“Documentaries Need Stars Just Like Feature Films Do”: Tiller Russell on his Amazon Docuseries The Last Narc

To say that documentarian Tiller Russell has a knack for discovering unconventional characters is an understatement. From NYPD cops running a cocaine ring (2015’s The Seven Five), to a Russian mobster, a Cuban spy and a Miami playboy conspiring to sell a Soviet sub to the Cali cartel (2018’s Operation Odessa), the filmmaker has more than earned his gonzo doc bona fides. And the weird winning streak continues with the director’s four-part docuseries The Last Narc, premiering on Amazon Prime Video today.

The story catalyzing Russell’s latest is one familiar to any viewer of the first season of Netflix’s Narcos: Mexico — the 1985 kidnapping and murder of DEA Agent Enrique “Kiki” Camarena. It was a case that ultimately fell to special agent Hector Berrellez, the heroic protagonist of The Last Narc, to investigate. What Berrellez uncovered, and relays with startling frankness to the camera, is a strange saga involving intricate layers of government coverup on both sides of the border, suggesting that the crime was never really meant to be solved (and leaving Camarena’s grieving widow, also prominently featured in the series, without closure to this very day). In fact, the special agent’s whole premise is so farfetched as to be easily dismissed as a crackpot conspiracy theory — if it weren’t for several other corroborating interviews Russell conducts, including with the informants who eventually came clean to Berrellez. Specifically, these are the three former, and still intimidating, Jalisco State policemen who served as bodyguards for the Guadalajara Cartel drug lords Rafael Caro Quintero and Ernesto Fonseca Carrillo (El Chapo’s onetime bosses).

So to learn more about bringing Narcos fiction back to fact while simultaneously crafting a narrative out of the real-life hunt for Silk Road founder Ross Ulbricht (Russell’s thriller Silk Road, which was set to debut at Tribeca, will be released later this year), Filmmaker reached out to the intrepid director a few days before The Last Narc episode one hit the small screen.

To read my interview visit Filmmaker magazine.

“We Worked With as Many BIPOC Womxn Crew Members as Possible, Whenever Possible!”: Linda Goldstein Knowlton on We Are The Radical Monarchs

The Black Panther Party, with its firm commitment to nourishing and nurturing the children of Oakland’s barely served African-American community, was founded all the way back in 1966. So it’s a bit shocking that it took nearly half a century later for the Radical Monarchs to be born. Or maybe not. After all, historically, queer women of color — like the Monarchs’ tireless co-founders Anayvette Martinez and Marilyn Hollinquest — had never been given leading roles in the Black Panther show.


Fortunately, dedicated feminist and filmmaker Linda Goldstein Knowlton and her all-female team (including EP Grace Lee) are now shining a documentary spotlight on Oakland’s newest (youngest) activist movement: an alternative to the Girl Scout Brownies for girls of color that can go from toasting marshmallows to marching for Black trans lives in a single bound. Or as 8-year-old member Amia puts it at the start of the film, “Something about social justice that is fun is that we get to kind of make history — or “herstory” as we like to say it. And we get to be one tiny little part of it. ‘Cause we all know that a lot of tiny little parts can equal one big part.” (That said, by the time of the troop’s trip to the state capitol to lobby lawmakers at the end, it’s pretty clear these girls’ ambitions are far from tiny. Amia for one takes a spin on the marble floor and sighs, “I was meant to be here.” Out of the mouths of radical babes indeed.)

Filmed over three years, including both before and after the 2016 presidential election, We Are The Radical Monarchs follows not just the third-through-fifth graders as they earn their badges (in such subjects as “radical beauty,” “radical bodies,” and “radical roots”), but also goes behind the scenes with the scrappy cofounders who put their day-job skills in community advocacy and organizing to work. In other words, Hollinquest and Martinez have found a way to harness willpower in lieu of financing to expand BIPOC girl power into a nationwide revolution.

Prior to the doc’s July 20th airing on POV, Filmmaker reached out to the Emmy Award-nominated director to learn more about the inspiring project, including shooting with underage characters and ensuring diversity behind the lens.

To read my interview visit Filmmaker magazine.

A Conversation With Elizabeth Radshaw & Dorota Lech (HOT DOCS Film Fest)

Elizabeth Radshaw, Industry Programs Director, and Dorota Lech, Industry Programmer and Hot Docs Forum Producer, were at the forefront of a swift shift to the online realm for all industry activities at this year’s Hot Docs. So what better pair to look back and provide a glimpse into what went right, what couldn’t be replicated, and what all participating parties might consider when looking forward to the festival future near and far?

Which is exactly why I reached out to the veteran industry duo with a handful of questions. (And in return received a variety of surprising responses, like how to avoid Zoom fatigue.)

To read my interview visit Hammer to Nail.

