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Variety Awards Circuit section is the home for all awards news and related content throughout the year, featuring the following: the official predictions for the upcoming Oscars, Emmys, Grammys and Tony Awards ceremonies, curated by Variety senior awards editor Clayton Davis. The prediction pages reflect the current standings in the race and do not reflect personal preferences for any individual contender. As other formal (and informal) polls suggest, competitions are fluid and subject to change based on buzz and events. Predictions are updated every Thursday.

Visit the prediction pages for the respective ceremonies via the links below:

Oscars | Emmys | Grammys | Tonys

2024 Oscars Predictions:

Best Documentary Feature

Weekly Commentary: With the Directors Guild of America and BAFTA Awards in hand, in addition to the tragic news of the death of Alexei Navalny, the subject of the Oscar-winning “Navalny” last year, “20 Days in Mariupol” is too important to ignore.

Will Win:...

Variety Awards Circuit section is the home for all awards news and related content throughout the year, featuring the following: the official predictions for the upcoming Oscars, Emmys, Grammys and Tony Awards ceremonies, curated by Variety senior awards editor Clayton Davis. The prediction pages reflect the current standings in the race and do not reflect personal preferences for any individual contender. As other formal (and informal) polls suggest, competitions are fluid and subject to change based on buzz and events. Predictions are updated every Thursday.

Visit the prediction pages for the respective ceremonies via the links below:

Oscars | Emmys | Grammys | Tonys

2024 Oscars Predictions:

Best Picture

Weekly Commentary: Christopher Nolan’s blockbuster biopic “Oppenheimer,” narrating the saga of the father of the atomic bomb, is poised to sweep the Oscars. Having clinched every major guild and industry accolade – BAFTA, Critics Choice, Golden Globes, DGA, PGA, and SAG – it’s the first...

Oscar nominee Steve James (Hoop Dreams) has been set to direct Mind vs. Machine, a new docuseries on the lightning rod topic of artificial intelligence from Oscar winner Alex Gibney’s Jigsaw Productions, Closer Media, Anonymous Content, and Emmy-winning producers Alyssa Fedele & Zachary Fink of Collective Hunch.

Gibney comes to the project after working with Closer Media and Anonymous Content on the forthcoming documentary Musk, to be distributed by HBO/Universal. Within the last year, his Jigsaw has also teamed with the companies on the MGM+ acquired documentary In Restless Dreams: The Music of Paul Simon and the Raoul Peck-helmed Orwell on 1984 author George Orwell, to be distributed by Neon.

As artificial intelligence bursts onto the world stage – and into our lives – it may seem like a radical new life form has suddenly been created. But as Mind vs. Machine illustrates,...

321 films are in contention for this year’s Academy Awards, while 265 features are eligible in the best picture category, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences announced on Monday as it released its annual “reminder list” for members.

To be eligible in the general categories, films (meaning a runtime of more than 40 minutes) must open in a commercial theater in at least one of the following areas: Los Angeles County; the city of New York; the Bay Area; Chicago, Illinois; Miami, Florida; and Atlanta, Georgia, between Jan. 1, 2023 and Dec. 31, 2023. Additionally, it must complete a minimum qualifying run of seven consecutive days in the same venue.

To be eligible for the best picture category specifically, the movies must be eligible for the general entry and have “submitted a confidential Academy Representation and Inclusion Standards entry form.” Additionally, the film must meet two of the four standards required, in addition to the theatrical component.

Aka Mr. Chow

(HBO Documentary Films)

This portrait directed by Nick Hooker follows the life and career of painter turned restaurateur Michael Chow, the owner of the Mr Chow restaurant chain, as he returns to the art world with his first solo show in nearly 60 years.

American Symphony

(Netflix)

Matthew Heineman switches gears from following the front lines of the Mexican drug war (the Oscar-nominated Cartel Land) and the early days of the Covid crisis in New York City (The First Wave), this time helming an intimate profile of Late Night With Stephen Colbert bandleader Jon Batiste as he balances an incredible year of professional success while aiding his wife, writer Suleika Jaouad, through her battle with a rare form of cancer.

Anonymous Sister

(Long Shot Factory/Gravitas Ventures)

Emmy Award-winning director Jamie Boyle chronicles her family’s collision with the opioid epidemic. The film, currently holding a 100 percent score on Rotten Tomatoes,...

The Academy has revealed the list of eligible films for consideration in best animated, documentary and international feature of the year, encompassing a broad range of blockbusters and critically acclaimed titles.

