Film festival a spotlight for documentaries

PARK CITY, Utah — Filmmaker Yance Ford was in a “Sundance haze” when he took a meeting with Netflix following the premiere of “Strong Island” in 2017. The streamer was still somewhat new in the original documentary space at that point, but had made several big splashes with docs as different as “The Square,” about the Egyptian revolution, and “What Happened, Miss Simone?” Liz Garbus’ portrait of Nina Simone, both of which were nominated for Oscars.

Ten years after “The Square,” an acquisition that put Netflix documentaries on the map, the streamer is back at the 40th Sundance Film Festival with an eye towards acquisitions and two very different originals. Ford’s latest, “Power,” an inquiry into the evolution of policing in America that had its world premiere Thursday night in Park City, Utah. Bao Nguyen’s “The Greatest Night in Pop,” about the making of the charity anthem “We Are The World,” debuts Friday before streaming on Jan. 29.

“I think that Netflix is largely responsible for the documentary landscape that exists today,” Ford said. “It was responsible for giving the public access to films like mine.”

Adam Del Deo, Netflix’s vice president of documentary, joined the company around the time of “The Square” and commissioning “What Happened, Miss Simone?,” working with veteran Lisa Nishimura.

“We really were the new kids on the block trying to persuade filmmakers that having the reach of the platform was something that was really important,” Del Deo said. “The mission when I began was to be the premiere storyteller in the doc space. That was the case back in the DVD days and continues to be the objective today.”

In the 10 years since, the Netflix audience has grown from around 37 million members to over 250 million worldwide and the appetite for documentaries has only intensified.