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Magnolia Pictures and Participant have acquired North American rights to The Grab, Blackfish director Gabriela Cowperthwaite’s follow-up about an investigative journalist’s efforts to uncover the powers responsible for land grabs to control food and water resources.

The film premiered at TIFF last year and Magnolia and Participant will release theatrically and on demand on June 14.

The Grab is produced by Center for Investigative Reporting Studios & Rocklin|Faust, Nathan Halverson, Amanda Pike, Blye Pagon Faust, Nicole Rocklin, and Cowperthwaite, and presented by Impact Partners.

Executive producers are Dan Cogan, Geralyn White Dreyfous, Jenny Raskin, Maiken Baird, Nina and David Fialkow,...

Magnolia Pictures and Participant have partnered to jointly acquire North American rights to “The Grab,” a new documentary from “Blackfish” director Gabriela Cowperthwaite.

The film, which premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival, follows journalists from The Center for Investigative Reporting as they work high-profile sources and utilize a cache of secret data to uncover the money and influence being used by countries, corporations and members of the uber-elite to control the planet’s most vital resources. Participant and Magnolia are positioning the film as a “high-stakes global thriller,” one that takes viewers from Arizona to Zambia as the moviemakers examine the food and water scarcity that’s resulting from this little-known power grab.

“We’re thrilled to reunite with our good friends at Participant and the great Gabriela Cowperthwaite who has, yet again, brought to light a nail biting, explosive, and essential story,” said Magnolia Pictures co-ceo’s Eamonn Bowles and Dori Begley.

"It's only in the details that you start seeing how a reporting victim becomes a suspect." Netflix debuted their official trailer for a documentary titled Victim/Suspect, made by doc director Nancy Schwartzman, arriving this May. This premiered at the 2023 Sundance Film Festival earlier this year, and also screened Cph:dox in Denmark. Victim/Suspect chronicles journalist Rae de Leon's investigation into a shocking nationwide pattern: Women tell the police they’ve been sexually assaulted, but instead of finding justice, they’re charged with the crime of making a false report, arrested, and even imprisoned by the system they believed would protect them. This all sounds horrifying, and it absolutely is horrifying. But worst of all it's true – it's happening all the time. Produced by Julie Goldman, Christopher Clements, Alice Henty, Rachel De Leon, Amanda Pike, Nancy Schwartzman. Reviews remind us, "all of this should rattle us and move us..." // Continue Reading ›...

Rae de Leon discovered a disturbing pattern while working as a reporter at the Center for Investigative Reporting. It seemed that, nationwide, there was a pipeline from women reporting sexual assault to the police to criminal charges made against them.

Director Nancy Schwartzman follows de Leon’s solo investigation in her Netflix documentary feature “Victim/Suspect,” a film that unveils how policing across the U.S. enables law enforcement to turn survivors of sexual assault into accused criminals.

Leon and other journalists use video and audio footage of police interrogations, firsthand accounts from these young women and interviews with legal experts to get a better sense of where potential flaws in the police system may lie. “Victim/Suspect” premiered this year at Sundance Film Festival and will be released on Netflix on May 23.

Schwartzman’s documentary debut, the Peabody nominated feature “Roll Red Roll,” follows a similar beat, investigating a sexual assault...

For the past several years there have been countless reportings of injustice on the part of American police forces, which for too long and too often have acted with impunity. Documentation — through filmmaking and journalism — have exposed years of this abuse of power, be it racial, sexual, or otherwise.

Nancy Schwartzman’s searing new documentary “Victim/Suspect” exposes yet another new cruelty: instances in which police forces have forced an alleged sexual assault victim to confess to fabricating their attack and pressing charges against them.

Schwartzman’s documentary focuses on reporter Rachel “Rae” de Leon’s investigation into these police-coerced confessions through her work at the Center for Investigative Reporting. In the process of uncovering the real stories behind these false confessions, she speaks with several young women, focusing on Emma Mannion, a former student at the University of Alabama, as well as Nikki Yovino, who faced jail time for her false confession,...

Documentary filmmaker Joe Berlinger has partnered with Keshet Studios and the Center for Investigative Reporting on a true-crime series devoted to cold murder cases tied to civil rights offenses.

“Unmasking Murder” is being shopped to TV and digital buyers as an eight-part documentary series following investigators as they dig in to longtime cold cases and a few contemporary homicides. The series would follow a handful of investigations per season, focusing on the legwork and day-to-day work of Cir investigative reporters.

Berlinger is known for the “Paradise Lost” trilogy of HBO documentaries that helped drive the legal reversal of fortune for the three men in the West Memphis Three murder case being released from prison after serving 18 years. His other documentary films include “Metallica: Some Kind of Monster” (2004) and Netflix’s “Tony Robbins: I Am Not Your Guru” (2016).

“The hook for me for this show was being able to observe and...