{"id":356356,"date":"2026-09-25T03:14:46","date_gmt":"2026-09-25T03:14:46","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/356356\/"},"modified":"2026-09-25T03:14:46","modified_gmt":"2026-09-25T03:14:46","slug":"savannah-film-fest-10-top-2026-documentaries-set-for-docs-to-watch-panel","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/356356\/","title":{"rendered":"Savannah Film Fest: 10 Top 2026 Documentaries Set for \u2018Docs to Watch\u2019 Panel"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tThe SCAD Savannah Film Festival<\/a> and The Hollywood Reporter have announced the 10 standout 2026 documentaries that will be represented by their directors on the 13th annual edition of Docs to Watch, the fest\u2019s panel that has become an important stop on the road to the Oscars for nonfiction films.<\/p>\n

\n\tThis year\u2019s selections: Poh Si Teng\u2019s American Doctor (Watermelon), Ron Howard\u2019s Avedon (Netflix), Alysa Nahmias\u2019s Cookie Queens (Roadside), Jimmy Chin and Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi\u2019s Everest: The Other Side (Nat Geo), Amir Bar-Lev\u2019s The Last First: Winter K2 (Apple), Julia Loktev\u2019s My Undesirable Friends: Part II \u2013 Exile (MUBI), William Greaves and David Greaves\u2019s Once Upon a Time in Harlem (Neon), Itab Azzam & Jack MacInnes\u2019s One in a Million (Frontline), Rory Kennedy\u2019s The Trial of Alec Baldwin (Abramorama) and Nathan Fielder<\/a> and Lance Oppenheim\u2019s You Can See Everything<\/a> (A24).<\/p>\n

\n\tOver the past 12 years, 27 films that were represented on the panel went on to receive an Oscar nomination for best documentary feature, and eight ultimately won that award: 2015\u2019s Amy, 2016\u2019s O.J.: Made in America, 2017\u2019s Icarus, 2018\u2019s Free Solo, 2019\u2019s American Factory, 2021\u2019s Summer of Soul, 2022\u2019s Navalny and 2023\u2019s 20 Days in Mariupol.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe 2026 panel will take place over 90 minutes at the Lucas Theatre on the afternoon of Wednesday, Oct. 28, and will be moderated by yours truly.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cThis year\u2019s Docs to Watch selections reflect a range of films that take us somewhere we didn\u2019t expect to go, whether that\u2019s into a hidden chapter of history, the life of an extraordinary individual, or a story unfolding in front of us right now,\u201d Christina Routhier, the senior executive director of SCAD Theaters and Festivals, said in a statement. \u201cWe\u2019re excited to partner with Scott Feinberg and The Hollywood Reporter to bring these filmmakers and their films to Savannah and give our students and audiences the chance to experience the work, meet the artists behind it, and be part of the conversation.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tHere are some brief loglines about each of 2026\u2019s Docs to Watch:<\/p>\n

\n\t\u2022 American Doctor, a film independently financed and directed by a Malaysian-born American journalist, follows three American physicians \u2014 one Jewish, one Palestinian and one Zoroastrian \u2014\u00a0as they volunteer at a hospital in Gaza amid the ongoing war<\/p>\n

\n\t\u2022 Avedon, from Oscar-winning director Ron Howard, explores the life, work and legacy of the American portrait photographer Richard Avedon, drawing upon unprecedented access to his personal archives and including never-before-seen stills and behind-the-lens footage<\/p>\n

\n\t\u2022 Cookie Queens, the year\u2019s highest-grossing non-celebrity doc, is a heartwarming chronicle of four young girls\u2019 efforts, in the face of varying forms of adversity, to meet their sales goals during Girl Scouts cookie-selling season<\/p>\n

\n\t\u2022 Everest: The Other Side, from the Oscar-winning directors of Free Solo, is another film about extreme outdoor athletes, in this case a man and a woman who fall in love and share a dream of climbing and then skiing down the north face of Mt. Everest<\/p>\n

\n\t\u2022 The Last First: Winter K2 follows a team of mountaineers as they strive to achieve something never previously accomplished, namely, climbing K2, the second-highest mountain in the world after Mt. Everest, in winter<\/p>\n

\n\t\u2022 My Undesirable Friends: Part II \u2013 Exile is the six-hour second installment, following a five-hour first, in an epic portrait of independent Russian journalists whose coverage amid Vladimir Putin\u2019s authoritarian crackdown forces them to flee their homeland<\/p>\n

\n\t\u2022 Once Upon a Time in Harlem is a miraculous achievement, featuring remarkable footage of a gathering of Harlem Renaissance luminaries that was shot by one filmmaker in 1972 but not turned into a film until that filmmaker\u2019s son completed it more than a half-century later<\/p>\n

\n\t\u2022 One in a Million, the winner of the Sundance Film Festival\u2019s audience award, chronicles a tumultuous decade in the life of a young Syrian girl who, along with her family, flees her war-torn country and seeks refuge in Europe<\/p>\n

\n\t\u2022 The Trial of Alec Baldwin is the result of exclusive access to the titular star following a 2021 accidental shooting during the making of the film Rust, and includes powerful footage from the set, from Baldwin\u2019s police interrogation and from the legal proceedings that followed<\/p>\n

\n\t\u2022 You Can See Everything, a film unlike any other, follows The Rehearsal\u2019s Nathan Fielder as he is welcomed into the home of Theranos\u2019 Elizabeth Holmes over the 34 days before begins serving a prison sentence, and tries to figure out what she\u2019s really about<\/p>\n

\n\tThe 29th SCAD Savannah Film Festival will take place Oct. 24-31. Presented by the Savannah College of Art and Design, it is the largest university-run film festival in the world. Each year, some 75,000 people attend the eight-day event, which attracts some of the biggest names in Hollywood and world cinema, and which features exclusive screenings, panel discussions and workshops. Tickets for this year\u2019s fest are now on sale<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The SCAD Savannah Film Festival and The Hollywood Reporter have announced the 10 standout 2026 documentaries that will…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":356357,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[37],"tags":[128563,9,24,63,122,124,123,132750,132751,132752],"class_list":["post-356356","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-queens","tag-nathan-fielder","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-city","tag-nyc","tag-queens","tag-queens-headlines","tag-queens-news","tag-scad-docs-to-watch","tag-scad-savannah-film-festival","tag-you-can-see-everything"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/356356","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=356356"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/356356\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/356357"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=356356"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=356356"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=356356"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}