Top Docs: Award-Winning Documentary Filmmakers

"Jane Elliott Against the World" with Judd Ehrlich

In a special, in-person conversation from the 2026 Sundance Film Festival, director Judd Ehrlich (“Keepers of the Game”) joins Ken in Park City to discuss his new documentary “Jane Elliott Against the World,” which just had its world premiere in the festival’s U.S. Documentary Competition section.
 
In the opening scene of “Jane Elliott Against the World,” the film’s eponymous protagonist rather provocatively calls herself a “bitch” — actually, an acronym for “Being in Total Control, Honey.” As a teacher in a rural Iowa school in the 1960s, Jane devised a provocative social experiment called “Blue Eyes/Brown Eyes” intended to make her students understand what it feels like to be an oppressed minority based on outward appearance. The effect on her students was immediate and profound, and the experiment reverberated across the country, making Jane famous. Judd describes getting to know Jane and learning from her daughters how, growing up, Jane’s full-time anti-racism activism took its toll on the family. Now 92, Jane shows few signs of slowing down. She may not be in total control, but, to anyone who tries to stand in her way, be forewarned.
 
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The Presenting Sponsor of "Top Docs" is Netflix.

"The Devil is Busy" with Christalyn Hampton & Rose Arce

A day in the life of a women’s reproductive healthcare center is unlike any other. In this post-Roe world, potential danger lurks in the dark or right out in the open. In the tense and nuanced Oscar-nominated documentary short “The Devil Is Busy” (directed by Christalyn Hampton and Geeta Gandbhir), we follow Tracii, the head of security at an Atlanta women’s health clinic, as she goes through her routine to ensure that no physical harm comes to those seeking care or dispensing it.
 
Christalyn and producer Rose Arce join Ken on the pod to discuss the intense stress facing Tracii, her colleagues, and the clinic’s patients (referred to as “guests”), many of whom have traveled hundreds of miles for an appointment at one of the few remaining abortion providers in the region. Over the course of the film, we learn more about Tracii, the difficult decisions she has had to face, and the role that religion and a forgiving God play in her life. Countering the shrill voices of the male anti-abortion protestors outside, Tracii’s simple acts of kindness transform an average day into something extraordinary.
 
“The Devil Is Busy” has been nominated for the Oscar for Best Documentary Short. It can be streamed on HBO MAX.
 
The Presenting Sponsor of "Top Docs" is Netflix.
 
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"Perfectly a Strangeness" with Alison McAlpine

 ”Three donkeys are in an unnamed desert and they discover an abandoned astronomical observatory.  And the universe.” 
That’s how Alison McAlpine (“Second Sight”, “Ghostmen of Skye”, "Cielo") describes her Oscar-nominated short documentary “Perfectly a Strangeness” to Mike.  In this wordless film, McAlpine uses the “fundamentals of cinema”– sound, movement, light, shadow, reflections – to craft a “conversation” between the muscular, visceral donkeys and the advanced, technological observatory.  The resulting 15 minutes are a rare amalgam of mundanity and profundity, one which will make you see living creatures, man-made objects, and even the night sky anew.
The Presenting Sponsor of "Top Docs" is Netflix.
 
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“Armed Only With a Camera" with Craig Renaud

While covering the devastating effects of the Russian bombing of Ukraine, documentary filmmaker/journalist Brent Renaud was shot and killed by Russian forces on March 22, 2022. He was the first foreign-born journalist killed in the war. Now, Brent’s filmmaking partner and younger brother Craig has made the harrowing documentary “Armed Only With a Camera: The Life and Death of Brent Renaud.”
 
Craig joins Ken on the pod to discuss Brent’s extraordinary career, the lasting impacts that Brent had on those he encountered while shooting in hot zones and other places of trauma around the world, and how he chose to honor Brent by picking up a camera in the aftermath of personal tragedy. With this remarkable film, Renaud Brothers Films lives on as a powerful reminder of all that can be accomplished when journalists and filmmakers do their incredibly valuable and dangerous work — and all that can be lost in a fleeting moment.
 
