The Fearlessness and Faith of Documentary Filmmaking with Shane Boris

Producer Shane Boris didn’t set out to make Oscar-worthy documentaries. He wanted to tell stories that moved him, helped people make sense of the world—and inspired them to change it for the better.Through a chance encounter on an airplane soon after graduating from Oberlin College and Conservatory with a degree in politics, Boris built a successful career in filmmaking that has resulted in multiple Oscar nominations, including two in 2023 for the documentaries Fire of Love and Navalny. The latter—about Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny, Putin’s fiercest critic and the country’s best hope for a democratic future—took home the award for Best Documentary. His films have premiered at festivals like Sundance and Venice, screened with museums including The Louvre and MOMA, received honors such as BAFTA and Peabody Awards, and were commissioned or acquired by distributors such as National Geographic, Netflix, HBO, and CNN. Recent films include: Hollywoodgate, King Coal, Stray, The Edge of Democracy, The Seer and the Unseen, and All These Sleepless Nights. In anticipation of the 2024 Academy Awards, Host and Oberlin College and Conservatory President Carmen Twillie Ambar invited Shane Boris to join her for a behind-the-scenes look at the making of Navalny and Fire of Love and to talk about the importance of making political films like Navalny—a model for how to resist authoritarianism everywhere, including in our our country. The episode was recorded a week before the world learned Alexei Navalny had died in a remote Russian prison colony in the Arctic Circle at age 47.Episode Links:Films by Shane Boris (Cottage M)Navalny trailerFire of Love trailer