Our New President is a 2018 documentary produced by Third Party Films. [1] It follows the story of Donald Trump's 2016 presidential campaign and is told entirely through footage from Russian state-sponsored media. Our New President is a satire about the Russian media and its take on American politics. [2] [3]
The film was originally made as an amateur short 12 minute collage of short clips from Russian media outlets and amateur clips by Russians for Field of Vision. [4] It was subsequently expanded into a full-length documentary, showing how the Russian media (especially Russia 1, Russia Today and NTV) overhyped the election of Trump in a Russo-centric manner, falsified information leading common Russian people to behave irrationally. [5]
Our New President premiered in the World Documentary Competition at the 2018 Sundance Film Festival. [6] [7] [8] It premiered on opening day of the festival. Our New President editors Maxim Pozdorovkin and Matvey Kulakov won the World Cinema Documentary Special Jury Award for Editing. [9]
Reactions to the documentary, made mostly of loosely stitched visuals from various Russian media as well as home videos made by Russians, were mixed. It received 6 out of 10 points on IMDb [10] while The Collider gave it an unfavourable "F". [11] The Guardian gave the documentary 4 out of 5 stars. [12] The Hollywood Reporter gave it a mixed review. [13]
Charles Robert Redford Jr. is an American retired actor and filmmaker. He has received numerous accolades such as an Academy Award, a BAFTA Award, and two Golden Globe Awards, as well as the Cecil B. DeMille Award in 1994, the Screen Actors Guild Life Achievement Award in 1996, the Academy Honorary Award in 2002, the Kennedy Center Honors in 2005, the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2016, and the Honorary César in 2019. He was named by Time as one of the 100 most influential people in the world in 2014.
William Oliver Stone is an American filmmaker. Stone is known as a controversial but acclaimed director, tackling subjects ranging from the Vietnam War, and American politics to musical biopics and crime dramas. He has received numerous accolades including four Academy Awards, a BAFTA Award, a Primetime Emmy Award, and five Golden Globe Awards.
Mike Lerner is a film director and producer. He has directed Pussy Riot: A Punk Prayer (2013), and Klarsfeld (2022). He has produced multiple documentary films and series including Hell and Back Again (2011), Rafea: Solar Mama (2012), The Square (2013), The Departure (2017), The Great Hack (2019), The Kleptocrats (2018), The Vow (2020–22), The Meaning of Hitler (2020), F*ck this Job (2021), Flight/Risk (2022), and Defiant (2023).
Pussy Riot: A Punk Prayer is a 2013 documentary film by Mike Lerner and Maxim Pozdorovkin. The film follows the court cases on the Russian feminist/anti-Putinist punk-rock protest group Pussy Riot. Directed by Lerner and Pozdorovkin, the film featured publicly available footage of the court proceedings and interviews with the families of the band members, but no interviews with the band members themselves.
Maxim Pozdorovkin is a Russian-American filmmaker based in New York. He is the director of The Truth About Killer Robots, an HBO documentary that premiered at the 2018 Toronto International Film Festival. The Truth About Killer Robots was described by The Guardian as "the year's most terrifying documentary". His film Our New President premiered at Sundance 2018 where it won a Special Jury Award. Variety also listed it as one of the ten best films from the festival. Pozdorovkin's other films include: Pussy Riot: A Punk Prayer, The Notorious Mr. Bout, Clinica de Migrantes (HBO). Upcoming feature documentary How to Rob Banks For Dummies is currently in post-production.
The Notorious Mr. Bout is a 2014 documentary film directed by Tony Gerber and Maxim Pozdorovkin. The film focuses on the life of Viktor Bout, an international arms smuggler. It premiered on January 17, 2014 at the Sundance Film Festival. It was also screened at the 2014 True/False Film Festival.
The Russian Woodpecker is a 2015 documentary film written, produced and directed by Chad Gracia following Fedor Alexandrovich's investigation into the Chernobyl disaster. It is Gracia's directorial debut feature. The film premiered in the "World Cinema Documentary" competition at 2015 Sundance Film Festival on 24 January 2015 and won the World Cinema Documentary Grand Jury Prize at the festival.
Before being elected president of the United States, Donald Trump had produced and hosted reality TV shows The Apprentice and The Celebrity Apprentice from 2004 to 2015. He also made dozens of cameo appearances in films, television series, and advertisements since the 1980s. He won the Worst Supporting Actor award at the 11th Golden Raspberry Awards for Ghosts Can't Do It in 1990, as well as awards for Worst Actor and Worst Screen Combo at the 39th Golden Raspberry Awards for his roles in the documentary films Death of a Nation and Fahrenheit 11/9 in 2019.
