Jacqui Lofaro, founder and executive director of Hamptons Doc Fest, has announced that the winner of the 2025 Brown Harris Stevens Audience Award for Best Documentary Feature is the Opening Night film “Steal This Story, Please!” Hamptons Doc Fest celebrated its 18th year, December 4 to 11, with 33 documentary film screenings at the Sag Harbor Cinema, Bay Street Theater, and Southampton Playhouse.
The film features intrepid journalist Amy Goodman, who grew up in nearby Bay Shore, following her as she covers hotspots around the globe, illustrating how an independent media is vital to a functioning democracy. As she explains in the film, she wanted other media to “steal her stories, please” to get more media coverage on the issues. “‘We will not be silent’ should be the Hippocratic Oath of the media today,” she said.
“Amy Goodman is a rock star, and the 220 people in attendance at Bay Street Theater for the opening night of the film festival also thought so,” said Lofaro in announcing the award to the film’s Oscar-nominated (“Trouble the Water”) co-directors Carl Deal and Tia Lessin, who spent over 12 years making the film. “At the film’s core is Amy’s courageous journalism and honest reporting in the face of attacks on democracy. It ignited us all to value the currency of free speech, a right worth fighting for,” said Lofaro, who also thanks Brown Harris Stevens for their continuing support of the award.
Said co-directors Deal and Lessin in accepting the award: “We are incredibly thankful to the Hamptons community and Doc Fest for their warm embrace of ‘Steal This Story, Please!’ The Sag Harbor screening was a magical experience, made even more special by this honor. At a time when our democracy is under attack, this award affirms the public’s hunger for stories that interrogate power and celebrate resistance, and for the kind of uncompromising — and uncompromised — journalism that Amy Goodman and the Democracy Now! team practice every day.”
Both directors and Goodman attended the Q&A at Bay Street Theater, where Goodman also announced that “Democracy Now!,” the daily independent news program syndicated on over 750 radio and TV stations that she co-founded in 1996 and hosts, will be celebrating its 30th anniversary.
For those interested in seeing the Q&A interview led by Andrew Botsford, all of the Q&As from Hamptons Doc Fest’s 18th festival can be viewed on the festival website at hamptonsdocfest.com
“Democracy Now!” airs Monday through Saturday at 10 AM and at other times on East Hampton Town’s LTV, Channel 20.