City Cast DC podcast host and documentary lover Bridget Todd here 👋 The Double Exposure Investigative Film Festival returns to D.C. this weekend from Oct. 30 through Nov. 2, bringing four days of films to the District.
This year’s lineup is stacked: From one of my favorite filmmakers, Laura Poitras’s new film “CoverUp,” which dives into the career of Pulitzer Prize winning journalist Seymour Hersh (known for exposing U.S. military abuses in Iraq), to “Canceled: The Paula Deen Story,” directed by Billy Corben, whose project “God Forbid: The Sex Scandal That Brought Down A Dynasty” became Hulu’s most-streamed documentary ever.
But for D.C. audiences, some films hit especially close to home. Here are three I am particularly excited for that speak directly to the city’s political pulse and social fabric.
Oct. 31, 11 a.m.
MLK Library, Free
Let’s be honest, the only person D.C. might collectively despise more than Dan Snyder is Elon Musk. This film takes that shared frustration and gives it an imaginative twist.
After Musk took over at DOGE and thousands of D.C. residents lost their federal jobs, agencies quietly began scrubbing “forbidden” words from public websites and official documents. Director Kate Stonehill uses that moment of bureaucratic erasure to ask: “What happens when language itself is censored?”
Her answer is as provocative as it is uncanny. She feeds the banned words into ChatGPT, which then writes a speech performed by a deepfake Musk.
🎧 Pair with our fiery episode about Elon Musk’s disrespect of D.C.’s federal workforce.
Last year's Double Exposure film festival (©Carolina Kroon / Double Exposure Film Festival)
Nov. 1, 7 p.m.
Naval Heritage Center, $18
For Black women, D.C. remains one of the most dangerous places in the country to give birth. “Listen to Me,” a new documentary directed by midwife Stephanie Etienne and Dr. Kanika Harris, the Executive Director of the National Association to Advance Black Birth in D.C, follows three Black women as they navigate pregnancy, childbirth, and the systemic racism embedded in American healthcare.
It’s an intimate, urgent look at what it means to demand dignity, safety, and voice in a city that too often denies all three.
🎧 Pair with the City Cast DC episode about infant mortality in the District.
Nov. 1, 11 a.m.
Naval Heritage Center, Free
One of President Trump’s first acts after returning to office in January was signing an executive order cutting off U.S. foreign aid. “Rovina’s Choice” traces the devastating ripple effects of that decision through the story of one woman fighting to save her daughter from starvation.
Rovina Naboi’s story shows how policy signed in D.C. can reverberate across the globe, hitting vulnerable communities hardest and undoing decades of progress in the fight against malnutrition.
🎧 Pair with our episode on how Trump’s first 100 days changed D.C.
