As of early January, it’s nonetheless too quickly to understand how the yr will form out for documentary movie, with many initiatives nonetheless to be introduced. However between headline-dominating tales virtually begging for a long-form remedy and the evergreen pipeline of movie star examinations, there’s already a full slate of nonfiction cinema for 2025. From examinations of the UnitedHealthcare CEO capturing to Elon Musk, the Titan submersible implosion to the grassroots combat in opposition to guide bans within the US, listed here are 10 of probably the most anticipated documentaries this yr.
Sly Lives! (AKA the Burden of Black Genius)
Constructing on his 2021 Oscar-winning documentary Summer time of Soul, in regards to the 1969 Harlem Cultural Pageant, director and Roots drummer Ahmir “Questlove” Thompson continues to discover the legacy of pioneering Black musicians with Sly Lives! (AKA the Burden of Black Genius). The almost two-hour movie on Sly and the Household Stone, which can premiere at Sundance in January earlier than heading to Hulu the subsequent month, captures the groundbreaking funk band’s “rise, reign and subsequent fadeout whereas shedding gentle on the unseen burden that comes with success for Black artists in America”, based on the press launch. As with Summer time of Soul, Sly Lives! boasts a slate of distinguished musical friends, together with Andre 3000, D’Angelo, Chaka Khan, Nile Rodgers, Q-Tip, Jimmy Jam, Terry Lewis, George Clinton, Ruth Copeland and Clive Davis, in addition to former band members and a number of other folks near frontman Sly Stone.
Musk
Alex Gibney, the prolific documentarian who has turned a pointy eye on Elizabeth Holmes, Enron and the Church of Scientology, has spent a number of years wanting into the world’s richest man/Tesla founder/“X” proprietor/unofficial presidential adviser. The ensuing movie, Musk, nonetheless has no confirmed launch date (HBO has home distribution rights, whereas Common snapped up worldwide rights in late 2023), although loads of materials, particularly as Musk now heads the “division of presidency effectivity” for incoming president Trump. The movie will purportedly ship a “definitive and unvarnished examination” of the erratic billionaire. Musk, who didn’t take part within the venture, has dismissed the portrait on X as a “hit piece”, to which Gibney responded: “How would you already know?”
The UnitedHealthcare CEO/Luigi Mangione movie
By no means one to relaxation, apparently, Gibney and his manufacturing firm, Jigsaw, introduced in mid-December that they’d associate with Nameless Content material for an as-yet untitled venture on the capturing of the United Healthcare CEO, Brian Thompson, by 26-year-old Luigi Mangione. The venture guarantees to the touch on each the capturing itself – Mangione shot Thompson in midtown Manhattan as he walked into an annual investor convention – and the bigger conversations in regards to the US medical insurance business sparked by the crime, with some hailing Mangione as a folks hero. In accordance with the logline: “From the crime’s seemingly meticulous execution to the alleged killer’s manifesto and his Ivy League background to the general public’s unapologetic apathy in the direction of the sufferer, the investigative deep dive will ask how killers are created, what this killing says about our society and the values we place on who lives and who dies.”
Untitled Rihanna documentary
For the sixth (!) yr in a row, my most anticipated documentary of the yr is the nonetheless untitled, endlessly in purgatory movie on Rihanna, which was bought to Amazon for $25m in 2019. Final yr, I predicted I might make my annual plea for this movie in January 2025 and, alas, we as soon as once more haven’t any updates, simply the data that about 1,200 hours of Rihanna footage – pre-Tremendous Bowl half-time present and the beginning of her second son! – are simply on the market on director Peter Berg’s slicing room flooring awaiting her approval, with the “executed and bought” movie (sequence …?) possibly by no means to see the sunshine of day. Will it’s this or R9 first? Right here’s to hoping in 2025.
