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Some people want Washington’s annual “nerd prom” to feature a little more backbone.

A bevy of journalism advocacy organizations and former journalists such as Sam Donaldson, Lynn Sherr and Linda Douglass urged the White House Correspondents Association to “demonstrate opposition” when President Donald Trump makes his first appearance at the group’s annual dinner, which takes place Saturday, April 25.

“The dinner has long served as a symbol of the vital and irreplaceable role of a free press in American democracy and a celebration of the First Amendment and the journalists who uphold it. President Trump’s systematic, sustained, and unprecedented attacks on the free press render his presence at such an event a
profound contradiction of its purpose,” reads a letter addressed to WHCA member and board of directors.,

The signatories include the Society of Professional Journalists; the National Association of Black Journalists; the National Press Photographers Association; the Freedom of the Press Association;. the Coalition for Women in Journalism; and the Radio Television Digital News Association.

The Trump administration and the media covering it enjoy a strained relationship at best. The group’s letter cited a bevy of efforts to undermine the press, including banning the Associated Press from White House pool reporting and taking office space away from credible press outlets covering the Pentagon. Many of these efforts have ended up being litigated in court.

The schism between President Trump and the media has been years in the making. During his first term, he declined to attend the WHCA event, a longtime happening on the D.C. calendar, and the organization has in recent years retreated from business as usual, which calls for a comedian to deliver a few hot takes about the current occupant of the Oval Office. Last year, the WHCA pulled an invite to comic Amber Ruffin, who was scheduled to be featured at the annual dinner. Plans for 2026 call for a demonstration by a mentalist instead of a comic’s routine.

The WHCA has faced difficulties in figuring out how to respond to Trump, who only likes one kind of criticism: none. During Trump’s first term, the WHCA undermined its invited comedian, Michelle Wolf, who led a blistering routine at the 2018 dinner.  “I think she’s very resourceful, like she burns facts and then she uses that ash to create a perfect smokey eye,” said Wolf of Sarah Huckabee Sanders, the White House Press Secretary, who attended the event. “Maybe she’s born with it, maybe it’s lies,” the comedian said, echoing the popular Maybelline advertising slogan. Within a day, the WHCA issued a statement saying that Wolf’s performance “was not in the spirit” of the group’s mission to call attention to the value of a free press as well as great journalism.

Some journalists attending this year’s dinner have unveiled plans to wear pocket handkerchiefs or lapel pins with the words of the First Amendment. But the backers urged the WHCA to “take stronger action by issuing — from the podium — a forceful defense of freedom of the press and condemnation of those
who threaten that freedom, followed by a standing toast to the First Amendment and a pledge to continue upholding such a critical cornerstone of our democracy.” The letter continued: ” Speak forcefully, in front of the man who seeks to undermine our country’s long tradition of an independent, strong, and free press. We also urge the WHCA to reaffirm, without equivocation, that freedom of the press is not a partisan issue and that the Association will not normalize this behavior but instead fight back against any officeholder who has waged systematic war against the journalists whose work the dinner celebrates.”

Whether anyone takes the group up on its counsel won’t be known, most likely, until Saturday night.

Opening the industry section of Swiss doc festival Visions du Réel, with her latest Netflix-produced feature “Cover-Up” serving as the festival’s opening film, Oscar-winning filmmaker Laura Poitras pointed to a documentary sector that is not only under pressure but increasingly mobilized – including around opposition to the Paramount-Warner Bros. Discovery deal.

Citing an open letter signed by more than 1,000 industry professionals, she said: “There’s recently been a letter calling to block the merger – I know behind the scenes a lot of documentary filmmakers were involved in that, there’s that kind of engagement.”

More broadly, she described a sector defined as much by solidarity as by strain, noting, “It’s no secret that this is a really dire time in the documentary landscape, if we’re talking about funding and distribution, but I also think it’s a time documentary filmmakers are actually showing up for each other and doing risk-taking work that is filling gaps where some of our institutions are failing us.”

Signed by directors including Alex Gibney and Davis Guggenheim, alongside Hollywood figures such as Mark Ruffalo, Kristen Stewart and Jane Fonda, the letter has drawn significant backing across the industry.

The question of funding surfaced sharply following a clip from “My Country, My Country,” the first of Poitras’ 9/11 trilogy, set in Iraq, which was backed by U.S. public television. Asked whether such a project on the current war in Iran could still be financed today, the answer was a clear ‘No.’

