The best documentaries of 2023 followed those fighting for their lives. That might mean being straight war journalism, harrowing and on the ground, like 20 Days in Mariupol or In the Rearview. It might also mean allowing some of our most marginalized voices to speak out about nations, cultures and economic realities that want them dead. Whether these speakers were Indigenous journalists fighting for freedom of the press, Land Back activists rejecting and re-educating the American narrative, Black trans sex workers laying bare the lives they risk every day simply by existing, or North Korean defectors fleeing their country in hopes of a better life, nonfiction filmmaking was listening, platforming and painting these stories in loud, undeniable colors. Even when the best documentaries of 2023 occupied themselves with less turbulent topics — such as immersive observations of artists, factory workers, chefs and museum curators — the friction of their lives and ours, ephemerally linked yet physically divided, encourages a similar reaction: Empathy, understanding, encouragement to leave our myopic day-to-day behind. De Humani Corporis Fabrica, a remarkable film that did not quite make the cut for this list, is perhaps the best symbol for the year in nonfiction. Morphing medical gore into abstraction, grounding it all in the deadpan discussions of doctors performing surgery, it opens us up to reveal that which we all share — whether we like it or not. Injustice and struggle were everywhere this year, but so too was compassion, solidarity and, yes, even beauty. In following with former Paste Movies editor Dom Sinacola’s tradition, our list of the best documentaries of 2023 is unranked and sorted alphabetically.
Here are the 20 best documentaries of 2023:
20 Days in Mariupol
It should go without saying that assessing the supposed “quality” of a film like 20 Days in Mariupol—an on-the-ground collection of footage from the Russo-Ukrainian War’s beginning days—is immaterial. The unflinching documentary follows Ukrainian international AP journalist Mstyslav Chernov, field producer Vasilisa Stepanenko and still photographer Evgeniy Maloletka, who were the last remaining journalists in Mariupol after arriving to document the beginning of the oncoming war, knowing that Russian forces were going to strategically prioritize a takeover of the port city. Some civilians fled before the conflict arrived. Many stayed, either out of an inability to leave or disbelief that such a terrorizing force would attack civilians. The war started within an hour of Chernov and his crew arriving in the city. 20 Days in Mariupol is a real-time account of a community that had their homes, families and livelihoods violently ripped away in a matter of days. Shot entirely from the perspective of Chernov’s lone camera, 20 Days in Mariupol is a demanding and visceral watch. The footage is raw and has a rampant sense of terrifying immediacy, with images transmitted straight from the heart of an excessively brutal conflict, assembled together with precise editing of materials from Michelle Mizner and Chernov’s own haunted narration to accompany proceedings. As the title suggests, the crew weathers the 20 days it took for Russian soldiers to transform Mariupol into an inhospitable war zone. With no sign of Ukrainian forces and with the city becoming closed in on all sides, anyone remaining is stuck with nowhere to go—including Chernov and his team. Early on, Chernov encounters a horrified local woman who begs for information about where she should go or what she should do if the bombs start hitting her neighborhood. It seems inconceivable that Russia would attack innocent civilians, even to Chernov. He tells her to wait in her basement and wait for more information—there won’t be any artillery attacks on neighborhoods. That’s an hour before the woman’s block is hit. All Chernov can do when he encounters her at an improvised shelter later on is apologize and tell her he’s glad she’s okay. Doctors try to resuscitate a young boy caught in the fallout of a bombing to no avail. Bloodied people crowd inside hospitals and shelters. Particularly graphic injuries are blurred—such as that of a pregnant woman, caught in the attack on a maternity ward, who would later die—but there is no shying away from the images of dead bodies, either being put into makeshift mortuaries, thrown into mass grave sites, or lying face down in the middle of the street. In his unceasing documentation and dogged resolve to ensure his footage makes it to the masses, Chernov and the result of his efforts speak to the paramount necessity of war reporting as its own way of fighting against oppressors. Russian government bodies knew the power of such images. That’s why they were desperate to sell the narrative that they were fake. Chernov’s camera is a tool to capture and distribute their worst fear: The truth. —Trace Sauveur
Anselm
