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The lore of “The Sopranos” is dissected in buzzy two-part documentary “Wise Guy: David Chase and ‘The Sopranos.'”

The feature, which debuted at Tribeca 2024, is directed by Academy Award winner Alex Gibney, who once again partners with HBO after helming “The Inventor: Out for Blood in Silicon Valley” and “Going Clear: Scientology and the Prison of Belief.” Per the official synopsis, the documentary “delves deep into the psyche of renowned ‘Sopranos’ creator and writer, David Chase, to illuminate his life and career while offering a unique window into his unparalleled work on the iconic program.”

Of course, as “Sopranos” fans know, the series debuted 25 years ago in 1999.

For “Wise Guy,” director Gibney puts series creator Chase in the psychiatrist’s chair to analyze the origins of the iconic show that drew upon his own upbringing in north New Jersey. Lorraine Bracco, Edie Falco, Michael Imperioli, Drea de Matteo, and...

HBO on Tuesday announced that Wise Guy: David Chase and the Sopranos, a two-part documentary on the premium cabler’s iconic mob drama The Sopranos and the visionary behind it, will premiere on September 7. The two parts will air consecutively, beginning at 8:00 p.m. Et/Pt on the 7th, and will also be available to stream on Max.

A trailer was also unveiled, which you can view above.

25 years after the show first debuted, HBO’s paradigm-shifting series The Sopranos remains a cultural phenomenon and a touchstone for prestige television. In Wise Guy, Oscar-winning documentarian Alex Gibney (Going Clear: Scientology and the Prison of Belief) delves deep into the psyche of Sopranos creator and writer, David Chase, to illuminate his life and career while offering a unique window into his unparalleled work on the iconic program.

On a replica set of Dr. Melfi’s psychiatrist’s office, Gibney flips the script on Chase,...

A select group of films has qualified for Academy Award consideration after winning prizes at the 27th LA Shorts Film Festival, the longest-running shorts festival in the movie capital.

Nowhere, directed by L.A.-based filmmaker Gavin Hovannisian, won the Best of Fest Award at a ceremony Sunday night. In the 11-minute narrative short, set in the fictional city of Nowhere, the protagonists are shadows that “dream of a life without their human masters.”

Also qualifying for Oscar consideration was It Takes a Village…, winner of Best International Film. Director Ophelia Harutyunyan’s drama “tells the story of Mariam, who lives in an Armenian Village where there are no men. On her birthday, her hopes of a reunited family are shattered, when she must put aside her own crushed dreams and help her friend Anush as she embarks into motherhood.”

Both Nowhere and It Takes a Village… are Armenian films.

The funding per project will rise from €150,000 to €200,000.

Funding for the next edition of Biennale College Cinema, Venice Film Festival’s emerging filmmakers’ training and production initiative, will be hiked from €150,000 to €200,000 per project.

The increase comes off the back of a three-year sponsorship deal with French media giant Vivendi that was announced in July. “Vivendi will join us as our partner,” said Venice festival artistic director Alberto Barbera. “We believe this will have a significant impact on our projects in coming years.”

Financial details of the partnership were not revealed. Biennale College Cinema is also supported by Italy’s ministry of culture,...

Oscar voting is wrapping on Wednesday, but it ain’t over ’til it’s over. Film distributor Neon, the reigning champion at the Academy Awards for best picture with “Parasite,” has another stack of contenders this year, all unique in awards discussions. CEO and co-founder Tom Quinn has always pushed the boundaries of cinema, and deeply believes in cultural representation in front and behind the camera, and the way consumers and Academy voters accept the film medium.

“Neon’s entire mission is built around the power of cinema,” Quinn says. “Cinema for us starts in the theater, a collective body of strangers coming together to see a director’s vision — unedited, uninterrupted — and with that comes great power.”

In this bonus episode of the “Variety Awards Circuit Podcast,” Quinn talks about Neon’s robust slate, which includes the comedy “Palm Springs,” international features like “Night of the Kings,” and docs...

I first met Tom Quinn, the film distributor Neon’s co-founder, at a party at the Telluride Film Festival in August 2019. With his film talent in attendance, including “Parasite” director Bong Joon Ho and “Portrait of a Lady on Fire” star Adèle Haenel, a 10-minute side conversation with the CEO has remained prevalent in my mind. At the time, I conveyed to him my thoughts that Bong’s film from South Korea had a real chance to win best picture at the Oscars later in the year. I probably wasn’t the first person to make such a declaration, as the film had premiered at Cannes months earlier, and the buzz was palpable, even though it probably wasn’t believed by the masses as of yet. Without skipping a beat, Quinn almost ignored the comment, quickly stating, “That’s great, but do you know what I really want? I want...

