News Archive

“Martha” nominated for the 2026 Realscreen Awards in Non-Fiction - Arts & Culture

Join us at the Paris Theater August 12 + 13 for our series MARTHA, BILLIE & ANNA: Portraits by R.J. Cutler, in celebration of MARTHA's two Emmy nominations!

Aug 12, THE SEPTEMBER ISSUE screens on 35mm + intro by former Vogue Creative Director Grace Coddington.

Aug 13, MARTHA will be followed by Q&A with R.J. Cutler!

“Martha” included on the 2025 Grierson Awards longlist

Our Emmy contender conversations conclude with a look at three stand out biographies. Host Thom Powers interviews these directors:

R.J. Cutler on "Martha" (Netflix) 

David Gelb with cinematographer Adam Bricker on "Chef's Table: Legends" (Netflix)

Laurent Bouzereau on "Music By John Williams" (Disney+)

Recorded live in Los Angeles at Documentary Spotlight, co-presented by The Ankler.

“This story is about equality, about women being able to stand up for themselves and do what they want to do,” she says of the R.J. Cutler-directed documentary.

“I didn’t want some namby-pamby, Ralph Lauren documentary,” Martha Stewart declared Monday night in Beverly Hills as she and filmmaker R.J. Cutler sat for an FYC event on the outdoor deck of the Maybourne Hotel to tout the Netflix docu “Martha.”

A new Netflix documentary explores the cost of Martha Stewart’s chase for domestic perfection.

A new documentary reminds us that the lifestyle guru was also selling the pleasure of mastery.

“Martha,” a new documentary now on Netflix, offers a candid portrait of the rise and fall (and rebirth?) of the homemaker extraordinaire, who last year, at 81, appeared on the cover of Sports Illustrated.

As a vérité filmmaker for the past 31 years, Mr. Cutler has tackled a wide variety of subjects, from politics (“The World According to Dick Cheney”) to Vogue magazine (“The September Issue”) to e-cigarettes (“Big Vape: The Rise and Fall of Juul”). He has been nominated for an Oscar. He has won three Emmys, including one for “American High,” a docuseries that tracked 14 high school students over a year.

Under R.J. Cutler's direction, the influential icon tells her story honestly, albeit with a high-sheen polish.

When I set out to see R.J. Cutler‘s new documentary, Martha, quite frankly I wasn’t focusing on it other than just another screening I had, and that it would be all about Martha Stewart. So I expected it would be mostly gardening, cooking and setting the perfect dinner-party table.

The way Martha Stewart sees it, her life story is pretty simple. “Here’s this girl from a family of eight in Nutley, N.J., living modestly, who gets a good idea, builds it into something really fine and profits from it,” she says in “Martha,” a documentary premiering Wednesday on Netflix. Then, Stewart continues, she “falls in a hole” and has to climb out of it.

Let’s play a game: What do you think of when you think of Martha Stewart? Her unlikely friendship with Snoop Dogg? A pre-#tradwife trad wife? A daytime television personality who served jail time? Something else entirely?

Tracing her arc from model to stockbroker to author to TV personality to inmate, film comes close to achieving the level of perfection famously demanded by the lifestyle maven.

Long before Instagram and TikTok existed as places for us to stoke our insecurities, there was Martha Stewart.

Netflix has emerged the winner of a bake-off for a documentary about the life and times of media mogul Martha Stewart. Oscar-nominated director R.J. Cutler had been shopping a sizzle reel of the all-access look at the history of America’s preeminent hostess in recent weeks. Netflix closed the deal late last week, according to insiders.

Never Too Late From "Elton John: Never Too Late" nominated for a Grammy in Best Song Written For Visual Media

The Academy Awards nominations were unveiled Thursday.

Elton John: Never Too Late, the documentary about the British-born music legend’s incredible career, will debut on Disney+ on Friday, December 13, the streaming platform announced today.

Elton John secured an EGOT on Monday night, joining the select group who have won all four major entertainment awards — an Emmy, a Grammy, an Oscar and a Tony — when he won an Emmy for outstanding variety special for his livestreamed farewell concert at Dodger Stadium.

Disney Original Documentary and Disney+ have won the rights to a big feature documentary package, Goodbye Yellow Brick Road: The Final Elton John Performances And the Years That Made His Legend. No one would comment, but we hear the docu, from Academy Award-nominee R.J. Cutler as well as filmmaker (and longtime Elton John partner) David Furnish, sold for about $30 million.

After getting his own blockbuster biopic, Elton John will be fêted with an official documentary, Goodbye Yellow Brick Road: The Final Elton John Performances and the Years That Made His Legend.

Co-directed by R.J. Cutler and filmmaker — and John’s husband — David Furnish, the movie will be centered around John’s farewell tour, while also looking back at 1970 to 1975, the monumental period when John released 10 albums and scored some of his biggest hits. The doc will also include an array of unseen concert footage from the past 50 years, as well as John’s handwritten journals and present-day footage of the musician and his family.

The groundwork was laid for Nicole Newnham’s Oscar-contending documentary The Disappearance of Shere Hite back when the director was just a girl.

Oscar-contending documentary The Disappearance of Shere Hite will be making an appearance in cinemas in the U.K. and Ireland within weeks, courtesy of Dogwoof.

In "The Disappearance of Shere Hite," Oscar-nominated director Nicole Newnham ("Crip Camp") profiles the sex researcher who soared to success in the 1970s, but then faded into obscurity. Pure Nonfiction host Thom Powers talks to Newnham about navigating Hite's complex personality, how the film team uncovered the author's private writings and brought them to life with the collaboration of Dakota Johnson.

German author Shere Hite made waves when her reporting on female sexuality and pleasure, The Hite Report: A Nationwide Study of Female Sexuality, was published in 1976. But after skyrocketing to fame in the '70s, Hite disappeared from public life. A new documentary, "The Disappearance Of Shere Hite," from director Nicole Newnham explores the life of Hite. Newnham joins us to discuss the film, which is in theaters tomorrow.

IFC Films and Sapan Studios today announced they have acquired North American rights to The Disappearance of Shere Hite, a feature documentary on the famed sex researcher whose pioneering study of women’s sexuality sold millions but triggered a ferocious backlash.

If, partway through Nicole Newnham’s extraordinary new documentary, you find yourself fighting the urge to do a bit of Googling — just to make sure that Shere Hite was a real person and you are not the victim of some wildly elaborate deepfake prank — don’t be alarmed. Be a little ashamed, perhaps, but not alarmed: You are not alone if you simply can’t stop asking yourself, “How on earth did I not know about this woman before?”