Joe Berlinger
Joe Berlinger’s career broke out when HBO assigned him to direct a documentary about the trial of three Satan-worshiping, teenage murderers. “As it turns out, because we paid attention to the story and we didn’t lock ourselves into a pre-conceived idea about where the film was going to be, we realized that the story is one of wrongful conviction as opposed to bloodthirsty satanic teens,” said Berlinger. The result was the Academy Award-nominated “Paradise Lost” trilogy. But Berlinger’s transition to narrative filmmaking was anything but smooth. He’d just as well forget about his work on “Book of Shadows: Blair Witch 2,” the sequel to the hailed “The Blair Witch Project.” Now, Berlinger is preparing his second narrative effort, this time also writing the screenplay. Based on the book “Facing the Wind,” this project falls more closely with his interest and expertise in true crime stories.
R.J. Cutler
Having started his career as a theater director (including “The Secret Garden” on Broadway) and transitioned to documentaries by way of radio, R.J. Cutler is accustomed to shifting mediums. So it’s no surprise that he has managed to segue from accomplished documentary producer (“The War Room”) and director (“The September Issue”) to narrative feature director with the soon to be released “If I Stay,” based on the best-selling YA novel by Gayle Forman. “The storytelling principles are the same,” Cutler recently told Indiewire about the transition from documentaries to narrative features. Maybe so, but with “If I Stay” Cutler brings a documentarian’s eye to the story of a teenage girl torn between life and death.
READ MORE: What We Learned at Joe Berlinger’s Master Class
Ari Folman
READ MORE: Here’s How This Documentary Filmmaker Made the Jump to Narrative
Steve James
Steve James has been making documentaries for over 25 years, and while his sweeping subject matters never fail to impress (he’s covered everything from football-related concussions to American immigration, Allen Iverson and a prison executioner), it’s his grand talents in the editing room that make James a stalwart documentarian. Whether he’s condensing 250 hours of filmmaking into a three-hour dissection of America in “Hoop Dreams,” or trimming an entire year in the lives of Chicago gang reformers into a two-hour examination of inner-city society in “The Interrupters” or putting the wild 70-year life of late film critic Roger Ebert into an unflinching two-hour love letter in “Life Itself,” James’ selective editing finds the narrative core of any ambitious topic and streamlines it with a dramatic pulse. Outside of a couple of made-for-television movies, the director has only made one narrative feature to date, 1997’s “Prefontaine,” but, unsurprisingly, it is a biographical drama chronicling the life and untimely death of long distance runner Steve Prefontaine (played by Jared Leto). Whether he goes documentary or narrative, James’ ability to turn sprawling lives into powerfully succinct stories is unmatched.
Debra Granik
James Marsh
James Marsh has had much success as a documentarian, but until now, his narrative efforts haven’t fared as well (at least at the box office). His 2008 film “Man on Wire,” which revisited Philippe Petit’s audacious high-wire walk between the Twin Towers, won an Oscar for Best Documentary and his 2011 effort “Project Nim,” won many awards and acclaim as well. Though his narrative projects, “The King” starring Gail Garcia Bernal and Wiliam Hurt and “Shadow Dancer,” starring Clive Owen, were generally well reviewed, they both faded from theaters fast. Nevertheless, we’re excited to see what Marsh does with his next project, “The Theory of Everything,” based on Stephen Hawking’s memoir of the same name. In fact, based on the looks of the trailer, we wouldn’t be surprised if Marsh has another chance to don his Oscar tux.
Bennett Miller
Oscar-nominated director Bennett Miller emerged in 1998 with “The Cruise,” a self-produced documentary on New York City bus driver Timothy “Speed” Levitch. At a brisk 79-minute runtime, the film is as rapid-fire as its motor-mouthed subject, whose Gray Line bus tours of the city that never sleeps earned cult status due to his affinity for blurring the line between sightseeing guide and philosophical preacher. Levitch’s oversized personality is inherently watchable, but Miller’s carefully constructed portrait of his subject is what allows the viewer to understand the ideals that drive a man to live out of his suitcase and on $200 a week. Although Miller’s narrative feature debut wouldn’t arrive until seven years later, the ability to examine his subjects with docudrama intensity was not lost. In biographical dramas “Capote” and “Moneyball,” Miller preserves the sharp, objective focus of a great documentary. By keeping his documentarian eye in his narrative work, Miller refuses to judge his characters, even when they make drastic decisions at the expense of family and the ones they love. The blending of feature filmmaking with documentarian precision is what gives Miller’s films their dramatic power, and this focus should do similar wonders for the director’s upcoming awards power player, “Foxcatcher.”
Sarah Polley
The acclaimed Canadian actress Sarah Polley, best known for her roles in “The Sweet Hereafter” and “Go,” directed several short films and an episode of a TV miniseries before directing the award-winning “Away From Her.” The powerful film earned star Julie Christie an Academy Award-nomination for her realistic portrayal of a woman suffering from dementia. Polley was also nominated for an Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay for her script which was adapted from the Alice Munro short story “The Bear Came Over the Mountain.” She seamlessly shifted to documentaries with “Stories We Tell,” which explores family secrets, including the identity of Polley’s biological father. Whether it’s documentary or narrative feature Polley takes on next, we’ll be watching.
Shari Springer Berman & Robert Pulcini
[Paula Bernstein, Eric Eidelstein, Shipra Gupta, Zack Sharf and Brandon Latham contributed to this list.]
Had no idea that Waltz with Bashir was a documentary when I was watching it.