The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences has announced the shortlists for nine categories for the upcoming Oscars. The categories and number of films include documentary feature (15), documentary short subject (10), international feature (15), makeup and hairstyling (10), original score (15), original song (15), animated short film (10), live action short film (10) and visual effects (10).

The shortlist voting concluded on Feb. 5, and the remaining will move on to the official phase one voting, which will take place on March 5-9. The Oscar nominations will be announced on March 15, with the show scheduled to take place on April 25.

The full lists are below with snubs and surprises:

Documentary Feature

Fifteen films will advance in the documentary feature category out of 238 films eligible films. Members of the documentary branch vote to determine the shortlist and the nominees.

“76 Days” (MTV Documentary Films) – directed by Weixi Chen, Hao Wu, Anonymous “All In: The Fight for Democracy” (Amazon Studios) – directed by Lisa Cortes,...

By Glenn Dunks

Alex Gibney isn’t the only one who can crush a deadline and produce a documentary about Covid-19 in time for the new year. While Gibney’s Totally Under Control, made alongside Ophelia Harutyunyan and Suzanne Hillinger, came out in October in an attempt to radicalise the American voters with tales of the then Trump-led American government’s inept response to the coronavirus outbreak. In doing so it already looks out of date.

Two other features, however, hone in more precisely on the pandemic’s beginnings in the city of Wuhan of the Hubei Province in the heart of China. Hao Wu and Weixu Chen’s 76 Days (made in collaboration with ‘Anonymous’) and Ai Weiwei’s CoroNation take different tacts with this setting, showing a city in chaos and alarming stillness at once.

Updated with video: Neon’s documentary Totally Under Control paints a devastating picture of the Trump administration’s response to the Covid-19 pandemic.

“There are moments that we look at in the film where the administration could have sort of righted the ship, released more funds, released the Defense Production Act to get more companies making more PPE, and that didn’t happen,” co-director Suzanne Hillinger says during Deadline’s Contenders Documentary awards-season event. “We’re still seeing effects of that now, unfortunately.”

Oscar winner Alex Gibney, Ophelia Harutyunyan and Hillinger joined forces to direct the film, springing into action to release it by October. “We moved at lightning speed,” Gibney says. “All three of us were working nonstop.”

Gibney was asked whether the administration’s failures resulted from incompetence or willful negligence.

“It was clearly incompetence because the Trump administration had playbooks…that they themselves designed…for exactly what...

The coronavirus pandemic pushed the release of a slew of narrative films into 2021, reducing the number of Best Picture contenders this Oscar season. But it’s a completely different story with documentary. Streaming platforms and other players didn’t hold back their nonfiction slate, and with the Academy relaxing qualification rules, the record for films in contention for Best Documentary is about to be shattered this year.

That makes this the perfect time to launch Deadline’s first Contenders Documentary, a virtual showcase of top nonfiction films this awards season. The event kicks off today at 8 a.m. Pt. Click here to register and join the livestream, and follow along for the day on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram via @Deadline and #DeadlineContenders. See the full schedule of panels below.

The Contenders Documentary program, featuring conversations with a raft of Oscar-winning and Oscar-nominated filmmakers including Alex Gibney, Liz Garbus, Ron Howard,...

— — Totally Under Control (2020) Film Review, a movie directed by Alex Gibney, Ophelia Harutyunyan, and Suzanne Hillinger, and featuring interviews with Scott Becker, Dr. Taison Bell, Michael Bowen, Dr. Rick Bright, Beth Cameron, Caroline Chen, Dr. Tom Frieden, Dr. [...]

Continue reading: Film Review: Totally Under Control (2020): A Straightforward Summary of the U.S.’s Mishandling of the Covid-19 Pandemic That Stresses Scientific Rigor Over Political Theatre...

Totally Under Control Review — Totally Under Control (2020) Video Movie Review, a movie directed by Alex Gibney, Ophelia Harutyunyan, Suzanne Hillanger, written by Alex Gibney, and stars Alex Azar, Charlie Baker, Scott Becker, Taison Bell, Deborah Birx, John Bolton, Michael Bowen, Rick Bright, Sylvia Burwell, and Beth Cameron. In this video review, I talk about the new documentary Totally Under Control, and whether or [...]

Continue reading: Video Movie Review: Totally Under Control (2020): A Documentary More Political Than it Needed to Be...