GKids’ “The Boy and the Heron,” Pixar’s “Elemental,” Sony’s “Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse” and Illumination’s “The Super Mario Bros. Movie” are among the 33 animated films in the running. This is up from 27 in 2023, when “Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio” took home the prize.

The eventual five nominees are determined by members of the shorts and animation branch, and any Academy members outside the branch who wish to participate. The number of outside members who opt in is unknown. All films submitted for animated feature also qualify for the Academy Awards in other categories, including best picture.

Read: Variety’s Awards Circuit for the latest Oscars predictions in all categories.

There are 88 films representing their countries for the international feature Oscar,...

Each week we highlight the noteworthy titles that have recently hit streaming platforms in the United States. Check out this week’s selections below and past round-ups here.

Beyond Utopia (Madeleine Gavin)

The name Pastor Kim comes up early in Madeleine Gavin’s Beyond Utopia. A gentle, aching man, Pastor Kim tells Gavin he has ensured the escape of over 1,000 people from North Korea in the last 10 years. He’s one of the leaders of this Underground Railroad in the area, leading defectors through rivers, mountains, and forests with rods in his neck, rolled ankles, and multiple surgeries plaguing his physical health over the years. Kim becomes the doc’s lynchpin, the character who provides light to the defectors and audience. In short: he’s a hero. – Michael F. (full review)

Where to Stream: VOD

Bottoms (Emma Seligman)

It’s beginning to feel like South By Southwest is the Rachel Sennott Festival.

The 2023 Cinema Eye Honors have unveiled the 20 titles for its Audience Choice Prize Long List, with voting now open.

The 17th annual awards ceremony also recognized the best nonfiction and documentary films and series across five Broadcast categories and a Shorts List with 10 of the year’s top documentary short films, as well as the 20 films in the running for the Audience Choice Prize Long List.

This year’s list includes films from Cinema Eye Honors alumni including “The Eternal Memory,” “American Symphony,” “Still: A Michael J. Fox Movie,” “Stamped from the Beginning,” “32 Sounds,” “A Compassionate Spy,” “Confessions of a Good Samaritan,” “The Mission,” “The Pigeon Tunnel,” and “Stephen Curry: Underrated.”

Hulu series “The 1619 Project” and Showtime’s “Nothing Lasts Forever” lead the Broadcast Film and Series nominations with three nods each. The “1619 Project,” adapted from Pulitzer Prize winning journalist Nikole Hannah-Jones’s work with The New...

Seven filmmakers will benefit from one of the most generous grants in the documentary field, as the North Points Institute today announced the recipients of the inaugural Diane Weyermann Fellowships.

The fellowship, named for the late Participant executive and producer who championed the careers of many leading documentary filmmakers and their work, will provide $100,000 and 18 months of mentorship to each of three nonfiction projects and their filmmaking teams.

“The three supported projects were chosen out of 401 submissions from 70 countries, through a 6-month selection process that included the Points North curatorial team and a jury of veteran filmmakers and programmers,” according to a release. “The projects include: The Last Nomads, directed and produced by Biljana Tutorov, co-directed by Petar Glomazić, and co-produced by Quentin Laurent, Rok Bicek and Eva Kuperman. The film is a co-production of Serbia, Montenegro, France, Slovenia, Belgium, and Croatia; The Production of the World, a co-production of Canada and USA,...

Do enough profiles or conduct enough interviews, and you develop a sixth sense that tingles when your subject utters words you know would make a good lede. Sometimes in that moment it’s hard to resist a tiny fist-pump.

Errol Morris’ new documentary The Pigeon Tunnel begins with such a moment. David Cornwell, known to the world at large as John le Carré, pauses and asks Morris about the role that the filmmaker hopes to play in their conversation.

“You need to know something about the ambitions of the people you’re talking to,” Cornwell observes.

Morris, of course, is a director so invested in the interaction between interviewer and subject that he developed a piece of technology dubbed the Interrotron to facilitate conversations more freely. It’s hard to imagine there’s anything he enjoys more than epistemological chatter of this sort — with the possible exception of finding himself...

Universal and Christopher Nolan’s Oppenheimer debuted in more than 500 locations in Korea on Tuesday, capitalizing on the Liberation Day national holiday. The epic bowed to $4.3M, capturing 44% market share for the day in a highly competitive environment.

That marks the best Nolan opening day in the market, biggest Hollywood opening of the year there (No. 2 launch of 2023 for all titles), the No. 5 debut day of the pandemic and the No. 4 Universal opening day ever. Presales were outstanding, beating all previous Nolan movies.

Across 1,600 screens, this is the second-widest release for a Nolan title in Korea, only behind Tenet, which came out during the pandemic when there was no other competition.

