Documentary First

Documentary First

The craft and business of documentary filmmaking, from people who actually do it.

Documentary First is a weekly podcast for working and aspiring documentary filmmakers who want honest, in-depth conversations about how documentaries get funded, made, and seen. Listen Notes ranks the show in the top 5 percent of all podcasts worldwide.

Hosted by Christian Taylor, award-winning director of The Girl Who Wore Freedom (25+ international awards, distributed through Virgil Films, Swank, and Canal+), the show draws on 295+ conversations with documentary filmmakers, editors, producers, distributors, and composers across HBO, Netflix, PBS, and the independent doc world. Past guests include Ken Burns, PBS American Masters creator Susan Lacy, Emmy and Peabody Award-winning editor Charles Olivier (HBO’s The Jinx, The Redeem Team), and Emmy-nominated director Nick Bruckman (Netflix’s Minted).

Every week, Documentary First delivers two formats in one feed. The main show is a long-form interview about how filmmakers approach their craft, handle distribution, and build a career that lasts. On alternating weeks, Documentary First: The Deep Dive takes a single insight from a recent guest conversation and goes further, drawing on psychology, philosophy, and hard-won experience to find the lesson underneath the work.

Christian hosts from inside the work, not from the sidelines. She has films in production right now, so she asks the questions a working documentary filmmaker actually needs answered, because she needs them answered too.

Topics include: documentary directing, documentary producing, documentary distribution, film festival strategy, fundraising for documentaries, storytelling craft, documentary cinematography, documentary editing, film music and scoring, sound design for film, entertainment law for filmmakers, archival footage and rights clearance, and building a sustainable career in nonfiction filmmaking.

New episodes every week. Subscribe and leave a review.