Kirby Bryan Dick is an American film director, producer, screenwriter, and editor best known for directing documentary films. He received Academy Award nominations for Best Documentary Feature for directing Twist of Faith (2005) and The Invisible War (2012). He has also received numerous awards from film festivals, including the Sundance Film Festival and Los Angeles Film Festival.
"All Falls Down" is a song by American hip hop artist Kanye West. It was released as the third single from his debut album, The College Dropout. The song was written and produced by West and features singer Syleena Johnson. The hip hop song contains an interpolation of "Mystery of Iniquity" by Lauryn Hill from her live album MTV Unplugged No. 2.0; Hill is credited as a composer.
Bryan Fogel is an American film director, producer, author, playwright, speaker and human rights activist, best known for the 2017 documentary Icarus, which won an Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature at the 90th Academy Awards in 2018.
Andrew Fried is an American documentary filmmaker, producer and director, and the president of Boardwalk Pictures. Fried is known for producing documentary films and television series, such as Chef's Table, The Black Godfather, Last Chance U, 7 Days Out, My Love, Men in Kilts, Booktube, Street Food, Cheer, Val and The Goop Lab with Gwyneth Paltrow. He directed the 2020 documentary film We Are Freestyle Love Supreme.
The Carter is a 2009 documentary film about the American hip hop recording artist Dwayne Michael Carter, Jr., better known as Lil Wayne. The film was directed by Adam Bhala Lough and produced by Joshua Krause and Quincy Jones III, and documents Lil Wayne in the period before and shortly after the release of his studio album, Tha Carter III, which achieved platinum status and critical acclaim, and sold one million copies in one week. After being shown at the Sundance Film Festival, it was subjected to a lawsuit by Carter to block distribution but eventually was released direct to DVD and iTunes, where it topped all movie charts. The film has since been banned from legal sale again but is widely bootlegged on the Internet. Despite having no formal release, it has been rated as one of the top 70 music documentaries of all time.
James Ivy Richardson II is an American performance poet, spoken word artist, songwriter, and author. He won his first Grammy Award in 2023 with his sixth album, The Poet Who Sat By The Door.
Amy Ziering is an American film producer and director. Mostly known for her work in documentary films, she is a regular collaborator of director Kirby Dick; they co-directed 2002's Derrida and 2020's On the Record, with Ziering also producing several of Dick's films.
Nicholas Britell is an American film and television composer. He has received numerous accolades including a Emmy Award as well as nominations for three Academy Awards and a Grammy Award. He has received Academy Award nominations for Best Original Score for Barry Jenkins' Moonlight (2016) and If Beale Street Could Talk (2018), and Adam McKay's Don't Look Up (2021). He also scored McKay's The Big Short (2015) and Vice (2018). He is also known for scoring Battle of the Sexes (2017), Cruella (2021), and She Said (2022).
Live Footage is an American electro-acoustic, improvisational music act. It consists of cellist and electronic musician, Topu Lyo, and drummer/keyboardist, Mike Thies.
Coodie Simmons and Chike Ozah are American film directors, screenwriters, cinematographers, and producers. Coodie and Chike started directing together with their music video for Kanye West entitled "Through the Wire", which was nominated for a MTV Viewers Choice Award, and won a Source Award for Best Music Video of the Year. They have continued their music video success directing "Two Words" and the third version of "Jesus Walks" off Kanye West's The College Dropout album, Pitbull's "Culo" video, Mos Def's "Ghetto Rock" video, Erykah Badu's controversial video "Window Seat" and most recently Lupe Fiasco's "Old School Love" video. The team started directing and producing long form music content with the bonus behind the scene video on Christina Aguilera's Back to Basics album and a music documentary for Wale's The Gifted album.
Kristopher Bowers is an American composer, pianist and documentary director. He has composed scores for films, including Green Book, King Richard, The Color Purple and television series, among them Bridgerton, Mrs. America, Dear White People, and When They See Us.
Ryan White is a documentary producer and director best known for his Netflix documentary film Pamela, a Love Story, Amazon Prime's Good Night Oppy, which won five Critics Choice Awards including Best Documentary and Best Director, and his Emmy-nominated Netflix series The Keepers. White's previous films include the HBO movie The Case Against 8, which won Sundance's Directing Award and was nominated for two Emmys, the documentary film Ask Dr. Ruth, and Coded, which was shortlisted for the Academy Award.
Strong Island is an American 2017 true-crime documentary film directed by Yance Ford.
Higher Ground Productions, also known simply as Higher Ground, is an American production company founded in 2018 by former United States President Barack Obama and former First Lady Michelle Obama.
Dick Johnson Is Dead is a 2020 American documentary film directed by Kirsten Johnson and co-written by Johnson and Nels Bangerter. The story focuses on Johnson's father Richard, who suffers from dementia, portraying different ways—some of them violent "accidents"—in which he could ultimately die. In each scenario, the elderly Johnson plays along with his daughter's black humor and imaginative fantasies. The film premiered at the 2020 Sundance Film Festival, where it won the Special Jury Award for Innovation in Non-fiction Storytelling. It was released on Netflix on October 2, 2020.
Small Axe is a British anthology film series, created and directed by Steve McQueen. The anthology consists of five films that tell distinct stories about the lives of West Indian immigrants in London from the 1960s to the 1980s. Two episodes of the series were selected into the 2020 Cannes Film Festival. The series premiered on 15 November 2020 on BBC One in the United Kingdom and on 20 November 2020 on Amazon Prime Video in the United States. The title references a proverb – "Small axe fall big tree" or "If you are the big tree, we are the small axe" – that was popularised by Bob Marley in his 1973 song "Small Axe".
The 2022 Sundance Film Festival took place from January 20 to 30, 2022. Due to COVID-19 pandemic protocol, it was initially intended to be an in-person/virtual hybrid festival, but on January 5, 2022, it was announced that the in-person components would be scrapped in favor of a wholly virtual festival due to the SARS-CoV-2 Omicron variant. The first lineup of competition films was announced on December 9, 2021.
We Need to Talk About Cosby is an American documentary miniseries directed and produced by W. Kamau Bell. It explores the life and career of Bill Cosby up to his sexual assault cases, through conversations with comedians, journalists, and survivors. It premiered on January 30, 2022, on Showtime.
Fire of Love is a 2022 independent documentary film about the lives and careers of volcanologists Katia and Maurice Krafft. Directed, written, and produced by Sara Dosa, the film had its world premiere at the 2022 Sundance Film Festival on January 20, 2022, where it won the Jonathan Oppenheim Editing Award. It was released on July 6, 2022, by National Geographic Documentary Films and Neon. It received acclaim from critics, and was nominated for Best Documentary Feature at the 95th Academy Awards.
Aftershock is a 2022 American documentary film directed and produced by Paula Eiselt and Tonya Lewis Lee. It follows Omari Maynard and Bruce McIntyre, whose partners died due to childbirth complications, which were preventable, as they fight for justice.
