With U.S. federal arts funding gutted, public media infrastructure under pressure, and media consolidation accelerating, the conditions under which documentary is made, distributed, and seen are now explicitly political questions. Sectors facing parallel pressures in local journalism, music, and the arts broadly have learned that fragmented advocacy loses; coalitions win. In this panel, we will hear from grassroots coalitions who have launched campaigns, won policy victories, and built field-wide political power where there was none to explore what cross-sector coalition-building looks like in practice. They will discuss how they identified leverage points, what has worked, and what it would take for documentary filmmakers to show up—and stay—as a political force. Moderator: Michael Bracy (Policy in Focus)Panelists: Brigid O'Shea (Documentary Association of Europe), Maya Chupkov (Common Cause), Jax Deluca (Future Film Coalition) Biographies (submitted by the speakers): Maya Chupkov is the Senior Program Manager for Media &amp; Technology at <a href="https://www.commoncause.org/?utm_source=chatgpt.com" target="_blank">Common Cause</a>, where she works at the intersection of media policy, civic engagement, and public-interest storytelling. Her work focuses on strengthening local information ecosystems, advancing public-interest media policy, supporting press freedom, and building cross-sector coalitions around civic media and democracy. In addition to her policy and advocacy work, Maya is a filmmaker, impact producer, podcaster, and founder of Proud Stutter, a nonprofit and storytelling platform amplifying the voices of people who stutter. She is currently co-directing a feature documentary with filmmakers Tessa Andrade and Christina Chin centered on Issac Bailey, a Black journalist and professor from Saint Stephen, South Carolina. The film explores race, disability, family history, incarceration, and resilience in the American South through the lens of Bailey’s life and experiences as a person who stutters. Maya is based in San Francisco. Jax Deluca is a cultural strategist with more than two decades of leadership across public service and nonprofit arts organizations. She currently serves as Interim Executive Director of the Future Film Coalition (FFC), a newly established coalition advocating for funding, resources, and policy protections for the indie film sector by uniting thousands of filmmakers, cultural workers, and organizations. From 2016 to 2025, Jax served as Director of Film &amp; Media Arts at the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA), where she oversaw a federal funding portfolio and led national initiatives addressing the structural challenges facing independent film. Her work included launching the Independent Media Arts Group (IMAG) in partnership with Sundance Institute and BAVC Media, as well as producing field-leading research on infrastructure, creative technology, and the sustainability of the independent film sector. She is a Documentary Film in the Public Interest Fellow at the Harvard Kennedy School’s Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics and Public Policy (2025–2026).

Terms of Engagement: Learning From Coalition Politics

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Getting Real is a biennial conference designed for and by documentary practitioners and focused on the business and art of nonfiction storytelling. The sixth edition of Getting Real will celebrate a decade of what is now the largest peer-to-peer gathering of its kind in North America.

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