Amy Berg’s Hollywood Sex Abuse Doc to Premiere at DOC NYC Festival

Amy Berg‘s documentary about Hollywood sex abuse, An Open Secret, is set to premiere next month at the fifth annual DOC NYC documentary festival in New York.

Berg reportedly worked with Michael Egan III, who sued Bryan Singer and a handful of other Hollywood execs for allegedly sexually assaulting him in a series of lawsuits that were all ultimately dismissed, on the documentary.

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Berg, who was nominated for an Oscar for Deliver Us from Evil, declined to discuss the documentary when she appeared at the Tribeca Film Festival premiere of her movie Every Secret Thing in April, shortly after Egan sued Singer.

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The DOC NYC description of Open Secret says “Every year, thousands of children swarm Hollywood in search of fame, but what they often find under the surface is a deep and disturbing underbelly of manipulation and abuse.” Berg is set to appear in person for the film’s world premiere.

DOC NYC will begin with the U.S. bow of Do I Sound Gay and will close with the U.S. debut of The Yes Men Are Revolting, directed by Laura Nix and The Yes Men. Both films made their premiere in September at the Toronto International Film Festival.

“Over the past five years, DOC NYC has brought together an exciting mix of filmmakers, special guests and influential audiences — providing the kind of experiences that happen only in New York,” artistic director Thom Powers said in a statement. “Our mix of premieres, classics, in-depth panels and master classes span documentary past, present and future.”

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Programming director Basil Tsiokos added: “We’re pleased that DOC NYC’s expansion this year enables us to expose New York audiences to a greater breadth of documentary storytelling and subject matter. Our competition sections and thematic sidebars offer wonderful new discoveries, while the larger Short List enables us to showcase even more of the year’s most acclaimed docs as we head into awards season.”

This year’s edition, which is larger than the festival has been in previous years, includes four new thematic programming strands: Fight the Power, celebrating activism; Centerstage, highlighting performance; sports-themed Jock Docs; and classics-based Docs Redux, which will include 20th and 10th anniversary screenings of Hoop Dreams and Metallica: Some Kind of Monster, respectively.

The festival will also feature the New York premieres of documentaries about Greg Louganis (Back on Board), Banksy (Banksy Does New York), Big Bird (I Am Big Bird: The Caroll Spinney Story) and Spandau Ballet (Soul Boys of the Western World), with the ’80s band set to make their first NYC appearance since 1983 in conjunction with the doc.

DOC NYC’s Short List section will also give New Yorkers another chance to see some of this year’s documentary awards contenders, including Citizenfour, Life Itself, Red Army, Finding Vivian Maier, The Case Against 8, Last Days in Vietnam, The Great Invisible, Merchants of Doubt, Happy Valley, Tales of the Grim Sleeper, The Salt of the Earth, The Overnighters and Keep On Keepin’ On.

More information about the festival, including its full slate, is available here.