On 20 Imax screens, Oppenheimer generated 9.4% of the total box office for the day. The Cvg Egg score currently stands at a strong 92%. The Korea cume is $5.5M through today (not included in the totals above), dominating with a 42% market share on Wednesday.

Execs discuss social outreach strategy at CineLink Industry Days panel in Sarajevo.

How do cash-strapped indie documentary producers pay for social outreach and impact campaigns? That was one of the questions asked at Sarajevo’s CineLink Industry Days panel, “Shaping Change: Unleashing the Transformative Power of Impact Producing and Outreach in Documentary Filmmaking” this week.

The talk was held shortly after Sarajevo launched a new impact award of its own – its CineLink Impact Award presented by Think-Film Impact Production. The award comes with €20,000 of in-kind support to develop a comprehensive impact campaign for a project in the post-production phase participating...

In Steve James’s documentary, A Compassionate Spy, a lesser-known figure from the Manhattan Project is given the spotlight

Nearly 80 years after it rattled the New Mexico desert, the Trinity Test is top of mind for many this summer. Thanks to Oppenheimer, director Christopher Nolan’s blockbuster film on the leader of the Manhattan Project, millions have relived the queasy aftermath of the first nuclear bomb detonation in July 1945 – a scientific achievement of terrible power greeted with jubilation at Los Alamos. In a pivotal scene set during post-test celebrations, J Robert Oppenheimer, the theoretical physicist played by Cillian Murphy, stokes the flames of triumphalism while seeing the ashes of future destruction.

At Los Alamos that day was a young physicist named Ted Hall, whose concerns outpaced Oppenheimer’s. Peeved by the celebrations and disturbed by the gleeful reaction to a weapon of mass destruction, he isolated himself in the Army barracks.

Right on time, this week brings a companion documentary to one of summer’s biggest movies, directed by an acclaimed filmmaker whose pedigree makes him an immediate Oscar candidate — especially in a year that isn’t overflowing with breakout docs.

The contender to watch this week: “A Compassionate Spy”

On the heels of “Oppenheimer” comes a documentary about Ted Hall, an American physicist who gave the Soviet Union classified intelligence about the construction of the atomic bomb. “A Compassionate Spy” has deep pedigree in two-time Oscar-nominated director Steve James, who made “Hoop Dreams,” “Life Itself,” and “City So Real.” If the campaign gods are smart, they’ll put James and Christopher Nolan in a room together at some point, even though Hall isn’t depicted in “Oppenheimer.” “Spy” is now in theaters and on VOD.

Other contenders:

“Black Ice”: Hockey is Canada’s most popular sport, which of course...

Festivals past are populating a busy specialty market this weekend with films from Sundance and Venice. Sony Pictures Classics is giving Randall Park’s Shortcomings a substantial 400+ screen release. See Deadline review. Mubi is out with Passages in New York and LA – both premiered to critical acclaim in Park City.

There’s been some drama around the latter after the MPA gave the Ira Sachs film an Nc-17 rating, which Mubi “officially rejected.” The distributor/streamer/producer said it “remains committed to releasing Passages nationwide in its original version as the filmmaker intended, with our full backing, unrated and uncut.” Rates a 94% with critics on Rotten Tomatoes, Deadline review here.

Casey Affleck and Noah Jupe-starring Dreamin’ Wild from Roadside Attractions on 400 screens follows the life of singer-musician brothers Donnie and Joe Emerson. Deadline review. Magnolia’s A Compassionate Spy, coming in the wake of blockbuster Oppenheimer, is an espionage...

In Christopher Nolan’s Oppenheimer, a fair amount is made of Klaus Fuchs, the German theoretical physicist who passed secrets from Los Alamos to the Soviet Union. But nowhere in this substantive blockbuster do we hear about Theodore Hall. A wunderkind physicist from Far Rockaway, New York City, recruited to the Manhattan Project as an 18-year-old Harvard senior, Hall, too, shared atomic secrets with the Soviets, for what he later claimed were purely moral reasons: He thought the possibility of the U.S. — or any country — having a monopoly on...

Each week we highlight the noteworthy titles that have recently hit streaming platforms in the United States. Check out this week’s selections below and past round-ups here.

A Compassionate Spy (Steve James)

See an exclusive clip above.

The latest film from acclaimed documentarian Steve James, A Compassionate Spy, comes with a fascinating subject: the spy who leaked nuclear information from the Manhattan Project to the Soviet Union, therefore ensuring that America could not establish a nuclear monopoly on the world. It’s easy to see why James would be drawn to the spy, Theodore “Ted” Hall, and his wife Joan as he has often been interested in using individuals as the framework to explore larger societal issues. Utilizing a hybrid of recreations, archival footage, and modern-day interviews, James crafts a portrait of a man, a relationship, and the sheer weight of the decision to betray your country to save the world.

