

Explores the circumstances that led to Brittney Griner playing basketball outside the U.S. despite being one of the best players in the sport, including her harrowing detainment, unwavering determination to secure her freedom, and her advocacy for the release of other wrongful detainees.
+ MoreExplores the circumstances that led to Brittney Griner playing basketball outside the U.S. despite being one of the best players in the sport, including her harrowing detainment, unwavering determination to secure her freedom, and her advocacy for the release of other wrongful detainees.
The media frenzy surrounding the detainment and eventual release of Brittney Griner was highly politicized, fueled by speculation and attempts to leverage her narrative to advance political agendas. Now, director Alexandria Stapleton gives the floor to Griner to tell her story, alongside her wife, Cherelle, and an inner circle of friends and family.
This intimate access grounds the film in Griner’s humanity, reminding us she is a wife, parent, daughter, sister, and friend — far more than just an athlete-turned-political pawn. Griner opens up about her childhood, the disappointment and fear surrounding her detainment, her harrowing experience in a Russian penal colony, and the complicated negotiations to get her home. It’s a riveting story of resilience, anchored by a family who never stopped pushing for her release and that of others. — SO
Available in person only.
Alexandria Stapleton
Alexandria Stapleton
Stacy Scripter
Funmi Akinyode
Megan Goedewaagen
Carolyn Hepburn
Lindsay Kagawa Colas
Jon Liebman
Cherelle Griner
Brian Lockhart
Burke Magnus
Marsha Cooke
Heather Anderson
Rosella Tursi
Benjamin Kast
Eve Cohen
Brittney Griner
Cherelle Griner
ESPN
Maria Delgado
maria.delgado@espn.com
6464686103

Alexandria Stapleton is an Emmy-winning documentary filmmaker and the founder of House of NonFiction. She directed The Brittney Griner Story for ESPN and Sean Combs: The Reckoning for Netflix, as well as films for Amazon Prime Video, Paramount+, and HBO. She is currently working on a feature doc about NFL Hall of Famer Terrell Owens.

A father-to-be tries to figure out what is happening with the AI insanity, exploring the existential dangers and stunning promise of this technology that humanity has created.
(1hr 44mins)
Previously unseen footage captured by Salman Rushdie’s wife, Rachel Eliza Griffiths, documents his journey. Following not just his physical rehabilitation, but also the restoration of his spirit and optimism. Inspired by Rushdie’s memoir Knife: Meditations After an Attempted Murder.
(1hr 47mins)
World champion tennis trailblazer Billie Jean King has had a game-changing impact on culture and sports. Rare archive and candid interviews with Billie Jean and those closest to her reveal how one woman put changing the world ahead of saving herself.
(1hr 41mins)
Facing the death of his country’s glaciers and the loss of his beloved grandparents, Icelandic writer Andri Snær Magnason turns his archives into a time capsule to hold what is slipping away — family, memory, time, and water.
(1hr 30mins)
After attending a workshop on how to write and sell a Hallmark movie, filmmaker John Wilson tries to use the same formula to sell a documentary about concrete.
(1hr 40mins)
A rural Iowa schoolteacher becomes a national voice against racism after leading a controversial 1968 lesson in discrimination with her all-white third-grade class. Now nearly 90, she refuses to hold back amid today’s fights about race, history, and power after a lifetime of speaking out.
(1hr 30mins)
In 1983, author Ta-Nehisi Coates learned that a 14-year-old boy was murdered in his Baltimore middle school. Upon revisiting the case, he uncovers the truth: Three innocent teenagers were wrongfully convicted and spent 36 years in prison — creating a lasting impact on the accused, the witnesses, and their community.
(1hr 52mins)
A decade-long global journey chronicles the ever-changing record holders of the title of oldest person alive. What begins as a portrait of longevity becomes a meditation on the passage of time, the randomness of fate, and the joy and profound human experience of being alive.
(1hr 27mins)
A decade after his death, genre-defying filmmaker William Greaves has one last trick up his sleeve with what he considered the most important event he captured on film: a 1972 party he engineered with the living luminaries of the Harlem Renaissance.
(1hr 40mins)
An outsider fueled by relentless determination works his way into the inner circle of the Wu-Tang Clan, where his ambition and creativity converge in the making of an album poised to ignite global controversy.
(1hr 45mins)
The struggle against apartheid is recounted through Nelson Mandela’s own voice, drawn from recordings he made while writing his autobiography Long Walk to Freedom.
(1hr 34mins)
A Hungarian girl dreams of conquering international men’s chess. After a 15-year battle against world champion Garry Kasparov, Judit Polgár revolutionizes the sport’s patriarchal culture to become one of the greatest chess prodigies in history and the greatest woman chess player of all time.
(1hr 33mins)
Singer, songwriter, and actor Courtney Love has long had an impact on rock and pop culture. Now sober and set to release new music for the first time in over a decade, Courtney is ready to reveal her story, unfiltered and unapologetic.
(1hr 38mins)
Blurring the line between performance and personal crisis, comedian Maria Bamford turns her mental health journey into material that’s riotously funny and ultimately inspiring. What emerges is a portrait of an artist transforming vulnerability into creative strength through honesty.
(1hr 56mins)
The race to grab the last great prize in mountaineering, K2 in winter, left five dead. It exposed deep fault lines in alpinism today: pressures from commercialization, toxic effects of social media, and long-brewing tensions between those who’ve been marginalized and those who’ve always basked in the sport’s glory.
(1hr 38mins)FESTIVAL HOST STATE


.png)

.png)





.png)

.png)


.png)


.png)
.png)





.png)

.png)





.png)

.png)


.png)


.png)
.png)




FESTIVAL HOST STATE
FESTIVAL HOST STATE

Presenting Sponsors

.png)

.png)
Leadership Sponsors





.png)
Sustaining Sponsors

.png)


.png)


Media Sponsors
.png)
.png)



FESTIVAL HOST STATE

Presenting Sponsors

.png)

.png)
Leadership Sponsors





.png)
Sustaining Sponsors

.png)


.png)


Media Sponsors
.png)
.png)



FESTIVAL HOST STATE