“Our public funding is now being completely decimated. The Corporation for Public Broadcasting, ITVS – one of the organizations that have been key in supporting first-time filmmakers – to lose that is completely devastating, both for funding and for distribution,” she said, referring to a U.S Congress vote last summer to defund the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, which led to the shutdown of key grant programs, reducing support for independent and politically engaged films.

Even beyond public support, she suggested, the space for politically sensitive work has narrowed across the board: “It’s going to be hard if you’re trying to go to a corporation,” she said, before adding that pitching such material to major platforms also has its limits. “I haven’t tried, but I think it’s going to be hard for a filmmaker to go to Netflix or HBO and say, ‘I want to make a film about the U.S. government’s regime change strategies in Venezuela and Iran.’”

Much of the focus of the conversation centered on Poitras’ long-standing interest in power and surveillance. Recalling the origins of her Oscar-winning film “Citizenfour,” about U.S. national security whistleblower Edward Snowden, she described trying to address a subject that, at the time, struggled to register with the public.

“I was very interested in how to make a film about [state] surveillance in a society that didn’t really seem to give a shit about surveillance.” Around 2010, she added, “people were in love with the internet, their phones, Facebook,” even as she felt, “Wow, this feels really scary and dangerous,” referring to the “long relationship between state power and surveillance.”

Acknowledging that it was “a very hard film to make – very hard to translate into cinematic language because it’s abstract,” Poitras turned directly to the audience: “How many people are worried about being surveilled?” she asked, before following with, “How many of you have engaged in political protests?,” drawing a direct line between fear of surveillance and political action.

Addressing Snowden’s exile to Moscow in 2013, Poitras was keen to underline what she described as a “full-throated effort” by the U.S. to prevent him from being granted asylum in Europe. “His passport was rescinded. He was trying to go someplace else. And he did try to get asylum in every European country. And every European country was pressured by the United States not to give him asylum,” she said.

While Poitras declined to discuss current projects, she returned repeatedly to what she described as a recurrent political pattern in U.S. political history – one that underpins “Cover-Up” – which she describes as “cycles of power and cycles of impunity”: “You have exposure of wrongdoing followed by denials and cover-ups, and ultimately impunity – nobody’s held accountable.”

In a Q&A with the industry audience, Poitras closed by defending freedom of expression at a time of increasing pressure on U.S. institutions. “I fully believe that we have the right to freedom of expression – and to use it,” she said, criticizing universities for “capitulating to pressure” and, in particular, their “silencing” of student protests over the situation in Gaza and Palestine. Calling the situation “shameful,” she added that the response must be to “use these rights that we have to resist and talk about the world that we live in.”

VdR-Industry runs alongside Visions du Réel in Nyon, Switzerland until April 22.

The second edition of SXSW London has unveiled the lineup of films and speakers for its screen program, which will open with the world premiere of “Virginia Woolf’s Night and Day.”

From BAFTA-nominated director Tina Ghavari and screenwriter Justine Waddell, the adaptation features a cast including Haley Bennett, Jack Whitehall, Jennifer Saunders, Lily Allen, Sally Phillips and Misia Butler, with Bennett and Whitehall among those expected to attend.

The darkly satirical “Savage House” — featuring Richard E. Grant and Claire Foy, Bel Powley and Jack Farthing — is also getting its world premiere at the festival, with Grant and Foy reported to be hitting the red carpet.

Elsewhere, SXSW London will feature an exclusive first-look screening of the Adult Swim animated series “Get Jiro,” based on The New York Times bestselling DC/Vertigo graphic novel from renowned chef Anthony Bourdain.

SXSW London has also unveiled six films selected for this year’s Official Competition section, including “The Other Side of the Sun” (Dir: Tawfik Sabouni), “The Red Hangar” (Juan Pablo Sallato), “Roya” (Mahnaz Mohammadi), “Memory” (Vladlena Sandu), “Remake” (Ross Mcelwee) and “Only Rebels Win” (Danielle Arbid).

“The films in our Official Competition embody what we are most excited about in contemporary cinema: no-holds-barred, deeply human and formally audacious films that provoke and challenge us to think wider, deeper and more empathetically,” said Anna Bogutskaya, head of screen at SXSW London.

Alongside the film, the festival has also announced its lineup of panels and speakers. Among them are “Toy Meets Tech: The New Technologies of Toy Story 5” with Thomas Jordan, VFX supervisor on “Toy Story 5” and “BookTok to Screen,” about transforming viral literary trends to streaming, with Prime Video’s head of originals UK and Europe Tara Erer and Banijay’s head of adaptations Hannah Griffiths.