It’s rare to find 3D present in a quiet documentary about German painter and sculptor Anselm Kiefer. It’s even rarer, though, to find the technology used in a manner that feels intentional and vital to its film’s storytelling, successfully eluding 3D’s propensity to come across as gimmicky or cheap. Both of these rarities are found in the mesmeric gold mine that is Wim Wenders’ Anselm. Anselm combines the filmmaker’s technical mastery with a deep curiosity for his subject to create an experience that is as thought-provoking as it is immersive. Shot in 6K-resolution by cinematographer Franz Lustig, Anselm presents a cinematic experience of Anselm Kiefer’s oeuvre, which probes complex themes of human existence, German nationalism, Nazism, poetry, science, mythology, religion, literature and the cyclical nature of history. Filmed over the course of two years, Anselm traces the artist’s path from his native Germany to his current home in France, connecting the stages of his life to the essential places of his career that spans more than five decades. Within the first few seconds, we are immediately transported into Kiefer’s world. This is achieved through a combination of strategic 3D placement and crisp, high-resolution imaging. The depth created through three-dimensional processing creates an overwhelming sense of realism. The images possess such details that they create the illusion that you are viewing them with the naked eye. It’s the first time I have ever truly felt as if I could reach out and touch the objects on a screen. It’s an incredibly immersive experience—and it’s incredibly beautiful. A standout moment happens just two minutes into the film: We’re outside on a still fall morning. The camera floats from a gorgeous wide shot of one of Kiefer’s wedding dress sculptures across to an hilly landscape. As the camera glides away, the sun begins to peek through from the mountains in the distance. The bright orange light, brought to the foreground through the use of 3D processing, feels so real, you almost expect to feel warmth on your skin. It’s subtle, yet divine. Wenders fills the sonic landscape with readings of poems, like “Todesfuge” by Paul Celan—the inspiration behind Kiefer works such as Margarethe (1981) and Your Golden Hair, Margarethe (1981)—haunting whispers from unknown female speakers, and voiceover by Kiefer. The result of this is something much more truthful than what could be uncovered by listening to any talking head. You’ve been allowed a glimpse of what it’s like to be inside Kiefer’s mind and soul for 93 minutes. The seamless flow of spoken thoughts and ideas, mirrored by the smooth, crane-shot visuals, gives the illusion of floating through memories, space and time. We feel Kiefer’s need to create. The work feels organic and, though incredibly intimate, never invasive. For its historical relevance, its personal connections to both filmmaker and subject, and its immersive nature, Anselm is well worth experiencing—yes, in 3D.—Kathy Michelle Chacón
Bad Press
Is there anyone in this country looked down upon and misunderstood more than Indigenous people and journalists? It’s not a hypothetical—the answer is yes: Indigenous journalists. Rebecca Landsberry-Baker and Joe Peeler’s engrossing documentary Bad Press clearly lays out the plights faced by an Indigenous news team and, in its hyperfocus on Mvskoke Media and the Muscogee Nation, finds hard, broad truths about both the relationship between the people and the reporters that serve them and the ease with which those being reported upon manipulate that relationship. Of the 574 self-governing tribes operating alongside (or, more often, in conflict with) the U.S., none of their constitutions ensured a free press. So if there’s someone reporting on, say, an embezzling chief, there’s nothing legally fundamental protecting them from retribution. The Muscogee Nation put a protective law in place in 2015, but an emergency legislative session surreptitiously repealed it in 2018. The nuances of sovereign tribal governments create a perfect microcosm for this story. The structure and size of the Muscogee Nation lend its public affairs a local feel, where executives are relatively available for interview and legislators vote in cramped municipal back rooms. This contrasts with the national implications of its power, making Bad Press the best of all worlds: An impossibly important political story that you can grasp with both hands. The filmmaking, confident and immersive, imbues the film with gravity. Context is efficient; characters are cultivated. Its procedural construction is thoroughly convincing, involving and educational. We care about the issue, but we care more about it because the issue comes with faces. Leading the way is Mvskoke Media reporter Angel Ellis. Ellis is as bombastic and brave a central figure as you could wish for, resolutely charming and a bastion of journalistic aspiration: A foul-mouthed, chain-smoking, citizen-serving machine of passion and integrity. Bad Press is wonderful, tightknit political and journalistic non-fiction, about a place and people close to my heart. It does what small-scale documentaries do best, and have been doing exceptionally since Harlan County, USA: Finding the global in the specific, and finding the personal in the ideological. Where Barbara Kopple found feminism, solidarity, tradition and rampant, violent corporate greed at the heart of her Kentucky miner’s strike, Landsberry-Baker and Peeler find vigilance, accountability and the systems in place to discourage both in the heart of a Muscogee newsroom.—Jacob Oller
Beyond Utopia
Traveling the full length of an Underground Railroad from North Korea, across China, moving secretly from Vietnam into the Laotian jungle in the dead of night, all the way to Thailand and an eventual resettlement in South Korea, Beyond Utopia is a miraculous and harrowing refugee travelogue. A family of defectors working with the heroic Pastor Seungeun Kim goes an extra brave step in allowing their journey to be filmed, thus becoming a cinematic case study in how dire life in North Korea is, and how desperate those who were born there are to escape it. Director Madeleine Gavin juxtaposes this heart-stopping flight with constant context surrounding the ideological forces that split Korea in two, and those that took advantage of the havoc wreaked by the U.S. and their Communist rivals. Though a too-obvious score accompanies some of the year’s most thrilling, affecting images (like an 80-year-old defector looking out onto Seoul’s skyline from her family’s new apartment), Beyond Utopia is composed of amazing footage taken by people risking their lives to do so — and you can feel that conscious decision in every frame’s wavering handheld adjustment.—Jacob Oller
