Several years ago, two Palestinians and two Israelis decided to make a documentary about the Israeli government’s efforts to demolish homes in Masafer Yatta in the southern West Bank.
“Even if you know the facts and understand that Masafer Yatta is being displaced so that settlements can take over the land, it’s very different when you see the face of a family that’s being kicked out of their house,” said Yuval Abraham, an Israeli journalist whose friendship with a Palestinian activist, Basel Adra, forms an important subplot of the movie they made. (Israel’s Supreme Court ruled the government has the right to clear the area.)
“No Other Land” received the best documentary prize at the Berlin International Film Festival, where it premiered in February, and similar recognition recently from the New York Film Critics Circle and the International Documentary Association. It was acquired for distribution in 24 countries, including the United Kingdom and France. And on Tuesday, it found itself on the official shortlist for the documentary feature Oscar.
But it still has no U.S. distributor. Aside from a couple of festivals and a one-week run at a Manhattan theater, filmgoers here could largely neither buy a ticket for “No Other Land” nor stream it.
“It could perhaps be explained by the thought that this topic is sensitive, and, ‘Why touch it? Why take the risk?’” Abraham said.
It is not the only documentary facing this predicament. “Union,” a dispatch from the picket lines and Zoom calls of the Amazon Labor Union’s successful organizing drive at a Staten Island warehouse, and “The Bibi Files,” an exposé of the corruption case against the Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, featuring leaked interrogation videos, are two other shortlisted current-affairs documentaries that neither studios nor streaming platforms have acquired.
Because distribution offers are insufficient or nonexistent, these movies and others are almost impossible to see in theaters and often difficult or expensive to stream, and they are losing out on the marketing muscle and financial upside that come with a robust distribution deal.
“We’re very happy with what we’ve been able to accomplish in self-distribution,” said Brett Story, a director of “Union,” “but it would be amazing to have the resources of a big platform.”
Twenty years ago, topical documentaries like Michael Moore’s “Fahrenheit 9/11” (2004) and “An Inconvenient Truth” (2006), which featured Al Gore, became blockbusters. More recently, “I Am Not Your Negro” (2017), about James Baldwin, and “RBG” (2018), about Ruth Bader Ginsburg, earned modest theatrical success and streaming after-lives. “Knock Down the House,” which chronicled the congressional primary campaigns of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and other progressive women, was acquired by Netflix in 2019 for a reported $10 million — a Sundance Film Festival documentary record at the time.
“My current joke,” said Rachel Lears, that film’s director, “is we are living through what jazz musicians lived through between the 1950s and 1970s, from being mass entertainment to being niche, except it happened in, like, three years.”
Another unacquired topical documentary is “The Last Republican,” a profile of Adam Kinzinger, the former Republican congressman-turned-critic of Donald J. Trump. Its director, Steve Pink, is known for successful comedic features like “Grosse Point Blank” and “Hot Tub Time Machine.”
“With the election turning out the way it did, I think there was a question mark with some political films,” said Josh Braun, a co-founder of Submarine, which represents “The Last Republican” in sales.
Others also blamed a polarized country for the situation.
“We were told outright,” said Story, of “Union,” “that the big streamers are not interested in social-issue docs.”
Conservative documentaries are a partial exception. This year’s polemic “Am I Racist?” featuring the Daily Wire podcaster Matt Walsh grossed more than $12 million. Jeremy Boering, the chief executive of the right-leaning Daily Wire, credited the movie’s success to “incredibly aggressive” promotion of the film, through personalities like Walsh and Ben Shapiro, a conservative commentator and Daily Wire co-founder.
Documentaries do thrive on streaming services. But platforms tend to drive resources and promotion toward those with the most eye-catching subjects — true crime and celebrities.
“It is crazy,” said Thom Powers, the Toronto International Film Festival’s documentary programmer and co-founder of the DOC NYC festival, “that the world has a 10-part documentary about Michael Jordan, but we don’t have a 10-part documentary about the rise of Donald Trump.”
Some filmmakers have opted for self-distribution. “The Bibi Files” has played in select theaters and is rentable for a suggested $12 on Jolt, a start-up that uses data to find viewers interested in documentaries’ subject matter. Gathr, another platform, offers “Union” for rent.
But these options, said Tara Hein-Phillips, Jolt’s chief executive, “shouldn’t have to exist.”
The simmering panic among the supporters of these films comes from the sense that more than a genre is under threat.
“Movies are a cultural space that can occupy a common ground and reach people past their silos of information,” said Powers.
The struggles of the topical documentary, he added, are “cutting off a key source in the culture that made room for independent voices, voices that were speaking truth to power.”
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