Francine Prose will join Roger Berkowitz, head of the Hannah Arendt Center, Petra Epperlein and Michael Tucker for a conversation on Doc NYC Facebook Live this Monday at 2:00pm (Est) Photo: Anne-Katrin Titze

Petra Epperlein and Michael Tucker’s kaleidoscopic investigation into the past and our future takes us on the road of history and the state of the world at this moment in time, featuring interviews with Saul Friedländer and Francine Prose on Leni Riefenstahl’s Triumph Of The Will, Martin Amis on political tactics and characterology, Deborah Lipstadt, Beate Klarsfeld, Serge Klarsfeld, and 94-year-old Yehuda Bauer getting the last word. We enter with books by Timothy Snyder, Hannah Arendt, George Orwell, Klaus Theweleit, and the one by Sebastian Haffner that gives the film its name.

Clips from Mel Brooks’s The Producers to Bruno Ganz in Oliver Hirschbiegel’s Downfall to Anthony Hopkins in George Schaefer’s...

“I was running a fever of rage over how badly the [Covid-19] response was being handled by the federal government,” says the Oscar- and Emmy-winning filmmaker Alex Gibney on The Hollywood Reporter‘s Awards Chatter podcast as we discuss what inspired his latest documentary, Totally Under Control, which he directed with his Jigsaw Productions colleagues Ophelia Harutyunyan and Suzanne Hillinger.

The trio began work on the film last spring with the goal of determining if the deadly mistakes of President Donald Trump and his administration had been avoidable, and then sharing their findings with the world before the Nov. 3 presidential election. Says Gibney, “It felt like if that was true, and we’re in an election year, then this is important information for voters to have.”

* * *

You can listen to the episode here. The article continues below.

Past guests include Steven Spielberg, Oprah Winfrey, Lorne Michaels, Barbra Streisand, George Clooney, Meryl Streep,...

“I was running a fever of rage over how badly the [Covid-19] response was being handled by the federal government,” says the Oscar- and Emmy-winning filmmaker Alex Gibney on The Hollywood Reporter’s Awards Chatter podcast as we discuss what inspired his latest documentary, Totally Under Control, which he directed with his Jigsaw Productions colleagues Ophelia Harutyunyan and Suzanne Hillinger.

The trio began work on the film last spring with the goal of determining if the deadly mistakes of President Donald Trump and his administration had been avoidable, and then sharing their findings with the world before the Nov. 3 presidential election. Says Gibney, “It felt ...

“I was running a fever of rage over how badly the [Covid-19] response was being handled by the federal government,” says the Oscar- and Emmy-winning filmmaker Alex Gibney on The Hollywood Reporter’s Awards Chatter podcast as we discuss what inspired his latest documentary, Totally Under Control, which he directed with his Jigsaw Productions colleagues Ophelia Harutyunyan and Suzanne Hillinger.

The trio began work on the film last spring with the goal of determining if the deadly mistakes of President Donald Trump and his administration had been avoidable, and then sharing their findings with the world before the Nov. 3 presidential election. Says Gibney, “It felt ...

Neon is making “Totally Under Control,” its documentary about the White House’s response to Covid-19, available to stream on its website for free through Election Day on Nov. 3.

The company made the announcement Thursday and said it is also setting up Twitter watch parties throughout the week along with Q&As with directors Alex Gibney, Ophelia Harutyunyan and Suzanne Hillinger. The filmmakers will host a watch party on Friday at 4 p.m. Pt with Judd Apatow.

“Totally Under Control” was filmed secretly over the last few months and was completed just days prior to its launch on Oct. 13. The film, which debuted at No. 2 on Apple in its opening week, is currently streaming on Hulu.

The documentary was recently nominated for four Critic’s Choice Awards including best political documentary, along with an honor for most compelling living subjects for whistleblower Dr. Rick Bright.

”This…will give you an...

In today’s TV news roundup, Netflix unveiled the premiere date of the final season of “Chilling Adventures of Sabrina,” and Apple TV Plus released a trailer for “Becoming You.”

Dates

Freeform‘s Instagram account will house the network’s new two-episode limited series, “The Clock Is Ticking” on Oct. 27 and Nov. 3. The digital series, part of the network’s voting initiative, stars Yara Shahidi as she breaks down the importance of voting and tips for packing snacks if voting on election day. The first episode is titled “Why We Vote” and the second, taking place on election day, is “Last Call for Democracy.” Shahidi also executive produces the show alongside Keri Shahidi, and Baratunde Thurston serves as the writer.

Netflix announced that the final season of “Chilling Adventures of Sabrina” will premiere Dec. 31. Sabrina Spellman (Kiernan Shipka) back in action as the coven prepares for war in the eight-episode run.