The latest film from acclaimed documentarian Steve James, A Compassionate Spy, comes with a fascinating subject: the spy who leaked nuclear information from the Manhattan Project to the Soviet Union, therefore ensuring that America could not establish a nuclear monopoly on the world. It’s easy to see why James would be drawn to the spy, Theodore “Ted” Hall, and his wife Joan as he has often been interested in using individuals as the framework to explore larger societal issues. Utilizing a hybrid of recreations, archival footage, and modern-day interviews, James crafts a portrait of a man, a relationship, and the sheer weight of the decision to betray your country to save the world.

With Ted having passed away just before the turn of the century, the framing device being built around conversations with his wife ground his story in everyday humanity, instead of reducing his actions to historical sensationalism.

While the fall movie lineup continues to shift due to studios adamantly deciding not to fairly pay the writers and actors responsible for them being in business in the first place, not much has changed when it comes to August. Aside from A24 yanking Julio Torres’ Problemista from its August 4 opening, the rest of the calendar has stayed intact and here are the films that should be on your radar.

13. What Comes Around (Amy Redford; Aug. 4)

One of the most divisive films to premiere at TIFF last year was Amy Redford’s What Comes Around (formerly titled Roost). Led by Grace Van Dien, Summer Phoenix, Jesse Garcia, and Kyle Gallner, the thriller tracked a young love affair that becomes a menacing game of cat-and-mouse where nothing is what it seems. Jared Mobarak said in his review, “What Comes Around is a tricky film to talk about without massive spoilers unless,...

While the latest film from Hoop Dreams and Life Itself director Steve James premiered last fall at Venice Film Festival and Telluride Film Festival, it’s clear why Magnolia Pictures wanted to wait until later this summer for a release. Ideal viewing shortly after Christopher Nolan’s blockbuster biopic Oppenheimer arrives in theaters, A Compassionate Spy tells the thrilling story of a controversial Manhattan Project physicist Ted Hall, who infamously provided nuclear secrets to the Soviet Union, told through the perspective of his loving wife Joan, who protected his secret for decades. Ahead of the August 4 release, the first trailer has now arrived.

Here’s more of the synopsis: “Recruited in 1944 as an 18-year-old Harvard undergraduate to help Robert Oppenheimer and his team create a bomb, Hall was the youngest physicist on the Manhattan Project, and didn’t share his colleagues’ elation after the successful detonation of the world’s first atomic bomb.

“There’s something I have to tell you:” As an 18-year-old undergraduate at Harvard, Ted Hall was recruited to help Robert Oppenheimer and his team develop a weapon that would alter the course of human history. When the Atomic Bomb was detonated twice the following year, over the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Hall did not share in his colleagues’ enthusiasm for the Manhattan Project. Due to his fears that the United States, having a monopoly over an ineffably destructive power, would cause a nuclear catastrophe, he relayed the bomb’s secrets to the Soviet Union.

Continue reading ‘A Compassionate Spy’ Trailer: Steve James’ New Doc Details A Physicist Who Shared Nuclear Secrets With The Soviet Union at The Playlist.

"Something gruesome & horrible was being constructed." Magnolia Pictures has revealed an official trailer for an acclaimed documentary film titled A Compassionate Spy, made by the award-winning Chicago-based doc filmmaker Steve James. This premiered at the 2022 Venice Film Festival last year, and ended up being one of my favorite films of the festival. A Compassionate Spy tells the incredible story of Manhattan Project scientist Ted Hall, who shared classified nuclear secrets with Russia. Hall is interviewed extensively, along with his wife Joan Hall, and courageously tells his story in this. It's a very sensitive topic, especially nowadays, but fascinating to dig into - he was one of a few people who had worked on the atomic bomb at Los Alamos and shared its secrets to the Russians. He thought it would be wrong for America to be the only country with this extraordinary power. Does he regret this knowing what Russia became?...

Is there such thing as a sympathetic cause for treason?

Magnolia Pictures documentary “A Compassionate Spy,” directed by two-time Oscar nominee Steve James, captures the controversial true story of Manhattan Project physicist Ted Hall. Part of the team behind J. Robert Oppenheimer’s atomic bomb, Hall shared nuclear secrets with the Soviet Union. The documentary is told through the perspective of Ted’s wife Joan Hall, who protected his secret across their 50-year marriage.

