2023
Made refugees by the war in Ukraine, Olga and her granddaughter, Milana, travel to a summer mountaineering camp in the Austrian Alps where they test the limits of bravery and the bonds between them.
Director: Max Snow
Produced By: Katy Chevigny, Marilyn Ness, Max Snow
Associate Producers: Katherine Clary, Anna Mader
In Post Production
THE EASY KIND is a documentary-influenced narrative feature inspired by and starring Nashville singer Elizabeth Cook. The film is a rollicking journey toward true self-expression for EC, as she breaks through the constraints of country music to become the artist that she’s meant to be.
Director: Katy Chevigny
Produced By: Katy Chevigny, Nikhil Melnechuk, Peter Gilbert
Executive Producers: Marilyn Ness, Love Today Productions
Starring: Elizabeth Cook, Melissa Jackson, Zebedee Row, Donal Brophy, Susie Essman, Catherine Curtin, with Karen Allen, David Letterman, and Charles Esten
In Production
POST MORTEM is a documentary feature that is at once personal memoir, true crime and Jewish family history as director Marilyn Ness confronts a legacy of secrecy and trauma using the communal power of theater and film.
Director: Marilyn Ness
Produced By: Beth Levison, Maureen A. Ryan
2021
When a young woman turns to the camera for refuge, she ends up with a firsthand account of what will become the deadliest man-made epidemic in United States history. Filmed over thirty years, ANONYMOUS SISTER is director, Jamie Boyle's chronicle of her family's fall into opioid addiction, providing a poignant and timely study of what it means to experience life in all its beauty and pain.
Director: Jamie Boyle
Produced By: Marilyn Ness, Elizabeth Westrate
2020
An intimate look into the life of former First Lady Michelle Obama during a moment of profound change, not only for her personally but for the country she and her husband served over eight impactful years in the White House. BECOMING offers a rare and up-close look at her life, taking viewers behind the scenes as she embarks on a 34-city tour that highlights the power of community to bridge our divides and the spirit of connection that comes when we openly and honestly share our stories. Nominated for four Primetime Emmy Awards®.
Director: Nadia Hallgren
Produced By: Katy Chevigny & Marilyn Ness
Associate Producers: Simon Mendes & Hayley Goodrich
2020
With this inventive portrait, a cameraperson seeks a way to keep her 86-year-old father alive forever. Utilizing moviemaking magic and her family’s dark humor, she celebrates Dr. Dick Johnson’s last years by staging fantasies of death and beyond. Together, dad and daughter confront the great inevitability awaiting us all. Premiered at the 2020 Sundance Film Festival, where it was awarded Special Jury Award for Innovation in Nonfiction Filmmaking and Shortlisted for the 2020 Academy Award® - Best Documentary Feature.
Director: Kirsten Johnson
Producers: Katy Chevigny & Marilyn Ness
Associate Producer: Simon Mendes
2018
During three years of unparalleled violence in Baltimore, CHARM CITY delivers an unexpectedly candid, observational portrait of those left on the frontlines. With grit, fury, and compassion, a group of police, citizens, and government officials grapple with the consequences of violence and try to reclaim their future. Premiered at the 2018 Tribeca Film Festival; Shortlisted for the 2019 Academy Award® - Best Documentary Feature and broadcast on PBS (Independent Lens) in April 2019.
Director: Marilyn Ness
Producer: Katy Chevigny
Associate Producer: Simon Mendes
2018
A century ago corrupt money scarred Montana’s democracy and landscape, but Montanans voted to prohibit corporate campaign contributions. Today, after the Citizens United ruling, dark money floods elections nationwide, but Montanans are standing up to stop history from repeating itself in a struggle that has the potential to change the way elections happen nationwide. Premiered at the 2018 Sundance Film Festival; Shortlisted for the 2019 Academy Award® - Best Documentary Feature and broadcast on PBS (POV) in October 2018.
