Mark Obenhaus's investigative documentaries concentrate on research, interviews and the work behind a published story. We recommend Cover-Up, made with Laura Poitras, for making that work absorbing, though the directors should press Seymour Hersh harder about his own methods.
Fi1m perspective
In Cover-Up (2025), Seymour Hersh is asked to explain how a source speaking becomes a story reaching the public. Mark Obenhaus and Laura Poitras make that process compelling without pretending their interview subject is easy company. They have Hersh's archive to work with, and his difficult presence keeps the film from becoming a tidy account of professional achievement. We were absorbed by the attention to what happens before publication, when there is still work to do rather than a finished story to admire.
That interest in how information is gathered suits a career spent largely in long-form documentary. Obenhaus produced six programmes for Frontline and made historical films for The American Experience, including JFK: A Time Remembered (1988). His television work then included senior and executive producer roles at ABC News with Peter Jennings, and a senior producer credit on The Century (1999). The skiing documentary Steep (2007), which he directed, wrote and executive produced, took him away from investigative and historical subjects. These credits suggest someone accustomed to organising substantial material, though they cannot tell us which decisions in a shared film were his.
That distinction matters with Cover-Up: Poitras is his co-director and co-producer, and the achievement belongs to both. Obenhaus's working relationship with Hersh goes back to the 1980s, helping to explain the access to the reporter and his archives. The interviews matter because an archive can preserve the work without explaining the choices that produced it. Obenhaus and Poitras give both room, making the reporting comprehensible without making the reporter conveniently agreeable.
The reservation is that the questions about Hersh's own methods deserve more time. An awkward interviewee can make an encounter lively without having answered everything worth asking, and the directors do not always press far enough. That limits a film whose admiration is otherwise earned; it does not undo the pleasure of watching reporting taken seriously. For a patient account of investigative reporting, start with Cover-Up; just do not expect every question about Hersh to be settled.
Biography
Mark Obenhaus is a British-American documentary director, producer and writer. He has directed and produced films and television programmes for ABC News, the PBS series Frontline and The American Experience, and other outlets since the 1970s.
His credits include the feature documentary Steep (2007) and episodes of The Age of Aerospace (2016–2017). He co-directed and produced the 2025 documentary Cover-Up with Laura Poitras. Obenhaus has collaborated with investigative journalist Seymour Hersh on several projects since the mid-1980s.
Obenhaus has received five national Emmy Awards, the Alfred I. duPont–Columbia University Award, two Robert F. Kennedy Journalism Awards and a Writers Guild of America Award.
