Documentarians must perform particularly tricky balancing acts with each new project. The audience expects their work to be richly cinematic, entertaining and surprising; the standards of their profession, too, dictate that they must be fiercely attentive to the facts. Unlike directors working on scripted films, they can’t find an easy fix if the facts don’t suit their story — they must follow the truth wherever it leads.

That’s among the challenges that several field-leading documentary filmmakers discussed at Variety and Rolling Stone’s Truth Seekers Summit on Aug. 14. The work each respective director has made recently diverges from their fellow panelists in style, in subject matter and in approach, but all the filmmakers share a commitment to using the tools of art to reveal stories

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