it as being like the second‑class citizens in the Oscar campaign race: you’re put at the children’s table, you’re segregated.

I think it’s high time that a documentary enters the top‑ten list of films for Best Picture Oscar. I’m just saying, this is a good one to enter that race, because the level of male domination in the fiction film world right now is so sick, and I’m so sick of it. So please let this go into the top ten, Rory.

Rory Thank you, Vanessa. You’re the best. I appreciate you — I really appreciate the opportunity to talk to you and see you. So thanks to you and Ted. Okay, take care.

Vanessa Okay, all right. Same. Thanks. Thanks, Rory.

Rory Kennedy is an Academy Award–nominated, Primetime Emmy–winning documentary filmmaker who has directed and produced more than forty films. Her films have appeared across major platforms including Netflix, HBO, National Geographic, PBS, and Hulu.

Kennedy and her husband, Emmy-nominated writer and producer Mark Bailey, co-founded Moxie Films. This year, Kennedy directed and produced FREEFALL: A RECKONING FOR BOEING, a Netflix feature documentary and follow-up to DOWNFALL: THE CASE AGAINST BOEING, uncovering further revelations about the Boeing Company. The film premiered at the DC/DOX Film Festival in June 2026 and launches on Netflix this August. Also this year, Kennedy directed and produced QUEEN OF CHESS, a feature documentary about Judit Polgár, the greatest female chess player in the world. The film premiered at the 2026 Sundance Film Festival, Kennedy’s tenth documentary to debut there, and launched globally on Netflix on February 6.

Recent projects include the HBO documentary series THE SYNANON FIX (2024), examining the rise and transformation of the controversial addiction treatment organization, THE VOLCANO: RESCUE FROM WHAKAARI, a Netflix feature documentary about the deadly 2019 eruption of New Zealand’s Whakaari/White Island volcano that became the platform’s #1 film worldwide, and DOWNFALL: THE CASE AGAINST BOEING, a feature documentary investigating the two tragic Boeing 737-Max crashes which went on to break the Netflix Global Top 10.

Kennedy’s earlier work includes the Academy Award–nominated LAST DAYS IN VIETNAM and HBO’s ETHEL, which received five Primetime Emmy nominations. In 2007, her HBO film GHOSTS OF ABU GHRAIB premiered at Sundance and went on to win a Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Nonfiction Special.

Kennedy has served two terms as a Governor of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences and is the founder of the Climate Emergency Fund.

WATCH QUEEN OF CHESS NOW ON NETFLIX

…and stay tuned for our next vHopeful conversation about FREEFALL: A RECKONING FOR BOEING, Rory’s Netflix feature documentary coming out in August this year!

You know the drill now, right? Only you who support us financially get access to this offering. It will be available for free in a week or two over on FilmStack Dail…

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Ted’s Note: Today we (again!) bring you an excerpt from the book Dressing the Story — a rare, inside-the-room account of how films are truly made—not just written and directed, but seen. In these vivid, candid conversations, celebrated costume designer Debra McGuire.

Buy the book!

By Debra MGuire (with Jim Stark asking the questions)

What is a costume?

A costume is something someone wears that can turn them into something other than who they are. It’s something that can disguise, enhance, or help create an illusion.

Why are costumes important?

In film, the job of a costume is to express who the character is visually. We have information in the script that tells us who the character is and their role in the story. But it’s a visual medium, so the costume is an important part of conveying the story. Like the dialogue and plot, it’s a storytelling mechanism.

Music, dialogue, and lighting help create the mood, but what do costumes contribute to the audience’s involvement in the story?

When I read a script, my goal isn’t to find a literal expression for what I am reading or even decide what the costumes should look like. I try to get inside the head of the person telling the story and understand what it is that they want to convey to the audience. My job is to design costumes that will support that storytelling. If a costume is wrong or if it doesn’t support the story, it can be extremely distracting. The biggest nightmare for a director is to include something in the film that distracts the audience and somehow severs them from the illusion.

When I watch a movie, TV show, or play, the costumes either help me believe what I’m seeing or pull me out of the story and movie experience entirely. Authenticity in clothing is crucial. If a rough, gritty character appears in an outfit that looks freshly purchased, for instance, the illusion breaks. If someone who’s been sleeping on the streets for three weeks shows up in a crisp, spotless shirt instead of one that’s been aged, dirtied, and sweat-stained, it undermines the reality of the story. It all sounds obvious, but costumes, when done truthfully, really do help audiences stay immersed in the world being created.

Can you give me some examples in your work where the wardrobe or a piece of costume really helped tell the story?

