MTV Entertainment Studios is the film and television production arm of MTV Entertainment Group, a subsidiary of the Paramount Media Networks division of Paramount Global. Founded in 1991 as MTV Productions, it is a consolidation of the former MTV Films group established in 1996 and the MTV Production Development/MTV Studios group of 2003–2021, it has produced original television shows like Beavis and Butt-Head, Æon Flux, Jackass, My Super Sweet 16, Daria, Celebrity Deathmatch, Clone High and The Real World and films such as Election, Joe's Apartment and Napoleon Dynamite. Its films are released by fellow Paramount Global division Paramount Pictures. The MTV Films unit was once part of Paramount Players until 2020.
Paul Westmoreland, known professionally as Wash Westmoreland and previously known as Wash West, is a British director who has worked in television, documentaries, and independent films. He frequently collaborated with his husband, writer-director Richard Glatzer. Together, they wrote and directed the 2014 film Still Alice, based on Lisa Genova's NYT best-selling book and starred Julianne Moore, Kristen Stewart, and Alec Baldwin. The film won many awards, including the Academy Award for Best Actress for Julianne Moore and Humanitas Prize for feature film for the duo. Their 2006 coming-of-age feature film, Quinceañera, won the Audience Award and the Grand Jury Prize at the 2006 Sundance Film Festival.
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.
The Sundance Film Festival is an annual film festival organized by the Sundance Institute. It is the largest independent film festival in the United States, with more than 46,660 attending in 2016. It takes place each January in Park City, Utah; Salt Lake City, Utah; and at the Sundance Resort, and acts as a showcase for new work from American and international independent filmmakers. The festival consists of competitive sections for American and international dramatic and documentary films, both feature films and short films, and a group of out-of-competition sections, including NEXT, New Frontier, Spotlight, Midnight, Sundance Kids, From the Collection, Premieres, and Documentary Premieres.
Justin Simien is an American filmmaker, actor, and author. His first feature film, Dear White People, won the U.S. Dramatic Special Jury Award for Breakthrough Talent at the 2014 Sundance Film Festival. The film was later adapted into the Netflix series of the same name (2017–2021). Simien has also been named to Variety's 2013 "10 Directors to Watch" list.
What Happened, Miss Simone? is a 2015 American biographical documentary film about Nina Simone directed by Liz Garbus. The film opened the 2015 Sundance Film Festival. The screening was followed by a tribute performance by John Legend. The film was released by Netflix on June 26, 2015. It was nominated for Best Documentary Feature at the 88th Academy Awards.
Unrest is a 2017 documentary film produced and directed by Jennifer Brea. The film tells the story of how Jennifer and her new husband faced an illness that struck Jennifer just before they married.
Casting JonBenet is a 2017 documentary film about the death of JonBenét Ramsey and the large impact it left behind. The film was directed by Kitty Green.
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.
Chasing Coral is a 2017 American documentary film about a team of divers, scientists and photographers around the world who document the disappearance of coral reefs. Chasing Coral was produced by Exposure Labs and directed by Jeff Orlowski. It premiered at the 2017 Sundance Film Festival and was released globally on Netflix as a Netflix Original Documentary in July 2017. Jeff Orlowski has previously directed the movie Chasing Ice in 2012 which share a similar plot to Chasing Coral.
Icarus is a 2017 American documentary film by Bryan Fogel. It chronicles Fogel's exploration of the option of doping to win an amateur cycling race and happening upon a major international doping scandal when he asks for the help of Grigory Rodchenkov, the head of the Russian anti-doping laboratory. It premiered at Sundance Film Festival on January 20, 2017, and was awarded the U.S. Documentary Special Jury Award. Netflix acquired the distribution rights and released Icarus globally on August 4, 2017. At the 90th Academy Awards, the film won the Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature.
Knock Down the House is a 2019 American documentary film directed by Rachel Lears. It revolves around the 2018 congressional primary campaigns of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Amy Vilela, Cori Bush and Paula Jean Swearengin, four progressive Democrats endorsed by Justice Democrats and Brand New Congress who ran in that year's midterm elections.
American Factory is a 2019 American documentary film directed by Steven Bognar and Julia Reichert, about Chinese company Fuyao's factory in Moraine, a city near Dayton, Ohio, that occupies Moraine Assembly, a shuttered General Motors plant. The film had its festival premiere at the 2019 Sundance Film Festival. It is distributed by Netflix and is the first film acquired by Barack and Michelle Obama's production company, Higher Ground Productions. It won an Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature.
Miss Americana is a 2020 American documentary film that follows singer-songwriter Taylor Swift and her life over the course of several years of her career. It was directed by Lana Wilson, produced by Tremolo Productions, and released to Netflix and select theaters on January 31, 2020. The film is titled after "Miss Americana & the Heartbreak Prince", a 2019 song by Swift.
Horse Girl is a 2020 American psychological drama film directed and produced by Jeff Baena, from a screenplay written by Baena and Alison Brie. It stars Brie, Debby Ryan, John Reynolds, Molly Shannon, John Ortiz, and Paul Reiser.
Sea of Shadows is a documentary about environmental activists, the Mexican Navy, marine scientists and undercover investigators trying to prevent the extinction of the vaquita, a species of porpoise and the smallest whale in the world, by pulling gillnets, doing research, and fighting back Mexican cartels and Chinese mafia who are destroying ocean habitats in their brutal pursuit to harvest the swim bladder of the totoaba fish, known as the "cocaine of the sea". The 1 hour and 44 minutes long film is directed by Richard Ladkani.
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.
Giving Voice is a 2020 American documentary film, directed and produced by James D. Stern and Fernando Villena. The film follows the 2018 edition of the annual August Wilson Monologue Competition entered by thousands of high school students for the opportunity to perform on Broadway. Viola Davis, John Legend, Constanza Romero and Nicholas Caprio serve as executive producers.
Into the Deep is a Danish documentary film that premiered at the 2020 Sundance Film Festival on January 24, 2020. It was directed by Emma Sullivan and filmed in Copenhagen, Denmark. It was planned to be released on Netflix, but the release was postponed indefinitely when some participants stated that they had not given their consent to participate in the film. Before a subsequent release, Netflix, Plus Pictures and Sullivan agreed to re-edit the film to remove those participants who did not wish to appear. It was released globally on September 30, 2022.
Fire of Love is a 2022 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.
