Based on a True Story documentary film conference begins March 4
Based on a True Story (BOATS), a three-day slate of documentary films, master classes, workshops and panel discussions leading into the True/False Film Fest, returns March 4-6.
Hosted by the Murray Center for Documentary Journalism at the Missouri School of Journalism, the events will be free and open to the public and will feature working documentary filmmakers like Ross McElwee, this year’s True/False True Vision Award Winner.
“We’re really excited about this year’s program,” said Murray Center Filmmaker-in-Chief Robert Greene. “We have some traditional, sit-down-and-talk-about-the-project talks, but we also like to push the boundaries at BOATS with sessions that are a little more adventurous. It’s one of the best programs in the industry discussing documentary and its intersections with journalism.”
Part of this year’s boundary pushing will happen on Thursday, when filmmaker and journalist Nick Berardini, BJ ’09, will host a session with someone Greene described as “a very special guest” and “one of the most controversial, most interesting people from the sports world whose experience directly relates to the sports gambling crisis we’re seeing unfold.”
If that isn’t intriguing enough, the session will also double as a film shoot that will give attendees a firsthand demonstration of how to film a public talk.
Another session will feature the team behind “Seized,” a film examining the local law enforcement raid of a community newspaper in Marion, Kansas, in 2023. Director Sharon Liese and other members of the production will discuss how they centered the human impact of a story that sparked a national conversation about press freedom.
“Our slate across the board is very current, very topical,” said Murray Center Supervising Producer Sebastián Martínez Valdivia. “Not just in terms of speaking to things that are happening in the documentary industry, but we’re really touching on some of the biggest topics in our country right now in a very direct way.”
BOATS will officially kick off on Wednesday with a master class from McElwee, followed by an evening screening of his early film, “Space Coast,” at Ragtag Cinema. After the screening, he will take part in a Q&A moderated by Daniel Christian, BJ ’17, MA ’19, a Murray Center alum and filmmaker.
With the exception of the opening night screening at Ragtag, all sessions will take place at Smith Forum on the second floor of the School of Journalism’s Reynolds Journalism Institute. See the full schedule of free events below and on the BOATS website.
BASED ON A TRUE STORY 2026 Schedule
Wednesdsay, March 4
ROSS MCELWEE: CINEMA OF SELF DISCOVERY
1 p.m. – 3 p.m. Smith Forum
With Ross McElwee.
Moderated by Daniel Christian.
Ross McElwee will be honored this year at True/False with the True Vision Award, an apt celebration of his 50 year career as one of our greatest documentarians. All semester, students at the Murray Center have been watching McElwee’s films, starting with his seminal “Sherman’s March” (1985) and culminating with the North American premiere of “Remake” (2025) at True/False. Join us for this master class with the great filmmaker, who popularized and perfected the first-person cinema of self discovery.
OPENING NIGHT: ROSS MCELWEE’S ‘SPACE COAST’
7 p.m. – 9 p.m. Ragtag Cinema
With Ross McElwee.
Q&A moderated by Daniel Christian.
Years before his breakthrough and the advent of his signature “cinema of self-discovery,” Ross McElwee made the under-seen and brilliant “Space Coast,” co-directed by Michel Negroponte. The film takes a character-driven look at a down-and-out community near Cape Canaveral, Florida, years after NASA had abandoned them and the space program. As a complex and resonant portrait of three residents in the town, the film showed how nuanced and perceptive McElwee’s filmmaking could be.
Then, with the massive success of “Sherman’s March” and the subsequent honing of his personal cinematic language, “Space Coast” got lost and has been seen little since. With the celebration of McElwee’s full career at this year’s True/False, we thought it was the perfect time to resurrect this beautiful film.
Moderated by Murray Center alum Daniel Christian, who has written extensively about McElwee’s films, including writing and preparing a monograph of his work to accompany this event. Christian is also a filmmaker, whose work (such as his first feature “Possum Town”) has been greatly influenced by McElwee.
Thursday, March 5
UNDER THE DREAM: SOMATIC CINEMA AND THE FUTURE STAKES FOR OUR MINDS AT NIGHT
9 a.m. – 10:15 a.m. Smith Forum
With Saelyx Finna.
Technology has explosively infiltrated so many facets of our lives over the past couple decades, changing how we engage with each other, with our communities and our world. But what about our dreams? Dream tech — influencing and directing the little movies our minds produce at night — is the latest frontier of scientific innovation, and the potential consequences are vast, especially for filmmaking.
For the past several years, filmmaker Saelyx Finna has immersed herself in this world, directing her first feature film, “Under the Dream” — a first-person exploration of technology’s increasing interventions into the dreamscape. Finna brings their findings to Based on a True Story to guide our sleepy brains in an interactive workshop, showing how dreams can serve as source code for cinema, and the stakes of making that code re-writeable.