Director: Kimberly Reed
Producer: Katy Chevigny
Consulting Producer: Marilyn Ness
2016
Kirsten Johnson's CAMERAPERSON is a tapestry of footage captured over her twenty-five-year career as a documentary cinematographer. The film premiered at the 2016 Sundance Film Festival, was short-listed for the 2017 Academy Award® - Best Documentary Feature, was nominated for an Independent Spirit Award, won the National Board of Review "Freedom of Expression" prize, and was awarded three 2017 Cinema Eye Honors, including Outstanding Nonfiction Feature. CAMERAPERSON was named one of the Top Ten Films of 2016 by The Washington Post and The New York Times.
Director: Kirsten Johnson
Producer: Marilyn Ness
Consulting Producer: Katy Chevigny
2016
At least half of American women will experience an unintended pregnancy by the age of 45. 4 in 10 unwanted pregnancies are terminated by abortion. What would happen if access to care for these cases completely disappeared? TRAPPED, a film from Dawn Porter, premiered at the 2016 Sundance Film Festival, where it won the Special Jury Award for Social Impact Filmmaking. TRAPPED is a recipient of a 2017 Peabody Award and 2017 Silver Gavel Award.
Director: Dawn Porter
Producer: Marilyn Ness
Consulting Producer: Katy Chevigny
2014
Driven by the high-stakes investigative work of four intrepid human rights workers, E-TEAM offers a rare look at their lives at home and dramatic work in the field. Using a cinema verite approach, our camera embeds with the investigators as they piece together the actual events that take place in various troubled spots around the globe. E-TEAM premiered at the 2014 Sundance Film Festival, where it won the coveted Cinematography Award in the U.S. Documentary Competition. The film is a Netflix original and was nominated for two News & Documentary Emmy Awards.
Directors: Katy Chevigny, Ross Kauffman
Producer: Marilyn Ness
[Watch Trailer]
2014
The FBI was unaccountable and untouchable until 1971, when a group of ordinary citizens uncovered its illegal domestic spying programs. On March 8, 1971, The Citizens' Commission to Investigate the FBI, as they called themselves, broke into a small FBI office in Media, Pennsylvania, took every file, and shared them with the American public. Never caught, forty-three years later, these everyday Americans – parents, teachers and citizens – publicly reveal themselves for the first time and share their story in the documentary 1971. This film was awarded IDA's ABCNews VideoSource Award for best archival footage, won Cinema Eye's Spotlight Award, and broadcast on PBS's Independent Lens in May 2015.
Director: Johanna Hamilton
Producers: Marilyn Ness, Katy Chevigny
BAD BLOOD
2010
Through the eyes of survivors and family members, BAD BLOOD chronicles how a “miracle” treatment for hemophilia became an agent of death for 10,000 Americans. Faced with evidence that pharmaceutical companies and government regulators knew the product was contaminated with deadly viruses from the 1960s through the early 1990s, the hemophilia community launched a powerful and inspiring fight to right the system that failed them and to make it safer for all.
Director and Producer: Marilyn Ness
ELECTION DAY
2007
Forget the pie charts, color-coded maps and hyperventilating pundits. What's the street-level experience of voters in today's America? In a triumph of documentary storytelling, ELECTION DAY combines 11 stories — shot simultaneously on November 2, 2004, from dawn until long past midnight — into one. Factory workers, ex-felons, harried moms, Native American activists and diligent poll watchers, from South Dakota to Florida, take the process of democracy into their own hands. The result: an entertaining, inspiring and sometimes unsettling tapestry of citizens determined on one fateful day to make their votes count.
Director: Katy Chevigny
Producers: Maggie Bowman, Dallas Brennan Rexer
DEADLINE
2004
Illinois, Fall 2002: Governor George Ryan faces shocking findings about flaws in his state's capital punishment system that call his long-held beliefs into question. Suddenly, he must make one of the most difficult decisions of his life — to ignore this disturbing evidence, or to transform the entire Illinois capital punishment system. The stakes of this decision are the lives of over 170 people, and Ryan's own political career. And he has only a few months to issue his final decision. DEADLINE captures the ensuing dramatic series of events as they unfold.
Directors: Katy Chevigny, Kirsten Johnson
Producers: Katy Chevigny, Dallas Brennan Rexer