Yako Molhov sat down with Tom Jennings, the award-winning filmmaker and journalist, CEO and EP at 1895 Films during the Monte-Carlo TV Festival this week to discuss the nominated projects, the current issues and topics that affect today's documentaries, his work, his travels around the world as well as 1895 Films' plans for future projects. Jennings is the President of the News & Documentaries Jury at the 62nd Monte-Carlo TV Festival.

The award-winning writer and producer commented that this year there were outstanding films that the jury watched, with most of them being presenting big picture, troubling topics that make you sad, make you angry and make you go out and try to make the world a better place which is what the purpose of a good documentary should be. Currently there is so much trouble in the world but the way the films were developed shows that there is also so much hope and he was moved by almost all of them, and the quality of them was very high.

Three of the projects that were selected for the Festival's competition program deal with the war in Ukraine, i.e. France Televisions' Life on the Donbas Frontline; BFMTV France's Russia, The Stolen Children of Ukraine and Polish documentary The Wagner Group - Putin's Mercenaries by TVN Warner Bros. Discovery. When asked if he has considered producing documentaries on the topic himself, thru his LA-based prod co 1895 Films, Jennings revealed that indeed he explored the subject because he has been contacted by several filmmakers in Ukraine that have great stories and they talked about trying to help them thru contacts, especially in the States and it hasn't been easy to get the US networks - they feel that the issue for them with Ukraine is that it is on the news everyday and he has heard sometimes from a network that "come back to me in one year with that exact same thing" meaning there is a need for some distance and his response is "but it is happening right now, this should be addressed right now, whether it is on the news or in a documentary". The bottom-line is that US networks worry about "saturation" because it is everywhere you look, even in the States. Jennings said that he is all in favor of more documentaries about Ukraine and they way in is to find stories that you cannot see on the news, find a story that no one knows, told thru individuals that no one has met before and the heart of what the story is which is not an easy task with all the footage coming from Ukraine.

Regarding the picking of the winners at the Festival, the documentary filmmaker underlined the fact that all were excellent films, brought many tears even for a journalist like him - "what did I just see". The jury chose three categories, got down to 4-5 of the projects. It was a difficult task and Jennings commented that this was the most successful collaboration he has been part of because everybody came from a slightly different background, different parts of the world but all had an expectation of professionalism in documentary filmmaking that was the same and it was down to minor things like "oh, why didn't they finish this story" or "what happened to that one character that was very early on", "why didn't they include this". It was hard to pick the final projects, they were looking for the "sins of omission". The question was "what else can we look at" - few of them left few things out and why they didn't include them. The jury had to put different parameters on for the categories. On the other hand the films at the Festival surprised them, "where did they get that" - a couple of instances. There were also twists, big surprises in storytelling which you don't always expect in documentary projects, political intrigue. At the end the voting was unanimous.

Jennings has produced documentaries on various topics - politics, religion, history, crime, sports, space; etc. He shared that his favorite one is history. He likes to tell stories from long ago or not so long ago when people think they know the story but then they find new facts. He gave an example with his Emmy-winning documentary from 2017 about The Challenger Space Shuttle - people they've heard everything and they found new footage - and guess what - there is so much more that you haven't seen or heard and we are going to put it together in a way that makes you feel like you are living thru. One of their latest projects is about King Charles - Charles in His Own Words for National Geographic and is on Disney+. Jennings also talked about their previous documentary for National Geographic - Diana in Her Own Words and the collaboration with Netflix - they licensed it to Netflix a year before The Crown S4 came out and the streamer paired it with the series, in fact the only production paired it with S4 - tens of millions of people saw it and he was grateful to Netflix for doing this. The filmmaker noted that he likes to make big stories that are recognizable and viewers don't know the half of it and he tells his staff that "if I were a piece of footage that I would want, where would I live" and they have found footage in people's garages - not everything is owned by Getty he joked. There is a lot more out there and it it usually those gems that are hidden away somewhere, sometimes on purpose, sometimes just stacked in a box and sometimes this changes your view on something. The 1895 Films CEO said he wished he had something with Charles talking about dating, they went back to Australia in 1974 and he was giving TV interviews, he talked what it was like to date, 6-7 years before Diana and he was very open about it. At his company they often think and imagine what they could fond, like in cinema. Jennings also joked that he was still looking for the Nixon tapes but he hasn't found them yet.

When asked about favorite places to make documentaries and tell stories about, Jennings said that he loves Europe, he also likes to go to crazy, off-beat places and two of his favorite ones are Easter Island in the South Pacific and French Guiana.