Close to Vermeer
While Johannes Vermeer, the Dutch baroque master who painted some 30-odd works during his career, is generally considered an enigmatic figure in the art world, curators and experts have nonetheless dedicated their entire careers to evaluating his comparatively limited oeuvre. Thus, Gregor Weber, a highly-regarded expert on the artist, considers the “crown jewel” of his career to be overseeing the largest and most encompassing Vermeer exhibit ever at the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam. The planning and execution of this Vermeer retrospective is the focus of Suzanne Raes’s documentary Close to Vermeer, which unfurls into an engrossing 79-minute exploration of the experts, museums and debates that continue to engage with the artist and his legacy. Just a year away from retirement, Weber embarks on a quest to acquire as many Vermeer paintings as possible for the swiftly-approaching exhibit. Despite being a Dutch artistic icon, many of Vermeer’s works – including recognizable artworks The Milkmaid and The Art of Painting – are currently (and perhaps forever destined to be) part of permanent collections at foreign museums. As such, he and several Rijksmuseum colleagues, including fellow Vermeer historian Pieter Roelofs, attempt to secure loans of those paintings. They travel to The Frick and Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City, Vienna’s Kunsthistorisches Museum, Germany’s Herzog Anton Ulrich Museum and even the neighboring Dutch Mauritshuis museum in The Hague. When able to secure pieces for the exhibit, researcher and conservator Anna Krekeler puts them under her microscope and relishes in the details of Vermeer’s brushwork up-close. Though much of the doc’s beauty clearly stems from the gorgeous details inherent to the 17th century artist’s motifs, the overall momentum of the film is driven by art-world politics that typically don’t filter down into public consciousness. For example, a standoff of sorts develops when American researchers decide to disavow a work long considered to be an authentic Vermeer due to the predominance of a green hue in a subject’s flesh tone. Weber contests this finding – but is it due to genuine scholarly disagreement, or because he’s down to the wire in terms of making decisions for the Rijksmuseum exhibit? Pleasant and contemplative, Close to Vermeer chronicles an exhibit of a master that both civilians and historians know startlingly little about, considering the profound impact he’s had on the craft of painting.–Natalia Keogan
The Disappearance of Shere Hite
In a world of digital footprints, it’s amusing to think that anyone with a voice and a strong platform can simply “disappear.” Even those who make the radical decision to vacate their online spaces can never fully do so; once on the internet, always on the internet. So The Disappearance of Shere Hite, the latest film from Nicole Newnham, strikes a discordant tone by the title alone, though its metaphorical substance shouldn’t be discounted. The author and sex educator Shere Hite has, after all, fallen out of cultural consciousness, and for all intents and purposes, she did take a powder from public life in the 1980s. Nobody can blame Hite, who passed in 2020, for flipping the U.S. the bird, after her shabby treatment for the apparent crime of publishing books evincing the pervasive isolation in Americans’ intimate relationships. That’s just one finding from The Hite Report on Female Sexuality, released in 1976, and The Hite Report on Men and Male Sexuality, which came out in 1981. In those days, the very idea of anyone, especially a woman, writing frankly about people’s sexual habits and appetites, and their attendant behavioral and existential woes, was anathema at best and a declaration of war at worst. The Disappearance of Shere Hite suggests that to know Hite was to love her – and not the same thing as truly knowing her. This validates Newnham’s casting of Dakota Johnson as a vocal performer, narrating Hite’s writings in imitation of Hite’s gentle, ethereal voice. As Samuel L. Jackson did for James Baldwin in Raoul Peck’s I Am Not Your Negro, so Johnson does here for Hite, giving her weight through her reading and affording us a medium for knowing an otherwise unknowable person. In Johnson, we recognize shades of who Hite’s peers tell us she was; through Newnham’s direction, we recognize Hite best of all for how she shone a harsh light on the state of American sexual pleasure and marital comfort with a series of straightforward if uncomfortable survey questions. Newnham isn’t telling a story of exodus, but hoping to usher along Hite’s re-emergence into popular awareness. This requires Newnham to take stock of Hite’s achievements, and then trace her subject’s humanity around and through those achievements.–Andy Crump
The Eternal Memory