The official “Compassionate Spy” synopsis reads: Recruited in 1944 as an 18-year-old Harvard undergraduate to help J. Robert Oppenheimer and his team create a bomb, Ted Hall was the youngest physicist on the Manhattan Project, and didn’t share his colleagues’ elation after the successful detonation of the world’s first atomic bomb. Concerned that a U.S. post-war monopoly on such a powerful weapon could lead to nuclear catastrophe, Hall began passing key information about the...

Exclusive: Docaviv, the prestigious all-documentary film festival in Tel Aviv, today announced the International Competition lineup for the 25th anniversary of the event, which takes place May 11-20.

In competition are some of the early favorites for Oscar recognition, including Apolonia, Apolonia, winner of Best Feature at IDFA; 20 Days in Mariupol, the harrowing examination of the siege of the Ukrainian port city in the early days of the Russian invasion; Kokomo City, winner of two awards at Sundance, and The Eternal Memory, winner of the Grand Jury Prize for World Cinema Documentary at Sundance [scroll for the full International Competition lineup].

Docaviv is an Oscar-qualifying festival, with winners in the International, Israeli, and Shorts competitions automatically becoming eligible for Academy Awards consideration. It is the only all-documentary festival in Israel and widely considered one of the world’s foremost nonfiction film events.

Some of the expected international guests include Emmy-winning documentary producer John Battsek, who will hold...

Documentary specialist Autlook Filmsales closed a raft of sales at a vibrant market during the Copenhagen documentary festival Cph:dox.

“Subject,” directed by Camilla Hall and Jennifer Tiexiera, got picked up by Sweden’s Svt, Denmark’s Dr, Norway’s Nrk, Norway’s Vgtv, The Netherlands’ Vpro, Israel’s Yes Doc, and Madman for Australia and New Zealand. Dogwoof released the film early this month in the U.K.

“Subject” is an examination of the relationship between nonfiction filmmakers and their subjects. It raises important ethical questions during a golden of age for documentaries, when docs are screened by millions of viewers. The film re-visits protagonists of some of the most viewed documentaries of today – “The Staircase,” “The Square,” “Hoop Dreams,” “The Wolfpack” and “Capturing the Friedmans.”

Australia and New Zealand distribution powerhouse Madman Entertainment and Spanish broadcaster Movistar have acquired “The Corridors of Power,” a documentary and upcoming eight-part series.

Steve James’s engrossing documentary tells the story of Ted Hall, a young physicist who leaked nuclear secrets to the Soviet Union in order to protect the future of mankind

Christopher Nolan’s Oppenheimer, due in July, is sure to fit its eponymous physicist out with dutiful misgivings on the atomic weaponry front. But this engrossing documentary by Hoop Dreams’ Steve James tells the story of someone who actually did something about it: Ted Hall, who confessed in 1998 – a year before his death – to having passed nuclear secrets to the Soviets while working on the Manhattan project. Recruited as an 18-year-old Harvard genius, he came to feel that a US monopoly on the bomb would threaten global stability and the future of humanity.

A sensitive college boy and nascent communist who chafed against wearing military uniform at Los Alamos, Hall gave priceless schematics to Uncle Joe via his beatnik friend,...

“In Her Hands,” a Netflix documentary produced by Hillary and Chelsea Clinton, has won the 18th Camden Intl. Film Festival’s audience award. While the in-person component of the Maine-based festival ended on Sept. 18, tallying audience award votes concluded today. Online screenings of the fest’s lineup are available until Sept. 25 to audiences across North America.

Filmed over a two year period, “In Her Hands” tells the story of Zarifa Ghafari, who at 26 became one of Afghanistan’s first female mayors and the youngest to ever hold the position. The film documents her fight for survival against the backdrop of her country’s accelerated unraveling as Western forces announce their retreat and the Taliban returns to power.

Directed by Tamana Ayazi and Marcel Mettelsiefen (“Watani: My Homeland”), “In Her Hands” premiered at the Toronto Intl. Film Festival on Sept. 9. Ayazi, who is a native of Afghanistan, escaped in 2021 after the Taliban took over.

The 18th Camden International Film Festival on Maine’s mid-coast – an increasingly important destination for documentary filmmakers – wrapped its in-person portion Sunday after announcing a handful of awards.

Day After…, directed by Kamar Ahmad Simon, won the festival’s Harrell Award, chosen from a group of “some of the most significant documentaries of the year.” The film is described as “A philosophical ballad along the rivers of Bangladesh, transporting the rich and poor, young and old, East and West in a century-old paddle steamer.”

