Davis Guggenheim: Last News

Addie Morfoot Contributor Hans Block and Moritz Riesewieck’s documentary “Eternal You,” which will premiere at the Sundance Film Festival in the world cinema doc competition section on Saturday, explores ways that artificial intelligence is being used to comfort the bereaved. The doc follows people from around the globe who are using AI to to create avatars of the deceased people to allow their loved ones to interact with them.

Concordia Studio has selected four filmmakers for its 2025 Documentary Filmmaker Fellowship, a prestigious artist development program cultivated within the independent film and television production studio co-founded by Oscar winner Davis Guggenheim.

Addie Morfoot Contributor Elegance Bratton’s “Move Ya Body: The Birth of House” will open the 10th edition of Chicago’s Doc10 documentary film festival on April 30. The doc, which premiered at Sundance 2025, charts the rise of house music. The film recounts how the Disco Sucks movement led to the infamous Disco Demolition Night at Chicago’s Comiskey Park, which resulted in thousands of people throwing records, mostly by Black artists, into a bonfire.

EXCLUSIVE: AppleTV+ has set a premiere date of May 16 for the Nyle DiMarco and Davis Guggenheim directed feature documentary, Deaf President Now!

Addie Morfoot Contributor During a recent appearance on “The Late Show With Stephen Colbert,” Will Ferrell playfully told Oscar documentary branch voters to “suck it” for snubbing “Will & Harper” in the best doc feature race. Although Ferrell was joking, he voiced a sentiment held by a number of doc branch members.

Peter Debruge Chief Film Critic The “now” in “Deaf President Now!” refers to the second week of March 1988 — when the students of Gallaudet University in Washington, D.C., united in protest of the board’s choice of a non-deaf candidate to lead the school. But the activism depicted is still relevant to identity-centric struggles today.

Some of the biggest talents in documentary film will be unveiling new work at the 2025 Sundance Film Festival, including Oscar winners Ahmir “Questlove” Thompson, Davis Guggenheim, and Mstyslav Chernov.

Variety Awards Circuit section is the home for all awards news and related content throughout the year, featuring the following: the official predictions for the upcoming Oscars, Emmys, Grammys and Tony Awards ceremonies, curated by Variety senior awards editor Clayton Davis. The prediction pages reflect the current standings in the race and do not reflect personal preferences for any individual contender.

Editors note: Filmmaker and producer Davis Guggenheim directed 2006’s An Inconvenient Truth featuring Al Gore. The film won the Oscar and helped put Jeff Skoll‘s social-impact-driven production company then known as Participant Media on the map, and also sounded an alarm about climate change that has become more pronounced since the film was released. In addition to documentaries, Participant was also responsible for Oscar Best Picture winners Spotlight and Green Book, and Steven Soderbergh’s Contagion, another timely topic. Guggenheim is a co-founder of Concordia Studio and most recently directed and produced Still: A Michael J. Fox Movie, which  won four Emmys including for Outstanding Documentary or Nonfiction Special.  He is the only person to direct and produce three distinct films ranking in the top 100 highest-grossing documentaries of all time (An Inconvenient Truth, It Might Get Loud, and Waiting for Superman). Here he penned a guest column for Deadline after learning Participant was shuttering. 

EXCLUSIVE: London-based Dogwoof has locked a series of international deals on Eternal You, a documentary about AI startups set to screen at this month’s Hot Docs Fest following a debut bow at Sundance.

The Concordia Fellowship provides crucial financial and professional support to diverse non-fiction storytellers in sixth class. Concordia Studio, the company behind the acclaimed Emmy-winning documentary film, STILL: A Michael J. Fox Movie, directed by founder Davis Guggenheim, is awarding four filmmakers the Concordia Fellowship for 2024.

Elsa Keslassy International Correspondent After premiering at the Sundance Film Festival, Hans Block and Moritz Riesewieck’s documentary “Eternal You” is set to be theatrical released by Dogwoof in the U.K. and Farbfilm in Germany. The buzzed-about documentary explores ways that AI is being used by help people cope with grief, allowing them to interact with avatars of their deceased loved ones.

When the Oscar nominations were announced last month, it marked a watershed moment for the Documentary Feature category. All the nominated films focused on international subjects – stories from Uganda, Tunisia, Ukraine, India and Chile — and not a single American director was recognized.

In an Oscar stunner, two films considered a lock for nominations failed to be recognized Tuesday morning in the Best Documentary Feature category: American Symphony and Still: A Michael J. Fox Movie.

Addie Morfoot Contributor This year’s Oscar feature documentary shortlist is made up of a group of 15 films that, by and large, big streamers aren’t interested in sharing with subscribers. Six films that made it to the shortlist — Lea Glob’s “Apolonia, Apolonia,” Nancy Buirski’s “Desperate Souls, Dark City and the Legend of Midnight Cowboy,” Kaouther Ben Hania’s “Four Daughters,” Maciek Hamela’s “In the Rearview,” Luke Lorentzen’s “A Still Small Voice” and Sam Green’s “32 Sounds” — have theatrical distribution, but were not picked up by a major streaming company such as Netflix, Amazon or Apple TV+.

The list of feature documentaries still in contention for the Oscars has been cut to 15 finalists, a brutal culling from a contingent of 167 qualifiers. The annual shortlist announcement leaves a handful of filmmakers celebrating, many more disappointed, and documentary watchers with much to debate. 

American Symphony, the Obamas-executive produced documentary about Grammy-winning musician Jon Batiste, scored a remarkable hat trick today as the Oscar shortlists were revealed, but a couple of documentary icons were left on the bench.

Deadline on Tuesday launched the streaming site for Contenders Film: Documentary, its annual showcase of the year’s best nonfiction films that are in the running for the Documentary Feature Oscar.

It was a very good night for Michael J. Fox Apple TV+’s Davis Guggenheim-directed documentary on the star’s life and battle with Parkinsons Disease won in all five categories for which it was nominated at the 8th Annual Critics Choice Documentary Awards. It swept the board for Best Documentary Feature, Best Director, Editing for Michael Harte, Narration for Fox himself, and Biographical Documentary.The Critics Choice Documentary Awards, held tonight at the Edison Hotel in New York City and live streamed, recognizes the year’s finest achievements in documentaries released in theaters, on TV and on major digital platforms, as determined by the voting of qualified CCA members. 20 Days in Mariupol winning for Best First Documentary for director Msyyslav Chernov and Best Political Documentary picked up a pair of wins as did Netflix’s docus  American Symphony, and The Deepest Breath which each took home two awards. Jon Batiste was the subject of American Symphony which had a leading six nominations and won a prize as Best Music Documentary as well as for Batiste’s score. The Deepest Breath prevailed as Best Sports Documentary and for its Cinematography.

CODA actors Troy Kotsur and Marlee Matlin will host the 2023 Media Access Awards next month, marking the first time that two Deaf performers will host an awards show together.

Apple TV+ has conjured up The Enfield Poltergeist, a four-part documentary that revisits the real-life haunting of a family in ’70s London.