What is man without his memory? Distinguished Chilean journalist Augusto Góngora encounters this question time and time again during a career spent reporting on the brutalities his country faced under the rule of Augusto Pinochet—brutalities that his government would have liked to obscure. “Those who have memory have courage,” Góngora wrote in a 1997 note to his partner, Paulina Urrutia. So what happens, then, when Augusto starts to lose his own memory? Directed by Maite Alberdi (The Mole Agent), The Eternal Memory chronicles Góngora’s struggles with Alzheimer’s disease, and Urrutia’s efforts to help him maintain his sense of self. Despite inherently existing through the opaque prism of memory and its relationship to identity, The Eternal Memory is surprisingly simple, and often lighthearted. Told largely through a series of conversations between Góngora and Urrutia, the couple is not, by any means, limited to discussing the heavy subject matter at hand. They reminisce on how they met, tease one another, flirt. And while the documentary certainly has its fair share of heavy moments—Urrutia is devastated when Góngora forgets who she is; they discuss death; they recall the cruelties of their former government—the atmosphere crafted is far from one of impending doom. It’s nearly impossible to talk about Alzheimer’s without forefronting misery, anger and despair. It is a cruel and callous disease that destroys lives piece by piece. Perhaps the greatest feat of the courageous The Eternal Memory, then, is Alberdi, Góngora and Urrutia’s ability to broach the subject with all of these emotions—but with an emphasis on life, not death.—Aurora Amidon
Four Daughters
Like Abbas Kiarostami’s Close-Up, Robert Greene’s Kate Plays Christine, and Nathan Fielder’s The Rehearsal, Kaouther Ben Hania’s Four Daughters takes place at the confluence of two rivers: Fiction and documentary. The subjects of this hybrid film are Olfa, a Tunisian mother of four girls, and the teenage Eya and Tayssir, the youngest two of her daughters. Ben Hania fills the gaping silhouette of the mysteriously absent other pair—Ghofrane and Rahma—with two actors (Nour Karoui and Ichraq Matar), as well as a stand-in for Olfa herself (Tunisian megastar Hend Sabri). Together, the actors (including one man, Majd Mastoura, who plays a variety of male figures in Olfa’s life) re-enact significant moments in the women’s lives in an attempt to therapeutically exorcize their grief and anger. The film is a rehearsal with no end performance in sight, the process being the point. The result is astonishing emotional rigor, particularly from Eya and Tayssir. Forced to endure hardships both new and familiar to their mother—who unquestioningly believes one of her motherly duties is to inflict the same pain on her children that marred her own life—the girls are remarkably unafraid to hold Olfa to account. The conceit at the heart of the film is a brilliant one, because it dissolves all of the interpersonal barriers that might have prevented its subjects from total honesty. Four Daughters is a fascinating, gripping watch for the depth and candor with which it explores these women’s fraught bonds. Rather than dilute the truth, then, the use of mirrored performances has an intensifying, clarifying effect on their original subjects—one so acute that it even unnerves some of the actors.–Farah Cheded
In the Rearview
A heartwrenching war documentary with the camera squarely facing the civilians affected by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, In the Rearview finds humanity and heroism intertwined with mundane senselessness. The debut from Maciek Hamela, the film observes his evacuation efforts: He’s a man with a van, shuttling Ukrainian refugees displaced from their small villages, to Poland. He Ubers families who must leave their grandmother behind, couples who can barely contain a freaked-out cat, and children who’ve suffered immeasurable trauma, literalized in notecards they carry listing their identifying details. Rolling past wreckage and bombed-out homes, Hamela’s car cruises through checkpoints and U-turns away from minefields. Along the way, the Cash Cab-like camera, locked onto the crammed backseat, listens to its passengers. They, like strangers on a bus, share plenty, and open up in the hiccups and spurts natural to stuck strangers. Some worry about their phone’s charge. Others grimace as their children play “Rock, Paper Scissors…Gun.” One, en route to a hospital, simply tries to gut out the bumpy trip. In the Rearview isn’t just a harrowing piece of on-the-ground war reporting, but a constant and steady reminder of tangible, logistical suffering — writ large by an invasive evil and tightly binding viewers to each person on the road against their will.–Jacob Oller
Judy Blume Forever
If you’re of a certain age where the monthly Scholastic Book Club flyers being dropped on your school desk was akin to a spiritual moment, then Judy Blume is likely a formative figure in your growing up. Her books were a constant in the Club’s rotation, thriving way past their release date cycle to welcome generations of young readers into a life-long love of reading. She had an amazing array of entry points to her work too. For all genders, there were Tales of a Fourth Grade Nothing (1972), Blubber (1974) and the Fudge books that were page-turners. But for young girls, Blume was essentially the internet before it existed. Her books, like Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret (1970), Deenie (1973) and Forever (1975), were resources for the unspoken. Her stories included candid references and sometimes full narratives digging into the mechanics and emotions around menstruation, masturbation, body acceptance and non-judgmental premarital sex. Blume’s books were passed around like knowledge contraband, especially by girls from strict families who never spoke of such topics, or attendees of religious schools that regurgitated dogmas meant to make young women feel guilty or bad about their “impure” thoughts. But what about Blume, herself? As much as her books have become seminal and beloved, the woman behind the stories has remained elusive. At age 83, Blume becomes the subject of the documentary Judy Blume Forever, remedying that in an informative and deeply emotional way. It features the still spritely and feisty author telling her own story, filling in the details of her own coming of age as a woman of her generation who had one foot in the expected—including a cold marriage and content