To celebrate the first season of The Doc Exchange: A Real Stories podcast, here are some of our highlights from our conversations with some of the biggest names in modern documentary filmmaking. Hear from the filmmakers behind many of this year’s most lauded and talked about documentaries as they reveal which non-fiction films mean the most to them. Head to our feed to hear the full interviews, our guests include: Kirsten Johnson | Director of Dick Johnson is Dead and...

In this episode, June is joined by Kirsten Johnson, a long-time cinematographer and documentary filmmaker who received widespread critical acclaim for her two most recent movies as director Cameraperson (2016) and Dick Johnson Is Dead (2020). Through the lens of three films that consider what it means to document life, death and the world around us, Kirsten discusses a range of topics from the intensely political to the intensely personal.  Welcome to The Doc Exchange: A Real Stories...

On this episode of The Doc Exchange, June Jennings is joined by Catherine Bray, a commissioner, producer and writer-director, whose most recent credits include two hour-long essays films for BBC Arts: Meet the Family and Guilt-Free Pleasures. Together they interrogate the theme of performance, constructed reality and fabrication and how this can alter our sense of what ‘counts’ as documentary. Welcome to The Doc Exchange: A Real Stories Podcast, where your favourite non-fiction filmmakers...

In this episode of The Doc Exchange, June Jennings is joined by Tamara Kotevska, the Oscar-nominated co-director of Honeyland. Discussing three seemingly disparate, but equally powerful documentaries, Tamara reflects on her experience of making a film about ancient beekeeping traditions in the mountains of North Macedonia, the spirit of collaboration that enabled its fruition and the importance of showing the world as it is.  Welcome to The Doc Exchange: A Real Stories Podcast, where your...

Welcome to The Doc Exchange: A Real Stories Podcast, where your favourite non-fiction filmmakers reveal the documentaries that have had a lasting impact on their lives and careers.  This week, June Jennings is joined by Simon Chinn, the Oscar-winning producer behind some of the most successful documentaries of the past decade including Man on Wire, Searching for Sugar Man, The Imposter, My Scientology Movie, LA 92 and Whitney. Through the lens of three music documentaries that have stayed...

Welcome to The Doc Exchange: A Real Stories Podcast, where your favourite non-fiction filmmakers reveal the documentaries that have had a lasting impact on their lives and careers.  This week, June Jennings is joined by Brian Woods and Kate Blewett for a special episode reflecting on the 25th anniversary of their award-winning Channel 4 documentary The Dying Rooms. Discover how they got extraordinary access to make their groundbreaking film, how the stakes were raised when they made Return...

Welcome to The Doc Exchange: A Real Stories Podcast, where your favourite non-fiction filmmakers reveal the documentaries that have had a lasting impact on their lives and careers.  This week, host June Jennings is joined by Poppy Dixon, Director of Documentaries at Sky UK and the producer of Untouchable, The Imposter and American Animals. United by the theme of memory, her documentary picks traverse family secrets, trauma and criminal justice. Hear how these films changed Poppy's...

Welcome to The Doc Exchange: A Real Stories Podcast, where your favourite non-fiction filmmakers reveal the documentaries that have had a lasting impact on their lives and careers.  This week, we're joined by filmmaking, and life, partners Bonni Cohen and Jon Shenk. The duo most recently directed the Netflix Original documentary Athlete A, which follows a team of reporters from ​The Indianapolis Star​ as they investigate claims of abuse at USA Gymnastics. Bonni and Jon pick three...

Welcome to The Doc Exchange: A Real Stories Podcast, where your favourite non-fiction filmmakers reveal the documentaries that have had a lasting impact on their lives and careers.  This week, co-directors Nicole Newnham and Jim LeBrecht join June Jennings to reveal the three documentaries that inspired their work on Crip Camp - the Netflix documentary about a disability revolution. From films about Harvey Milk to James Baldwin, we discover their non-fiction touchstones and why they were...

Welcome to The Doc Exchange: A Real Stories Podcast, where your favourite non-fiction filmmakers reveal the documentaries that have had lasting impact on their lives and careers.  This week, multi award-winning film director, writer and producer Asif Kapadia (and the 2020 recipient of the prestigious BBC Grierson Trustees' Award) joins June Jennings to talk about three documentaries related to the 1970s. From political context to personal archives to depicting icons in their prime, we...

