EXCLUSIVE: Documentary+ will become the streaming home of Speak., the documentary executive produced by Josh Gad that centers on gifted high schoolers competing in the Original Oratory category at the National Speech & Debate Association’s National Tournament.

The award-winning film directed by Jennifer Tiexiera and co-directed by Guy Mossman will begin streaming on Doc+ on October 15, the same day it becomes available to rent or buy on Apple TV, Amazon Prime Video and Google Play. Among its honors are the Kathleen Bryan Edwards Award for Human Rights at Full Frame, the Jury Award for Best Documentary at Thin Line, Best Documentary Feature at Lost Weekend, the Grand Prize of Shine Global’s 2025 Resilience Awards, as well as a Special Mention from the International Jury at the Thessaloniki International Documentary Festival in Greece.

The young orators in Speak. follow in the footsteps of some remarkable speech and debate luminaries, including two-time Original Oratory national champion Gad, Oprah Winfrey, Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, Elizabeth Warren, Ailsa Chang, Bruce Springsteen, Chadwick Boseman, and Jordan Peele. “Against the backdrop of the 2024 elections and a divided nation, Speak. follows its cast of students and coaches fighting to keep speech programs alive amid budget cuts, book bans and censorship.”

Five high schoolers take center stage in the film: Noor, a west Texan with a younger brother struggling with Lennox-Gastaut Disorder, speaks up for disability rights; Noah, a sharp-witted outsider from San Antonio, turns personal tragedy into a plea for mental health awareness; Sam, a proudly queer Minnesotan, calls out American politics’ obsession with nostalgia; Mfaz, a Sudan-born TikTok star with more than 3 million followers, takes on cultural shaming. And Esther, the reigning two-time national champion in Original Oratory, tries to break the record held by Gad.

“You cannot help but be in awe of these amazing orators,” commented director Jennifer Tiexiera. “Every day there are events and issues that seem to weigh us down, but it is so uplifting to see how these kids have found their voices and are speaking up loudly and proudly to advocate for a better world.”

“When I discovered these young savants in competition, I felt like the world needed to see them,” observed co-director Guy Mossman. “We would love it if parents and education advocates demanded that programs like this be available in all school districts around the country.”

Geoff Clark, CEO of Documentary+, said in a statement, “Speak. is one of the most hopeful films we’ll put out this year, and the timing couldn’t be better. A few weeks before a midterm election, these five students show the country what it looks like to listen, reason and argue in good faith. At Documentary+, our job is to get films like this in front of as many people as possible, and we’d love for every parent, teacher and school board member in America to watch it.”

Speak. is a Vox Pop Films production, in association with Lady & Bird Films, World of HA Productions, The Stephen Wolfe Foundation, The DeNovo Initiative, The Schultz Family Foundation and Truant Pictures. Jennifer Tiexiera directs; Guy Mossman serves as co-director and director of photography. Producers are Pamela Griner, Guy Mossman and Jennifer Tiexiera. Delaney Lynch and Jennifer Tiexiera edited the film. The original score is by Osei Essed.

Executive producers include Josh Gad, Simon Kilmurry, Lisa Hepner, Christoph Baaden, Abby Ellin, Joseph Wolfe, Polly Wolfe, the Schultz Family Foundation, Hallee Adelman, Dawn Bonder, Daniel J. Chalfen, Marci Wiseman, Toby Nalbandian, Greg Schmidt, Sean Bradley, Lauren Lexton, Jenny Warburg, Jamie Wolf, Nathalie Seaver, Melony and Adam Lewis, J. Todd Harris, Andrea Van Beuren, Michael Sugar, Neil Berkeley, and Meryl Metni.

At Sundance, where the documentary premiered in 2025, Deadline spoke with Tiexiera about the origins of the project.

“I was in a place in my career where things were a little dark and I needed to be reminded that there was good in the world,” she told us. “And that’s where I met Guy who had been working on this project for years before that… Very early on, he sent me Esther doing her speech her sophomore year when she became the national champion for the first time. And it was definitely a moment where it was like hearing Obama speak for the first time and I was like, ‘This girl is so young and so brilliant.’ And we never looked back.”

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