motherhood—and the other foot frustratingly tapping towards something else. Directors Davina Pardo and Leah Wolchok do an exceptional job balancing Blume’s personal story against the backdrop of the women’s movement. Wisely, they have Judy tell her story to camera, both as the primary talking head and as the reader of excerpts from her stories. Witnessing the passionate way she still performs her character’s voices speaks volumes about how intimate she remains with her work, even to the point of tears. Blume is not jaded, and the doc warmly frames how she’s remained present and involved regarding the impact of her stories, and the cultural waves that have occurred because of them. It’s thorough and honest in including Blume’s own critical self-assessments of her flaws and mistakes. But it’s refreshing to have an author of such note track their own journey, in both a personal and historical way, authentically, especially regarding a woman’s experience wrestling with cultural norms and growing societal freedom. —Tara Bennett
Kokomo City
One of the most exciting non-fiction entries to this year’s Sundance is a radical, on-the-ground pulpit from which four Black trans sex workers talk their shit. Putting transphobia within and without Black culture on blast, Kokomo City raises a curtain to reveal four stars: Daniella Carter, Dominique Silver, Liyah Mitchell and Koko Da Doll. Actually, make that five stars. Filmmaker D. Smith, a trans musician making her feature debut, keeps the rollicking conversations and righteously indignant monologues barreling along in beautiful black-and-white as we laugh, cry and commiserate with women whose experiences and insights are only outweighed by their personalities. From the opening anecdote, about a client setting a massive pistol on the bed as he receives head, you understand that these escorts are braver than the troops. Laughing off nightmares like that, running through lists of friends that have been killed by the same men paying them, their resilience forms the sobering foundation of an overwhelmingly entertaining experience. But of course, queer storytellers have always been able to—had to—turn tragedy into exuberant art. Smith refuses to undersell this seriousness while her aesthetic refuses to bury her subjects’ pop under their oppression: If Kokomo City lacks anything, it’s certainly not pizzazz. The soundtrack, some of which was provided by Smith, offers up lyrical laughs, as do the score’s sudden shifts (dopey cartoon tunes play when a worker recounts what it’s like to be approached by a stereotypically macho would-be client) and the on-screen subtitles that chronicle its fast-talking, no-holds-barred interviewees. Carter (the undeniable breakout of the bunch, exuding charisma and eloquent thoughtfulness) compares trans women to broken-down cars that still rev like hot rods—under attack but, defiantly, all the more extravagant for it. Kokomo City follows suit: It’s got a handmade underdog feel, loose and close and raw, but every DIY frame is fierce. Kokomo City vibrates with that energy in part because Smith did…pretty much everything. In addition to directing and contributing to the soundtrack, she also shot, edited and produced the doc. With that level of auteurism comes plenty of personality and a tight tempo. Aside from magnetic subjects that would give Portrait of Jason a run for its money, there’s a kineticism of shape and setting—hopping between New York and Georgia, between apartment couches and shadowy cars, between homes filled with love and those where the loneliness reverberates, between reenacting blowjobs and blowing smoke rings—that churns your body as the political, racial, queer theories put forth by the women dance in your mind. Hilarious, scary, tragic and sometimes flat-out jaw-dropping, Kokomo City is a gripping and accessible dissection of modern life, told through a brutally specific point of view.—Jacob Oller
Lakota Nation vs. United States
Layli Long Soldier, the poet whose clear words punctuate the documentary Lakota Nation vs. United States, isn’t concerned with navigating the labyrinthine treaties and agreements that swindled countless Indigenous people. She observes this legalese for what it is, and with that observation, cuts through the Gordian Knot of the disingenuous contracts. There is only so much to be understood from parsing the paperwork. Directors Jesse Short Bull and Laura Tomaselli want to play by their own rules, which means shifting the perspective, values and teachers of their history lesson. It means plain language and plain images, used to rewrite assumptions so ingrained as to be invisible. With its expressive overview of the centuries from Christopher Columbus to Standing Rock, Lakota Nation vs. United States deftly demonstrates how a change in form can change a mindset—and how necessary that is when discussing the lives and futures of Indigenous people. Long Soldier’s role as tone-narrator is just as important as the lengths Short Bull and Tomaselli go to assemble a representative, damning collage of footage. While the two-hour doc is structured chronologically, Lakota Nation vs. United States is more concerned with establishing thematic throughlines than a detailed narrative. There are plenty of anecdotes characterizing colonizer hypocrisy (one, drawing from Long Soldier’s poem “38,” is most stark and striking), but there is a restless insistence that a higher truth be seen. We are shown the beauty of the Black Hills—the ancestral home of the Lakota—blooming in bright sunflowers, towering as tough granite crags, persisting around burned-out forts, and running alongside horses and deer. The land isn’t abstract. It’s right in front of us, and it is life itself. Like any good heist film, it’s important