Welcome to The Doc Exchange: A Real Stories podcast. Hear from the filmmakers behind many of this year’s most lauded and talked about documentaries as they reveal which non-fiction films mean the most to them.   See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

In the year’s last episode, Jake Wiafe welcomes Leon McCarron, presenter, adventurer, and writer, starring in the Real Stories Original, “How to Save a Tribe” - a documentary about the small and ancient Samaritan community residing on mount Gerizim in Palestine, the Middle East. This small religious tribe is on the verge of extinction as no one traditionally were allowed to marry outside the community - yet, realising this, online dating has become the way to secure the next generations, now...

Our host Jake Wiafe is in this episode guested by award-winning documentary filmmaker Christy Garland from Toronto, Canada - the director of the documentary feature film What Walaa Wants, which was nominated for 9 awards and won the Special Jury Prize at the Hot Docs Canadian International Documentary Festival.  Shot over five years, Christy Garland’s documentary is a classic coming-of-age story portraying Walaa from West Bank’s Balata Palestinian refugee camp. Walaa is determined to become...

Siobhan McDonnell, founder and director of HeteroDocs, take us through her highlights and takeaways from IDFA, the world's largest documentary film festival held annually since 1988 in Amsterdam, the Netherlands. With a growing focus on VR and immersive technologies, Siobhan and Jake discuss some of the most cutting-edge immersive experiences of IDFA 2019 - and among these, Victoria Mapplebeck’s VR documentary, “The Waiting Room” which just won the IDFA DocLab Award for Digital...

“Just be you - and just be fabulous!” These are the wise words of Leo Noakes, a 13-year old boy who likes to dance, wear colourful dresses, wigs, and makeup - being one of the youngest drag queens in the UK.  In this episode, our host Jake Wiafe meets Leo Noakes aka Violet Vixen together with Leanne Rogers, the director of this remarkable Real Stories Original with the same name as Leo’s alias; “Violet Vixen.”  Tune in for a heartwarming chat around the background for shooting the documentary...

The day of this podcast episode release, 27th November, marks the 24th anniversary for Ruth Wilson’s disappearance from Box Hill, Surrey in England. Our host, Jake Wiafe, speaks with journalist Martin Bright, who features in the investigative documentary about Ruth Wilson’s case: Vanished: The Surrey Schoolgirl. They discuss the mysterious events that led up to the day of Ruth vanished; the new information the documentary revealed; and the dealings with police, friends, and family while...

The documentary In Your Face features three heavily inked people that have their tattoos covered as part of a social experiment investigating our prejudices against face and neck tattoos. In this episode, our host, Jake Wiafe, meets the director & producer Simon Goodman from Showem Entertainment and contributor Jason Brookes, who became a local celebrity after appearing in the documentary. They will be talking about tattoos and tattoo culture - but of course also about the making of the...

In this episode, our host Jake Wiafe meets the documentary producers Rachel Forbes and Paul Woolf to discuss the newly released true-crime series, Searching For. The documentary series investigates the mysterious disappearances of Akia Eggleston, Jenna Van Gelderen, and Nancy Moyer, whose cases all remain unsolved to this day.   They discuss the process of making the series while dealing with family, police, and the surrounding communities, hoping that their work may lead to new clues as to...

You come at the king? You best not miss. So said Omar Little in David Simon's legendary HBO drama The Wire. So when we got the chance to speak to our very own CEO, Andy Taylor, we were very excited, and we're pleased to say we feel it's a hit. This episode you'll hear some of the background of Real Stories, and Little Dot Studios (that's us, the company behind Real Stories), as well as a look ahead to what's still to come. Real Stories is available on Youtube and Facebook, and you can...

In Episode 2 Jake speaks to Joya and Lucy Jane, the surfing film makers responsible for Real Stories original Surf Girls Jamaica. Surf girls Jamaica explores the oft over looked black female surf culture in Jamaica through the eyes of some of it's most active and vocal proponents. You can watch the full film here on YouTube from anywhere in the world - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KaTUYaSD-wA We also find out whether Missed Call, about which we talked in episode one with Director and...

Welcome to the first ever Real Stories Podcast. In this first episode Jake speaks to Real Stories Commissioner Adam Gee, and the Director of one of our Real Stories Originals 'Missed Call', Victoria Mapplebeck, about: getting a Bafta nomination; shooting a documentary entirely on an iPhone; putting your personal life (and that of your son) on screen; and loads more besides.