"We get a lot of passes, we get a lot of nos. We don't have a magic bullet that gets our projects made," Vinnie Malhotra said during a panel in Park City hosted by Firelight Media and the MacArthur Foundation.

Vinnie Malhotra, the president of Higher Ground, the film, TV and new media production company founded by Barack and Michelle Obama, offered some insight into what it’s like to navigate Hollywood amid widespread industry consolidation and cutbacks. Turns out having projects endorsed by the former President and First Lady doesn’t immediately translate to a greenlight from the powers that be at studios or streamers.

“We are not immune to the same challenges that so many companies like ours, so many filmmakers, so many storytellers, find themselves. It is a challenging business, and it doesn’t matter if the Obamas are behind your project,” Malhotra said this week while sitting on a panel of documentary industry insiders during the Sundance Film Festival in Park City, Utah. “We get a lot of passes, we get a lot of nos. We don’t have a magic bullet that gets our projects made. More and more, [it is] about us trying to get a little bit farther out of that system and trying to get, as we’ve tried over the last two years, to a place where we can utilize this company with the founders [and] figure out how to help bring to life different films and stories.”

Mounting any type of project during a climate of “tremendous fear” is a challenge that peers must continue to grapple with, Malhotra added. “It is a daily battle…trying to convince people,” he said, adding that storytellers must remain nimble especially when it comes to the format. “How you present stories is important, and I think that you cannot be locked into, ‘It’s going to be my way or no way.’ Just like they cannot be locked into, ‘It’s my way or no way.’ We have to find common ground there. Sometimes it’s a documentary, sometimes it’s a scripted project or sometimes it’s a podcast. We’re constantly trying to figure out the means to tell that story.”

The panel, held at the Impact Lounge in Park City’s Prospector Square, was presented and hosted by Firelight Media in partnership with the MacArthur Foundation. Titled “State of the Union: Documentary Industry Leaders on What Comes Next,” the conversation featured Malhotra alongside fellow panelists Marcia Smith, filmmaker and co-founder of Firelight Media, Geeta Gandbhir, director of Sundance selection The Perfect Neighbor, and Carrie Lozano, president and CEO of ITVS.

Much of the discussion focused on what those in the nonfiction space can and should be doing now after the documentary bubble burst and as purse strings have been tightened all over town. Add to that an uncertain political, social and cultural landscape, and the result is something close to an industry crisis. Moderator Cristina Ibarra, a documentary filmmaker and 2021 MacArthur fellow, acknowledged the current climate by calling it “a very chaotic time” just days into the new administration of President Donald Trump. “I came here [to Sundance] from El Paso, Texas where my beloved borderland is under attack, specifically, right now,” she said in opening the conversation. “I’m thinking about my uncle who is fighting his deportation as we speak.”

Ibarra noted how rights for women and members of the LGBTQ community are under attack while threats are also being unleashed at public media institutions from the Republican party. Ibarra asked, “It’s a really difficult, challenging moment for democracy itself, so what can we do as documentarians? What can the form of documentary do at this moment to respond to these challenges?”

Those questions provided the throughline for the nearly one-hour conversation. Marcia took the first stab at finding an answer. “Times are difficult now in the field,” she said, adding that filmmakers of color are some of the first to feel the sting. “People aren’t getting the budget they have been used to getting. … And it’s tough for everybody. It’s not like these are great fat times for anyone, but a very small number of filmmakers. Yet, what the country is facing is so much bigger than that.”

While the instinct of those in the field may be to retract and “protect ourselves,” Smith said documentarians must instead be bold. “It is essentially our responsibility to tell the stories that people need to hear at this time, [stories] that may be harder to tell, but that is really what our job is,” she added. “I do think there’s a premium on collaboration on talking across fields, so we can’t stay in our own documentary bubble. We’re going to have to talk across communities and build a lot of solidarity and figure out how we defend people on many different fields.”

Read more at The Hollywood Reporter.