Oscar winner Alex Gibney‘s new documentary “Totally Under Control,” which he wrote and co-directed with Ophelia Harutyunyan and Suzanne Hillinger, is already available to rent on demand via streaming services, but will be more widely available through Hulu beginning Tuesday, Oct. 20. The film is another addition to the sea of information about how the United States government mishandled the initial response to the threat of the Covid-19 pandemic. In that regard, it’s not as much an enlightening documentary as a timely one, seemingly aimed at giving voice to scientists and public health experts who appear in the film to narrate all the ways the Trump administration’s response failed the country.

As the documentarian behind the 2019 Emmy nominee “The Inventor: Out for Blood in Silicon Valley” and 2015 Emmy winner “Going Clear: Scientology & the Prison of Belief,” as well as the film for which he won the Oscar...

The failures of the United States federal government to contain Covid-19 is well-documented in the media but a new documentary, Totally Under Control tracks the rise of the deadly virus in broader terms. From Academy Award-winning director Alex Gibney with Suzanne Hillinger and Ophelia Harutyunyan, the documentary was filmed in secrecy for the past five months in order to get on record insider information revealing details behind the failed response. Totally Under Control compares South Korea's response in contrast to the United States which makes for a riveting watch.

By Glenn Dunks

There have been experimental Zoom horror movies on streaming services and there have been lockdown diaries where we get the news. Hell, Spike Lee’s New York, New York was ‘released’ so to speak on the filmmaker’s Instagram feed. But none feel quite as spontaneous and ambitious as Totally Under Control from directors Alex Gibney, Ophelia Harutyunyan, and Suzanne Hillinger. A feature-length documentary that takes its title from one of many Donald Trump quotes that should theoretically haunt him for years to come and which examines the United States’ response to the still very present Covid-19 pandemic and just what went wrong.

The finished product isn’t quite as much of a bombshell as its initial trailer drop just a week and a half ago might have suggested. The truth is, there’s very little in here that will be breaking news to anybody who has followed along closely.

Alex Gibney is driving from his home in New Jersey to Philadelphia Stadium for Neon’s drive-in premiere of “Totally Under Control,” his hard-hitting exposé about how President Donald Trump and his administration’s response to Covid-19 cost the lives of over 210,000 Americans. Eight months ago, this movie wasn’t even a notion; now it’s one of three non-fiction projects from the Oscar-winning documentarian (“Taxi to the Dark Side”) on multiple platforms this fall. “Totally Under Control” is available On Demand October 13 and hits Hulu October 20.

The pandemic has done little to slow down Gibney and his prolific Jigsaw Prods. His HBO documentary “Crazy, Not Insane” was supposed to debut at SXSW; instead, his intimate profile of forensic psychiatrist Dorothy Otnow Lewis who diagnosed high-profile killers with multiple personality disorders debuted at Venice and will finally reach HBO in November.

Gibney also completed “Agents of Chaos,” his two-part, four-hour...

Alex Gibney is driving from his home in New Jersey to Philadelphia Stadium for Neon’s drive-in premiere of “Totally Under Control,” his hard-hitting exposé about how President Donald Trump and his administration’s response to Covid-19 cost the lives of over 210,000 Americans. Eight months ago, this movie wasn’t even a notion; now it’s one of three non-fiction projects from the Oscar-winning documentarian (“Taxi to the Dark Side”) on multiple platforms this fall. “Totally Under Control” is available On Demand October 13 and hits Hulu October 20.

The pandemic has done little to slow down Gibney and his prolific Jigsaw Prods. His HBO documentary “Crazy, Not Insane” was supposed to debut at SXSW; instead, his intimate profile of forensic psychiatrist Dorothy Otnow Lewis who diagnosed high-profile killers with multiple personality disorders debuted at Venice and will finally reach HBO in November.

Gibney also completed “Agents of Chaos,” his two-part, four-hour...

Alex Gibney, Suzanne Hillinger, and Ophelia Harutyunyan’s new Covid-19 documentary, Totally Under Control, began production in April in secret, while the three directors worked remotely from Maine and New York. (The documentary is now streaming online.) Until recently, the movie’s final cut was almost completely to-the-minute regarding the pandemic’s progress, or at least as much as could be expected from a project being made practically live, in the moment. Its currentness is meant to imply a level of journalistic credibility and thoroughness, a point made clear early...

Donald Trump’s recent Covid-19 diagnosis brought all the chaos and contradictions of the pandemic into sharp focus. Between his refusal to protect himself and the people surrounding him and the president’s unequal access to superior medical care, many Americans became even more frustrated by the situation than ever before.