to establish what’s at stake. Then you can establish the thieves. This exciting formal approach, with its diverse selection of striking nature photography and archival sources, moves swiftly and effectively. Using lyrical imagery to package unflattering facts, Lakota Nation vs. United States deftly demonstrates the necessity of both to retell the story of America’s invasion and Indigenous resistance. I found some sections deeply illuminating and others familiar, but your mileage may vary depending on what part of the world you grew up in. When I arrived in Chicago from Oklahoma, I remember a conversation with a born-and-raised Midwesterner shocked to learn that Indigenous people still lived in the U.S. at all. This film erases that invisibility easily, energetically, insistently. But whatever your familiarity with the real history of the U.S., the righteous pleasure of Lakota Nation vs. United States is in its telling.—Jacob Oller
Menus-Plaisirs Les Troisgros
Frederick Wiseman is, and has been for more than half a century now, fascinated by how the sausage gets made. Since the 1960s, he’s spent time documenting hospitals, schools, local government, cultural institutions, zoos and parks, submerging himself and us in their often arcane processes. His films are famously lengthy—his recent work has averaged around the three-and-a-half-hour mark, though he has gone as long as six—because of his granular devotion to detail. The lesser movies of his oeuvre can prove to be something of an endurance test; the better films (and that’s a far more populous category) leave you with the feeling of having properly experienced a whole new world. In Menus-Plaisirs Les Troisgros, Wiseman shows us how the sausage gets made in an unusually literal sense, along with a whole host of other culinary delights. His latest odyssey takes us to France, and the restaurants of celebrated chef Michel Troisgros, which he runs with his two sons, César and Leo. For most of the four-hour runtime, we are situated in the main establishment, La Colline du Colombier, nestled in the postcard-perfect French countryside. We spend time both in front and back of house, as well as in the immediate surrounds; a particularly charming scene sees a group of young Troisgros workers heading out into the local forest on a foraging trip in their chef’s whites, the sole woman of the group being hoisted on the tallest man’s shoulders so she can reach higher up in the tree for the fruit. It’s an idyllic sequence; one of the most notable features of Menus-Plaisirs Les Troisgros is how surprisingly calm the whole business is. For decades, but especially recently, with productions like The Bear and Boiling Point, audiences have seen high-end kitchens depicted as frantic, hellishly stressful places (if you can’t stand the heat, etc…). Here though, Wiseman shows us a workplace that could—in some scenes, at least—be fairly described as tranquil. As we watch these masters at work, Wiseman invites us to revel in the poetry of their expertise—and it’s mesmerizing. And speaking of poetry, there’s a lovely lyricism to the culinary language we pick up along the way (and of course, it helps that everyone’s speaking French): Quenelle, battuta, bigarade, arlettes, duxelles, zabaione, mignardise, gremolata, faisselle, rau răm. We may not be able to taste the food, but between the sights and the sounds of the kitchen, Menus-Plaisirs Les Troisgros is still a feast for the senses.—Chloe Walker
Mister Organ
Mister Organ is a remarkable film: A comedic horror of a documentary, a simple piece of investigative journalism descending into madness and a spotlight on the human spirit’s capacity for darkness. It’s a drama and thriller created out of real-life footage of strange-as-fiction events. It’s the story of David Farrier trying to unravel the mystery of Michael Organ, a man who burrows into people’s lives and destroys them. It isn’t rare for documentarians to put themselves in harm’s way for their work, but it’s uncanny that an investigation into a parking fine scam would open the door to a labyrinth of madness. Mister Organ represents the menace of the mundane: The everyday person that knows social rules and expectations well enough to bend or skirt them as necessary to get what they want out of other people, able to variously present a façade of sophistication or put-togetherness while needling and harassing, or assaulting and playing victim. The story starts with journalist-documentarian Farrier discovering an apparent wheel-clamping scam run outside of an antique shop in Ponsonby, New Zealand—anyone parked in the apparently unmarked private car park gets their wheels clamped and/or their car blocked in by a man in a van who charges them up to $760 for as little as 30 minutes of parking. Farrier’s published investigative work on the phenomenon—including diving into message boards full of complaints about the scheme—raises the story’s profile to New Zealand’s parliament, resulting in a bill which lowers the maximum allowable parking fine. After taking the signage from the soon-thereafter-abandoned antique shop, Farrier is met with criminal charges and then a lawsuit, and is drawn into the world of a cunning master manipulator seemingly capable of sowing psychosis in people. Part of Mister Organ’s thrill ride is the race against time: We wonder if Farrier can survive the experience, can gain some insight into Organ’s desires and drive, before the time he spends with Organ drives him insane. We’re reminded that there are people like Organ all around us. Some run conglomerates. Some aspire to run countries. Some simply exist in the everyday lives of our friends and ourselves, self-assured and self-righteous, isolating victims and destroying communities.–Kevin Fox, Jr.
