NBC’s Meet the Press is reteaming with AFI Docs to present a second annual film festival of short political documentaries in Washington, D.C.
The 2018 Meet the Press Film Festival will be held October 7-8, focusing on stories about people and policy told from a “diversity of perspective.”
The inaugural 2017 film festival, held over one day at the Landmark Atlantic Plumbing Cinema, screened 16 shorts that were made available for a short period online and on OTT platforms including Apple TV, Roku and Fire TV for those not in D.C.
Three of those shorts — Heroine, Edith+Eddie and Knife Skills — went on to be nominated in the documentary shorts category at the 2018 Academy Awards. Other shorts at the festival included director Sharon Liese’s Fight for the First, about journalism students studying as rules of the trade changed under the Trump Administration; Julia Meltzer’s immigration story From Aleppo to L.A.; and Los Lecheros, Jim Cricci’s examination of the relationship between undocumented workers and Wisconsin’s dairy industry.
Shorts must be 40 minutes or less in length, and cannot have been broadcast or screened theatrically in Washington, D.C., prior to the submission entry.
Festival filmmakers will be invited to talk about their titles on NBC’s cable and digital platforms, as well as participate in post-film discussions. Last year, NBC contributors including Meet the Press host Chuck Todd, Andrea Mitchell, Katy Tur and Joy Reid served as post-film moderators.