It was when I was working on Face of a Stranger that I began to understand how profoundly costume could shape character. Gena Rowlands and Tyne Daly played two extraordinary women whose lives in the story could not have appeared more different. Tyne was a homeless woman living on the streets; Gena was a refined widow whose world had recently come undone. At first glance, these two women shared nothing in common, but over the course of the film, as the two women’s relationship deepened, I gradually shifted their wardrobes to reflect that evolution. Gena’s refined look softened and became simpler, while Tyne’s rough, disheveled exterior grew more polished and composed. By the final scene—set in a graveyard, their silhouettes side by side—the contrast between them had all but disappeared. The vast social and economic gulf that once defined them was gone. That really was the heart of the story: transformation, connection, and the way clothing can express both. What began as mere fabric became a narrative of change, an artifice of costume that revealed something deeply human.

We did Tyne’s fitting at her home in Venice, California. I instinctively felt her wardrobe needed to be built from the inside out, starting with the most intimate layer. What would a woman sleeping on the streets put on first, closest to her body, before piling on layers of protection? I remember sitting cross-legged on the floor, surrounded by concentric circles of clothing, choosing what would be the first layer, the second, and the next. Through those choices, I was building her world from the inside—the unseen life beneath the surface. Each piece carried its own history: a shirt once bought new but long worn thin, a sweater salvaged from a thrift shop, everything aged and softened by time and circumstance. The layering became a visual backstory, a tactile record of her struggle and resilience. I did all of this with Tyne right there in the room. With her input as we layered her wardrobe piece by piece she was discovering the woman she was about to inhabit. For a costume designer, that’s the ultimate experience: not only helping to create a character through clothing, but witnessing the actor finding that character through what they wear. For Gena’s role, I designed eleven elegant, Chanel-inspired suits. She loved them so much that she bought them all once filming had ended. It was only years later that I realized how lucky I was to begin my career with actors of this caliber.

Another potent example is Bad Teacher. The first time we see Cameron Diaz, we immediately understand the essence of her character. She is standing in the doorway of a fairly drab teacher’s lounge in a high school, wearing a bright yellow vintage dress. That costume tells us exactly who this woman is and hints at how the story will unfold. The way the dress clings to her body and the bold yellow combine to communicate volumes—without a single line of dialogue. We feel it instinctively. That’s the power of costume: it makes us believe, it makes us feel, it defines character before the actor even speaks. What kind of schoolteacher dresses this way?

The main character of Anchorman is named Ron Burgundy. Director Adam McKay didn’t want him to wear the color burgundy, but I insisted. “He has to be in a burgundy suit—he’s Ron Burgundy!” There’s a scene where Ron bursts through a billboard with his own image on it. I told Adam, “He needs to be wearing burgundy in that shot.” Adam wasn’t convinced, but he respected me enough to film it both ways—once in a brown suit and another in burgundy. When he saw the two takes cut together, he immediately realized I was right. Production had to build two billboards, and with multiples for suit options, this became an expensive decision.

Certain costume choices don’t just support a story—they become the story. The burgundy suit did exactly that. Every fan of the movie remembers that moment. It captures who Ron Burgundy is: self-important, oblivious, and perfectly ridiculous. Over the years, that single image has come to symbolize the film itself. That’s the ultimate proof of what costume design can do.

What is the most common misconception about what costume designers do?”

The biggest misconception is that because everyone wears clothes, people think anyone can design costumes. Especially when a show is set in contemporary times—jeans, t-shirts, suits, dresses—people assume, “How hard can that be?” They think it’s just shopping. I can’t tell you how many times a producer has said something like, “I saw some blouses at Bloomingdale’s that might be perfect for our lead—I could pick them up after work.” That kind of comment leaves me speechless, because it reveals a total misunderstanding of what we actually do. Designing costumes—even for a so-called “simple” modern show—is about storytelling, continuity, psychology, and tone. Every choice, down to the texture of a t-shirt or the shade of a lipstick, has meaning.

I once worked with a very well-known director who said to me during a fitting, “Let me take these photos home so my wife can look at them. She has great taste.” Imagine the hours of work, research, and preparation that go into building a wardrobe for an entire cast, then being told it’ll be run by someone’s spouse for approval. It’s both funny and humiliating.

Another misconception is that costume design is a glamorous job. It’s not. It’s a wonderful job—it’s creative, collaborative, and endlessly interesting. But glamorous? Hardly. We spend our days managing huge teams, dealing with fittings, breakdowns, logistics, budgets, and endless problem-solving. There’s nothing glamorous about hauling racks of clothes through mud or sewing until three in the morning because an actor changed their mind about a costume the night before shooting.

