Rachel Maddow and director Ben Klein will receive the 2026 David Carr Award for Truth in Non-Fiction Filmmaking at the Montclair Film Festival for Kill. Bury. Print., a new true-crime documentary centered on a small family-operated newspaper in McCurtain County, Oklahoma.
The award recognizes nonfiction filmmaking with a commitment to truth and journalism, making the subject matter particularly fitting: the documentary follows a confrontation between the paper and the county sheriff’s department after the newspaper released secretly recorded audio involving local officials. Maddow first covered the events in 2023. The recording included officials discussing killing and burying the reporters, a detail that gives the film’s deliberately blunt title its force.
A journalism story moving into true crime
Kill. Bury. Print. is Maddow’s first true-crime documentary, her first project for Peacock, and her first documentary scheduled to play a film festival. Those distinctions matter because “true crime” is a broad label, often applied to stories focused on a crime, a criminal case, or an investigation. Here, the supplied details point to a different emphasis: the danger and pressure faced by reporters whose work brought them into conflict with public officials.
That makes the documentary as much a story about local journalism as it is one about alleged criminal conduct. Small newspapers can be institutions of record in places with limited competing media, documenting public meetings, official actions, and community disputes. The film’s central conflict places those functions under extreme strain: a family-run outlet publishing material that directly concerns people with local power.
Maddow described the case as containing sex, drugs, suspicious disappearances, a jailbreak, a spy pen, grave crimes, and an alleged murder plot. Those elements establish a wider narrative canvas than the recorded audio alone, although the available details do not spell out how each component fits into the film. The careful word is alleged: it signals an accusation or reported claim, rather than a fact established in the information provided.
“Doing a true crime documentary is not something I ever thought I would do,” Maddow said. “Yet this story excites me, and I love Ben Klein’s vision and the sometimes creepy, often darkly funny and always beautiful way he tells it.”
Her description of Klein’s approach suggests the film will not treat its subject exclusively as a procedural account. “Creepy” and “darkly funny” point to tonal choices that may explore the absurdity or menace of the circumstances, while “beautiful” refers to the presentation rather than minimizing the seriousness of the subject. It is a notable balancing act for nonfiction: style can make a dense local story accessible, but the stakes remain tied to people working in a real community.
Why the David Carr Award fits the film
The Montclair Film Festival presents the David Carr Award annually in honor of David Carr, a journalist and longtime Montclair resident. Its purpose is to recognize a film reflecting his dedication to truth and excellent journalism. In that light, the honor is not simply a pre-release promotional milestone. It identifies the documentary’s reporting-centered premise as central to its value.
Related coverage includes Rachel Maddow and Ben Klein to Receive 2026 David Carr Award for ‘Kill. Bury. Print.’.
Klein called the project a story about a family of “bulldog journalists,” and thanked the festival on behalf of the filmmaking team. The phrase is evocative but also descriptive of the basic narrative conflict: journalists continuing to report despite a confrontation with officials. The award connects that persistence with the larger idea that the press has a public role even when the setting is a small county rather than a national capital.
Maddow compared the film’s starting-point sensibility to All the President’s Men meeting No Country for Old Men. That is a comparison of atmosphere, not a promise that the documentary resembles either title literally. Still, it clarifies what the team sees in the material: investigative reporting on one side, and a menacing regional noir mood on the other.
When and where it will be seen
Kill. Bury. Print. is set to debut on Peacock on Sunday, September 27. It will then screen during the Montclair Film Festival in Montclair, New Jersey. Maddow and Klein are scheduled to take part in a post-screening Q&A on Saturday, October 17, at 8 p.m. at the Wellmont Theater.
The Peacock debut places the documentary within the streaming ecosystem, where nonfiction projects can reach viewers outside a traditional theatrical rollout. A festival screening, meanwhile, provides a different kind of setting: audiences can see the film with its creators present and hear discussion about the reporting, filmmaking decisions, and the broader questions raised by the story.
Streaming platforms remain a consequential part of how media companies package and circulate documentaries, alongside larger business shifts across the industry. For a separate look at the financial and structural pressures shaping that environment, see this report on the proposed Paramount-Warner Bros. deal and its streaming implications.
The people and companies behind the documentary
Maddow and Klein are producers on Kill. Bury. Print.. Joshua Rofé and Steven J. Berger produce for Number 19; Phil Griffin and Jack Bohrer produce for Surprise Inside; and Otis Pictures and Universal Television Alternative Studio, part of Universal Studio Group, are also involved. Ben Warhit and Colleen Hall are executive producers.
The film is Maddow’s third documentary produced with Surprise Inside, the company she founded with Griffin. Her previous documentaries were 2024’s From Russia With Lev and 2025’s Andrew Young: The Dirty Work. The new film marks a shift in genre while retaining a reporting-oriented subject: instead of a conventional true-crime story built around a single case alone, it appears to locate danger, accountability, and public information inside the daily stakes of a local newsroom.
What the recognition signals
A festival award before the documentary’s Peacock premiere does not settle how audiences will respond to the finished film. It does, however, establish what Montclair Film believes the project represents: nonfiction filmmaking aligned with the pursuit of truth and with the work of journalists who report under difficult conditions.
For viewers, the key distinction is worth keeping in mind. The documentary’s title and genre invite the tension of a crime story, but its premise is inseparable from the real-world consequences of publishing information about public officials. That is the core reason the David Carr Award is a meaningful match for Kill. Bury. Print.: the film’s suspense is rooted not only in what happened, but in who was willing to put it on the record.