“Armed Only With a Camera: The Life and Death of Brent Renaud” is nominated for an Oscar for Best Documentary Short. It can be streamed on HBO MAX.
 
The Presenting Sponsor of "Top Docs" is Netflix.
 
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“Children No More: Were and are Gone” with Hilla Medalia

 
Protestors silently bearing the pictures of children killed in Gaza: they hold no other signs, chant no slogans.  
 
Hilla Medalia ("Leftover Women", "Prisoner X") speaks to Mike about her Oscar-nominated short documentary, “Children No More: Were and are Gone”, explaining how this act held weekly in Tel Aviv–where the images of the dead in Gaza are not regularly shown in the mainstream media–is intended less as sheer defiance than it is a call for opening a dialog.  The film’s culminating images of the mute participants buffeted with abuse, as well experiencing the heartfelt anguish of their opponents’ own losses and traumas, can be read both tragically as well as hopefully.
 
The Presenting Sponsor of “Top Docs” is Netflix.
 
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Academy Awards Breakdown 2026 with Clayton Davis

Joining us for the 5th year in a row, Variety’s Chief Awards Editor Clayton Davis is back on “Top Docs” to break down this year’s Oscar races for Best Documentary Feature and Best Documentary Short and to offer his predictions for who will walk away victorious on March 15th. With another close race on our hands, you don’t want to miss Clayton’s analysis and final picks.
 
And be sure to catch up on all of the Oscar-nominated films in the documentary feature and shorts categories by listening to our “Top Docs” interviews with all ten of the nominees.
 
Clayton Davis is Variety’s Chief Awards Editor. He is also host of Variety Studio: Actors on Actors and the Variety Awards Circuit podcast. He's been an awards, film and television analyst and critic for more than 15 years and has co-hosted the Oscars Pre-Show on ABC. Clayton is also co-founder and president of the Latino Entertainment Journalists Association and is a board member of the Critics Choice Association.
 
The Presenting Sponsor of “Top Docs” is Netflix.
 
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"Birds of War" with Janay Boulos & Abd Alkader Habak

What started out as a transactional exchange between Janay Boulos, a BBC journalist, and Abd Alkader Habak, a local activist and cameraperson in Aleppo during the Syrian war, later evolved into a mutual curiosity. Over time, texting, voice memos and phone calls became the currency of a deepening relationship... and eventually the two married and became film partners living in London. In their intense and gripping new Sundance documentary “Birds of War,” Janay and Habak create a moving assemblage of personal archival material and devastating wartime news footage that tells a universal story of war and love through a unique personal lens.
 
Following their film’s world premiere in the Sundance World Cinema Documentary section, Janay and Habak joined Ken in his Sundance Park City podcast studio (i.e. condo) for a lively in-person conversation. From the trauma of Habak’s last days in Syria to Janay’s emotional return to Lebanon to cover a burgeoning rebellion, the twists and turns of their individual journeys are just as unpredictable as the love that brought them together.
 
The Presenting Sponsor of "Top Docs" is Netflix.
 
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"Ask E. Jean" with Ivy Meeropol

You may only know her from those few minutes in a dressing room where she was assaulted by Donald Trump, who has himself relentlessly lied about what happened there and slandered the woman who, after years of telling only those closest to her of his crime, finally sought justice–and won.  Repeatedly.
 
But Ivy Meeropol, in her new documentary, “Ask E. Jean” provides a much fuller story:  How E. Jean, after years on a Montana ranch, trying to place her writing, finally arrived in New York at nearly 40 years of age, and then successfully pursued a journalistic career: writing for some of the dominant magazines in an age of magazines; hosting a call-in television show awarded her by Roger Ailes(!); and even serving a season as a writer on SNL.  Ultimately, we see a woman who over the course of decades, emboldened by the me too movement, learns to redefine what constitutes “courage.”
 
“Ask E. Jean” has recently been acquired by Abramorama.
 
The Presenting Sponsor of "Top Docs" is Netflix.
 
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