Whose Streets? is a 2017 American documentary film about the killing of Michael Brown and the Ferguson uprising. Directed by Sabaah Folayan and co-directed by Damon Davis, Whose Streets? premiered in competition at the 2017 Sundance Film Festival, then was released theatrically in August, 2017, for the anniversary of Brown's death. It was a nominee for Critics' Choice and Gotham Independent Film awards.
An Inconvenient Sequel: Truth to Power is a 2017 American concert film/documentary film, directed by Bonni Cohen and Jon Shenk, about former United States Vice President Al Gore's continuing mission to battle climate change. The sequel to An Inconvenient Truth (2006), the film addresses the progress made to tackle the problem and Gore's global efforts to persuade governmental leaders to invest in renewable energy, culminating in the landmark signing of 2016's Paris Agreement. The film was released on July 28, 2017, by Paramount Pictures, and grossed over $5 million worldwide. It received a nomination for Best Documentary at the 71st British Academy Film Awards.
Trumped: Inside the Greatest Political Upset of All Time is a 2017 American documentary film that chronicles the presidential campaign of Donald Trump, leading up to his electoral victory in November 2016. The film was directed by Ted Bourne, Mary Robertson, and Banks Tarver, and was created from footage that was shot for the Showtime television documentary series, The Circus: Inside the Greatest Political Show on Earth, starring Mark Halperin, John Heilemann, and Mark McKinnon; the three also appear in the film.
Fahrenheit 11/9 is a 2018 American documentary by filmmaker Michael Moore about the 2016 United States presidential election and presidency of Donald Trump up to the time of the film's release. The film is a follow-up to Moore's Fahrenheit 9/11 (2004), a documentary about the presidency of George W. Bush. The film had its world premiere on September 6, 2018, at the 2018 Toronto International Film Festival, and was released in the United States on September 21, 2018, by Briarcliff Entertainment.
Icarus is a 2017 American documentary film by Bryan Fogel. Initially an attempt by Fogel to expose the inadequacy of existing policies and procedures to catch athletes who use banned performance-enhancing substances, the project shifted focus after pressures related to the World Anti-Doping Agency's investigation of doping in Russia led Grigory Rodchenkov, the head of the Moscow Anti-Doping Laboratory and one of Fogel's primary advisors, to flee Russia and become a whistleblower.
Genesis 2.0 is a documentary film made by Swiss director and producer Christian Frei and Russian filmmaker Maxim Abugaev. The feature-length film was released in January 2018 in the World Cinema Documentary section at the Sundance Film Festival. At the center of the film is the woolly mammoth, an extinct and iconic species that today is surrounded by wishes and visions. On the one hand, the film documents the hazardous daily lives of a group of men who gather valuable mammoth tusks in a remote archipelago, the New Siberian Islands. On the other, it illuminates the potential of genetic research and synthetic biology — the means by which researchers hope to bring the woolly mammoth back to life.
Won't You Be My Neighbor? is a 2018 American documentary film about the life and guiding philosophy of Fred Rogers, the host and creator of Mister Rogers' Neighborhood, directed by Morgan Neville. The trailer for the film debuted on what would have been Rogers' 90th birthday, March 20, 2018.
Active Measures is a 2018 documentary film by director Jack Bryan. The documentary centered on Russian interference in the 2016 U.S. election, and looks at the many suspicious links between Trump associates and Russian officials and spies. Additional topics covered included the life of Vladimir Putin, social media manipulation broadly, and the Cambridge Analytica scandal.
The Truth About Killer Robots is a 2018 documentary made by Third Party Films. It describes the hitherto ignored issues related to robots that have been involved in human fatalities.
Welcome to Chechnya is a 2020 documentary film by American reporter, author and documentarian David France. The film centers on the anti-gay purges in Chechnya of the late 2010s, filming LGBT Chechen refugees using hidden cameras as they made their way out of Russia through a network of safehouses aided by activists.
Street Gang: How We Got to Sesame Street is a 2021 American documentary film directed by Marilyn Agrelo. Based on the non-fiction book Street Gang by Michael Davis, the film chronicles the development and airing of the children's television program Sesame Street, featuring interviews with series creators Joan Ganz Cooney and Lloyd Morrisett, as well as writers, actors, and artists involved in its creation.
Navalny is a 2022 American documentary film directed by Daniel Roher. The film revolves around Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny and events related to his poisoning. It was produced by HBO Max and CNN Films. The film premiered on January 25, 2022 at the Sundance Film Festival, where it received critical and audience acclaim and won the Audience Award in the US Documentary competition and the Festival Favorite Award. It also won the Best Documentary Feature at the 95th Academy Awards, won the award for Best Political Documentary at the 7th Critics' Choice Documentary Awards and picked up best documentary at the 76th BAFTA awards ceremony.