Where did America go so wrong? That’s the question that “Totally Under Control,” the new documentary from Alex Gibney, Suzanne Hillinger and Ophelia Harutyunyan tries to answer.

The filmmakers worked in secret, using an ingenious combination of pandemic-dictated production methods, surprising many when they revealed a month ago that they had completed a feature documentary that was ready to be released before the election.

From bungling getting the first tests up and running to Jared Kushner’s PPE corps of inexperienced volunteers, including Robert Kennedy’s grandson Max Kennedy Jr., the story of how the 2020 pandemic unfolded is...

Totally Under Control recounts the early days of the pandemic in the US, revealing in clinical detail a disastrous federal response to a preventable crisis

In May, as their city began to emerge from the paralyzing grip of coronavirus that killed over 33,000 residents, New York City-based film-makers Alex Gibney, Ophelia Harutyunyan and Suzanne Hillinger started retracing still-raw recent history on film. They tracked whistleblowers, and noted comparisons between the disastrous sprawl of coronavirus in the US and South Korea, which received their first positive coronavirus diagnoses on the same day: 20 January. Meetings were held by Zoom, interviews by remote camera draped by a shower curtain – a large, amorphous ghost, compliant with quickly adopted social distancing guidelines.

Related: Totally Under Control review – shocking film on Trump's failure to handle Covid-19...

The main question for a documentary is whether it’ll sway anyone. A lot don’t, and that’s unfortunately understandable. You can’t teach an old dog new tricks. I use that phrase not just because it fits here, but also because it’s a cliché, because it seems every day of desensitization turns suffering into one. If our ability to adapt is amazing, it’s the most incredible in how quickly the extraordinary becomes normal. With that very ability, the coronavirus pandemic became a political meme before most even saw it as a real issue. The bar is startlingly low, and the high that comes from crossing it can only last a few hours at best.

As of writing this, nothing has really changed in the 285 days since the first Covid-19 infection was recorded. Totally Under Control knows it. Have things happened? Of course, but that’s not the same thing.

Halloween and politics are just two of the major themes onscreen in a month that offers a flood of brand-new movies on streaming services and VOD. October naturally brings its share of pre-Halloween horror movies, even when movie theaters are closed. Hulu released Clive Barker adaptation “Books of Blood,” which features fresh entries in the vein of the scaremeister’s popular short story anthology, and Amazon Prime launches Welcome to the Blumhouse, shrewdly packaging four of the low-budget horror studio’s not-slick-enough-for-theaters picks into a streaming event. The program launches this week with “Black Box” and “The Lie.”

But this isn’t just any October. Weeks before an all-important presidential election, politically engaged filmmakers are swooping in to sway undecided voters. That explains the surprise release of Alex Gibney and company’s “Totally Under Control,” which looks at the failure of the U.S government’s response to the coronavirus pandemic.

Anyone living under a rock over the past eight months, blissfully unaware that the country mismanaged the coronavirus outbreak and caused thousands of unnecessary deaths, would do well to watch “Totally Under Control.” Churned out by prolific documentarian Alex Gibney with co-directors Suzanne Hillinger and Ophelia Harutyunyan over the last few months, this infuriating overview of the government’s response to the virus isn’t revelatory or groundbreaking, but

“Totally Under Control” is far from the first documentary to tackle coronavirus fallout (recent efforts “76 Days” and Ai Weiwei’s “Coronation” reveal the struggle inside Wuhan), but it’s the first serious assessment outside of nightly news shows to illustrate how much America bungled its response. Gibney and his collaborators fold in a lot of material into two hours, from the tick-tock of CDC efforts to downplay the virus and Donald Trump’s lunacy in conflicting science at every turn,...

Why did the United States fail so miserably when it came to combating the coronavirus? The easy answer is that our President is a selfish moron, and the fish rots from the head. But that doesn’t really encompass the complete and utter breakdown that has led to over 200,000 dead Americans. Directors Alex Gibney, Ophelia Harutyunyan, and Suzanne Hillinger explore exactly what went wrong with their new documentary Totally Under Control, and while you may be familiar with the larger beats—broken tests, absence of leadership, etc.—the documentary is an infuriating education on how a powerful nation …...

A feature-length version of the kind of montage that usually opens a dystopian thriller about a post-apocalyptic society, “Totally Under Control” is a terrifying and infuriating examination of the rise of the Covid-19 virus and of the many ways in which the U.S. government intentionally failed its citizens. As one of the film’s many experts notes, public health didn’t fail the people; the government’s decision to ignore public health warnings and standards made the current crisis happen.

