For Netflix documentaries, there’s no place like Sundance
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 documen- tary space but had made sev- eral big splashes with docs as different as “The Square,” about the Egypt an revolut on, and “What Happened, Miss Simone? “Liz Garbus’ por- trait of Nina Simone, which were nominated for Oscars.
“Strong Island” would go on to get an Oscar nomination, too, as would its Sundance and Netflix peer “Icarus,” which would win best docu- mentary in 2018. But “Strong Island” was a different kind of film, a wrenching and deeply personal investigation into the 1992 murder of his brother and the failures of the jus- tice system. When Ford, a first-time filmmaker, walked out of the meeting, he asked his producer if that had gone as well as he thought. He was assured it had.
“There was no explaining the film to them,” Ford said. “Netflix understood what ‘Strong Island’ was doing and what it could say to a big, broad audience.”
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 dif-
rent 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 Nguy- en’s “The Greatest Night in Pop,” about the making of the charity anthem “We Are The World,” debuted 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.”
Wi h “Power,” which looks at policing from 30,000 feet, he said, “I wasn’t particularly
erested in the debate about defund the police. I wasn’t particularly interested in the rhetoric of Back the Blue. What I was interested in is this thing that I saw at play which was just this manifes- tation of the power of the state being exercised over people.”
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 plat- form 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 cont nues to be the objective today.”
In the 10 years since, the Netflix audience has grown from around 37 million mem- bers to over 250 mi lion world- wide and the appetite for doc- umentaries has only intensi- fied. It’s allowed for experimentation in commissions and acquisitions in both series and features, includ- ing “Chef ’s Table,” “Making a Murderer,” the Emmy win- ning “Wild Wild Country,” the Oscar winning “Ameri- can Factory “and the Oscar nominated “Crip Camp. “
Many of those successes started in some form at Sundance, the festival that launched “Hoop Dreams” and “Paradise Lost” before the so-called “golden age of documentary” from the past several years. They don’t have one specific type of movie they’re after – in fact, they’ve
und their members seek out diversity of genre and thus it’s a matter of finding “best in class storytelling,” he said, whether that’s in sports, pop culture, nature, current events or anything else.
“It’s really a question of curation of titles that … really cut through, that are going to feel fresh and drive conversation and create cultural moments,” Del Deo said.
“What Happened, Miss Simone?” was the company’s first commissioned documentary and Garbus remembers being excited but also a little wary as they were “untested.” Then she met Del Deo who became her trusted “man on the ground” while making the film, which played on the festival’s opening night in 2015, with a performance by John Legend.
“One of the most exciting things was being on Twitter the moment the filmed dropped on Netflix, seeing reactions from Brazil, from France, and seeing the world light up at once,” Garbus said. “It was thrilling. You really felt like you were in a global moment.”