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Now in its 21st year, the Big Sky Documentary Film Festival is the premier venue for non-fiction film in the American West. Every year, the festival brings over a hundred beautifully-crafted, thought-provoking documentary films to Missoula, Montana. This podcast, a collaboration between the Big Sky Documentary Film Festival and the Missoula Broadcasting Company, gives you the chance to hear directly from filmmakers, gaining insight into what drew them to their subjects and the behind-the-sce ...
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Educating and empowering the next generation of documentary filmmakers, the BSDFF's youth fellowship gives students a crash course in documentary history and hands-on filmmaking. Two of the youth filmmakers visited the Trail studios to talk with Mike Smith about their experience. Amity Blue directed Flipping the Switch, about what happens when a ba…
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Bring Them Home is the story of a small group of Blackfoot people and their mission to establish the first wild buffalo herd on their ancestral territory since the species’ near-extinction a century ago. Filmmakers Ivy McDonald and Daniel Glick joined Colter Nuanez on 102.9 ESPN Missoula to talk about creating an emotional, important film about res…
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Welcome Space Brothers is a feature documentary about The Unarius Academy of Science, an extraterrestrial-channeling spiritual school and self-healing community established in the 1970s in El Cajon, California that became a wildly prolific filmmaking collective under the direction of outlandish spiritual leader and filmmaker Ruth E. Norman, AKA “Ar…
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The Big Sky Documentary Film Festival was the very first film festival to show Jeanie Finlay's work when Teenland premiered in Missoula in 2008. Fifteen years later, Finlay is an accomplished, decorated director with an eclectic filmography that runs from community theater to goths on a boat to a behind-the-scenes look at Game of Thrones. Jeanie Fi…
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In the 1970s, the Houston Herricanes were a part of the first women’s full tackle football league in the United States, starting a movement that's still in motion today. The Herricanes tells their unknown story of commitment, courage, strength and love for the game. Filmmaker Olivia Kuan joined Andrew Houghton of 102.9 ESPN Missoula to talk about h…
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The Wonder and the Worry follows the careers of former National Geographic Editor in Chief, Chris Johns, and his daughter Louise, a young freelance photographer, telling a story about family, photography and the power of visual storytelling to create change. Director David Baker and subject Chris Johns visited the Trail studios to chat with Mike Sm…
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On the Red Lake (Ojibwe) Reservation in Minnesota, the high school football team hasn't one a game in two decades. Through the Storm follows the efforts of a determined coach and group of young athletes, who fight to keep their football program alive. Filmmakers Charles Frank and Fritz Bitsoie joined Colter Nuanez for a look at their film before it…
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Every summer, working-class families enjoy waterfront living in a scrappy trailer park off the coast of Virginia. When the relentless march of capitalism threatens their shabby Shangri-La, the denizens of Inlet View face the inevitable, and reveal the secrets to a rich life. Amy Nicholson, the director of Happy Campers, visited the Trail studios to…
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Big Sky Documentary Film Festival Education Director Julia Sherman talks with Aubrey Nilsen of 104.5 the U about Schoolhouse Docs and the wonderfully rich array of youth programs that are part of the 21st annual Big Sky Doc Film Fest.Big Sky Documentary Film Festival
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Known only by her research number, Grizzly 399 has captivated photographers since 2007, becoming the most famous — and photographed — mother bear in the world. The Big Sky Doc Fest's opening night film follows 399 as she struggles to raise an unusually large litter in the face of human encroachment, a rapidly changing climate, and disputes over her…
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Big Sky Documentary Film Festival executive director Rachel Gregg stopped by the Missoula Broadcasting company studios to preview the opening night film 399: Queen of the Tetons and offer a few of her other personal recommendations for films she's looking forward to this week.Big Sky Documentary Film Festival
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As buffalo return to the North American landscapes they once defined, the important ecological and cultural impacts of that restoration have begun to manifest. A Buffalo Story follows the work of Jason Baldes, the Tribal Buffalo Manager for buffalo restoration on the Wind River Reservation, whose efforts to help people believe in buffalo again requ…
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Renowned ecologist Nalini Nadkarni pioneered climbing techniques to study the Costa Rican rainforest canopy. After surviving a life-threatening fall from a tree, she turns her research inward to understand the processes of disturbance and recovery in her own life, a journey documented in Between Earth and Sky. Nalini Nadkarni and director Andrew Na…
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In the middle of a remote desert, two men are assigned to guard the ruins of an ancient kingdom. When the Dust Blows Through follows them as they confront the heat and thirst of the desert, as well as more insidious foes like loneliness and tomb raiders. Director Ethan Wu visited the Trail 103.3 studios to discuss the challenges of filming in such …
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The film Hollywood's Finest follows three mothers fighting to create a family: Mckenzie, a young woman in recovery who became pregnant while living in a tent; Cat, her nomadic mom; and Leslie, the social worker with her own history of addiction, housing insecurity, and losing children to foster care. Filmmakers Claire Hannah Collins and Gale Hollan…