Directors Alex Gibney (“Going Clear”), Ophelia Harutyunyan, and Suzanne Hillinger (“How to Fix an Election”) have made the kind of historical document that future scholars will consult to get an idea of the impact of the pandemic on the United States and on the rest of the world, but watching it right now is akin to viewing a meta-horror film like “Wes Craven’s New Nightmare,” whereby the audience understands that...

Alex Gibney’s eye-opening documentary, made in secret, assembles a damning, if frustratingly incomplete, timeline of a government ill-equipped to deal with a deadly pandemic

Making a documentary that endeavors to tell the story of the coronavirus pandemic presents a litany of unique inherent challenges. To wit: the preponderance of misinformation swirling around the topic, a scope that encompasses every country on the face of the Earth, the difficulty of shooting without infecting the crew or interview subjects, a breadth of crisis felt at both the highest institutional and most intimately personal levels, and the fact that no one knows whether we’re nearing the end, at some phase of the middle, or still working through the beginning. Alex Gibney, Ophelia Harutyunyan and Suzanne Hillinger’s new film Totally Under Control sneaks in a title card stating that Donald Trump announced his positive Covid-19 test the day after the production...

Drama critics have a word for Covid-19, courtesy of the ancient Greeks: “nemesis.” In theater, this useful term applies to the inevitable downfall that awaits the wicked, the prideful and the overly confident. Decades from now, historians will look back on the coronavirus outbreak as the thing that derailed President Donald J. Trump, and perhaps the “re-greatening” America in the process.

Joining the situation in medias res, such dire predictions may seem premature — although that doesn’t stop investigative documentary superstar Alex Gibney (“Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room”) from rushing his righteously compelling exposé “Totally Under Control” out before the election. That timing tells you everything about what Gibney hopes to achieve: The goal isn’t to be definitive so much as influential, without compromising the facts, which Trump has gone to extraordinary lengths to obscure.

To get ’er done on schedule, Gibney enlisted co-directors Suzanne Hillinger and...

There’s no doubting why Totally Under Control, a doc about a pandemic whose end is nowhere in sight, would be released — first in drive-ins, then VOD, then on Hulu — in the weeks leading up to the presidential election: Directors Alex Gibney, Suzanne Hillinger and Ophelia Harutyunyan believe, as all fact-valuing people do, that the current administration has fared so badly in 2020 that a new one must be brought in to clean up the mess.

But if the film’s title is an ironic use of Trumpian bluster, it also accurately represents the movie itself, which is about as far ...

There’s no doubting why Totally Under Control, a doc about a pandemic whose end is nowhere in sight, would be released — first in drive-ins, then VOD, then on Hulu — in the weeks leading up to the presidential election: Directors Alex Gibney, Suzanne Hillinger and Ophelia Harutyunyan believe, as all fact-valuing people do, that the current administration has fared so badly in 2020 that a new one must be brought in to clean up the mess.

But if the film’s title is an ironic use of Trumpian bluster, it also accurately represents the movie itself, which is about as far ...

“It’s complete bullsh*t…he has no idea what he’s talking about” is a quote from the trailer from Totally Under Control, Alex Gibney’s documentary that chronicles Donald Trump and the White House’s failed response to the coronavirus pandemic. The trailer for the upcoming Neon film caught the eyes of over 6 million viewers in its first 72 hours across all platforms since its Friday release, which pretty much shows that the world is searching for the truth.

The trailer comes in the wake of the Covid soup that has brewed in the White House as President Trump, First Lady Melania Trump and numerous members of his administration and the Republican party have tested positive for the coronavirus. The documentary was directed by Gibney, Ophelia Harutyunyan and Suzanne Hillinger and was filmed in secrecy over the last four months.

On January 20, 2020 the U.S. and South Korea both...

Like tumbling autumn leaves, fall film festivals in Toronto, New York and more have added to the pile of must-see documentaries that could figure in the 2021 Oscar race for Best Documentary Feature.

Possible contenders include Oscar winner Errol Morris‘s yet-untitled doc for Showtime about LSD advocate Timothy Leary. Also, Lisa Cortes and Liz Garbus‘s voter suppression film, “All In: The Fight for Democracy,” zeroes in on Stacey Abrams, the 2018 Georgia gubernatorial election and the continued threat to our elections; it just dropped on Amazon Prime. Oscar-nominated “Fire at Sea” director Gianfranco Rosi showed his latest effort, “Notturno,” in Venice and Toronto; shot across three years in Middle East locales near war zones, the doc focuses on how people from the region try to reclaim their everyday lives. It lacks a U.S. distributor.

Sam Pollard showed his IFC Films release “MLK/ FBI”in Toronto and New York, chronicling...

