Flyout Menu
Main Menu

Reality Check Forum 2025 / Panel

Distribution Case Studies

Jenny Raskin, Moderator, Executive Director of Impact Partners

Matt Cowal, Awards & Distribution Consultant

Samantha Curley, Producer, Level Ground Productions

Jess Devaney, Founder & President, Multitude Films

Documentary filmmakers understand the urgency of telling stories that shape cultural and political narratives. This timely panel takes a deep dive into the evolving distribution landscape for socio-political documentaries, examining how filmmakers can strategically navigate self-distribution, impact campaigns, festival timelines, and awards pushes. With the traditional gatekeepers and outdated best practices no longer serving the needs of today’s urgent stories, the conversation will center on innovation, collaboration, and leveraging collective power to ensure these films reach—and mobilize—broad audiences. Together, we’ll explore what it takes to build a more sustainable, effective, and just path forward for political documentary distribution.

Producers and Founders of their respective production companies, Samantha Curley (UNION, 2024) and Jess Devalney (POWER, 2024), will join seasoned Film Executive Matt Cowal for an honest conversation moderated by the Executive Director of Impact Partners, Jenny Raskin.

Samantha-Curley_by_meredith-adelaide

Samantha Curley

Producer, Level Ground Productions

Samantha Curley is an award-winning documentary film producer and creative entrepreneur based in Los Angeles. She is the Co-Founder of Level Ground, which is both a 501(c)3 nonprofit artist collective and production company. Her most recent film Union won a Special Jury Award for The Art of Change at the 2024 Sundance Film Festival and was shortlisted for the Academy Award for Best Documentary. She also produced Framing Agnes, which won the NEXT Innovator Award and Audience Award at the 2022 Sundance Film Festival and the GLAAD Media Award for Outstanding Documentary. She’s held fellowships with the Producers Guild of America, NBCU Original Voices, and Impact Partners. In 2023, she received a Cali Catalyst grant awarded to California changemakers whose bold actions are impacting the arts and culture sector. In 2024, she was named to DOC NYC’s 40 Under 40 list which spotlights young creatives that are making an impact on the field of documentary. And in 2025 she won a Cinema Eye Honors award for Outstanding Achievement in Production for her work on Union.

MattCowalAMPAS-pic

Matt Cowal

Awards & Distribution Consultant

Matt Cowal is a seasoned film and television executive with 25 years of experience in the industry. A member of AMPAS, BAFTA and ATAS, he is one of the leading industry strategists for documentary film and television awards campaigning, and has a unique range of experience in film marketing, publicity, comms, acquisitions and distribution. For six years, he was the head of documentary awards at Netflix, overseeing numerous Oscar and Emmy winning campaigns for films like American Factory, working with top talent in the documentary space. Prior to that, he was co-EVP at Magnolia Pictures where he ran the publicity and marketing campaigns for some of the most successful, iconic and impactful documentaries of the era, including: RBG, Food, Inc, I Am Not Your Negro, Jiro Dreams of Sushi and Man on Wire, among many others films of all genres. He is based in NYC.

Jess Devaney_Headshot_Courtesy of Staci Janik_Square

Jess Devaney

Founder & President, Multitude Films

Jess Devaney (they/she) is an Emmy-winning producer and Founder & President of Multitude Films. Their latest films include Yance Ford’s Netflix Original Power; Oscar-shortlisted HBO Documentary Films Original How We Get Free; the Indigo Girls documentary It’s Only Life After All; Emmy-winning Peacock Original Lowndes County and the Road to Black Power, Emmy-nominated Netflix Original Pray Away, Oscar-shortlisted Call Center Blues, and Apart, the Emmy-winning episode of Through Our Eyes. Jess created the Ford Foundation-supported Queer Futures series and produced Sundance Award-winning and IDA-nominated Always in Season, as well as The Feeling of Being Watched, dubbed “a real-world conspiracy thriller” by Variety. Additional credits include Critics’ Choice-nominated Speed Sisters and IDA Award-nominated Milisuthando, among others.

Her films have been programmed at top festivals including Sundance, SXSW, Tribeca, BlackStar, and Telluride, among others. Jess founded QueerDoc and was a Sundance Institute Documentary Edit and Story Lab fellow, Women at Sundance fellow, and Sundance Institute Creative Producing Lab advisor. They have been recognized with the Cinereach Producers Award, DOC NYC and Topic Studios’ inaugural 40 Under 40 Award, Doc10’s inaugural Vanguard Award, and the 2023 Sundance Institute Amazon Studios Nonfiction Producers Award. Multitude Films’ latest feature documentary LIFE AFTER, directed by Reid Davenport, will premiere in competition at the 2025 Sundance Film Festival.

JennyRaskinheadshotcrop-scaled

Jenny Raskin

Executive Director, Impact Partners

Jenny Raskin is the Executive Director of Impact Partners, a fund dedicated to supporting independent documentary films that entertain audiences, engage with pressing social issues, and propel the art of cinema forward. Her executive producer credentials include Going Varsity in Mariachi, Aftershock, Procession, Nuclear Family, Trophy, and Dina. Other credits include: Here Come the Videofreex (director/producer), Found (producer), Facing the Dragon (producer), Motherland Afghanistan (producer), and On Hostile Ground (director/producer). She received a B.A. from Barnard College and an M.A. from the Culture & Media program at NYU.