What’s Up Doc?: Louie Psihoyos Tops Our *New* Monthly Top 50 Most Anticipated Docs Guide

They often get quite a bit less attention than their fictional brethren, and it doesn’t help that many films fly under the radar while development and filming is underway. To chart this course with a little more precision, I’m launching IONCINEMA.com’s latest feature, What’s Up Doc?, our monthly Top 50 Most Anticipated films, a sort of hitlist and/or snapshot of the most alluring, the most promising documentary film projects from the established documentarian guard, the new crop of future voices or the fiction filmmakers who on occasion dip their toes in the form. Curated by me, Jordan M. Smith, you’ll find docu items that are in their beginning stages to being moments away from their film festival berth. Like any such list, we can expect film items to fluctuate in ranking, with the cut-off being publicly items — such recent examples include Laura Poitras’s white hot Edward Snowden project, Citizenfour, which recently made tidal waves at the New York Film Festival, or A.J. Schnack’s recently premiered Al Jazeera America aired election project, Midterms.

Near the top of our initial run is the the latest project from documentary legends Chris Hegedus and D.A. Pennebaker with Unlocking the Cage, which “documents Steve’s (renowned animal rights attorney Steven Wise) unprecedented challenge to break down the legal wall that separates animals from humans.” Despite being co-produced by the BBC and having received funding from the Tribeca Film Institute last year, the filmmaking couple took to Kickstarter back in May and successfully raised over $75,000 towards production costs (maybe you saw some of the ridiculously awesome rewards on offer for pitching in). On the brink of summer they still had a lengthy list of film shoots left, including scientific discussions around the world and on going New York court cases, so despite its high rank, it’s likely a candidate for a late 2015 release, best case scenario.

Much closer to release are Alex Gibney’s Mr. Dynamite: The Rise of James Brown, which premieres on HBO next Monday (October 27th), and An Open Secret, one of four films by Amy Berg stacked throughout this list. The latter marks Berg’s second film to call attention to sexual abuse (the first being the devastating Deliver Us From Evil), stating in it’s official synopsis that “Every year, thousands of children swarm Hollywood in search of fame, but what they often find under the surface is a deep and disturbing underbelly of manipulation and abuse.” Earlier this week Elle released the first clip from the film, which is slated to make its world premiere next month at DOC NYC along with a lengthy list of others, including Dan Rybicky & Aaron Wickenden’s Almost There, Althea by Rex Miller, and the Tom Roberts directed Every Last Child.

Looking down the pipeline once again, Kent Jones, director of the New York Film Festival, as well as the director of programming for the Film Society of Lincoln Center, is hard at work on his first solo doc since Val Lewton: The Man in the Shadows (both Lady by the Sea: The Statue of Liberty and A Letter to Elia were co-directed with Martin Scorsese). Taking its namesake from Francois Truffaut’s monumental 1966 book “Cinema According to Hitchcock”, Hitchcock/Truffaut, Jones seems to have rounded up just about every working auteur one can dream of to reflect on the text that made an impact on generations of filmmakers in its wake. The list includes names like Spielberg, Linklater, Fincher, W. Anderson, Assayas, Scorsese, Gray and on and on. Given cinema history subject and the pedigree involved, I might wager for a rare docu premiere at Cannes à la Jodorowsky’s Dune or Ain’t Misbehavin’.

P.S: For those attached to any of the docs mentioned below — please feel free to share any updates on the status of your projects. I can be reached at jordan [at] ioncinema dot com.