The award-winning director and producer behind the recent headline-grabbing Michael Jackson documentary, Leaving Neverland, is joining the festival line-up.
Reed will join a panel including other leading filmmakers, to look at the future of factual, and the renewed appetite for high-quality, feature documentaries with global appeal.
Leaving Neverland, co-produced by Channel 4 and HBO, centred on two men who recount their experiences of being sexually abused by Michael Jackson.
The bombshell, ratings-busting doc has made headlines around the world, sparked an on-going Twitter storm and seen radio stations worldwide boycott Jackson’s music. It has also divided audiences, fans and celebrities, with the Jackson family denying all the allegations.
Reed, who is also behind award-winning and critically-acclaimed documentaries including The Valley, Terror in Mumbai and The Paedophile Hunter, said “Leaving Neverland shows how unfolding a complex, character-led, uncompromising and very, very long true story can still draw a mass audience in a landscape of info-mush and fake news.”
Festival Director, Lisa Campbell said:“The Festival is famous for provoking and inspiring in equal measure and [...] Dan Reed’s compelling film has become one of the most hotly-debated documentaries of all time.”
The filmmakers joining Dan Reed on the panel will be announced in due course.
This year's Edinburgh TV Festival runs from Wednesday 21st to Friday 23rd August and you can book tickets here