And finally, there’s this idea that “real” costume design only happens in period films—the corsets, the crinolines, the big gowns. Those are stunning and historically important, but they’re also bound by strict rules of accuracy. You’re often designing within the parameters of the time, the fabrics, the silhouettes, the methods of construction. In a contemporary project, you have far more freedom—you can invent, juxtapose, and play, but always staying true to the character. You’re not necessarily confined by history, but by truth—the truth of the character and the world they inhabit. For me, that’s where the most exciting and nuanced design work often happens.

Read the prior excerpt here:

Bio:

Debra McGuire is an award-winning American costume designer best known for defining the look of the hit sitcom Friends over its ten-season run. Her work spans film, television, and theatre, with credits including Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy, Superbad, Freaks and Geeks, and The Morning Show. Known for blending character psychology with contemporary fashion, McGuire has collaborated with filmmakers including David Mamet, Judd Apatow, and Jake Kasdan, and has become one of Hollywood’s most influential contemporary costume designers. Her website is here.

Order "Dressing The Story" here

In her book Dressing The Story, she reveals how clothing becomes character, how fabric carries emotion, and how the smallest visual detail can shape an audience’s experience without them ever realizing it. Drawing on decades of work across film and television, she takes us from first script reading to final fitting, from instinct to execution, showing how costume design is not decoration but storytelling in its most immediate, visual form.

Presented as a series of conversations with independent producer Jim Stark, and enriched by contributions from Gavin McGuire and longtime collaborator Joe Mastrolia, this book offers a uniquely intimate portrait of the collaborative spirit at the heart of costume design.

Whether you’re a filmmaker, designer, or simply someone who loves cinema, Dressing the Story opens your eyes to an essential, often invisible art—and leaves you watching every film differently.

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I am particularly excited to share this post because Cole shares one of the most requested documents that is hard to get your hands on. People frequently ask me for the “sales pitch” of a series. I have a few, but generally I have been forbidden to share them. Cole does us all a great service by sharing. But it gets even better, at least for me.

One of the films he cites is one by ’s grandfather, Walter Wanger. I love stories about that period and Walter has plenty.

Cole takes it even further than even that though. He gives you autopsy on why such a promising child died. Even the most perfect projects aren’t often able to be.

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Back in 2021, I wrote a feature spec that got a little attention around Hollywood. It turned out to be director bait, which didn’t exactly surprise me as I suspected it would be. I met several of my filmmaking heroes as a result of it, including two Aussie giants, John Hillcoat and the legendary Philip Noyce – who was as impressive as I hoped.

This spec I wrote also rekindled several producer relationships and kicked off a few others that led to some exciting creative opportunities. You can read about what happened with one of those here. Today, I’m going to tell you about the other that stands out in my memory — a prestige (as we like to call them) — eight-part TV mini-series. An international coproduction between the US and Sweden about one of the biggest movie stars in both American and Swedish history. And like everything else I touched in 2021, it somehow, miraculously attracted some giant names – in fact, it did more than that. Another legend, Lasse Hallström – director of such classics as My Life as a Dog, The Cider House Rules, and Chocolat – attached himself to direct the series.

But before I go on, I want to tell you what you should expect out of this piece, because I think it’s a mix of cinema history (at least in part), an infuriating cautionary tale for screenwriters in general, and a chance to study a sales document that attracted Lasse but also had a certain (shall remain unnamed) Swedish-English superstar circling the project before things went south.

THE DREAM PROJECT

The project in question was called “The Code”. This was in reference to the Hays Code, a strict, self-imposed set of moral guidelines that were enforced in American film from 1934 to 1968 – until its architect died or the American New Wave blew it up, depending on your point of view. Bit of a chicken and the egg scenario, I think.

In the next section, I’m going to get more into what the Hays Code meant for Hollywood and, more importantly, America. But first, you should know that, while “The Code” was ostensibly about the origin of the Hays Code, it was really about the rivalry between Swedish movie star Greta Garbo (nicknamed the Divine) and Joseph Breen (the moral crusader behind the Code).

This rivalry would lead Garbo to star in a romantic drama called Queen Christina (1933) about a Swedish queen who abdicates her thrown in order to live her life on her own terms rather than the dictates of her court. The film was an allegory for Garbo’s own struggles to live her best life in a town that wanted to control her to such a degree that she couldn’t be with the man she really loved.

Fun fact for those who don’t understand how adventurous pre-Code Hollywood was: Queen Christina features Garbo cross-dressing and sharing a same-sex kiss — in 1933!

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Before Shakespeare in Love and other similar stories that reimagined the origins of great works of art from the artist’s secret personal lives, there was Queen Christina.

