'We are not doing political films': Why award-winning documentaries are being frozen out
Despite racking up awards and making the Oscars shortlist, Union and No Other Land have no U.S. distribution
A modern David and Goliath story blazed through the film festival circuit last year: Union, a documentary about a group of Amazon workers fighting to unionize a warehouse of one of the biggest companies in the world.
Now, Union is on the Oscar short list for best documentary feature — but, like several others on that list, you won't find it on a major American streaming platform.
"The big streamers — Hulu and Netflix specifically — they were pretty blunt," Brett Story, who co-directed Union with Stephen Maing, told CBC News. "They said, 'We are not doing social issue documentary. We are not doing political films.'"
Neither Hulu nor Netflix responded to CBC News's request for comment.
Story isn't the only filmmaker navigating what she sees as political and corporate roadblocks.
There's also No Other Land, which documents Palestinian resistance in Masafer Yatta, a community in the occupied West Bank that the Israeli military has gradually destroyed. Despite debuting to acclaim last year, it too has been unable to find U.S. distribution deals.
"I read it as something that's completely political," Yuval Abraham, one of the filmmakers, told Variety last week.
In a media landscape increasingly characterized by fewer options and more powerful corporate interests, films that push boundaries and challenge power are becoming harder for the general public to easily access, industry experts say.
Critical buzz, but no sales
Union follows a group of Amazon workers on Staten Island, N.Y., as they embark on an 11-month battle to unionize their warehouse.
The film saw critical buzz, appearing at more than 100 festivals worldwide and winning prizes including at Sundance Film Festival.
But that didn't materialize into sales, Story said.
She said some distributors expressed to her privately that they were afraid of jeopardizing their relationship with Amazon MGM Studios if they took it.
"Our film is about a group of ordinary people that take on a big tech company and win.
"Despite that being something audiences want to see, there's a lot of corporate interests that don't want that story to get out."
No Other Land co-creator Abraham told The Associated Press in November that he believed the chances of finding an American distributor rested on the result of the then-looming U.S. election, and that distributors were holding back out of fear of a Trump win.
"But Basel risked his life for years since he was a young boy to film this material," said the Israeli filmmaker, referring to his Palestinian co-filmmaker, Basel Adra.
"Can we not have one distributor with the courage, OK, to take a certain risk, but to distribute such an acclaimed and such an important documentary?"
Although the film has distribution in 24 countries, no major U.S. distributor has signed on. The film will get a theatrical release in select U.S. theatres through Cinetic Media.
'A sense of risk aversion'
Major companies haven't always avoided "overtly political" documentaries, said Pat Mullen, publisher of Canadian documentary outlet POV Magazine. Just five years ago, he said, Netflix picked up a documentary about labour struggles at a U.S. auto factory shortly after its Sundance debut. American Factory went on to take home the Oscar for best documentary feature.
"Now, we have Union, which is covering similar territory, and no one's picking it up," Mullen said.
Mullen, who's been reporting on the documentary scene for 10 years, says we've recently been seeing a "sense of risk aversion in the business."
"We're seeing a lot more softer titles get distribution, like music documentaries, celebrity bios," he said. "Not necessarily ... films that really take a deep look at issues of today."
Story called it "governance by algorithm." To her, that means "sure bets that don't rock any boats."
Not every documentary breaking new ground has been shut out from major distributors. For example, Disney+ is set to carry Sugarcane, a film about residential schools, and Netflix is housing Will & Harper, which follows a road trip between Will Ferrell and his friend Harper Steele, a transgender woman.
But of that short list, the more politically charged films haven't gotten major distribution. That includes The Bibi Files, which examines corruption charges against Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, and Hollywoodgate, which follows the growth of the Taliban after the U.S. retreat from Afghanistan. Both are only available to see in the U.S. and Canada through a little-known new streaming platform called Jolt, and only for a limited time.
Streamers and major companies seem to be avoiding controversy, he said, even though that has historically sold tickets.
"There's no logical connection between what the audience is expressing interest in and what distributors are resisting to take," he said. "The disconnect, it's not making sense."
Shrinking media landscape
One factor is the increasing consolidation of media companies, experts say.
For example, last spring, Participant announced it was shutting down. The independent studio was dedicated to films meant to inspire social change, helping produce American Factory, the labour documentary that Netflix distributed in 2019. It was also known for heavy-hitters like An Inconvenient Truth, Spotlight and Food, Inc.
And here in Canada, Hot Docs, the country's largest documentary film festival, continues to experiences internal turmoil.
When just a few companies control what films get to be seen, "that's a real problem," said Story. She pointed out that one of them, Amazon MGM Studios, is owned by Jeff Bezos, who reportedly spiked an endorsement of Kamala Harris for U.S. president last year at the Washington Post, which he also owns.
Amazon's studio arm is also sinking serious cash into a Melania Trump documentary, recently signing a $40-million US deal for licensing rights.
"Forty million could buy a lot of documentaries," Mullen said.
Self-distribution struggles
After failing to find a distributor, Story and co-director Steven Maing decided to do it themselves, making deals with theatres and offering the film for purchase on a digital platform called Gathr.
Self-distributing can allow filmmakers to make an event out of screenings and have more control over advertising.
But it also adds a huge burden. It took a year and a half and an Oscar nomination for director Nisha Pahuja's much-lauded 2022 documentary To Kill a Tiger to be picked up by Netflix worldwide, Mullen said. In that time, Pahuja wasn't able to make other films, he said.
The documentary format is an opportunity to explore a story in depth, going beyond the headlines to provide analysis on a larger scale and longer timeline.
When people lose access to these films, they "can't be as well informed about what's going on in the world," Mullen said.
"If these films aren't accessible, then people can just live in happy ignorance. And that's sort of where some of the state of politics is today."
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With files from The Associated Press