Occupied City
The poster for Occupied City is a lyrical mystery, one that quietly manages to encapsulate the film which mysteriously unfurls. Bundled up children are skidding down an icy hill, some sitting politely on sleds while others frozen in daring maneuvers; feet first, belly up, a flurry of limbs encased by lurking buildings. With so few reference points, the latest venture from director Steve McQueen feels bathed in hazy mystery, lending it anonymity as it slips into 2023 with barely any fanfare. Such intimidating silence surrounding Occupied City’s release is at least partially mandated by its bracingly long runtime. At four-and-a-half-hours long, McQueen’s documentary guides his audience on a tour through Amsterdam while an immaculately composed voiceover describes the Jewish families who were murdered during World War II and lost to the city forever. Present-day footage of the city quietly plays out while these stories are strung together; there is no twist, no narrative, it is a collection of tales and a city. All the images play with the stories heard, activating the described details and lending them tangible weight. Each moment coils around its successive scene in an unexpected way. A shot of children sprinting around a frosty field in muddied uniforms is abandoned only to be picked up with a shot of a stricken teammate comforted by his parents. A loosely strung story—feelings splintered across a city. Occupied City is a reflection on the World War II documentaries that have come before, many of which try to grapple such loss and devastation into a definite shape. But it’s Chantal Akerman’s New York City doc News From Home that is the true foundation for Occupied City’s deliberate and engrossing storytelling. Distance and objectivity conceal a staggering melancholy, longing seeping beneath every frame. Like Akerman’s masterpiece, Occupied City follows no plot, instead passing any discernible structure onto a waiting audience whose own interpretations will inform the emotional arc of the film. Like wandering into an art exhibition, your inconsistencies stick out at sharp angles, repositioning the weight of the film and forcing it to hang off your lived experience in striking patterns. Occupied City is a demanding watch, but this cinematic gamble is singular and rewarding in its emotional intelligence. What this film understands that most other documentaries ignore is that to condense a whole life into a runtime is a futile task, laden with cruel motivations. Occupied City is something purpose-built to fall short and, regardless, inspire.–Anna McKibbin
The Pigeon Tunnel
For a documentary about one of the most celebrated writers of spy fiction, The Pigeon Tunnel can seem—at first glance—deceptively placid. Clocking in at just over 90 minutes, the film features an extended conversation between David Cornwell, AKA John le Carre, and Oscar-winning docmaker Errol Morris. It’s just that. Two people talking, with Morris off-screen, their parrying question-and-answers broken up with archival images and re-enactments of Cornwell’s past, as well as snippets from the classic movies or TV adaptations based on his spy universe: The Spy Who Came in from the Cold, Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy and A Perfect Spy. However, it’s a fascinating conversation that keeps its hold on the viewer for its duration. The Pigeon Tunnel begins with Cornwell wondering what kind of an interlocutor Morris might make. After all, an interview is a type of interrogation, he muses. Cornwell makes the comparison lightly, a bemused smile playing on his face, his polished diction never slipping. At once, you know he’s in control of this interview, and by extension this representation of himself—a famous author who borrowed from his own troubled past when writing fiction. For fans of le Carre, who may have read his 2016 memoir The Pigeon Tunnel: Stories from My Life, there isn’t much new information in the documentary. What’s engaging is Cornwell’s erudition as he outlines his life and the circumstances that led to his career as spy. Cornwell rarely gave interviews. His conversation with Morris would turn out to be one of the last he gave before his death in 2020. Throughout the process, Cornwell is perfectly at ease, dancing around Morris’ sometimes-speechifying questions with practiced polish. He speaks in perfect paragraphs, never searching or pausing for words. There are no grand revelations. Morris doesn’t push Cornwell far on his own betrayals—to his friends or in his love life. We don’t get a sense of what it was like for Cornwell to live in murky worlds of his own making as an adult, and whether he felt guilt—beyond a general attitude of shrugging away life’s messiness. It’s clear that Cornwell had determined in advance that there would be some questions that he would never answer, that he’s not an open book to be read through and through. There are some secrets he keeps. The Pigeon Tunnel, then, is a chance to see an expert raconteur, who seems to know every trick of the trade—answering a master documentarian’s questions when he wants, and deflecting with panache when he doesn’t, regaling you with such wonder that you can’t help but be enthralled.—Aparita Bhandari
