Steal This Story, Please!

In 1991, Amy Goodman was beaten with rifle butts by Indonesian soldiers while reporting on a massacre in East Timor. It's one of many stories in 'Steal This Story, Please!', Tia Lessin and Carl Deal's portrait of the journalist behind 'Democracy Now!', the independent news programme she's presented since 1996 without taking a single advert.

The film follows her four decades in the job, microphone in hand, chasing politicians down stairs and corridors with questions they'd rather not answer. There's the day she walked unannounced into Chevron's offices in Nigeria, and the Election Day call from Bill Clinton in 2000 that turned into half an hour he clearly didn't enjoy. Colleagues such as Juan González and Jeremy Scahill chip in, alongside home videos, her dog Zazu and a trip to Ukraine to visit the graves of relatives killed in the Holocaust.

The title is her mantra: steal our stories, because what matters is that they get told. Lessin and Deal, who produced several Michael Moore films before earning an Oscar nomination for 'Trouble the Water', premiered it at DC/DOX in Washington in June 2025, then took it to Telluride and IDFA ahead of its US release in April 2026.

Along the way it's picked up audience awards at festivals including Palm Springs, Santa Barbara and Woodstock. Jane Fonda, Rosario Dawson and Tom Morello are among the executive producers, cellist Zoë Keating wrote the score, and its average across the 20 outlets collected on Movienco is 7.5 out of 10.

• Documentary
• Biography
• History