Pat Mullen
Pat Mullen covers documentary cinema with a critic’s eye and a programmer’s view of the field, using festival lineups, archival work, and industry shifts to show how nonfiction film reflects contemporary culture. He is the publisher of POV Magazine and leads its online and festival coverage, which gives his writing a broad vantage point on new releases and the ecosystems around them. His work combines detailed reviews, festival surveys, interviews, essays, and industry news, with a consistent focus on how films engage with politics, history, activism, and media itself.
TIFF Docs Report
Mullen’s Toronto International Film Festival coverage is one of the centrepieces of his work, and he uses the TIFF documentary programme to track broader currents in culture and politics. His recent TIFF reviews include Union Town, a look at delivery drivers fighting for labour rights in the gig economy; Like Magic, which takes a hauntingly personal approach to true crime; and Rapinoe, a portrait of an activist athlete, each treated as a story about power, identity, and public life rather than only as festival titles.
He writes on music and performance through films like Gail, a band portrait told through a central figure’s eyes, and Don’t Look Back in Anger, a documentary about forgiveness on tour, showing how he pulls performance, fandom, and emotional arcs into his reading of entertainment-focused docs.
His TIFF pieces move between reviews, interviews, features, and industry items, which lets him place individual films inside a larger frame. He profiles filmmakers and subjects, such as his feature on Carol Nguyễn that connects crying and vulnerability to documentary practice, and his interviews around Eternal Spring and The Grab, using conversations to dig into process, ethics, and collaboration. At the same time he files industry stories like National Film Board of Canada project slates, DGC documentary award nominations, and Oscar race selections, signalling a sustained interest in how institutions support, recognize, and distribute nonfiction work.
His 2022 TIFF Docs Report surveys the programme as a whole and positions Laura Poitras’s All the Beauty and the Bloodshed as a standout, showing a habit of using one major film to anchor a wider read of a festival year.
Sundance Documentary Report
Mullen’s Sundance coverage mirrors his TIFF work, pairing individual reviews with broader festival dispatches that trace themes across the slate. He reviews films like Public Access, an archival trip through Manhattan Cable’s public programming; Aanikoobijigan, a haunting story about what remains; Runa Simi, a DIY Disney dub used as a vehicle for reconciliation; The King of Color, a portrait steeped in shades of pride; and Melania, a politically tinged documentary that he judges on its effectiveness rather than its notoriety. His review of Everest Dark focuses on a climber’s mission to recover bodies from the mountain, and he connects that narrative to questions of risk, legacy, and the emotional weight of spectacle in nonfiction storytelling.
Alongside individual reviews, Mullen co-authors festival surveys such as The 2026 Sundance Documentary Report: On Last Calls & New Beginnings, which draws together multiple films into a single argument about where documentary is headed.
He spotlights Sundance short docs with attention to “killers, heroic historians, and family traditions,” weaving crime, history, and domestic narratives into a compact overview of the short form. These pieces show that he treats Sundance not only as a venue for premieres but as a barometer for global documentary trends, with an emphasis on how personal stories intersect with structural forces.
Journalism on Screen
A distinct strand of Mullen’s work focuses on documentaries about journalism, media, and the information ecosystem, which he brings together under recurring coverage in the magazine’s journalism archive. In Steal this Story, Please! he highlights Amy Goodman’s independent journalism at Democracy Now! and treats the film as a benchmark for assessing the state of news and public trust. Reviews like Put Your Soul on Your Hand and Walk, about the final year of Palestinian photojournalist Fatma Hassouna; Cover-Up, centred on Seymour Hersh; and Love+War, profiling war photographer Lynsey Addario, show his interest in frontline reporting and the pressures faced by journalists and photographers working in conflict zones.
His interview with Julia Loktev about My Undesirable Friends explores how the film captures journalists reporting under censorship, and he uses the conversation to examine documentation, risk, and the ethics of filming history as it unfolds. Across these pieces, he treats journalism-themed films as both character studies and case studies in press freedom, connecting individual careers to larger debates about truth, propaganda, and the role of media in democracy.
This thread distinguishes his entertainment coverage from more conventional film reporting by keeping questions of reporting, accountability, and information politics in play.
