‘A chilling effect’: is Hollywood too scared to touch hot-button documentaries?

No Other Land chronicles the destruction of the West Bank community of Masafer Yatta by the Israeli military.

The film, made by an Israeli -Palestinian collective, garnered numerous festival accolades, several independent awards and nearly every American critics association’s “best of” title.

No major US distributor bought the project, stranding the film in a strange limbo high visibility, at least in the film world, but almost no access to audiences.

Documentary has never been an easy business, especially for ethically challenging films.

Traditionally, documentary film was by and large a small and hardscrabble business, marketing films on word of mouth and audience outreach.

Netflix raised eyebrows when it paid $ 5 m for Icarus , a documentary on the Russian Olympic doping scandal, out of Sundance in 2017 .

As the golden age of the streaming wars faded and companies tightened their belts, smaller films requiring a heftier lift in promotion and outreach got the pass.

Union, meanwhile, contracted the impact production company Red Owl Partners , who helped organize 250 partners to co-host and market screenings in 25 cities last year .

With their one -off eventized screenings, it was the highest-grossing film of that night in those markets.

The liberal influencer Hasan Piker livestreamed the film on his Twitch channel with 25,000 people watching.