‘The Tale Of Silyan’, ‘Put Your Soul On Your Hand’, ‘Cover-Up’

When Oscar doc branch members prepare to cast their ballots for the shortlists beginning Monday, they will have a record-breaking 201 feature documentaries to choose from. By the time votes are tabulated, that list will have been culled to a mere 15 finalists with a shot at an Oscar nomination.

On today’s edition of Deadline’s Doc Talk podcast, we’re speaking with the makers of three of the top contenders to earn shortlist recognition, including the talented team behind National Geographic’s The Tale of Silyan. Director Tamara Kotevska, who earned an Oscar nomination for her 2019 documentary Honeyland (co-directed by Ljubo Stefanov), spins a story at once rooted in reality and in myth. In North Macedonia, where Kotevska is from, white storks occupy a treasured place in the culture, having long made that part of Eastern Europe a home to raise their young. In the film, shot and produced by Jean Dakar, a farmer takes in an injured stork, a relationship between human and bird that became in the words of Kotevska and Dakar “pure magic.”

We also speak with Sepideh Farsi, the director of Put Your Soul on Your Hand and Walk. The filmmaker tells us how she met the protagonist of her documentary, Fatma Hassouna, a Palestinian photographer and poet trying to survive the Israeli invasion of Gaza. Hassouna and her family were tragically killed in an Israeli missile attack the day after Farsi’s film was accepted to premiere at this year’s Cannes Film Festival.

Legendary investigative journalist Seymour Hersh, now in his late 80s, continues to pursue Gaza reporting and other scoops with the same dogged determination that helped him break the My Lai Massacre story during the Vietnam War. Hersh’s career is the focus of Cover-Up, directed by Oscar winner Laura Poitras (Citizenfour) and Mark Obenhaus. Poitras tells us why the Nixon White House nearly exploded when Hersh joined the staff of the New York Times, and why Hersh began investigating his own boss at the newspaper while he was working there. Poitras also reveals why Hersh threatened to bolt on the doc project before harmony was restored between filmmakers and protagonist.

Cover-Up, which premiered at the Venice Film Festival (as did The Tale of Silyan) opens in theaters in the U.S. on December 19 before premiering December 26 on Netflix.

We met up with all our guests featured in today’s podcast at SFFILM’s Doc Stories film festival in San Francisco. It has become a critical destination for filmmakers in the hunt for Academy Awards.
That’s on the new episode of Doc Talk. co-hosted by Oscar winner Ridley (12 Years a Slave, Shirley) and Matt Carey, Deadline’s senior documentary editor. The pod is a production of Deadline and Ridley’s Nō Studios.

Listen to the episode above or on major podcast platforms including Spotify, iHeart and Apple.