Interviews, Essays, and Industry Coverage
Beyond festival reviews, Mullen invests heavily in interviews and essays that position documentary within longer arcs of film history and representation. He speaks with figures like Ross McElwee about revisiting images of his late son and earlier films, which lets him connect new work to a director’s body of cinema. His profile and remembrance of Frederick Wiseman treats the documentarian’s career as a template for a certain kind of observational filmmaking, and he uses that legacy to frame current releases. In essays such as his piece on The Celluloid Closet, he revisits a landmark documentary about LGBTQ+ representation in Hollywood to argue for its ongoing relevance, tying archival work to contemporary debates over queer lives on screen.
Industry and news pieces broaden this perspective. He covers announcements like FIPRESCI’s documentary grand prix finalists, National Film Board project slates, new executive appointments, and award campaigns, showing an interest in how documentaries move through funding, programming, and awards circuits.
His regular coverage of festival lineups and trailers, including titles like You Had to Be There, Ceremony, and The Sandbox, keeps an eye on upcoming work while reflecting on how festivals shape perception of nonfiction stories.
Work at other outlets, including contributions to The Canadian Encyclopedia, Xtra, That Shelf, Sharp, Complex, and BeatRoute, underscores that he carries this documentary-focused lens into broader entertainment and culture writing. His leadership roles as president of the Toronto Film Critics Association, international voter for the Golden Globe Awards, and associate programmer at the Blue Mountain Film + Media Festival give him ongoing access to both industry and critical conversations, which in turn informs his coverage of films, filmmakers, and the structures around them.
4 more entertainment journalists.
Ama Sechere
Ama Sechere is an entertainment publicist at Bell Media who maps Crave’s streaming slate across Crave, HBO, Starz, and related specialty channels. Her main work is the recurring Crave Streaming Overview series, published monthly from at least December 2021 through July 2026 and in weekly editions. These releases track feature films, returning series, premieres, finales, special events, and new acquisitions by date, format, and platform. She also handles campaign-style announcements for priority titles, including the short-form original comedy series MY DEAD MOM. Sechere focuses on streaming and television publicity, with more than a decade of experience in national and multi-platform campaigns. She reports through structured schedules, concise loglines, highlight notes, premiere details, and clear cross-brand labels. Her work supports media planning rather than criticism or review.
Amaris Encinas
Amaris Encinas tracks how viral culture, celebrity news and brand-driven moments move across platforms and into everyday life for USA TODAY’s national trending desk. She covers celebrities, athletes, entertainment headlines, consumer news, viral food culture, internet trends, nostalgia and technology. Her work includes stories on Simone Biles, Jimmy Kimmel, Dolly Parton, Sophie Cunningham, Taco Bell’s Pink Baja Blast, viral food hacks, Cartoon Network Flash games and Apple launches. She also reports on recalls, retail policy, public safety and representation, including a profile of Revista Étnica’s founder. Encinas writes quick-turn, news-driven pieces that explain why incidents, products and trends are capturing attention. She connects online activity to real-world effects and grounds stories in clear facts, timelines and stakes. Before USA TODAY, she covered breaking news, arts and life for regional outlets.
Andrew Thompson
Andrew Thompson covers the modern wrestling business through interview-led news and detailed event reports across major promotions. He writes for Fightful and POST Wrestling, focusing on clear, news-first stories built from wrestler quotations, promotional announcements and match results. Since 2017, his beat has spanned WWE, AEW, NJPW, MLW and other companies, documenting plans, deals and career moves through his own interviews and conversations. He files chronological recaps from major WWE cards and weekly shows, tracking match outcomes, title changes, segments and announced bouts with wrestling-specific detail. His cross-promotion coverage and appearances discussing events like AEW All In add context on how talent, stories and major cards move between companies. Beyond articles, he runs the “Andrew Thompson Interviews” video series and appears as a podcaster, keeping the emphasis on direct questions, sourced quotes and concrete developments.
Angelina Mazza
Angelina Mazza is a romance scholar and cultural critic who treats love stories, celebrity narratives, and pop entertainment as serious subjects, tracing how they shape contemporary culture. She writes for outlets including Vulture, Slate, Literary Hub, Salon, and other magazines and journals. At Vulture she covers romance fiction and celebrity stories, using list-driven guides and essays to analyze genre tropes, fandoms, and how romance moves from niche communities into mainstream culture. Her work extends to television, music, poetry, internet culture, and the history of music television, examining programming choices, character types, and images as texts that encode identity, desire, gender, and audience. She also writes about digital culture and campus television comedies, and works as a fact-checker, bringing precise detail and careful sourcing to her reported and critical pieces.