On 16 October, MIA hosted a talk dedicated to impact documentaries. During the event, the panellists shared their insights into crafting powerful stories that not only inform but also inspire action. The conversation saw the participation of France Télévisions Studio’s Head of Programmes Diego Buñuel, RAI filmmaker and journalist Giulia Innocenzi, Impact Partners VP of Production Kelsey Koenig, LCP Assemblée Nationale’s Head of Documentary Isabella Pisani, GTV Docs Partners and Creative Director Tilman Remme and Georg Tschurtschenthaler of German production outfit Gebrueder Beetz.
After a brief introduction by MIA Head of Doc and Factual Marco Spagnoli, the floor was given to Steven Segaller, who served as the conversation’s moderator.
Segaller is Vice President of Programming for The WNET Group, part of the PBS family. He oversees the company’s major productions, which are composed of two-thirds documentaries along with news and children’s content. “A few years ago, our firm changed its slogan to ‘media with impact,’ and this prompted disputes. People were cynical and asked each other: Were we doing media [content] without impact? But who wants to do that?” Despite its crucial importance, he admitted how, for many, “impact is still a bit of a tautology.”
The mic was then handed to Koenig, who spoke about Impact Partners’ inception in 2007. “We’re an equity fund based in New York backing 10-12 films tackling social issues each year. We don’t always plan impact campaigns, and we often work on character-driven films that can change people’s minds. Not all our docs have an advocacy element; we look for the most pressing issues of our time and touch on a variety of themes across our slate of projects.”
“Some of our films’ goals include changes in policies and legislation, presenting them to the US Congress, the White House, the UN, and other governing bodies – but, of course, we also operate on a lower, grassroots level. Impact Partners productions aim to intercept communities who can’t see them at festivals or theatres but maybe at their college or church. Essentially, we’re executive producers bringing in the [necessary] financiers, and we represent 50 philanthropists who are all members of Impact Partners.”
Next, Buñuel discussed his role at France Télévisions. “I commission content and produce it; we’re in a hybrid position, a bit like BBC Studio,” he said. “We’re in a world characterised by a complex media landscape; there’s a deluge of content. There are a million different topics at stake, from veganism to animal welfare. But how do we create content that can keep people hooked long enough? That’s the big question of our time.”
Zooming in on the differences between producing impact docs for streamers and pubcasters, he said: “Having worked for both, the difficulty with platforms is that you’re going to appear as a loose square among thousands of others [in the platform’s catalogue]. On the other hand, pubcasters follow the mission of addressing the public with interesting, pertinent storytelling. Linear channels, however, act like factories, producing and airing a lot of content. The 36-month window you’d get might include a prime-time run and another one late at night. Then [the doc] is gone in just 36 months.”
Later, Innocenzi spoke about making her latest doc feature, Food for Profit, co-helmed with Pablo D’Ambrosi. “At the beginning, [raising funds] was a failure; we didn’t have producers or distributors. So, for Food for Profit, we had to create our own outfit. Pablo and I created Pueblo Unido.”
“We weren’t ‘pueblo,’ but we were united,” she joked. “It took us five years; it’s an investigative doc, but in the end, we made it. Distributing it has been even harder. When I spoke to distributors and streamers, everyone was saying, ‘I don’t know.’ We said: ‘Whatever, we’ll ask the audience to help us.’ After all, it was about something talking [directly] to them; [the topic] is intensive farms funded by the European Union.”
Innocenzi and D’Ambrosi’s efforts ultimately paid off. “We ended up being in the top 10 of the most-seen Italian films for four weeks. We premiered it at the EU Parliament. And that happened because nobody really knew [anything] about it,” she laughed. “Then we screened it at the Italian Parliament. The ‘campaign’ was already inside the film itself. The film is a quest [calling us] to stop financing these intensive farms.” As a result, two MEPs – Italian Democrat Paolo De Castro and Spanish Socialist Clara Aguilera – were unable to run in this year’s European elections after having made citizens outraged.
