David France: Last News

Matt Minton mminton@variety.com The first eight fellows participating in the new Sundance Institute Cultural Impact Residency program include Caron Creighton, Jennifer Huang, Kristal Sotomayor, Alejandra López, A.D. Smith, Wendi Tang, Caitlin McCarthy and Kaelo Iyizoba, Variety can exclusively reveal.

Leo Barraclough International Features Editor Amber Fares’ “Coexistence, My Ass!,” which centers on Israeli comedian Noam Shuster-Eliassi, won the Golden Alexander in the International Competition section of the 27th Thessaloniki Intl. Documentary Festival Sunday.

It’s an elusive dream for so many docmakers: to impact legislation, to find justice, to make a difference. To change the world. With Free Leonard Peltier, filmmakers Jesse Short Bull (Lakota Nation vs. United States) and David France (How To Survive a Plague) achieved their eponymous goal: Seven days before the world premiere of their film at the 2025 Sundance Film Festival in January, President Joe Biden, in his last act before leaving office, issued a clemency order, commuting Peltier’s sentence to home confinement.

The Thessaloniki International Documentary Festival has announced its competition lineups for the March event, a slate of world, international and European premieres hailing from Greece, Paraguay, Kyrgyzstan, Israel, Kenya, the U.S. and other parts of the globe.

Joe Leydon Film Critic It’s the sort of twist no screenwriter would dare invent: “Free Leonard Peltier,” a persuasively well-researched and often infuriating documentary about the American Indian Movement activist convicted nearly a half-century ago of killing two FBI agents, had its premiere at the Sundance Film Festival on Jan. 27, 2025 — precisely one week after Joe Biden, as one of his very last official acts as U.S.

Producer Rob Reiner and director Dan Partland screened God & Country, a new documentary chronicling the rise of Christian nationalism, on Capitol Hill on Thursday evening.

Addie Morfoot Contributor Distribution platform Gathr and documentary distribution agency Roco Films have teamed to create Roco Voices, a new speakers bureau. Roco Voices, launching Nov.

Brent Lang Executive Editor Oscilloscope Laboratories has acquired U.S. rights to Dan Partland’s “God & Country: The Rise of Christian Nationalism.” The film, which was produced by Rob Reiner, is set for release in early 2024. It features interviews with prominent faith leaders, who share their fears about this movement.

Malina Saval Associate Editor, Features Jewish Story Partners (JSP), a Los Angeles-based nonprofit film funding organization, has announced  its new slate of grants to 19 documentary film projects. The org, which was launched in April 2021 with support from Kate Capshaw and Steven Spielberg’s Righteous Persons Foundation, will distribute $490,000 among these independent films, all of which explore the vast and vibrant terrain of the Jewish storytelling space. The announcement coincides with Jewish American Heritage Month and a commitment from President Joe Biden’s White House administration to develop a national strategy to counter antisemitism and “address increasing awareness and understanding of both antisemitism and Jewish American heritage.” 

Guy Lodge Film CriticA decade ago, when his documentary “How to Survive a Plague” rode a wave of festival acclaim to an Oscar nomination, journalist-turned-filmmaker David France probably didn’t imagine that a similarly titled quasi-sequel was in the cards. A superb overview of the early years of HIV-AIDS activism in the face of political indifference and ineptitude — ultimately leading to game-changing medication and pharmaceutical policy change — that film has given France a solid grounding for another feature-length study of very different if somewhat comparable global health crisis, centered on the COVID-19 pandemic and the extraordinarily accelerated scientific race for a solution.Researched and assembled with his characteristic intelligence and thoroughness, “How to Survive a Pandemic” serves as both a valuable potted history of the last two years of medical tumult and relief, and a critical progress report marking work yet to be done. Hardly the first high-profile documentary on the pandemic, but the most substantial yet to focus specifically on the trajectory of the vaccine, France’s film is assured a receptive audience when it bows on HBO next week, following docfest premiere slots in Thessaloniki and Copenhagen.

Christopher Vourlias From the early days of the coronavirus pandemic, Oscar-nominated documentary filmmaker David France (“How to Survive a Plague”) could sense the scale of the threat looming on the horizon. A long-time health reporter who has spent decades documenting the battle against HIV and AIDS, he also knew that it would be up to science to lead the world from the brink of an unprecedented human catastrophe.The race to develop and rollout a COVID-19 vaccine has been the defining story of recent memory, and it was the director’s need to document “the great unseen work” performed in laboratories across the world that led to his latest feature, “How to Survive a Pandemic.” “This is the largest scientific undertaking of our lifetimes,” France tells Variety, “and it deserved to be chronicled.” “How to Survive a Pandemic,” which world premieres this week at the Thessaloniki Documentary Festival, is a kaleidoscopic portrait of the world’s response to COVID-19 told through the eyes of leading scientists, lawmakers, activists, healthcare workers, and everyday figures on the pandemic’s frontlines.

Emmy nominations in the doc categories are giving films passed over by the Oscars a shot at some trophies of their own.

LONG BEACH — Due to COVID-19, Long Beach’s QFilm Festival will be virtual this year.