By Variety | Created at 2026-08-07 15:14:34 | Updated at 2026-08-07 16:58:19
1 hour ago
“Give It a Shot,” a documentary following the decades-long push to bring a reversible male contraceptive to market, will open theatrically across North America this September.
Coast to Coast Films, in association with Sandbox Films and ITVS, will release the film. A trailer has been unveiled.
Directed and produced by Vaishali Sinha (“Made in India,” “Ask the Sexpert”), the documentary centers on 83-year-old Indian researcher Dr. Sujoy Guha and a U.S.-based development team as they work toward launching the first reversible male contraceptive since the modern condom was invented 200 years ago. The Guttmacher Institute counts just three contraceptive methods currently available to men – condoms, vasectomy and withdrawal – versus roughly five times as many options for women.
The film opens Sept. 4 at DCTV in New York, followed by sneak-peek screenings in Los Angeles Sept. 14-16 and a full Los Angeles opening Sept. 18 at Laemmle Theatres, before expanding to additional markets this fall. “Give It a Shot” will debut on PBS’s “Independent Lens” in 2027.
Post-screening Q&A discussions will feature Academy Award nominee Geeta Gandbhir (“The Perfect Neighbor,” “The Devil is Busy”), Cindy Gallop, founder and CEO of Make Love Not Porn, actress and writer Elizabeth Zephyrine (“The Daily Show,” “Full Frontal with Samantha Bee”), actress and producer Farah Bala, and Peabody-winning filmmaker Richard Wormser (“The Rise and Fall of Jim Crow”).
“I’m thrilled that ‘Give It a Shot’ is headed to screens in the US this fall,” said Sinha. “It’s a dream come true to share this entertaining and inspiring story that I had the privilege of filming. Often the question asked is: are men ready for male birth control? I think we might find that the film surprises us. The question for me is: can all men step up and share the burden of birth control, even if they wanted to? How will we enable that future and who will it be accessible to?”
The film follows Dr. Guha in India, California-based team members Elaine Lissner and L.R. Fox, and Kevin Eisenfrats in Virginia.
“Give It a Shot” is produced by Sinha and Hemang Chheda, and co-produced by Lara Heintz and Tracie Holder. Executive producers include Carrie Lozano of ITVS, Lois Vossen of PBS’s “Independent Lens,” and Jessica Harrop and Caitlin Mae Burke of Sandbox Films, along with Nish Acharya of Equal Innovation. Jaime Gher and Sanjana Gaind serve as impact producers.
The film world premiered at the Big Sky Documentary Film Festival and has since screened at the Indie Meme Film Festival, where it won the Jury Award for Best Doc, Doclands Film Festival’s Art of Impact program, and the London Indian Film Festival as an international premiere. It was also nominated for the German Star of India Award at the Indian Film Festival Stuttgart and is set to screen at the DC South Asian Film Festival this September.
Sinha’s previous credits include “Made in India” and “Ask the Sexpert,” both of which aired on PBS, with “Ask the Sexpert” also streaming on Netflix India. “Made in India” became a case study at Harvard Business School. Sinha was a development consultant on the Oscar-winning short “Period. End of Sentence.” and is a former fellow at the Rockefeller Foundation’s Bellagio Center. She co-founded Bitchitra Collective, a support network for Indian women in documentary filmmaking, and has mentored emerging filmmakers through Firelight Media Doc Lab, Kartemquin Films’ Diverse Voices in Docs, BAVC and the Video Consortium.
Sandbox Films, the New York-based documentary studio co-producing the project, has previously backed the Oscar-nominated “Fire of Love,” Sundance Jury Prize winners “All Light, Everywhere” and “Nocturnes,” and “André Is an Idiot,” winner of the 2025 U.S. Documentary Audience Award at Sundance. ITVS was established by Congress in 1988 and counts more than 1,400 documentaries in its portfolio, some 97 of which have won Emmy or Peabody awards.
Watch the trailer here:
