Steven Bognar: Last News

Matt Donnelly Senior Film Writer The snow from this year’s Sundance Film Festival has mostly melted off of Hollywood’s Dior boots, and as the Utah event draws to a close the time has come to crown a new class of indie filmmaking stars. Multiple pedigreed juries will hand out prizes to movies in competition on Friday at Park City’s The Ray Theater — where buzzy titles will duke it out for honors including directing, acting, screenwriting and the most coveted honors, the audience award and the grand jury prize. “Storytelling is important, part of human continuity,” Sundance interim CEO Amanda Kelso said at the top of the ceremony, quoting its founder Robert Redford.

Lauren Coates Filmmakers Reinaldo Marcus Green, Arian Moayed and Celine Song are among the among the jurors who will be bestowing awards at this year’s Sundance Film Festival. The 2025 Sundance Film Festival Jury is divided into six sections: U.S. dramatic, U.S.

The Sundance Institute has named 16 jurors for the 2025 Sundance Film Festival, as well as the group of five that deliberated on the Alfred P. Sloan Feature Film Prize.

Addie Morfoot Contributor Five documentary filmmakers have been chosen to receive Catapult Film Fund‘s annual research grant. Each recipient will receive $10,000 in direct support and six months of mentorship from industry advisors to support new nonfiction projects.

Alison Herman TV Critic In 2020, the Academy Award for Documentary Feature went to “American Factory,” a portrait of a former General Motors plant taken over by Fuyao, a Chinese company that lowered safety standards and pay while fiercely resisting unionization. The Oscar was a victory not just for filmmakers Steven Bognar and Julia Reichert, but for the company that acquired “American Factory” as its first major feature: Higher Ground, the production outfit of former President and First Lady Barack and Michelle Obama. The new Netflix series “Working” — subtitle: “What We Do All Day” — is inspired by the Studs Terkel book of the same name, published in 1974. But it’s also an informal sequel of sorts to “American Factory,” making many of the same points about the evolution of labor and the erosion of the middle class. “Working” also shares with its predecessor the same inherent tensions that stem directly from the Obamas’ sign-on. In the case of “Working,” the country’s 44th commander in chief is more than just a name in the credits; he’s also the narrator and on-camera host, reprising his dual role from prior Higher Ground series “Our Great National Parks.” That hands-on involvement only underlines the nature of “Working,” and Higher Ground projects as a whole. It’s a stand-alone political message that’s also a piece of a larger political legacy. Inevitably, the latter overshadows and complicates the former.

Julia Reichert, the documentary filmmaker who won an Oscar in 2020 with husband and directing partner Steven Bognar for American Factory, died last night of bladder cancer. She was 75.

Rebecca Rubin Film and Media ReporterTribeca Festival, the first in-person film festival in the U.S. since the pandemic, closed out its 20th edition with a tribute to a small town in the midwest.Filmmakers Julia Reichert and Steven Bognar, the Oscar winners behind “American Factory,” took the stage at New York’s iconic Radio City Music Hall to introduce their new documentary to a packed  vaccinated and mostly mask-less crowd.“We live in a small town in Ohio,” Bognar told the nearly 6,000 audience members in attendance.

The vaccine-mandatory world premiere of Dave Chappelle: This Time This Place reopened Radio City Music Hall Saturday night for the first time since Covid hit.