“The jury was unanimous in its admiration for this film, in which an old riverboat seems to contain an entire society’s worth of dreamers and hustlers, politicians and radicals,” juror Eric Hynes said, noting that the documentary employs “both hybrid techniques and dogged observational power. This is a dazzling work of nonfiction.”

The jury awarded a special mention to Polaris, another film with a nautical theme.

Diane Weyermann’s impact continues to be felt throughout the documentary field, with her presence evident on some of the fall’s most talked about nonfiction films, including Laura Poitras’s All the Beauty and the Bloodshed and Steve James’s A Compassionate Spy.

Today, the Points North Institute honored the legacy of the late chief content officer of Participant by establishing the Diane Weyermann Fellowship, an artists’ program “aimed at supporting global filmmaking teams in production on feature length documentary films that highlight stories of moral and ethical urgency.”

The announcement took place at the Camden International Film Festival in Maine, itself a program of Points North.

“We are incredibly honored and grateful for the opportunity to recognize Diane’s tremendous impact on the world of documentary filmmaking through this new Fellowship,” said Ben Fowlie, Points North Executive and Artistic Director and Founder of Ciff. “Diane has been a...

Click here to read the full article.

Steve James takes a break from his duties as Chicago’s documentary poet laureate with the new unscripted feature A Compassionate Spy, a topical and stylistic detour that still has a place within the director’s ongoing exploration of the blurry line between justice and injustice.

A Compassionate Spy borrows the look and feel of a historical espionage thriller and builds some momentum and moral complexity along the way, but it finds its real potency as a generational family drama.

Ted Hall was recruited to join the Manhattan Project when he was still a teenager. A brilliant young physicist, Ted went to Los Alamos with no clue what he would be working on, but when he learned the nature of the weapon being designed, he began to worry that if only the United States possessed nuclear technology, the post-war risks might be great.

The Telluride Film Festival’s emphasis on documentary has not wavered in recent years. But the prominence of nonfiction fare at the 49th edition has arguably made this year’s Telluride the autumn Sundance, where some of the biggest buzz is for docs.

The lineup, kept under wraps until the eve of the fest’s opening on Sept. 2, includes 16 docs from novice and veteran documentarians, including Steve James (“A Compassionate Spy”), Matthew Heineman (“Retrograde”), Chris Smith (“Sr.”) Ondi Timoner (“Last Flight Home”) and Ryan White (“Good Night Oppy”). (Additional “secret” screenings have yet to be announced.)

The rising level of documentaries at the Colorado fest is largely due to the influence of Telluride executive director Julie Huntsinger.

“This year, there is almost parity with the narrative features in the [main feature] program,” says Huntsinger, who co-directs Telluride with Tom Luddy. “It’s not us actively seeking it. For lack of a better word,...

As a child growing up in the United States, you’re taught that betraying the country is a terrible act, punishable by death. Every morning, in most public schools, you’re forced to recite the Pledge of Allegiance, which overtly puts your patriotism at the forefront of the day’s events. Sure, this is a bit of hive-mind indoctrination, but it’s an accepted way of life. With that in mind, director Steve James has an uphill battle ahead of him as his audiences watch “A Compassionate Spy,” a documentary that not only asks you to listen to the defense of someone who betrayed the United States during World War II by feeding information to the Russians but also implores you to understand his actions and believe that treason can sometimes be the correct solution.

Continue reading ‘A Compassionate Spy’ Review: Steve James’ Doc Is A Compelling Defense Of Treason...

Editor’s note: This review was originally published at the 2022 Venice Film Festival. Magnolia Pictures releases the film in theaters and on VOD on Friday, August 4.

Steve James’ “A Compassionate Spy” is ultimately a minor addition to one of documentary cinema’s great bodies of work, but it might just contain the one true secret to a happy marriage: sharing historically significant nuclear secrets.

That sure seems to have been a winning strategy for Ted Hall, a young physics student who fell in love with an undergrad named Joan at the University of Chicago in 1947. They seemed like natural soulmates from the start, but Ted’s inevitable proposal came with a radioactive disclaimer. If Joan wanted to spend the rest of her life with him, she would have to accept that Ted — who was admitted to the Manhattan Project as a preternaturally smart teenager — had passed crucial information about the...

Given the fragile state of world peace at the moment, it seems like a good time for the latest film from Hoop Dreams director Steve James, a piece of little-known history from the cold war that could potentially have devastating consequences today. Sadly, James’ Venice Film Festival out of competition title A Compassionate Spy just doesn’t deliver the drama and tension you might expect from the high-stakes story of a mild-mannered American scientist who passed sensitive nuclear secrets to the Russians out of a mixture of idealism and naivety.