As the world continues to face the novel coronavirus pandemic, the first look at a new documentary aimed to examine the government’s response to the virus and “uncover the truth” has been released.

The first trailer for Alex Gibney’s doc, Totally Under Control — a title quoting President’s Donald Trump affirmation that everything is “totally under control” with Covid-19 — was released Friday.

The documentary, from Gibney and co-directors Ophelia Harutyunyan and Suzanne Hillinger, was made in secrecy over the last five months, the trailer states, with the directors having interviewed “countless scientists, medical professionals ...

As the world continues to face the novel coronavirus pandemic, the first look at a new documentary aimed to examine the government’s response to the virus and “uncover the truth” has been released.

The first trailer for Alex Gibney’s doc, Totally Under Control — a title quoting President’s Donald Trump affirmation that everything is “totally under control” with Covid-19 — was released Friday.

The documentary, from Gibney and co-directors Ophelia Harutyunyan and Suzanne Hillinger, was made in secrecy over the last five months, the trailer states, with the directors having interviewed “countless scientists, medical professionals ...

"It's complete bullshit. He has no idea what he's talking about." Neon has released a trailer for a damning documentary titled Totally Under Controlled, being rushed out to watch this month. The film is an in-depth look at how the United States government handled the response to the Covid-19 outbreak during the early months of the pandemic. It offers a comparison by looking at how South Korea handled the pandemic and spread of the virus, and how America, er, did not handle it. Or perhaps tried - but ended up in the worst case scenario anyway. "It will be a generation before we know the full extent of the damage wrought by this pandemic, but Totally Under Control will stand as the definitive account of the Trump administration’s incompetence, corruption and denial in the face of this global pandemic." The doc film is made by Academy Award-winning filmmaker Alex Gibney,...

Contrary to president Donald Trump’s repeated declarations, the coronavirus pandemic was not — and still isn’t — totally under control. That lie is central to “Totally Under Control,” the latest documentary from Alex Gibney. Neon, which will distribute the documentary this fall, released a trailer for the upcoming film on Friday morning.

“Totally Under Control” was filmed in secret over five months earlier in the year and focuses on the Trump administration’s ongoing failures to adequately respond to the coronavirus pandemic, which has infected over 7 million Americans, 200,000 of which have died from the virus. The documentary includes a variety of interviews with scientists, medical professionals, and government officials to discern how and why the country’s leadership failed to deal with the pandemic.

Per Neon, the documentary’s synopsis reads: “Where did we go wrong? As the presidential election nears, Americans are increasingly enraged by a lack of clear leadership,...

Distributor Altitude has picked up a slate of four films for the U.K. and Ireland, including Adam Egypt Mortimer’s “Archenemy,” Quentin Dupieux‘s “Mandibles,” Mathieu Turi’s “Meander” and Philippe Lacôte’s “Night of the Kings.”

Spectrevision’s “Archenemy” stars Joe Manganiello (“True Blood”) as a hero from another dimension exiled to Earth, while the Venice Film Festival’s sleeper hit “Mandibles” is a surreal buddy road movie starring comedy duo David Marsais and Grégoire Ludig, known for “La Folle Histoire du Palmashow,” as well as Coralie Russier (“120 Bpm”), Adèle Exarchopoulos (“Blue Is The Warmest Color”) and rapper Romeo Elvis.

Thriller “Meander” features Gaia Weiss (“Vikings”) as a woman who wakes up in a seemingly never-ending metal tube and is forced to overcome a variety of deadly traps to survive.

Venice title “Night of the Kings,” which won the Amplify Voices Award at Toronto International Film Festival...

Director Adam Benzine, Oscar-nominated in the best documentary short subject category in 2016 for “Claude Lanzmann: Spectres of the Shoah,” is launching Covid-19 documentary “The Curve” to buyers at the Toronto International Film Festival market.

Structured as an investigative thriller and made in secret over the last six months, the documentary — also produced by Benzine via his Jet Black Iris Productions — examines the decisions around the pandemic made by America’s leaders from mid-January to mid-April, which led to the current scenario.

The film combines original interviews with creatively treated archival footage, and features interviews with experts including Dr. Ali Khan, former director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Office of Public Health Preparedness and Response; Dr. Emily Landon, chief infectious-disease epidemiologist at University of Chicago Medicine; Sonya Shah, investigative journalist and author of “Pandemic: Tracking Contagions, from Cholera to Ebola and Beyond”; Ilan Goldenberg, former U.S.

