What's Behind The Nonfiction Hotlist?
Adam Neuhaus, Isis Masoud and Carol Paik on a new pathway for supporting projects
In March, the inaugural Nonfiction Hotlist was unveiled: 23 yet to be realised documentaries, series, and podcast projects selected to represent some of the outstanding projects deserving to be championed in today's nonfiction landscape.
Feature Documentaries:
The Animated Mind of Oliver Sacks directed by Dempsey Rice
The Arrival Center directed by Gregory Purpura and Nicole Salazar
Aunties directed by Haohao Yan
A City in the Forest directed by Lev Omelchenko and Nolan Huber-Rhoades
Daddy directed by Hannah Myers
Earth to Michael directed by Nico Lopez-Alegria and Zach Zuckerman
Erin's Law directed by Maureen Isern
Father Figures directed by Emma D. Miller
God of Sight directed by Cole Sax
Good Kids directed by Daniel Yonathan
The Grind directed by Dan Chen
Lift Off directed by Michael Crommett
Making the Line directed by Zilla Barbosa
Movement directed by Zac Manuel
State of Gambling directed by Kyle Thrash
Talked to Death directed by Josh Zeman
Vestibule directed by Riley Hooper
Walk With Me directed by Renée Muza
Whale Like Me directed by Malcolm Wright
You’ll Be Happier directed by Daniel Lombroso
Short Documentaries:
Screw Lucy directed by Mary Pilon
Thank You for Listening directed by Gene Gallerano and Bob Ray
Nonfiction Podcast:
When We All Get to Heaven hosted and executive produced by Lynne Gerber, created by Siri Colom and Ariana Nedelman
Helmed by a volunteer collective of 20 professionals from different corners of the industry, the initiative aim to forge new connections between emerging projects seeking supporters, resources and collaborators. The list has already been distributed to a network of over 2,000, including buyers, funders, and other creators who signed up to receive it.
I spoke to Adam Neuhaus, Isis Masoud and Carol Paik about the vision for the Hotlist and how it came into being.
“Every aspect of the Nonfiction Hotlist was designed to put filmmakers and storytellers first, to try to give them a little bit more leverage”
The full team behind Nonfiction Hotlist includes: Andrew Jacobs, Aron Phillips, Ben Selkow, Mandi Gorenstein, Nicole Tossou, Matthew Smaglik, Rachel Holbrook, Amanda Muscat, Sarit G., Anna Rau, Sara McCrea, Amita Patel, Zac Manuel, Todd Weiser, Ann Rose and Cheryl Ottenritter.
Listen to the full interview or read excerpts below.
Follow @purenonfiction on Instagram and tune into tomorrow’s live discussion with Isabel Castro ahead of her film Selena y Los Dinos screening at Miami Film Festival.
Bella: Can you each describe your background and how you came to the Nonfiction Hotlist?
Adam: I've worked at production companies, in reality, docs, podcasts. I worked as an executive most recently at ESPN, leading creative development for the 30 for 30 brand across the films and podcast. In the last two years I left to start Neuhaus Ideas, which works across all mediums.
The idea for the Hotlist was born out of my own experience. Over the last couple of years, I've taken out a lot of high profile docs and doc series to the marketplace, but things were not getting picked up. I felt like the feedback had nothing to do with the creative, but more to do with the industry and how fewer people are buying. I knew a lot of people with full slates in the same position, so I shared a LinkedIn post about my experience with a line that said we could use a Blacklist of nonfiction. It was just a shorthand, not because we're trying to copy exactly what they're doing or their process, but because people know what that is.
That post went viral on LinkedIn. Many people saw it, reposted and commented. One of the first comments was from Isis Masoud who said, “Well, what are we doing? Why don't we get started with this?”
Isis: I currently work in documentary-style casting for big brands. I'm currently on an Airbnb campaign and I’ve done numerous Super Bowl commercials for Google. My job is to find real stories and doc filmmakers for big brands, so the second that Adam posted about this, it really hit home for me. The Nonfiction Hotlist had a similar process to casting; getting a bunch of submissions, we make decisions, we tell people yes or no.
Carol: I spent most of my career in the public media space in the doc world. I've been at PBS, NPR, ITVS and Independent Lens. I also spent a good couple of years at TLC and Warner Brothers, a very different experience from the doc world. I’m also a filmmaker, so Adam’s post really resonated because I see both sides of the industry and know that a lot of really great projects are not getting greenlit.
What I love about this project is that, from the beginning, Adam said, “We're going to do it fast.”
I was curious, could we actually make this happen in a short amount of time? We had 639 submissions and 20 reviewers - all filmmakers and creators at heart, coming up with a list – versus, some [executive] in an office. I really appreciated that we were doing something in what felt like record time.
Isis: There's an energy behind it. If everything is doom and gloom then that becomes the world that you live in. Something new is going to emerge out of this chaos. Let's be a part of discovering what that is.
Adam: We had this nice mix of people who had the time, energy and passion for the industry to come together. It was important for us, right off the bat, to think about doing this in the spirit of service. We are not attached to these projects, there were no submission fees. We're not even playing a middle person or gatekeeper – on the Hotlist, you see the direct contact information for each of the projects.
We felt the industry needed a non-biased curation. It needed somebody to stand up and say, this is just good. We wanted to cross-pollinate in the nonfiction space, whether that's with a series, a podcast, or branded content. Documentary projects were more common in the applications, but we got a lot of submissions in the series space, as well as documentary podcasts. This opening up of our industry is something I believe we all would benefit from.
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