Doc Star of the Month: Michael Martin, 'Bloody Nose, Empty Pockets'

Though Bloody Nose, Empty Pockets premiered in the US Documentary Competition at pre-pandemic Sundance back in January, I didn’t catch Bill and Turner Ross' heartfelt film until the festival world had turned upside down and digital. Fortunately, I was able to watch the unusual dive-bar drama during CPH:DOX's pioneering virtual edition, deeming it "the quintessential CPH:DOX film — i.e., designed to have doc purists tearing their hair out," and summed it up as follows: "Veering from the ridiculous to the poignant, often in the same scene, this collection of character studies shot during last call at a Las Vegas bar before it closes for good [but filmed in a New Orleans canteen that's still open] includes a patron named Michael, a washed-up actor who sweeps up and sleeps at the Sin City saloon. Played by Michael Martin [a former actor who really does sweep up at a Big Easy bar], he delivers drunken profound wisdom that sounds so good as to be scripted. And when he warns a young musician to 'get out' before he gets stuck because 'there's nothing more boring than a guy who used to do stuff and doesn’t do stuff no more,' it's simply devastating. An uneasy portrait of an actor who long ago lost a part of his soul to the roles he played."

So now that Utopia has launched an online rollout of the provocative doc (it premiered July 10), Documentary thought it the perfect time to reach out to the riveting thespian at its center. And luckily, Michael Martin graciously agreed to take on the role of July's Doc Star of the Month — and to give us the scoop on how he managed to pull off one of the year’s most inspired performances in a documentary.

To read my interview visit Documentary magazine.

“His First Question To Us Was, ‘What Are Your Astrological Signs?'”: Cristina Costantini, Kareem Tabsch and Alex Fumero on Mucho Mucho Amor

Premiering at Sundance back in the pre-pandemic festival days (uh, January) Mucho Mucho Amor is a much-needed uplift in these trying times. Co-directed and produced by Cristina Costantini (Science Fair) and Kareem Tabsch (The Last Resort), and produced by Alex Fumero (I Think You Should Leave with Tim Robinson), the doc, which hits Netflix today, is a fascinating odyssey into the beautifully eccentric world of Walter Mercado. Combining the fashion sense of Liberace with the relentless positivity of Tammy Faye Bakker, the Puerto Rican astrologer, psychic and defiantly nonbinary pioneer spent decades spreading his mantra of “mucho mucho amor” to an audience of millions — 120 to be exact — of Latinx viewers across the globe. (That would include Lin-Manuel Miranda, who touchingly transforms into a starstruck schoolkid upon being granted an audience with the icon.) Until one day the bundle of energy just up and vanished from the TV.

Exhaustively thorough, the film mixes archival images with contemporary interviews with Mercado’s relatives, friends and former business partners, and even the hiding-in-plain-sight Mercado himself. Yet the doc goes further than just stitching together the mystery of what happened to this once ubiquitous ambassador for happiness. Indeed, Mucho Mucho Amor even reaches out to make a convincing case for why this relic from another era, an octogenarian at the time of production, matters today. For Mercado’s adamant refusal to discuss his gender or sexuality — while making it clear through his in-your-face appearance that he would never be confined to category nor closet — put him way ahead of his time. (Historically, LGBTQ folks went directly from being shamed into secrecy, to being shamed if they didn’t come out. Of course, being expected to proudly announce one’s identity is a burden that straight cisgender people have never been asked to bear.) And this unconventional spirit, who at one point declares to the camera that every morning he wakes up is the first day of his life, had no interest in living life on others’ terms.

So to learn more about Mucho Mucho Amor and its uncompromising star (though Mercado notes, “I used to be a star and now I’m a constellation”) Filmmaker reached out to the trio that rediscovered the legend and so much more.

To read my interview visit Filmmaker magazine.

A (Brief) Conversation With Malene Flindt Pedersen (Fat Front)

One of the more unusual topics to be spot-lit at last year’s International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam was the body-positive movement – specifically the “revolution in Scandinavia” that sparked it. Danish doc-makers Louise Unmack Kjeldsen and Louise Detlefsen’s Fat Front – now available on YouTube and Google Play – is the latest film from longtime female-focused producer Malene Flindt Pedersen. It’s a clear-eyed yet fun, upbeat look at four young Nordic women who have defiantly thrown off the oversized mantle of shame, and wholeheartedly embraced the word “fat.” The ladies also proudly display their stomach rolls, and shake their jiggly thighs, for thousands of enthusiastic Instagram followers around the world. 

In addition to premiering in the Frontlight program, Fat Front also arrived at the prestigious fest with an accompanying provocative photographic exhibition presented at Amsterdam Centraal. (Wake up, morning commuters!) And to discuss all this and more I sat down for lunch last fall with the thoughtful co-directors and their dogged producer – who I later followed up with via email – at the Danish Film Institute restaurant SULT while I was in Copenhagen just a few weeks prior to the doc’s international premiere.

To read my interview head over to Hammer to Nail.