HOW TO DISRUPT INEQUITY, HOW TO BUILD A NETWORK: CELEBRATING 10 YEARS OF BROWN GIRLS DOC MAFIA
10:30 a.m. – 11:45 a.m. Smith Forum
With Iyabo Boyd, Kitty Hu, Emily Mkrtichian and Nell Lawrenz-Wareheim.
Technology has explosively infiltrated so many facets of our lives over the past couple decades, changing how we engage with each other, with our communities and our world. But what about our dreams? Dream tech — influencing and directing the little movies our minds produce at night — is the latest frontier of scientific innovation, and the potential consequences are vast, especially for filmmaking.
For the past several years, filmmaker Saelyx Finna has immersed herself in this world, directing her first feature film, “Under the Dream” — a first-person exploration of technology’s increasing interventions into the dreamscape. Finna brings their findings to Based on a True Story to guide our sleepy brains in an interactive workshop, showing how dreams can serve as source code for cinema, and the stakes of making that code re-writeable.
SEIZED: DEFENDING THE FREE PRESS ON FILM
12:45 p.m. – 2 p.m. Smith Forum
With Sharon Liese, Sasha Alpert, Paul Matyakovsky, Derek Boonstra and Jackson Montemayor.
Moderated by Sebastián Martínez Valdivia.
On Friday, Aug. 11, 2023, law enforcement in the small town of Marion, Kansas, launched a raid on the local newspaper and the home of its editor, Eric Meyer. Officers took laptops, cell phones and documents under the pretext that they were investigating the newspaper’s role in an identity theft of a local business owner. Yet, as is often the case, the truth was messier and thornier — an accumulation of resentments and interpersonal drama that typify small town conflicts.
In “Seized,” director Sharon Liese and her team shed light on how vulnerable inalienable rights can become when state and national leaders undermine our norms. In this session, Liese, alongside producers Sasha Alpert and Paul Matyakovsky, editor Derek Boonstra and cinematographer Jackson Montemayor, will take us inside how they kept the human impact at the heart of a front-page story that reverberated around the word.
A MINNESOTA FIELD REPORT: CENTERING COMMUNITY AMID AUTHORITARIAN CHAOS
2:15 – 3:15 p.m. Smith Forum
With Rachel Lauren Mueller.
Moderated by Sebastián Martínez Valdivia.
Videos of arrests, violence and killings in the Twin Cities have gone viral and played on repeat across social media and legacy news outlets. As important and harrowing as those images are, they can’t capture the full impact on communities. Doing so takes time, building relationships and trust that are core to the documentary process.
Investigative journalist and filmmaker Rachel Lauren Mueller knows this process well: it’s an approach she has taken to tell a range of stories, from juvenile detention centers in Louisiana to a racist pagan church in rural Minnesota. Taking a number of precautions to ensure the safety of her participants, Mueller brings the BOATS audience into her works in progress with a one-of-a-kind field report.
CANARIES IN THE SPORTS GAMBLING COAL MINE (SIGNUP REQUIRED)
3:30 p.m. – 5 p.m. Smith Forum
With Nick Berardini and a special guest.
Moderated by Eric Hynes.
With sports betting now legal in Missouri and across much of country, a new generation of fans are coming up with access to instant gambling right in their pockets. This has led to billions of dollars flowing into online sports books, increased eyeballs for leagues like the NBA, tons of controversy and FBI indictments. In this session, journalist and former Mizzou basketball player Nick Berardini, an expert in the thorny issues that surround sports gambling, will speak to a very special guest who has intimate knowledge of the consequences of this wild west era.
The session will also serve as a film shoot, with a demonstration in the room about how to film an event and public talk for a future project. This highly anticipated session will be strictly off the record and all attendees will need to sign up using this link to ensure the safety of the participants.
Friday, March 6
CLOSING SESSION: THE FUTURE OF TRUE/FALSE
9 – 10:30 a.m. Smith Forum
With the new artistic director of True/False and Executive Director of the Ragtag Film Society Andrea Luque Káram. Moderated by 2026 Visiting Artistic Director Yance Ford.
With Executive Director Andrea Luque Káram settling in and a new artistic director set to begin soon, True/False is at a crossroads. This session will be a deep dive into the management and programming philosophies of Andrea and the brand new (not yet announced) artistic director. How can True/False survive and grow from the seismic shifts impacting every corner of our industry? What is the new AD’s programming philosophy and how will that shape the next several years of everyone’s favorite film festival? How has Yance’s one year stint as the programming lead changed the festival already?
Updated: March 5, 2026