Predators
For 4 years, beginning in 2004, the Dateline NBC program To Catch a Predator confronted alleged youngster predators in dramatic vogue – partially utilizing hidden cameras, the present adopted undercover sting operations to lure suspected predators to a supposed assembly with a minor, solely to be confronted by host Chris Hansen and, normally, arrested. Predators, a brand new movie from director and producer David Osit (Mayor), examines the rise and stunning fall of the favored program, which was cancelled in 2008 after the suicide of a person caught exchanging photos with a sting operator posing as a 13-year-old boy, as police and NBC digicam operators entered his residence. Premiering at Sundance this month, the movie will even have a look at the world of sordid entertainment-cum-true crime the present helped create.
The Librarians
Given, um, political occasions scheduled for January, Librarians, a brand new documentary on the nationwide pattern towards guide bans, is completely timed for a Sundance premiere. The movie, directed by Kim A Snyder (Us Children, Newtown) and executive-produced by Sarah Jessica Parker, follows a gaggle of librarians dubbed the “FReadom Fighters”, who’ve fought rightwing guide bans in Texas, Florida and elsewhere. “They’ve been standing as much as the ideology that forestalls youngsters from getting access to sure books and so they have put their very own lives and their household’s lives in danger, however they haven’t backed down,” stated Parker on the Purple Sea movie competition in December. The documentary will focus particularly on Amanda Jones, a librarian in southern Louisiana who confronted intense backlash for defending college students’ entry to books with LGBTQ+ themes and revealed a memoir on the combat in opposition to guide bans in America.
It’s By no means Over, Jeff Buckley
The Sundance movie competition has more and more been residence to a number of movie star musician doc premieres, and this yr is not any completely different, with a brand new portrait on the American singer-songwriter Jeff Buckley. It’s By no means Over, Jeff Buckley, from director Amy Berg (Janis: Little Woman Blue), will reportedly embrace never-before-seen footage, unique voice messages and interviews with these near the Grace musician, who by chance drowned at age 30 in 1997.
Apocalypse within the Tropics
Director Petra Costa’s exploration of the evangelical Christian motion in her native Brazil technically premiered on the competition circuit in 2024, however will get a vast launch through Netflix sooner or later this yr. Costa’s Oscar-nominated documentary Fringe of Democracy tracked the rise of the far proper in Brazil below theTrump-esque president Jair Bolsonaro; Apocalypse within the Tropics examines considered one of its major fuels. The movie options interviews from each side of the nation’s intense political divide, together with televangelist and Bolsonaro adviser Silas Malafaia and Bolsonaro’s liberal predecessor/successor Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, for a portrait of the high-quality, dissolving line between democracy and theocracy.
Untitled Titan submersible movie
As with every headline-dominating, head-scratching story, the tragic saga of the doomed Titan submersible, which imploded throughout a personal journey to view the wreck of the Titanic in June 2023, has graduated from frenzied information protection to barely extra thought-about documentary. The as-yet untitled movie comes from Aron Arngrimsson, stated to be the final one that noticed the five-person submersible crew alive as he closed the vessel’s hatch. It “solely tells the emotional expertise of 5 Titan crew members, revealing the household tales behind the media headlines and exposing the painful penalties of an exploration gone incorrect”, based on a synopsis from producers Soiled Dozen Productions and RadicalMedia. The movie, reportedly in post-production, is about to debut in 2025.
Elway
And one for the sports activities followers – a documentary on the legendary NFL quarterback John Elway, probably the most celebrated American soccer gamers in historical past, is coming to Netflix. The movie from Skydance Sports activities, which not too long ago produced a docu-series on the controversial QB Aaron Rodgers for the platform, will discover Elway’s “extraordinary journey” on and off the sphere, from his early days as a burgeoning baseball star – he was a New York Yankees draftee – to his school days at Stanford to his 16-year profession with the Denver Broncos, which resulted in 1999 with two Tremendous Bowl championships (and later a 3rd, as an govt). Elway, directed by Ken Rodgers and produced by Peyton Manning’s Omaha Productions, will presumably premiere this yr, with a launch date to be introduced.
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