The film was a smash hit, too, as you’ll learn, but it had disastrous consequences for Garbo, America, and, arguably, the world.

What else should know about “The Code”?

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The fall film festival season is now upon us. Sure it is still summer, but I have booked my ticket for our first stop of a festival whirlwind.

The lucky few filmmakers who are playing Telluride, Toronto, Venice or any of The October Flurry will start to feel that there is a possibility that their film could break through and get to colonize our collective mindshare for a month or maybe more. Perhaps the film will even enter the cultural conversation. That still happens, doesn’t it?

In most conversations with filmmakers about their festival strategy, they have a first choice festival they hope to get into, but their plan often stops there. The truth is a festival strategy requires you to have the next festivals lined up too. It is possible — particularly for the films that are in the top Q1 & Q2 festivals — to take a break after the premiere and not begin their festival push for several months, but with the ones that play the second half of the year, you often have to hit the ground running.

Just like most filmmakers don’t have a true festival strategy, most don’t seem to know how to get into a festival. Sure, there once was a time when festivals could look at a work-in-progress and make a fair assessment, and as much as they still probably can do that with many films, there is no reason to. Why bother? There is a surplus of films so you might as wait until there is no denying whether something is great or not.

But getting in to the festival of your choice isn’t based on just making sure you put your best foot forward with your film — it also requires you put your best foot forward with your relationship. Festivals are overwhelmed with submissions. Despite everyone’s effort to give each and every film fair consideration, mind set matters. The truth is you want them to know it is your film and you want that it is your film to positively matter to one doing the viewing.

So who are they? Who are these folks who have a say in your future? And how are you going to develop a relationship with them? If you are already late to that game, maybe you know someone whose film screened there? Or perhaps your Executive Producer is pals with the Artistic Director? Or maybe you have mastered the cold Linked In message request? Whatever you can do, a personal touch helps. That is if you know how to reach them.

I have been in the business now for over five hundred years, and I have not once seen a handy dandy list (even an out-of-date one!) of all the programmers at all the festivals. I don’t want to get your hopes up. I don’t have that for you today either. But I do have a starter list. I am not the one to hand out emails and cell phones to all of them. But we could build out a more comprehensive one together. Perhaps you could put some of the missing pieces into the comments for the rest of us now that I got us going, okay?

The Festival Programmers, a starter list

Berlin, Cannes, CPH:Dox, IDFA, Karlovy-Vary, Locarno, Mill Valley, Rotterdam, San Francisco, San Sebastian, Sarajevo, Sidewalk, Sundance, SXSW, Toronto, Tribcea, True/False, Venice, & Woodstock — that’s almost 20!

1. Berlinale: https://www.berlinale.de/en/contact.html

• Tricia Tuttle, Festival Director

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I was going to publish something other than this today. I have another edition of The Round Up ready for you, and as that depends on currency, it was stacked for GO!

It included Variety’s recent effort to convince us of a box office rebound — as well as some well thought out counter-wisdom from others. But as I slept on it, something ate at me. So much for trying to maintain a regular daily schedule of column types! Oh well, and onwards!

I think my third collision with a big idea occurred for me in high school. “Find the bias,” my history professor encouraged. “All history is written with bias.” It blew my mind, and I suspect you can see its ramifications in a great deal of my writing to this very day.

Our industry’s trade press is filled with bias. So are must of our “recognitions” about the way things are. I get a big kick out of trying to unravel these for myself and my readers though. Anytime it becomes apparent that the majority thinks one way, it is worth of trying to understand precisely why they do or might think this way. The majority opinion and the status quo is not the gospel, and for that matter… neither is the gospel.

That said, although the accepted truth or the encouraged accepted truth may not be accurate, a lot can be gained by examining it. And that’s what I give you today, instead of another round up. I give you a little examination of some of what is lurking underneath Variety’s assertion that “Movies Are On The Rebound”

This is also really a plea to, to make more news, news one can use. There’s a lot of advice and warning both in Variety’s article, but none of it really pops or even lands. Should every article be followed by a TL;DR list of bullet points? No, but some should. And I think that recent Variety article should have been. So that’s what I provide that for you now.

But of course it wasn’t that just that that I was working away on as I slept. It was the realization that if you are a regular HopeForFilm reader, you’ve already read each each and every point that Variety had to offer as recommendations as how to restore the FKATheFilmBiz. Why? Because I wrote about them years ago. Or maybe a few days back!

We know these things. The Gatekeepers know these things. Our audiences know these things too. And yet we don’t do these things. What’s up with that, friend? Why does Variety’s recommendation of the fairly obvious read as news, or with a little redraft could be “news you can use”.

