Nikola Conev holding the stork Silyan in The Tale of Silyan. Photo credit: Ciconia Film/Jean Dakar
Documentary distribution can be hit or miss in the United States, but it feels like an unusual number of highly-regarded docs aren’t available for screening this year. So the absence of films like Coexistence, My Ass!, Cutting Through Rocks, Mr. Nobody Against Putin, My Undesirable Friends: Part 1 – Last Air in Moscow, Seeds, and Yanuni, all of which made the Academy shortlist this year, is not due to my seeing them and deciding they weren’t among the best, but because I wasn’t able to see them at all. This list is not the point, however, so much as the fact that these films cover controversial topics (Russia, the Middle East, women in politics, Indigenous rights) of the sort that deserve more public discussion, not less.
Apocalypse in the Tropics. The United States has done a lot of interfering in Latin American affairs over the years, frequently to the detriment of most of the citizens of the countries involved, but the government and the military are not the only offenders. Petra Costa’s documentary traces how American-style evangelism has infiltrated Brazilian society and plays an influential role in propping up right-wing political campaigns, including that of former president and current jailbird Jair Bolsonaro. Special urbanist shoutout to Costa for her analysis of the failures of the modernist design of the national capital of Brasilia, which was intended to symbolize a new and better age for Brazil but has been described as functioning less like a city and more like an “office campus for a government.”
Blood & Myth. Questions about what’s real and what’s not, who gets to decide, and whether culture should play a role in that determination lie at the heart of Kahlil Hudson’s documentary. His primary subject is the trial of Teddy Kyle Smith, an Iñupiaq (indigenous Alaskan) actor who shot at and injured two white men who came near the cabin where he was staying. Smith said he did it on the orders of the Iñukuns, “little people” with supernatural strength whose existence is recognized within his community but not among the white settlers who run the justice system.
Cover-Up. Seymour Hersh, an investigative reporter who broke, among other major stories, the My Lai massacre, the secret bombing of Cambodia, the CIA’s surveillance and harassment of American citizens, and the atrocities of Abu Ghraib, is the sometimes reluctant subject of Laura Poitras and Mark Obenhaus’s documentary. It’s largely a traditional doc told through interviews and archival materials, but the prickly subject at the center of it all keeps things from becoming too predictable. What may be most notable about Hersh’s story is that despite working for some of the most prestigious outlets in American journalism, including the New York Times and the Associated Press, he has frequently taken the freelance route to avoid demands that he limit his reporting to keep the shareholders happy. Fun fact: he currently runs a Substack account with the telling title “It’s worse than you think.”
Orwell: 2+2=5. Raoul Peck’s documentary underlines the relevance of George Orwell’s political observations to today’s world, with particular focus on his final novel 1984 (first published in 1949). Damian Lewis reads excerpts from Orwell’s letters and journals, which are intercut with clips from the news media and television and film versions of Orwell’s novels, creating a biographical portrait of a writer who because aware of his role in perpetuating injustice while serving in the British colonial police force in Burma. Orwell was also keenly aware of the British class system (he says he was born into the “lower upper middle class”) and how it interacted with colonialism, noting that in the colonies Brits not born to wealth could “play at being gentlemen,” something that would have been impossible at home.
The Perfect Neighbor. The title of Geeta Gandbhir’s documentary drips with irony as it portrays, using primarily police bodycam footage, how Susan Louise Lorincz came to shoot and kill one of her neighbors. The worst of it, beyond the death of a young mother who did nothing wrong, is that the shooting seemed to be motivated by the most ordinary of annoyances: kids being kids and making noise while they played in a public space near their home. If there’s any upside to this sad story, it’s that there are limits to what can be justified under Florida’s “stand your ground” defense.
River of Grass. Sasha Wortzel’s documentary addresses a pressing question of our time: what is the natural world for? Is it to be exploited for the economic benefit of man or does it have value for its own sake and thus deserve our respect and protection? Her focus is on the Florida Everglades and she highlights a number of different voices alongside her own experience. These include Miccosukee educator Betty Osceola, author and ecologist Marjory Stoneman Douglas (whose 1947 book provides this film’s title), local fisherman, ecologists, and activists.
Sally. SallyRide gained fame as the first American woman in space and the youngest American astronaut to have flown in space (at age 32). In order to rack up those accomplishments, she had to keep a big part of her life secret—her sexual preference and long-term relationship with tennis pro Tam O’Shaughnessy. Cristina Costantini’s film creates a rich portrait of Ride, including her many accomplishments as well as her relationship with O’Shaughnessy (made public after Ride’s death in 2012). Besides a worthy celebration of a woman who richly deserves it, Sally serves as a reminder that social justice can be a long time coming.
Secret Mall Apartment. Jeremy Workman’s documentary focuses on an unusual accomplishment that could be interpreted as a prank, a social protest, a work of art, or maybe all three at once. In 2003, a group of Rhode Island artists, led by Michael Townsend, decided to create and live in an apartment located in an unused space in the Providence Place Shopping Center. They proceeded to do just that, abandoning the project only when they were discovered in 2007. Workman’s documentary is made up mostly of present-day interviews with the participants (all of whom seem to have positive memories of the experience) plus their recordings of themselves from 2003-2007, shot using miniature digital cameras.
The Tale of Silyan. Tamara Kotevska infuses a straightforward documentary about the difficulties of making a living in rural North Macedonia with a touch of magic through a folktale about a boy who wanted to leave his village and was turned into a white stork by his angry father. The choice of tale is not accidental: The Tale of Silyan was shot in a region that has the highest concentration of storks in the world, and the film’s central character, farmer Nikola Conev, had one son leave the family farm before filmmaking began. When his daughter and her husband leave for work in Germnay, followed by his wife to provide childcare for them, it seems that the village may become inhabited only by old men who refuse to abandon land that’s been in their family for generations.
Zodiac Killer Project. Director Charlie Shackleton goes meta on true crime after losing the rights to Lyndon Lafferty’s book The Zodiac Killer Cover-Up: The Silenced Badge which he had intended to serve as the basis for a more straightforward doc. The result is a an examination of true crime conventions and a critique of the genre’s popularity as well as a lot of the director saying, basically, “if I’d been able to make the film I had planned, this is what you would be seeing now” accompanied by shots of bland suburban parking lots, innocuous buildings, and motorways lacking the expected characters and actions.
Honorable mention: The Gas Station Attendant, Janis Ian: Breaking Silence, Lilith Fair: Building a Mystery, Liza: A Truly Terrific Absolutely True Story, The New Yorker at 100, Put Your Hand on Your Soul and Walk, Remaining Native, Riefenstahl, Spare My Bones, Coyote!, Swamp Dogg Gets His Pool Painted. | Sarah Boslaugh