The subject is Harvard graduate Theodore “Ted” Hall, who, at 18, became the youngest person to work on the Manhattan Project under Robert Oppenheimer, developing nuclear weaponry in Los Alamos. Hall died of cancer in 1999, but not before giving a series of video interviews in the mistaken belief that he would not be around to see them aired. He was a low-key,...

Just before director Christopher Nolan’s upcoming “Oppenheimer” plants a fixed image of Ted Hall in the popular imagination, along comes Steve James’s sensitive, studious documentary “A Compassionate Spy” to preemptively set any records straight. Unpacking the life and work of the prodigious teenage Manhattan Project physicist who passed key information about the endeavor to the Soviet Union — cuing an adulthood dogged by suspicion and secrecy — the film demonstrates its director’s characteristic nose for strong material and knack for gripping, straightforward storytelling. If the filmmaking is more televisual than in James’s best work, with its flourishes limited to some unnecessary dramatized passages, that should be no impediment to “A Compassionate Spy” commanding a sizable audience on multiple platforms.

“It would be nice to be proud, but I’m not a proud person,” says the septuagenarian Hall, in interview footage captured not long before his death in 1999. It...

Arriving at a fateful time in the history of handling top secrets, “Hoop Dreams” filmmaker Steve James’s new documentary “A Compassionate Spy” aims to suggest that not all disloyalty is so clear-cut.

Though James couldn’t have foreseen the country being gripped by speculation about the motives of an unprincipled ex-president in suspicious possession of sensitive documents, this slice of history — making its world premiere at the 2022 Venice Film Festival — nevertheless offers up a story of unambiguous espionage with idealistic motive: a Harvard physics undergraduate recruited for the Manhattan Project who, in 1944, passed on its secrets to the Soviet Union to safeguard the world from monopolistic power and atomic annihilation.

His name was Ted Hall, and though he was suspected his whole life by authorities, he lived free from prosecution, raising a family and working at Cambridge University on pioneering biophysics until his death in 1999.

Also Read:

Why ‘City So Real...

High-profile espionage cases in the post-war period often invoke the grisly fate of the Rosenbergs, the first U.S. citizens to be convicted and executed by electric chair for sharing atomic secrets with the Soviet Union in peace time. But in the new documentary “A Compassionate Spy,” filmmaker Steve James tells the incredible story of Manhattan Project scientist Ted Hall, who shared classified nuclear secrets with Russia — and got away with it.

The Participant and Kartemquin Films-produced documentary, which has its world premiere in Venice on Sept. 2, is one of a number of films at this year’s festival that tackle the topic of nuclear disaster: Projects from Noah Baumbach’s feature adaptation of Don DeLillo’s “White Noise” through to Oliver Stone’s on-the-nose documentary “Nuclear” all contemplate some aspect of our nuclear past and future.

“There will be people who will look at what Ted did and say,...

The US festival runs from September 2-5,

Telluride Film Festival (Tff) has unveiled the programme for its 49th edition, with the US festival running from tomorrow (September 2) to September 5.

Ahead of its play at Toronto and BFI London Film Festival, Sam Mendes’ Empire Of Light will world premiere. Set in an English seaside town during the 1980s, the film follows a love story and an old cinema. Olivia Colman and Colin Firth star, alongside Screen Star of Tomorrow 2020 Micheal Ward, Toby Jones, Tanya Moodie, Tom Brooke and Crystal Clarke. It is produced by Mendes and Pippa Harris’ Neal Street Productions in association with Searchlight.

The world premieres of Sam Mendes’ “Empire of Light,” Sarah Polley’s “Women Talking” and Sebastian Lelio’s “The Wonder” will take place at the 2022 Telluride Film Festival, which announced its lineup on Thursday, one day before the festival begins.

Other notable films in the Telluride lineup include Alejandro G. Inarritu’s “Bardo,” Luca Guadagnino’s “Bones and All,” Todd Field’s “TÁR” and James Gray’s “Armageddon Time,” which are making their North American debuts after premiering at European festivals.

Among the documentaries heading to Telluride, premieres are Steve James’ “A Compassionate Spy,” Anton Corbijn’s “Squaring the Circle,” Ryan White’s “Good Night Oppy,” Mary McCartney’s “If These Walls Could Sing” and Eva Webber’s “Merkel.”

Also Read:

TIFF 2022 Lineup: Films From Tyler Perry, Peter Farrelly, Sam Mendes and Catherine Hardwicke to Premiere

Documentary director and film historian Mark Cousins will have two films at the festival,...

