‘Doc Albany,’ Oscar Winner Ben Proudfoot’s Documentary About Real-Life Inspiration for ‘Doc Hollywood,’ to Premiere at Tribeca Festival (2025)

“Doc Albany,” a short documentary by Oscar winner Ben Proudfoot and the third installment in a film series highlighting the beneficial uses of technology, will world premiere at Tribeca Festival on June 8.

The film will screen at Shorts Theater at Spring Studio at 2:30 p.m.

The documentary delves into the medical community of Albany, Georgia. Dr. Jim Hotz is the founder of Albany Area Primary Health Care, a medical center where Dr. Sheena Favors works as an OB-GYN. Hotz had a hand in establishing the National Health Service Corps, a program from the Health Resources and Services Administration that assigns clinicians to communities in medical deserts and pays off their student debt. Favors served in Albany through the program and then stayed in the community.

“I was taken aback at how much of the United States is a medical desert and what a high percentage of rural counties don’t have access to healthcare and hospitals,” Proudfoot, whose credits include “The Last Repair Shop” and “The Queen of Basketball,” told Variety.

“When I found out about the National Health Service Corps, I just thought that was an amazing program, an amazing solve to a difficult problem,” he added.

The documentary is the final project in the Impact Films initiative, a three-part series by Publicis Sapient that highlights the stories of people whose lives are affected by the technology systems that the company develops or improves for its clients. The previous films in the series, created with Proudfoot’s Breakwater Studios, were “Never Done” and “Forgiving Johnny.”

Publicis Sapient worked with HRSA to build a digital platform that makes the process of placing healthcare workers in communities more efficient. But the main focus of the documentary isn’t the creation of that system — it’s the doctors’ stories. “Doc Albany” provides an overview of Hotz’s career and how he served as the real-life basis for the Michael J. Fox film, “Doc Hollywood.” And the film also covers Favors’s history of fertility issues, connecting her personal experience with her work.

“To really understand Dr. Favors and what it means to her to be an OB-GYN, and what it means to her to help mothers have safe and happy pregnancies and birth stories, you have to really understand who she is as a person,” Proudfoot.

Proudfoot had creative control over the documentaries in this series.

“It’s a collaborative project, but Ben in the end, decides how to tell the story. I don’t get to see the film until the end,” Teresa Barreira, Publicis Sapient’s global chief marketing and communications officer, who spearheaded Impact Films, said.

A key tenet of the series was keeping the films “unbranded,” according to Barreira. “We don’t even talk about us. We don’t even mention our name,” she said.

For Proudfoot, creating “Doc Albany” involved filming interviews with Hotz and Favors and capturing their day-to-day responsibilities at the health center. The documentary even shows Favors working in the delivery room.

“To see her save a life and go into doctor mode was incredibly impressive,” he said.

Proudfoot wants audience members to learn about a functioning aspect of healthcare. “It just feels like an overwhelming and broken system, and to see a part of that system that is actually working and getting better with time and the application of technology makes me hopeful that that sort of trend will continue,” he said.

Ultimately, the hope is that the film encourages interest in the National Health Service Corps. “My dream is for medical students and young doctors to watch and be moved by the story, so that they might consider, ‘Hey, maybe I should enroll in that program,'” Proudfoot said.