Under Raney Aronson-Rath, the decades-old PBS doc series has started winning Oscars (“20 Days in Mariupol”) and appealing to younger generations online. This year’s documentary Oscar race will pit a cringe comedy maestro against the most decorated documentary film producer of the past decade. While plenty of ink has been spilled over Nathan Fielder and Lance Oppenheim’s form-shattering Elizabeth Holmes curio “You Can See Everything,” it would be a mistake to count out Raney Aronson-Rath.
Aronson-Rath has been at the helm of “Frontline,” PBS’ acclaimed investigative documentary series, since 2015. Under her watch, the program has won so many Emmys she’s lost count (it stands at 44) and launches around 20 documentaries a year. In 2024, it took home its first documentary Oscar for “20 Days in Mariupol,” a vivid and violent account of AP journalist Mstyslav Chernov and his colleagues’ time in the Ukrainian city as it withstood Russia’s invasion in early 2022.
A few days after Chernov and his team escaped Mariupol with their footage, he and Aronson-Rath got to work on the film. The common refrain was that “Frontline” couldn’t do theatrical films, and then one day it hit her: “I realized I was in charge of ‘Frontline,’ and we had the funding and distribution, so why not?” Aronson-Rath launched Frontline Features last November as a dedicated studio that premieres feature and short-form documentaries in festivals and theaters ahead of PBS airings. Its latest release is “One in a Million,” a feature doc from Itab Azzam and Jack MacInnes that follows an 11-year-old girl, Israa, over 10 years as she and her family flee war-torn Syria to Turkey before settling in Germany.
A powerful examination of war, immigration and the ties that bind, the film won the Audience Award at this year’s Sundance Film Festival and is poised to earn an Oscar nomination. They sent me raw footage of Israa when she was 10 years old,” explains Aronson-Rath, a producer on the film. Aronson-Rath’s team typically assigns investigative reporters to aid projects, conduct deep legal reviews and analyze rushes to make sure they meet their editorial standards.
Aronson-Rath caught the journalism bug writing for The China Post, an English-language newspaper for expats in Taipei, after graduating from the University of Wisconsin. While attending the Columbia Journalism School, she caught a screening of Steve James’ 1994 documentary “Hoop Dreams” at Film Forum in downtown Manhattan. Its YouTube channel has 4.8 million subscribers — eclipsing 1 billion views in July with an astonishing 422 million hours watched.
It also has three features lined up for 2027, including Chernov’s next film, which Aronson-Rath will be producing.
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