From Indie to Oscar

The panelists represent a breadth of roles and approaches in the documentary world. Kate Davis and David Heilbroner, co-founders of the Woods Hole Film Festival itself, have built a body of work that has earned them a place in the Academy conversation. Lindsay Utz is an award-winning editor whose work on American Factory took her to the Oscar stage in 2020, when the film won Best Documentary Feature. Doug Blush is an AMPAS member whose producing and editing credits span multiple Oscar-winning documentaries, including Icarus, Period. End of Sentence, and The Elephant Whisperers. Jason Spingarn-Koff, formerly Director of Original Documentary programming at Netflix, shepherded films including My Octopus Teacher and The Last Repair Shop to Academy glory. Robin Hessman is a filmmaker whose career has spanned decades of internationally recognized work, most recently as Executive Producer of Mr. Nobody Against Putin, winner of the 2026 Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature. And Josh Seftel is a two-time Oscar-nominated director, most recently recognized for All the Empty Rooms, a deeply human film about the families of school shooting victims.

Together, these filmmakers will pull back the curtain on what it means to navigate the awards landscape while staying true to independent storytelling — and what it looks like when the work you believe in gets recognized on the world's biggest stage.