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A chance encounter transformed Bernie Krause's life, setting the prolific composer and sound artist on a path to capture the sounds of a vanishing wilderness. The Last of the Nightengales is a haunting black-and-white film that follows Krause's journey, inviting the audience to experience the rich acoustic beauty of the living world through his ear…
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Megan Harrington and Malia Kipp visit the ESPN Missoula studios to discuss the documentary film Native Ball: Legacy of a Trailblazer, which follows Kipp's journey from the Blackfeet Reservation to becoming the first Native American player in Montana Lady Griz history.Big Sky Documentary Film Festival
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When two young American Jews raised to unconditionally love Israel witness the mistreatment of Palestinians, they battle the old guard to create a new movement opposing Israel’s occupation, and recentering Judaism itself. That's the story of Israelism, which makes its world premiere Thursday at the Big Sky Documentary Film Festival. Filmmakers Eric…
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When professional skier Jamie MoCrazy fell during the slopestyle event at the World Tour Finals in 2015, she suffered a traumatic brain injury so severe that officials at the ski hill prepared her fatality report. The injury left her in a coma, with her entire right side paralyzed and her brain bleeding in eight places. #MoCrazyStrong is the story …
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Director Anna Moot-Levin discusses her film Matter of Mind: My ALS. The documentary follows three people diagnosed with ALS, a neurodegenerative disease with no known cure, and the choices they make as they grapple with how best to treat the illness.Big Sky Documentary Film Festival
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Elwira Niewiera and Piotr Rosolowski visit the Missoula Broadcasting Company studios to discuss their documentary film The Hamlet Syndrome. Filmed just months before the Russian invasion of Ukraine, the documentary follows a group of Ukrainian actors struggling with the traumas of war, sexism and homophobia as they attempt to stage an adaptation of…
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Filmmakers Sean Paulsen and Brad Wickham detail the late-night cemetery stakeouts that went into making their film Shadow of a Dog. The film follows a man who roams the forgotten corners of New York, hoping to track down lost pets and re-unite them with their owners.Big Sky Documentary Film Festival
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Documentary filmmaker Penny Lane, the subject of this year's Big Sky Documentary Film Festival Retrospective, visits the Trail 103.3 studio to talk about her films that will shown at the festival, with subjects as diverse as Kenny G, Richard Nixon, the Church of Satan and Depression-era snake oil salesman John Brinkley, who peddled goat testicles a…
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The film A Decent Home opened the 2022 Big Sky Documentary Film Festival by going inside mobile home parks, where some of the most affordable housing in the country is increasingly being bought out by the richest of the rich. In this episode of the BSDFF podcast, the Trail's Robert Chase talks with director Sara Terry about A Decent Home being show…
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While stuck in his apartment during the pandemic, Brian Gersten decided to make a film about one of his family's favorite pastimes - bowling. That film became Memory Lanes. In this episode of the BSDFF podcast, ESPN Missoula's Andrew Houghton sits down with Gersten to talk about the process of making a film completely from archival footage and how …
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The closing night film at the Big Sky Documentary Film Festival is Charm Circle, a deeply personal glimpse into the lives of an eccentric New York family. In this episode of the Big Sky Doc fest podcast, the Trail's Robert Chase talks with director Nira Burstein about her first visit to Missoula and the process of making a film that documents her o…
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Every winter, a ragtag group of crustpunks, libertarians, snowbirds, and elderly folks become unlikely neighbors during their annual pilgrimage to a temporary longterm camping community in Quartzsite, Arizona. In this episode of the Big Sky Documentary Film Festival podcast, Colter Nuanez talks with Ryan Maxey, director of the film One Road to Quar…
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The swamp towns of south Florida, where kids chase rabbits through the muck of cut sugar cane fields, produce NFL talent at a rate that's almost unseen anywhere else in the country. When Ira McKinley returned to his hometown of Pahokee, he knew he wanted to make a film about the resilience and excellence that's persevered on the shores of Lake Okee…
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Deep in the mountains of Montana and Idaho, a diverse group of Southeast Asian refugees, Latino immigrants and rural white Americans search for rare fungi. In this episode of the Big Sky Documentary Film Festival podcast, Colter Nuanez talks with Olivier Matthon and Michael Reis of the film Up on the Mountain about the people searching for this wil…
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Hockey is religion in northern Minnesota, where ponds freeze over, snow drifts deep and kids strap up skates as soon as they can walk. In this episode of the Big Sky Documentary Film Festival podcast, ESPN Missoula's Colter Nuanez is joined by director Tommy Haines, producer Andrew Sherburne and cinematographer Ben Handler of the film Hockeyland, a…
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Quinn Brett was a hard-charging, record-setting mountain climber before a fall on Yosemite's famous El Capitan left her nearly dead and without the use of her legs. In the film An Accidental Life, director Henna Taylor intimately portrays Brett's arduous rehab and journey to find meaning in all that's been taken away from her. In this episode of th…
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Being Michelle tells the incredible story of a deaf autistic woman who spent five years in Florida prisons, trapped in a system unable to accommodate or even recognize her needs. Now free, Michelle and her caretakers struggle to heal her traumas and keep her out of the criminal justice system that's already caused her so much pain. In this podcast,…
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