Leaving Neverland Filmmaker Joins Edinburgh TV Festival Lineup

The Edinburgh TV Festival has added to its lineup Dan Reed, the award-winning director and producer of the Leaving Neverland Michael Jackson documentary.

Reed, who was also behind the critically-acclaimed documentaries The Valley, Terror in Mumbai and The Paedophile Hunter, will join fellow filmmakers in a panel that explores the future of factual content and viewers’ renewed interest in feature documentaries.

“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,” said Reed of his two-part documentary, co-produced by HBO and Channel 4.

In addition to Reed, the Edinburgh TV Festival will play host to Russell T Davies and Nicola Shindler, Queer as Folk’s writer and executive producer, respectively. Marking the 20th anniversary of the ground-breaking drama, Davies and Shindler will discuss the show and how LGBTQ+ representation has evolved since Queer as Folk bowed in 1999 with a panel of stars.

Lisa Campbell, the festival director, said: “The Festival is famous for provoking and inspiring in equal measure, and both Russell T Davies and Dan Reed promise to do just that. The turn-of-the-millennium breakthrough hit Queer as Folk dealt with issues that had rarely been seen on TV before and has had a huge impact ever since, while Dan Reed’s compelling film has become one of the most hotly-debated documentaries of all time.”