DOC NYC’s 2025 PROGRAM TEAM
As DOC NYC, the festival for documentaries, continues to accept submissions for programming consideration for its upcoming 16th edition, November 12 – 30, 2025, Artistic Director Jaie Laplante unveiled updates to the festival’s 2025 program team, several of whom are taking on new roles this season.
After serving as lead shorts programmer for the past four years, Samah Ali will transition into a new role as Programmer Consultant exclusively for DOC NYC’s Short List: Shorts section.
Bedatri D. Choudhury returns for her fifth season with DOC NYC, this year taking on the new title of Senior Programmer, Features. Choudhury will increase her contributions to this year’s program, continuing to focus on prioritizing World and U.S. premieres for Competition and other Main Slate sections. Among Choudhury’s major successes at the 2024 edition of DOC NYC were the U.S. premieres of Alina Simone’s Black Snow for the U.S. Competition and Nishtha Jain’s Farming the Revolution for the International Competition.
Murtada Elfadl enters his third season with DOC NYC, this year also taking on a new title as Senior Programmer, Features and Shorts. Elfadl will oversee DOC NYC’s newest noncompetitive section, Resilience, for films that demonstrate strength in the face of trauma, and join the shorts team for the first time. In 2024, Elfadl programmed DOC NYC’s International Competition Grand Prize Winner, Areeb Zuaiter’s Yalla Parkour, among many other successes.
Brandon Harrison, a veteran of the program team, will continue as Senior Programmer, Features and will especially oversee the festival’s Game Face Cinema section, for films focused on sports and athletic pursuits, in addition to programming across the Main Slate of the festival. In 2024, Harrison programmed DOC NYC’s U.S. Competition Grand Prize Winner, Daniel Kaufman’s Stone Mountain, among many other triumphs.
Karen McMullen, another veteran of the program team, will take on new duties in 2025 as Senior Programmer, Features and Shorts. In addition to overseeing the ever-popular Metropolis Competition and non-competitive Sonic Cinema (for music-based films) sections, McMullen will lead the shorts programming team of DeWitt Davis, Murtada Elfadl and Anita Raswant. In 2024, McMullen programmed DOC NYC’s Closing Night film, Drop Dead City, among many other prestigious accomplishments.
Ruth Somalo, the longest-serving member of DOC NYC’s program team, also continues as Senior Programmer, Features, overseeing the Festival’s Kaleidoscope Competition section, for formally challenging and poetic works. In addition, Somalo will continue to program across the Main Slate of the festival. In 2024, Somalo programmed DOC NYCs Opening Night film, Blue Road – The Edna O’Brien Story, as well as the Grand Prize Winner of the Kaleidoscope section, Eryk Rocha and Gabriela Carneiro de Cunha’s The Falling Sky.
DeWitt Davis, also a long-serving member of the program team, returns as Shorts Programmer for 2025. At recent editions of DOC NYC, Davis programmed the NYC premieres of Bill Morrison’s “Incident” and Kim A. Snyder’s “Death by Numbers”, both which went on to an Oscar nomination for Best Documentary Short Subject at the 2025 Academy Awards.
Anita Raswant, the newest member of the DOC NYC program team, returns for a second year as Shorts Programmer in 2025. In 2024, Raswant programmed “Qotzuñi: People of the Lake”, directed/produced by Gastón Zilberman and Michael Salama, which went on to win the Shorts Competition Grand Jury Prize and qualify for the 98th Academy Awards in 2026.
DOC NYC is open for submissions for the 16th edition until June 19, 2025. The program will be announced in October.