I am not sure if you should read mine or Variety’s post first, but…

DO

Links to some of my prior posts on each specific recommendation are included for further exploration on the subject…

1. Make great movies. In today’s marketplace, quality is no longer optional. If audiences don’t love a film, they’ll tell everyone immediately.

2. Make films that feel fresh and original. Audiences are rewarding originality over repetition, even when it comes from first-time filmmakers.

3. Produce a diverse slate of films. A healthy industry needs a broad mix of genres, budgets, and voices—not just tentpoles.

4. Produce enough movies. The industry flourishes when there is a steady pipeline of theatrical releases across a variety of genres and audience profiles. More films create more opportunities for audiences to build moviegoing into their lives. Just don’t make them all the same.

5. Protect meaningful theatrical windows. Exclusive theatrical runs create cultural urgency and increase a film’s long-term value across every subsequent platform.

6. Support bold voices and emerging filmmakers. Every generation reinvents cinema. Younger creators are bringing new audiences and new forms of storytelling. We have a bad habit of neglecting those that do something differently.

7. Design films for specific audiences. Not every film needs to be for everyone. It’s better to become essential to one audience than merely acceptable to all. A regular cadence of supply at a consistent quality is part of how audiences are built.

8. Serve audiences that are currently underserved. Women, older audiences, Black audiences, Hispanic audiences, and others represent significant opportunities when films genuinely speak to them.

9. Treat theaters as destinations and cultural events. Moviegoing succeeds because it offers something impossible to duplicate at home: a shared communal experience. Yet we still can make it better. Much…

10. Build direct relationships with audiences. Filmmakers who understand and cultivate their communities are increasingly outperforming those who rely solely on traditional marketing.

11. Give audiences something worth talking about. Cultural conversation has become one of the most valuable forms of marketing.

12. Innovate instead of trying to recreate the past. The audience has changed. The business must continue changing with it.

13. Back bold ideas when audiences show they want them. Don’t let fear and risk-mitigation be the driving force. Confident investment produces bold filmmaking. Fear produces safe, repetitive decisions.

14. Recognize that theatrical success strengthens every other revenue stream. Theatrical isn’t separate from streaming and home entertainment—it enhances them.

15. Allow filmmakers the time to create exceptional work. Great films cannot be manufactured on rushed schedules. Invest in filmmakers, not just films.

Please recognize that these are not the be all and end all. This is just the list in that Variety article. I have many more recommendations, and some that I think are more important than these listed here.

These fifteen lessons largely emerge from five continuing Hope For Film arguments—quality, abundance, bespoke distribution, direct audience ownership, and long-term investment in artists. I guess I find it nice thatVariety article independently is finally arriving at the same conclusions.

But you know what they are really saying with this piece, right? If they have to say what’s already been being said for a good long time, and they call it news, what are they really saying? Someone is not doing their job. A lot of people in this business aren’t doing their job.

Before calling this post a day though, it probably makes sense to harvest the negs from that same article, right? What should we all be avoiding in the here and now — particularly if The Old World may have once allowed for it.

I mean why say something once, if we can say it perhaps better in the way it lands. I’d love it if some Paramount exec could cut this list out and put it on Ellison’s desk for his morning read.

DON’T

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The BlockTheMerger Round-Up #4

1

It is: “anti-competitive, anti-consumer and anti-creator.”

THINGS have been moving fast. I had this all stacked ready to enjoy the first stage of victory, but then came even more good news yesterday.

Of course, the other side of things, ie. Paramount, tried to spin it as good news for them, but they will be spending $650M a quarter because of it, which I don’t think anyone enjoys. And don’t forget why they have to spend that money. They were so cocky to believe that they could just push this merger through and make everyone think it was a “done deal”. Doesn’t look that way now does it?

Paramount’s decision to agree to pause the merger pending a trial is a giant tell. They are showing their cards: companies confident they will win in court don’t voluntarily put their mergers on hold for months, particularly when it will cost them a small fortune to do so.

Those on the side of democracy and fair competition, preserving jobs and opportunity were just fighting for their day in court. And now that is going to come. That is a victory for the good guys.

“Halting this merger while our case proceeds is a critical victory in our efforts to uphold the law and protect the film and television industries,” said New York’s attorney general, Letitia James, in a statement. “I look forward to continuing our case to stop this illegal merger.”

And Cali’s AG, Rob Bonta added:

“Our argument against this illegal merger is straightforward: When too few corporations have too much power in markets central to American life, it makes things more expensive, and it makes things worse,” he said. “Today’s agreement is great news for audiences, movie theaters, and the many people who write, build, and create the art, news, and entertainment so many of us enjoy. We are eager to continue to make our case in court and celebrate another tremendous win in our effort to ensure this unlawful merger never sees the light of day.”

