Alex Gibney on the State of Investigative Documentaries and the Stories That Are Currently “Difficult to Get Made”
The Hollywood Reporter, November 12, 2022: Alex Gibney on the State of Investigative Documentaries and the Stories That Are Currently “Difficult to Get Made”
“With an Academy Award under his belt and a production company that routinely works with top distributors, Alex Gibney is one of the privileged few name brands in documentary film. After helming a long list of films and series focused on corporate and institutional malfeasance and public figures’ moral ambiguities (The Trials of Henry Kissinger, Going Clear: Scientology and the Prison of Belief, Taxi to the Dark Side), Gibney’s credit has come to typify documentary’s capacity for rigorous investigative work.
“Still, the director and his company, Jigsaw Productions, aren’t immune to the ups and downs of today’s corporate entertainment landscape. Even as streamers continue to fuel audience and buyer interest in docs, industry titans are consolidating and cost-cutting as Wall Street grows more bearish on streaming and a potential recession lingers on the horizon. ‘There’s simply fewer buyers. And that’s a huge concern,’ Gibney says of recent corporate amalgamations like the Warner Bros.-Discovery merger, whose aftereffects have included onetime doc powerhouse CNN Films ending its work with outside producers.
“On Nov. 12, Gibney will attend Poland’s EnergaCamerimage International Film Festival to receive the Camerimage Award for Outstanding Achievements in Documentary Filmmaking, rewarding his work as ‘an investigative filmmaker whose oft-controversial films reveal both the ugly and the beautiful sides of the modern world.’ In its retrospective, the festival will showcase his film about the Donald Trump White House’s response to COVID-19, Totally Under Control; the portrait of Putin critic Mikhail Khodorkovsky, Citizen K; We Steal Secrets, a deep dive on Wikileaks’ origins; and U.S. torture exposé Taxi to the Dark Side.
“Before he left for Poland, Gibney spoke with The Hollywood Reporter about the award as well as the current state of the documentary market at large and why he believes ‘it’s incumbent upon filmmakers to operate less like armies and more like guerilla bands’ in the current climate.”
Additional reading:
Variety, November 7, 2022: ‘Bad Bets’ Podcast About Disgraced Nikola CEO Trevor Milton Getting Scripted Treatment
Slate, November 6, 2022: An Ex-Scientologist Explains the Danny Masterson Trial—and How Scientology Got Desperate
Hollywood in Toto, September 27, 2022: Oscar-Winner Alex Gibney Defends Canceled Doc ‘Jihad Rehab’
