Reality Check Forum 2026 / Panel

Signal to Noise

What happens when the systems shaping our world become too vast, too opaque, or too entrenched to fully understand — let alone hold accountable?

From artificial intelligence to mercenary warfare, border surveillance, and the machinery of geopolitical conflict and its human cost, this conversation brings together filmmakers confronting the hidden infrastructures of modern power and asking what documentary can uniquely reveal about them. In AI: PROBABLY NOTHING TO WORRY ABOUT, Geoffrey Hinton wrestles with the unintended consequences of the technology he helped create. In HELL’S ARMY, the rise of Wagner exposes a sprawling privatized war machine built on secrecy, violence, and political deniability. In THE SANDBOX, borderlands become laboratories for surveillance technologies increasingly shaping civilian life far beyond the frontier. And in AMERICAN DOCTOR, physicians navigating both a besieged Gazan hospital and the American political system expose the human consequences of institutional paralysis, geopolitical power, and bureaucratic distance.

Though radically different in subject, all four films investigate systems designed to diffuse responsibility and evade visibility: black-box intelligence, shadow militaries, surveillance architectures, and political structures capable of absorbing catastrophe without meaningful accountability. Together, they raise urgent questions about human agency, moral responsibility, and the role of documentary itself in making visible what power prefers to keep hidden.

At a moment when many of the most consequential forces shaping our lives operate at scales difficult to comprehend — technologically, politically, and bureaucratically — this conversation asks: what can documentary illuminate that journalism, policy, or data alone cannot? And what responsibilities do filmmakers carry when documenting systems whose consequences may be unfolding faster than our ability to process them?

Nick Holt

Director, AI: Probably Nothing To Worry About

Nick Holt is a multi-British Academy of Film and Television Arts and Emmy Award–winning director whose work is marked by restraint, sensitivity, and a deep engagement with complex moral questions. His debut film, GUYS & DOLLS, an exploration of men and their imitation girlfriends, established his distinctive voice, while BETWEEN LIFE AND DEATH (BBC One) captured public attention with its raw and powerful examination of end-of-life decisions. In 2019, he directed RESPONSIBLE CHILD for BBC Two, the acclaimed drama about a 12-year-old boy facing trial for murder. His subsequent work has continued to explore urgent contemporary realities, including SURVIVING COVID and THE MURDER TRIAL.

Kenya-Jade Pinto

Director, The Sandbox

Kenya-Jade Pinto is an Indo-Kenyan Canadian storyteller whose training as a lawyer informs her work as a documentarian. Her hyphenated perspective shapes a practice attentive to the nuances of shared human experience in an increasingly interconnected world.

Pinto has participated in DOC Institute’s Breakthrough Program and the Hot Docs Canadian International Documentary Festival Emerging Filmmaker Program and Incubator. She holds a Bachelor of Arts in International Relations and a Juris Doctor with a specialization in international law, and is a member of Women Photograph and Diversify Photo. In 2021, she was named a National Geographic Society Explorer.

Richard Rowley

Director, Hell's Army

After a decade as a war reporter, Rick Rowley reinvented the investigative war film with his groundbreaking, Oscar-nominated DIRTY WARS (IFC Films).

Since then, he has won multiple Emmys, along with DuPont, Peabody, and Polk Awards, for hard-hitting investigative thrillers that fuse high-stakes journalism with powerful, immersive storytelling.

His Emmy Award–winning feature 16 SHOTS (Showtime) offers a definitive look at the Chicago police killing of Laquan McDonald and the cover-up that reached the highest levels. His follow-up for Showtime, KINGDOM OF SILENCE, also won an Emmy for its explosive examination of the murder of Washington Post journalist Jamal Khashoggi. His recent HBO feature documentary, CRITICAL INCIDENT, reveals the corruption and cruelty at the heart of the U.S. Border Patrol and has been nominated for an Emmy and a Peabody.

Rowley is also an innovator in nonfiction series. He created and executive produced two seasons of the prophetic series AMERICA DIVIDED with Norman Lear, Rosario Dawson, and Zach Galifianakis. His series DOCUMENTING HATE unmasked an underground neo-Nazi fight club and a terrorist cell. The series received an Emmy, a DuPont Award, and prompted an FBI investigation that led to dozens of arrests.

Rowley’s newest film, HELL’S ARMY, follows a dissident Russian investigator as she pursues the world’s most feared mercenary army across the globe.

Poh Si Teng

Director, American Doctor

Poh Si Teng is the director and producer of AMERICAN DOCTOR. She is the producer of the Oscar-nominated ST. LOUIS SUPERMAN and executive producer of the Emmy Award–winning PATRICE: THE MOVIE. She is a former creative executive at ABC/Disney, documentary commissioner for Al Jazeera English, IDA grants director, and journalist for The New York Times. She is the founder of Tiny Boxer Films, which produces nonfiction feature documentaries and docu- and unscripted series for U.S. and global majority markets.

David Smith

Washington Bureau Chief, The Guardian

David Smith is the Washington bureau chief of The Guardian, reporting on the White House, Congress, the Supreme Court, and national election campaigns, as well as the Smithsonian Institution and various aspects of arts and culture. He was previously based in London for The Observer, reporting from conflict zones including Afghanistan and Iraq, and served as The Guardian’s Africa correspondent based in Johannesburg, South Africa. He is a frequent commentator on the BBC, CNN, France 24, LBC, NPR, Radio New Zealand, and Guardian podcasts.