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Joe Lauro, a film producer from Greenport, left the Long Island Music and Entertainment Hall of Fame’s Music Documentary Film Festival with more than just applause—he picked up the Social Impact Award. This wasn’t just another night spent clapping for hitmakers or humming along to classic tunes. At this festival, the main focus was digging into the real stories lurking behind the songs.

Over a busy weekend in Stony Brook, fans, filmmakers, and musicians turned up for the festival’s second year. More than 40 documentaries filled the screens, offering everything from Billy Preston’s gospel roots to the wild ride of the Filipino band Eraserheads. The program sprawled across 15 countries, and Long Island got 16 premieres—including three world firsts. For anyone who thinks music documentaries are just about rock stars and nostalgia, this lineup said otherwise.

The festival wrapped with Newport & the Great Folk Dream, a film that seemed destined for the closing slot. Directed by Robert Gordon, produced by Joe Lauro, and recognized with the Social Impact Award, it’s not just about folk music legends. It zooms out. It’s about how music stitches people together—how it can be a force bigger than any one star’s ego or any chart-topping hit. Lauro stood onstage, taking the mic for his team, and reminded people of something easy to forget: music brings us together, and there’s real history—real lessons—in those sounds. “Director Robert Gordon and I strongly believe that music has unifying power,” he said. “And that there are lessons to learn from its history.”

That thread ran through the whole festival. Tom Needham, the festival’s executive producer, summed up the vibe. These weren’t just movies about musicians doing musician things. Again and again, the films showed how music shapes lives, knits together communities, and says what can’t always be said out loud. Some stories punched hard; some went quiet. All of them drove the wider point home.

The award winners proved you can’t put these documentaries in a box. Broadway heavyweight Dori Berinstein, with six Tonys and an Emmy already on her shelf, opened the festival with Kenny Loggins: Conviction of the Heart and snagged Best U.S. Director. Paris Barclay’s riveting Billy Preston: That’s the Way God Planned It landed both Best U.S. Feature and the Audience Award. A film on Peter Asher, by Daniel Geller and Dayna Goldfine, picked up the Musical Crossroads Award, and Barbara Jean Hall’s Ann Wilson: In My Voice took the Authentic Voice Award.

Some stories felt especially close to home. Archie Snowden, a Central Islip filmmaker, took the Long Island Filmmaker Award for The Long Island Underground Legends of Hip-Hop, and capped it off with a packed night of live performances from local hip-hop icons. Snowden grinned as he called the honor uniquely meaningful, especially since it happened on his own turf.

You can’t leave out 15-year-old Marlow Jean Pinnicia. A student at Ward Melville High, she won Short Film Audience Award for The Art of Being Different, her own exploration of music, autism, and the stormy waters of high school. It’s her life, unfiltered.

But the festival didn’t stop at Long Island’s borders. Maria Diane Ventura traveled almost a full day from Dubai, bringing her film Eraserheads: Combo on the Run—with Ely Buendia, the band’s celebrated songwriter, flying in from the Philippines for a post-screening Q&A. Ventura grabbed the Best International Director award. From Canada, Louis-Philippe Eno won Best International Feature for The Extraordinary Life of Robert Charlebois. Hélène Sevaux, born in Paris, won Best International Short for Four Hands. The roster stretched from Japan to Brazil, Malawi to Australia.

Billy Joel made a cameo, too—in virtual form. Adam Ripp’s 1971: Billy Joel’s Lost Interview, which used AI to reconstruct Joel and his crew in a long-lost radio session, took home the Innovation in Filmmaking Award.

All those movies together made something clear: the standard “life story” music documentary is on its way out. These are explorations of memory, identity, and community—evidence that music and the lives it touches are always tangled up together.

No wonder Newport & the Great Folk Dream took home the Social Impact Award. The film looks backwards, yes, but only to ask what music still has to teach us right now.

That’s what makes this young festival exciting. The songs? Most people have heard them already. It’s the stories—they’re full of surprises.

The festival wrapped up on September 27, handing out 14 awards. It poured outside—classic nor’easter—but filmmakers and musicians still crisscrossed the globe to make it to Stony Brook. That kind of dedication hints at bigger things to come for an event that’s only in its second year. Wendy Feinberg, the festival’s artistic director, is already plotting for the next one, scheduled for 2027. Looks like this festival isn’t fading out any time soon.