Read it all here: https://variety.com/2026/film/news/paramount-warner-bros-merger-postpone-antitrust-trial-1236820601/

Paramount had said they would get this deal done by July 22nd. Ha! That day is long gone. I hate how the rich and powerful are often also the arrogant and selfish. Even before yesterday’s “deal”, the judge recognized that more time was needed. You can call that The First Injunction. And we just had The Second.

And more from that First Injunction:

https://www.freepress.net/news/federal-judge-issues-temporary-restraining-order-stop-paramount-skydance-merger

2

Victory is sweet… but the fight continues on.

As I said, this is moving fast, and this was all from The First Injunction a few days back…

3

The Ellison Men have made it clear that they are doing this for political reasons, so let me know if you want to bet on what will happen to CNN, if their merger succeeds.

“Democracy dies in darkness.: Remember that? What do you think will happen to the diversity of reporting and coverage with further consolidation?

“A combination of CBS News, home to “Face the Nation” as well as “60 Minutes,” with CNN, a pioneer of 24-hour cable news that is on track to generate $650 million in profit this year, would be one of the largest consolidations in news gathering in decades.”

NYTimes tries to figure it out what will be the likely outcome. To me though, there is no question. Don’t be fooled, again.

Others are taking notice…

4

Beyond just media consolidation, there are other concerns with the merger… like foreign investment…

I would have thought the more conservative side of our government might have raised this — but it has come from the liberal side. Go figure.

“On April 24, 2026, Paramount filed a petition for declaratory ruling with the Federal Communications Commission (Commission) seeking approval for significant indirect foreign investment, formally disclosing that nearly half—approximately 49.5 percent—of the combined Paramount-Warner Bros. Discovery entity would be owned by foreign investors. Paramount’s petition seeks far more than approval for the 49.5 percent aggregate foreign investment. The media conglomerate is requesting advance approval for each foreign investor to increase its individual stake up to 20 percent in the future, which, should each of the Sovereign Wealth Funds exercise that option, could result in up to 100 percent aggregate foreign ownership of one of the nation’s largest broadcast media companies,”

5

JIC you forgot… oligarchy is the root of a lot of evil in America

speaks clearly of the designs of the current wave of media consolidation. Like using their capital to buy influence in American politics, the richest men are using their capital to buy up the media here and influence how we all think.

Paul Krugman

Oligarchy and the Media

For all my interviews and more, subscribe on YouTube…

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16 days ago · 1851 likes · 358 comments · Paul Krugman

“Ellison, or the Ellison family —because nominally this is Ellison’s son in charge of Paramount — has already acquired CBS and has hired Bari Weiss to basically corrupt and destroy that network. If the deal for takeover of Warner proceeds, then CNN will get the same treatment. I’m finding CNN a very good news source, just braver at taking on what’s really happening than my old employer, the New York Times, which is a great news organization and may be more necessary than ever, but tends to be cautious — and CNN is a little bit less cautious.

But anyway, if he gets away with it, then CNN as we know it will almost disappear. It will almost turn into Fox News. Now, that won’t be a profitable venture. There’s already a Fox News, and so creating another one is not going to actually produce a lot of profits, if any, but that’s not the objective. This is buying influence.

Elon Musk, of course, took over the app formerly known as Twitter. Which was already becoming a more difficult place even before its takeover. I used to have, I guess, I think I had 4 million followers there. But it was impossible. I had to shut off comments because of the cesspool that Twitter had become. But now it is really by design. It is heavily tilted. That can be quantified. The algorithm really tilts it towards right-wing stuff, promotes really rabid racist views.”

BONUS:
What would you do with the 100’s of millions you looted from a once great film studio (if you were willing to ruin something for your own personal benefit and that of the shareholders, that is)?

Warner Bros. Discovery CEO David Zaslav is trying to buy the bankrupt Westchester County summer camp his kids attended.

https://www.curbed.com/article/david-zaslav-offer-mohawk-day-camp-bankruptcy.html

(HT: LA Material)

BONUS BONUS:

This is that bath:

https://seekingalpha.com/article/4923814-oracle-is-taking-the-bullet-netflix-dodged

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Intro:

Hey hey! Grateful to take the reins at Hope For Film. I am Mo_Diggs and I write about media, culture, politics and tech here and here. As I have mentioned numerous times, this decade is unique because film, not music, is at the center of countercultural rage and countercultural cool. These are some of the best reports from the line of battle!

1

The End of Spectacle

Alex Rollins Berg typically writes great essays on film but he may have outdone himself here. AI has made spectacle besides the point now. People want stories now. The blockbuster success of The Odyssey this past weekend proves the point. It is one thing to retell a classic tale and another to try to revive He-Man again.

2

A Film For Our Times, Unfortunately

I have been excited about Backrooms and Obsession more as a business story; how both films outperformed a Star Wars sequel. But increasingly I have had to make the distinction between liking a film’s box office performance (and the implications for what that means for future films) and liking the films themselves. I liked that last year’s Sinners was a blockbuster based on an original idea, but I did not consider it Best Picture material.

Sam Jennings is a current film critic who hearkens back to the critics of yore that wrote reviews you couldn’t flatten into a RT score. His ambivalence for the film Backrooms beguiles me that much more than most critics cut-and-dry thumbs up/thumbs down. While criticizing the film’s emptiness, he also acknowledges how well the film reflects our current mood. Ironically I am even having difficulty encapsulating his opinion in this paragraph, all the more reason to give it a read for yourself. Like most great critics, agreeing with him is not a requirement for enjoying and appreciating him.

3

Small Cinemas in a Quiet Neighborhood

What most people don’t get about revolution: it is as much about moving with secrecy and stealth as it is about massive explosions. Filmmaker Magazine’s comprehensive overview of the microcinema movement in Ridgewood, a relatively quiet countercultural hub in Queens, is the type of article you revisit again and again. Not just to read about the great theaters and series; living close to Ridgewood like I do, in Bushwick, it lovingly captures its charms. But please share the link discreetly.

4

The Dumb Comedy Renaissance

Here’s what I wrote in my newsletter back in 2024:

Cult film Hundreds of Beavers (when’s the last time you heard “cult film” regarding a contemporary movie) was shot on a shoestring budget and self-distributed. Through word of mouth and online buzz, it more than made back its money. Hundreds of Beavers (which I haven’t seen yet) is the inverse of Snakes on a Plane. Snakes on a Plane was a Hollywood film that got mocked many months before its release. The title — and the revelation that foul-mouthed star Samuel Jackson was attached — led to memes and fan-made trailers (including the infamous line that was later added to the actual movie: “I’m tired of these motherfucking snakes on this motherfucking plane”). The actual release fell short of studio expectations because, at that time, Internet culture was not synonymous with culture. Hundreds of Beavers, of course, had no pre-release hype. Unlike Snakes, Beavers was confidently stupid, from the page to the screen. It might not be a Clerks-level success, but its profit margins were good enough to to get it profiled in Variety.

A year later, I wrote this about Friendship:

If it surprises you how popular this film is with the youth, you are forgetting that comedy is the lingua franca of Gen Z. It is also mind-boggling that most studios had cold feet about Tim Robinson as a movie star, when most youths are laughing at his “I Think You Should Leave” sketches on TikTok and Reels while avoiding going to the multiplex to watch any of the “more bankable” stars. Friendship might just become this generation’s secret handshake, like Bob Dylan’s Highway 61 Revisited was for a different one. The roaring laughter of the theater audience (which hasn’t been heard after years of Hollywood avoiding comedies to better appeal to global markets and indie studios steering clear so as not to disturb their stuffy liberal patrons) is like the signal of a new age, like the opening arpeggio of The Byrd’s “Mr. Tambourine Man” that announced the arrival of the Sixties.

Right diagnosis, wrong patient. Turns out Nirvanna The Band The Show The Movie is the film that has inspired a cultish legion that no rock band this decade has inspired. AV Club’s Erik Adams explores how the anarchic spirit of dumb comedy is back in films like Gail Daughtry and Jackass: Best And Last. It’s only fair I give him a block quote:

But with the death of the theatrical studio comedy, and comedy itself turning into an increasingly irksome battleground in the Forever Culture Wars, it became more difficult to find the proudly silly and the inventively asinine. The art of the hard joke seemed to escape an entire generation of TV writers. Every new Adam Sandler Netflix movie felt cheaper and lazier than the last. David Zaslav did his best Judge Doom impression and tried to drop two whole Looney Tunes features into The Dip.

But in this wet, hot, American summer of 2026, the tide seems to be turning. A new Jackass opened a few weeks ago; the latest from David Wain, Gail Daughtry And The Celebrity Sex Pass, is out this weekend. Coyote Vs. Acme finally sees the light at the end of the tunnel painted onto a rock wall in August. A new age of stupid comedy is dawning. It’s about damn time.

