Pure Nonfiction
130 episodes listed below
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Hear the world's top storytellers talk all things documentary film. Host Thom Powers is as well-connected as it gets in this world as a documentary curator for TIFF and other renowned festivals. He wrote the book "Mondo Documentary" that is “required reading for fans of nonfiction cinema,” says Judd Apatow. Our podcast guests range from documentary legends to emerging talent. Follow us on Instagram and Substack at @purenonfiction.
Based on 6 episodes we listened to · September 2026
Tom Powers turns filmmaker interviews into clear accounts of how documentary form, access, art, and political pressure shape what reaches the screen.
Tom Powers treats documentary film as a set of choices with consequences. His interviews move from a project's premise into the decisions behind access, form, and representation.
Nine minutes of animation, a year of work: Thom Powers gives your curiosity somewhere to go.
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Short reviews from the PlayNext desk, based on the episodes we processed.
A sober look at how access, risk, and documentary craft shaped a film made inside Taliban-controlled Afghanistan.
Tom Powers' conversation with Ibrahim Nash'at follows the making of Hollywood Gate, a documentary shot inside Afghanistan after the Taliban returned and most outside journalists were leaving.
A careful documentary conversation that finds humor without flattening the stakes.
Pure Nonfiction tracks The Last Republican with a steady eye on Congressman Adam Kinzinger as he breaks with his party after opposing Donald Trump, and it keeps that split grounded with dry humor.
A focused conversation about leaked interrogation footage, corruption, and the way power gets exercised.
Pure Nonfiction treats The BB Files as a tight look at leaked interrogation footage and the corruption case around Benjamin Netanyahu. It traces the project back to the spring 2023 anonymous contact with Alex Gibney and to the Israeli police investigation that began in 2016 and…
A close, process-first conversation about self-portraiture, memory, and the work behind making drawings move.
The episode works best when it stays with process. William Kentridge and Tom Powers talk through how Self-Portrait as a Coffee Pot turns drawing into a moving subject, and why a nine-minute film can take nine months or a year to finish.
A live episode that keeps historical reckoning and documentary craft in clear balance.
Pure Nonfiction turns a London live event into four conversations, and the best part is how much room it gives each one to settle. The opening run on The Commandant's Shadow is careful and plainspoken, following Auschwitz, inherited guilt, and the long reach of a family history…
A calm pair of film conversations about making, meaning, and public life.
Tom Powers opens the London Documentary Spotlight with two conversations about experimentation and what documentary form can carry through personality and process.
A grounded look at Ernest Cole's life, shaped by House of Bondage, testimony, and a newly found archive.
Raoul Peck's return to documentary treats Ernest Cole's life as a recovery project: the South African photographer who documented apartheid in the 1960s, published House of Bondage, went into exile, and died in obscurity in 1990.
Comedy veterans are used to open a careful, steady double feature about documentary stakes.
Tom Powers uses two comedy veterans as a way into documentary seriousness, pairing Steve Pink's The Last Republican with Josh Greenbaum's Will and Harper.
Warm interviews with public lives in focus.
Josh Clark and Chuck Bryant explain one topic per episode, from the bicameral mind to Boeing's MCAS.
Multi-part dramatized retellings of scandals like OceanGate's Titan and the Lehman Brothers collapse.
Sean Fennessey and Amanda Dobbins dissect Oscar races, new releases, and Hollywood news.
Adam Kempenaar and Josh Larsen debate new releases, classics, and their own film rankings.
Tom Powers opens on Queendom, the documentary about Jenna Marvin.
Tom Powers opens by noting he is recording two days after Donald Trump was re-elected.
Tom Powers talks with Ibrahim Nash'at about Hollywood Gate.
Pure Nonfiction turns to *The Last Republican*, a documentary following Congressman Adam Kinzinger as he breaks with his own party after opposing Donald Trump and January 6.
Tom Powers speaks with producer Alex Gibney and director Alexis Blum about their collaboration on The BB Files.
Tom Powers speaks with William Kentridge about *Self-Portrait as a Coffee Pot*, a nine-part series that took shape after the pandemic kept him in his Johannesburg studio.
Tom Powers brings four London conversations together in one live episode.
Tom Powers brings together two London Documentary Spotlight conversations.
Tom Powers speaks with Raoul Peck about Ernest Cole, the South African photographer whose apartheid-era work and long exile shape *Ernest Cole, Lost and Found*.
Tom Powers opens two days after Donald Trump’s re-election and uses the moment to point out that the United States is told through more than one story.