As film and TV try their best to get back into production amidst the constraints of a global pandemic, Oscar-winning filmmaker Alex Gibney has been quietly filming a documentary for the past four months with Ophelia Harutyunyan and Suzanne Hillinger. The project, titled Totally Under Control puts a spotlight on the White House’s failed response to the global pandemic and how it could have been prevented. Neon announced today that they will be releasing the docu in October.

Gibney, Harutyunyan and Hillinger dive deep into how this happened and the pandemic’s devastating impact. The film gives damning testimony from public health officials and hard investigative reporting, Gibney exposes a system-wide collapse caused by a profound dereliction of Presidential leadership.

“With an extraordinary team of collaborators, I was compelled to mount this production when I saw the scale of incompetence and political corruption by the Trump Administration in the face of a global pandemic,...

Altitude handles international sales.

Neon is planning a pre-election US release and Altitude will handle international sales on an Alex Gibney documentary that exposes the Trump administration’s response to the pandemic crisis in the US.

Details of the film, which is called Totally Under Control and shot secretly over the last four months, emerged on Thursday (September 10) with less than two months to go before the US election.

Neon plans to release the film in October.

Alex Gibney, Ophelia Harutyunyan and Suzanne Hillinger co-directed and obtained testimony from public health officials that argues a system-wide collapse and dereliction of...

In a surprise announcement, boutique distributor Neon revealed Thursday that Oscar winner Alex Gibney and his collaborators have been hard at work over the last four months filming a documentary about the White House’s failed response to the pandemic. “Totally Under Control” will be released be Neon in October, with the final date yet to be announced.

The distributor says the doc has a bombshell premise: The film will show that most of the United States’ coronavirus-associated deaths — totaling 190,000 this week — the lockdowns, and most of the economic damage could have been prevented if the federal government had done its job properly.

“The carelessly designed lockdowns and their long-lasting economic effects have led to massive job losses (23 million/14.7 percent in April), widespread hunger, dislocation and a runaway federal deficit. Had the federal government done its job properly — by following clear guidelines in place based on past pandemics — most of...

Neon has nabbed rights to Alex Gibney’s documentary “Totally Under Control,” detailing the White House response to the Covid-19 pandemic, and plans to release the film in October.

Neon made the announcement Thursday, a day after revelations from journalist Bob Woodward that President Donald Trump admitted he knew weeks before the first confirmed U.S. coronavirus death that the virus was dangerous and repeatedly downplayed it publicly. The distributor said “Totally Under Control” has been filming for the past four months.

“With an extraordinary team of collaborators, I was compelled to mount this production when I saw the scale of incompetence and political corruption by the Trump Administration in the face of a global pandemic,” Gibney said. “Now we know that by Feb. 7, Trump knew that Covid was, in his words, ‘a deadly virus.’ But instead of working to protect the American people by containing the virus, the current...

Alex Gibney has a new documentary film called “Totally Under Control” aimed at President Trump’s response to the coronavirus pandemic. Neon will release the movie this October ahead of the general election, the distributor announced Thursday.

Gibney, an Oscar winner for “Taxi to the Dark Side,” has been quietly filming the documentary alongside co-directors Ophelia Harutyunyan and Suzanne Hillinger for the past four months. In “Totally Under Control” they ask the simple question as deaths — which currently number 190,000 in the U.S. — have continued to rise, “How did this happen?”

Gibney criticizes carelessly designed lockdowns and how the economic effects of those lockdowns have led to 23 million job losses, not to mention widespread hunger, dislocation and a runaway federal deficit. The documentary asserts that much of this destruction could have been avoided if the federal government had followed guidelines and acted properly, even as the Trump administration makes a...

Neon has picked up Alex Gibney’s latest documentary, Totally Under Control, about U.S. president Donald Trump’s failed response to the global Coronavirus pandemic, for an October theatrical release.

“With an extraordinary team of collaborators, I was compelled to mount this production when I saw the scale of incompetence and political corruption by the Trump Administration in the face of a global pandemic,” Gibney said in a statement on Thursday.

He directed Totally Under Control alongside Ophelia Harutyunyan and Suzanne Hillinger over the last four months. The film is backed by Stacey Offman and Richard Perello at Jigsaw ...

Neon has picked up Alex Gibney’s latest documentary, Totally Under Control, about U.S. president Donald Trump’s failed response to the global Coronavirus pandemic, for an October theatrical release.

“With an extraordinary team of collaborators, I was compelled to mount this production when I saw the scale of incompetence and political corruption by the Trump Administration in the face of a global pandemic,” Gibney said in a statement on Thursday.

He directed Totally Under Control alongside Ophelia Harutyunyan and Suzanne Hillinger over the last four months. The film is backed by Stacey Offman and Richard Perello at Jigsaw ...