5

Jonathan Rosenbaum

I cannot tell you how many people I meet that don’t know who Jonathan Rosenbaum is. He is a legendary film critic who wrote for The Chicago Reader and helped define the midnight movie along with Village Voice legend J. Hoberman. He is on Substack now and the fact that I have more subscribers than he does is unacceptable. Much of his writing was from the frontline of New Hollywood as well as the ‘90s indie film revolution. He happily skewered the sacred cows of both movements (Robert Altman and Quentin Tarantino respectively). While reading his deep dive on Richard Pryor, I stopped with petulant impatience when he maligned Live on the Sunset Strip, but I came back weeks later and realized…he didn’t malign the special. He simply didn’t submit to it with unwavering fealty. Like a true critic, where most people see gods, he sees mortals who deserve less — or more — zeroes in their paychecks.

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— ESG to those that know him well — dives deep and answers the questions we all need to know. This is a classic one of his and I am thrilled to be able to share it with you today. It will always be relevant regardless of when it was written or when you are reading it.

Although we will have a few more ESG’s classic hits on our platter in the months ahead, do yourself a favor and subscribe to him today.

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When I started this post (years ago!), I had recently had something fairly wonderful happen to me.

A couple of people I know reached out to me and offered me an opportunity of a lifetime. They asked me to join them in building an EU-based English-language studio focused on authored cinema. Wow.

I wanted that job — and I knew I was best choice for it too. I had already given it a great amount of thought and had drafts of different plans for it, in different directions. I was ready, but still I was kind of shocked the opportunity had come to me.

It truly was stunning to me because such things are so incredibly rare — both the idea and their offer. When the good acts come from others, they sharpen our focus on what the typical situation is, which unfortunately usually ain’t so great... not even close. The good makes us see how bad things usually are. Which is depressing.

I recognize this may be another situation of how “to the hammer everything looks like a nail”. Our perspective frequently becomes self-fulfilling. If we want to see the negative you don’t ever have to look too hard. But what if we want to see the positive? Why does that need to be a struggle?

I believe that people are good. Honestly, I do. They want to do good. I believe that almost everyone entered the film business because they fell in love with cinema, somehow they had it change their lives or what they thought possible, and they believed they could somehow make a positive contribution to our field. And yet, with all that positivity and faith of their original intent, I find it very difficult to see people in our industry ever doing anything other than looking out for their own self-interest. And that is what has to change.

We seem to overlook the opportunity to make things better even in the easiest way — simply by helping each other.

The challenges of mere survival encourage many of us to suppress our more utopian pursuits. I understand why many participants resign themselves to a pragmatic point of view, accepting that this is “just the way it is” and then putting their head down and plugging away, trying to find a way to get their film made. A life in film is now barely sustainable, after all. And our industry is not a meritocracy, is it? And for all the strides that have been made to diversify our ranks, there remains tremendous prejudice and discrimination everywhere.  We too often just fall back on excuses that our desires are “off mandate”. Is anyone willing to strive to better this world anymore – particularly if it doesn’t just immediate benefit themselves?

But what about if we chose to behave differently? What if we actually tried to be nice? Or generous? Or compassionate? I’d certainly like that version of our world I whole lot better and suspect you would too.

Fuck, yeah.

I’ve been in this business a very long time. It has been good to me. I’ve been privileged. I am grateful. I’ve done my best to help others, and think I have done pretty well at that. This is not a pat myself on the back session either, but I want to point a few things out and make sure they land for all of us.

These kind things I do, I do them without expectation that anything will come from them in return. Not only do I try not to let my success limit the opportunities of others, but I work to have it generate new opportunities for others. I want to help others, particularly those that do the sort of work I admire. Yet….  remember how I started by saying I started this post years ago, but didn’t finish or publish it then?

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1

If it looks, feels, and smel…

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In this episode of vHopeful Conversations, I sit down with writer-director Peter Glanz to talk about his bold new period satire Savage House, a 1715-set black comedy that uses wigs, corsets, and a pox-ridden elite household to mirror the madness of our own political moment. We dig into how January 6th and QAnon-era unrest pushed Peter toward a story of …

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Not every weekend in 2026 needs to match or exceed every weekend in 2025 (or any other year) if A) the films that are opening are performing well enough on their own terms, and B) there’s enough in the marketplace for theaters to not panic every time a tentpole underwhelms. However, last weekend’s estimated total of $126 million was down 1/3 from the $2…

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“We live in capitalism, its power seems inescapable —

but then, so did the divine right of kings.

Any human power can be resisted and changed by human beings.

Resistance and change often begin in art.”

— Ursula LeGuin

TL;DR —

• A viable alternative to media consolidation exists

• deep pockets are not the only advantage in a complex, competitive process

• people power

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