Innocenzi also called for the creation of a common hub to “help out directors and independent productions” in making environmental docs and other socially conscious films. “It’d be easier and more efficient instead of starting from scratch each time,” she added.
Tschurtschenthaler chimed in: “When I started, it was the era when we had 10-15 docs in theatres a year; everything was more on the ‘fly on the wall’ journalistic approach, with filmmaking in the background and letting the movie speak for itself. Then we got this ‘documentary boom,’ and we’ve seen this shift to activist filmmaking.” He cited as prime examples Frank Piasecki Poulsen’s Blood in the Mobile—which addressed the issue of conflict minerals by examining illegal cassiterite mining in eastern DR Congo—and Moritz Riesewieck’s The Cleaners, which uncovered “the dark side of social media” and ultimately had an impact on EU legislation.
“I’m not sure about what we should do today [to be impactful]…Maybe we can have a real impact by creating a forum hosting people with different opinions, [a space] where they can share their experiences and talk to each other.”
Pisani spoke about LCP: “We air a documentary every day. After the doc, we’ve got a debate. This channel is very important because, through docs, we try to ‘explain’ our society, educate, inform, and have an impact on politics.”
She cited Guerre fantôme, la vente d’Alstom à General Electricas as a good example of an impact documentary, which LCP co-produced. The investigative doc zoomed in on French nuclear and transportation giant Alstom and how General Electric took control of it “in mysterious ways.” This led to a larger investigation into how the US can take over big companies and key economic sectors, which resulted in the creation of a commission of inquiry. “We understood that we can change things through documentaries and through the emotions they prompt,” she summed up.
GTV Docs Partners’ Remme admitted that, after a 38-year career, the motto ‘inform, educate, and entertain’ is still valid. “You get these three right, and you can reach a lot of people. I’ve been lucky since some of the shows I’ve been involved in have reached millions of people.”
“It’s because we’re part of our democratic society that we talk and engage, we challenge and question things. We have to be journalists, dig deep into things. We need to challenge our brains. That’s the job of public broadcasters, and it’s not just about one specific topic, but [it’s about] questioning things and remaining dedicated to the democratic world that is being challenged by alternative, untruthful right-wing people.”
Kelsey touched on Emily Kassie and Julian Brave NoiseCat’s Sugarcane, a doc that follows an investigation into abuse and missing children at an Indian residential school, prompting a reckoning on the nearby titular reserve. Having premiered at Sundance this year, the pic’s impact campaign sparked conversation and promoted education around Canadian residential schools and US Indian boarding schools, sensitising its audience to the intergenerational harm this system of forced assimilation and genocide left in its wake.
Sugarcane was thus brought to Indian Country, faith communities, educational spaces, and beyond to support healing, correct the historical record, provoke dialogue, and seek accountability from the church, government, and individuals.
Buñuel showed the highly emotional trailer of Thierry Demaizière and Alban Teurlai’s Aiming for Glory, a doc following three French and three foreign athletes taking part in the 2024 Paralympics. For the exec, the doc aims “to show the impact of disabled people and their ability to do everything, especially when it comes to extreme sports.”
“Today, in France, 80% of blind people have no jobs, and most people with disabilities are being rejected by society. Here, the idea is that if these people can go through all of this, they can do anything. That’s what made me want to make this film. When we spoke to the founder of the Paralympics, he said something that struck me: ‘Athletes at the Olympics become heroes, but at the Paralympics heroes become athletes.’”
Towards the end of the talk, Tschurtschenthaler showed a clip of Andreas Pichler’s Dangerously Close, co-produced with Italy’s Miramonte Films. In 2023, Andrea Papi was killed by a brown bear in the Brenta Dolomites, an area where humans and bears live very close to each other, “closer than anywhere on this planet.” The tragedy sparked a heated debate between animal rights activists and villagers, which is at the core of the feature documentary produced by Tschurtschenthaler. “Both sides are right and wrong; you can’t take sides,” he admitted, adding that giving enough room to both parties seemed fairer and ultimately contributed to discussions after the screenings. The movie performed well at the box office and managed to be the most-watched non-sports documentary on Sky Germany.
