Latest in American Symphony

When the Oscar nominations were announced last month, it marked a watershed moment for the Documentary Feature category. All the nominated films focused on international subjects – stories from Uganda, Tunisia, Ukraine, India and Chile — and not a single American director was recognized. Two…

UPDATED with reaction from documentary nominees. In an Oscar stunner, two films considered a lock for nominations failed to be recognized Tuesday morning in the Best Documentary Feature category: American Symphony and Still: A Michael J. Fox Movie. Instead, a group of five internationally focused…

Oscar documentary branch voters can't be accused of parochialism. They ventured far and wide to select their shortlist of feature documentaries for 2023, tapping films from countries as varied as a U.N. roll call: Ukraine, Uganda, Poland, Denmark, Tunisia, Canada and the United…

There are times when one's world unexpectedly shifts off its axis, and everyone involved must scramble and find a new center of gravity. November 10, 2021 was such a day for Jon Batiste and his life partner, Suleika Jaouad. That morning, the acclaimed multi-instrumentalist and bandleader for The Late Show…

Michelle Obama is giving a boost to American Symphony, the Oscar-contending documentary about musician Jon Batiste and his wife, musician Suleika Jaouad. The former first lady introduced the Matthew Heineman film at a special screening Thursday night in New Orleans, a place of special significance…

Emerald Fennell's dark comedy Saltburn takes a massive jump from to over 1,500 screens today as Bradley Cooper's Maestro, Hayao Miyazaki's latest The Boy and the Heron, animated They Shot The Piano Player and other festival favorites launch awards season runs this Thanksgiving specialty…

It was a very good night Sunday for Apple TV+’s Davis Guggenheim-directed documentary Still: A Michael J Fox Movie, about Fox’s life and battle with Parkinson’s disease. The movie won in all five categories for which it was nominated at the eighth annual…

Ava DuVernay’s Origin and Matthew Heineman’s American Symphony were among the top winners at the Virginia Film Festival, the four-day Charlottesville event that ran from October 25-29. Origin, based on Isabel Wilkerson’s Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents, won the festival’s Audience Award for…

Matthew Heineman’s documentary profiling Grammy and Oscar winning musician Jon Batiste and the medical struggles for his wife that have marked trying times in their marriage leads the pack of nominees for the 8th Annual Critics Choice Documentary Awards with…