The box office success of A24’s You Can See Everything, the documentary about disgraced Theranos founder Elizabeth Holmes from directors Nathan Fielder and Lance Oppenheim, underlines what’s working for doc producers these days, the MIA Market in Rome was told on Thursday.
“It’s only celebrities, or if you have a really good investigative story, that will sell. Preferably when Beyonce does the narration,” Lea Fels, partner and co-owner of Dutch documentary maker Scenery, told a panel on indie doc making. Factual films that pull the curtain back on fame or tabloid scandals are all the rage with audiences in the global marketplace.
These include Oscar winner Alex Gibney‘s four-hour dissection of Elon Musk, Disney’s intimate Oasis reunion movie, NAZA, the politically charged Gaza documentary from Israeli directors Yuval Abraham and Rachel Szor, and the ICE documentary They’re Here from Laura Poitras and Rachel Lauren Mueller.
Anna Godas, CEO of U.K.-based Dogwoof, said content aimed at streamers or U.S. buyers is a major consideration for her production banner, as our films about the lives and experiences of celebrities. “Unless it’s crime, or someone famous, it’s not going to work. That’s the reality at this point,” she explained.
To navigate an industry-wide malaise for documentary producers brought on by industry consolidation and budget contractions, Dogwoof is experimenting with bite-sized non-fiction films structured like micro dramas, and on YouTube with A Coffee With… series. “I love that someone can come and see a documentary and not be subject to gatekeepers, who are limiting what people can see,” Godas argued.
Stephanie Carter, an executive producer with THIRTEEN, the New York-city based PBS station, said selling documentaries is less a concern for her platform than the loss of funding after the Trump administration in Washington, D.C. pulled indirect funding to NPR and PBS in 2025 amid a conservative backlash.
“We lost our funding, which was sad, and we spent the past year coming up with a new financial model,” Carter explained. That means attaching a distributor to series content, or THIRTEEN investing some of its own funds to keep a series going.
Of course, times of political and economic turmoil leave doc producers having to weigh making films that can find audiences and making films a company really believes in. “Everytime it’s a challenge. But as a producer, do the projects you feel need to be told, but be realistic as a company of the results. And find partners,” Fels argued.
Godas said the challenge in balancing creativity and commercial concerns is finding accessible projects that have a deeper meaning for audiences. An example is Dogwood, which grew from a theatrical distributor to becoming a full-service company, releasing in UK theaters NAZA, the Gaza documentary film from Israeli directors Yuval Abraham and Rachel Szor.
“It’s not something we do for money, but we can do it,” Godas said of the U.K. rights mostly residing with The Guardian, which plans to stream the controversial film for free on its website starting in November.