Telluride Film Festival’s official 2022 lineup has been announced, revealing world premieres of Sam Mendes’ “Empire of Light,” Sarah Polley’s “Women Talking,” Laure de Clermont-Tonnerre’s “Lady Chatterley’s Lover” and Sebastián Lelio’s “The Wonder.”

In its 49th year, the festival will pay tribute to two-time Oscar-winner Cate Blanchett, whose new film “TÁR,” from director Todd Field, will debut stateside after premiering at the Venice Film Festival.

In addition, the festival will also tribute Academy Award nominee Polley (adapted screenplay for 2006’s “Away from Her”) and acclaimed documentarian Marc Cousins, who has two films dropping at the fest. One is “My Name Is Alfred Hitchcock,” which is based on a fictional monologue between Cousins and the master of suspense. The other is “The March on Rome,” depicting the ascent of fascism in Europe during the 1930s.

Other Venice bows heading over to the Colorado Mountains are Luca Guadagnino’s...

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A tribute to Cate Blanchett, a Sam Mendes romance set in a cinema house and a bumper crop of documentaries are on the agenda at the 49th edition of the Telluride Film Festival, which kicks off Friday in the Rockies and runs through Monday.

The intimate Colorado event serves as the unofficial stateside kickoff of awards season, but Telluride may be most notable this year for the arguments its movies start, says festival executive director Julie Huntsinger.

“There’s so many more divisive films,” says Huntsinger, who programs Telluride together with the festival’s sr. consultant, Tom Luddy. “There’s so much more angst. There’s just tumult and upheaval in the world, and it’s reflected in the films. People will fight about movies this year more than they ever have.”

Among the movies screening at Telluride that may spark furious debates...

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Given the direction of the world in recent years, it’s perhaps no surprise that Participant — Jeff Skoll’s socially conscious production powerhouse — has been as prolific as ever. But its output isn’t all about shining a torch on today’s most pressing concerns, as Academy Awards winners such as Roma, Green Book and Spotlight attest.

That said, the studio comes to Venice with two somewhat topical documentary features. In All The Beauty and the Bloodshed, Laura Poitras (an Oscar winner for her Participant film CitizenFour) follows artist and activist Nan Goldin in a deeply personal battle as she fights to hold the Sackler family to account for the opioid crisis.

Meanwhile, A Compassionate Spy from Hoop Dreams director Steve James (also behind Participant’s first TV series, America to Me) tells the story of Ted Hall, who as a physicist on...

Director Steve James chronicles a former Manhattan Project physicist.

Austria-based sales agent Autlook Filmsales has boarded international sales on Steve James’ documentary A Compassionate Spy, which is set to premiere out of competition at the Venice Film Festival this week.

The film traces the life of a former Manhattan Project physicist who passed on secrets to the Soviet Union and lived the rest of his life under FBI surveillance and suspicion.

US outfit Participant financed the film and is jointly handling global and North American sales for the film with Cinetic.

It marks the latest from US documentary-maker James, who...

Laura Poitras’ “All the Beauty and the Bloodshed,” Steve James’ “A Compassionate Spy” and Evgeny Afineevsky’s “Freedom on Fire: Ukraine’s Fight for Freedom” are among 11 documentaries making their world premieres at the Venice Film Festival this year, with Poitras’ competition title vying for a Golden Lion — a rare feat for a doc at a major international film festival.

The growing number of high-profile non-fiction films in and out of competition at Venice suggests that major European film festivals have finally accepted documentaries as viable, cinematic art.

While docs at the Toronto International Film Festival and major U.S. fests, including Sundance, Telluride and South by Southwest, have long been the belles of the ball, the most prominent international festivals, including Venice, Cannes and Berlin, have been slow to embrace non-fiction content, especially in competition.

“There had been what I would only characterize as an illogical resistance to thinking...

The 18th edition of the Camden Intl. Film Festival, kicking off Sept. 15, will feature a handful of award-contending documentaries fresh off showings at Telluride and the Toronto film festivals. The Maine-based festival will unfold in a hybrid format, with both in-person events over a three-day period concluding Sept. 18, and online screenings available from Sept. 15 to Sept. 25 to audiences across North America.

This year’s Ciff highlights include the U.S. premiere of Tamana Ayazi and Marcel Mettelsiefen’s Netflix release “In Her Hands,” which follows one of Afghanistan’s first female mayors during the months leading up to the Taliban takeover the country in 2021; Chris Smith’s “Sr.,” centered on the life and career of Robert Downey Sr. and his relationship to his son, Robert Downey Jr.; and Steve James’ “A Compassionate Spy,” about Manhattan Project physicist, Soviet spy and University of Chicago alum Theodore Hall. Each of the three...