Silver Dollar Road
Raoul Peck does his audience a great kindness with a simple, unassuming gesture: The introduction of and recurring visits to the Reels’ family tree. Peck’s new documentary, Silver Dollar Road, draws on the Reels’ years-long real estate saga as its source, and Lizzie Presser’s jaw-dropping 2019 ProPublica article as its basis; he justifies his own interrogation of the family’s legal travails through variations on his usual sociopolitical filmmaking lens. Some documentaries would be better off as written journalism. Silver Dollar Road complements Presser’s work with Peck’s erudition and humane touch. The former comes up in his detangling of America’s longstanding, fundamentally racist real estate laws. The latter surfaces through his proximity to the Reels, best demonstrated by the presentation of that tree: Its textured background of rich, green tree branches, its burgeoning series of roots connecting Elijah, the Reels’ progenitor, to his children (notably Mitchell and Shedrick), and they to their own children, and so on, an ever-growing line of beneficiaries to Elijah’s wise decision to purchase land parallel to Silver Dollar Road in North Carolina, about a century ago and some change. Peck centers the film on the quiet outrage of how this splendor is co-opted or outright stolen from Black people in the United States. The legal jabber is tiresome, but if you are tired after mere minutes of listening to it then you must sit with yourself and imagine how exhausted the Reels are after dealing with it since about the 1980s, when Shedrick, invoking a legal procedure called “adverse possession,” first planted his flag on the most valuable slice of land in the Reels’ 65 acres, then sold it off to developers after somehow convincing the courts that he had a point despite not having lived there for almost 30 years. The Reels aren’t the first Black American family to lose what is theirs to white supremacist chicanery. They won’t be the last. But the notes of triumph the film ends on, as Licurtis and Melvin return home in their due glory after staring down America’s penal system, suggest that the tricks, and misdirections, and prejudicial advantages written into our laws to benefit whites and kneecap minorities, can be defeated by those of unyielding spirit. Resolve like that comes at a high cost. As Silver Dollar Road draws to a close, with drone footage rising from the street itself to the high heavens, surveying the land the Reels fought so hard for, and still do, we’re left with the certainty that it’s a cost worth paying.—Andy Crump
Smoke Sauna Sisterhood
The Russian bath across the street from where I used to live in Chicago, once owned by the mob and now known as Red Square, is a cultural rarity. There are very few saunas in the U.S. retaining its form: The water sizzling on the hot rocks, the swollen wooden benches, the whole “get smacked by some branches” thing (note: I haven’t done this). But it’s a far cry from the community and conversations generated by the smoke saunas in Võrumaa, a southern county of Estonia bordering Latvia and Russia. With its traditions captured in delicate, sweaty vignettes by filmmaker Anna Hints, Smoke Sauna Sisterhood’s anecdotes fill your lungs and engulf you, until its women’s secrets drip down your body. While lovingly filming reddened skin, Hints and her subjects play with vulnerability. They’re all naked all the time; the brief shots of people stoking the flames and drawing buckets of wellwater are really the only time we see clothing. Their bodies are the main canvas of the film, positioned in different configurations as the droplets paint them. Flesh becomes so omnipresent as to be abstract, worth looking at both for what it is and for the gradations in texture and shadow that play across it. Breasts, butts, bellies, the curves of calves—Smoke Sauna Sisterhood appreciates the female form deeply, and uses it to accentuate its narrative storytelling. The stories these women tell are similarly equalizing. The topics they choose to vent about—including queerness, abortion, pressure to partner up, sexual assault, body image, and dick pics—are completely specific to each of the women, yet accepted by the larger sauna (and us) as universal. Yet, with that universality comes tragedy. Hints films a year’s passage, with seasons passing over a log cabin isolated in the forest. Some months, fog rolls off the nearby lake. Others, the ice is so thick, the woman tending the sauna has to smash a hole and drop down a wooden ladder for her clients’ cooldown dip. But no matter the weather, the building is filled with steam and women, baring it all. Literally and figuratively: Smoke Sauna Sisterhood constructs gorgeous topographies from the naked, relaxing bodies, while they expunge some of their biggest stresses. Smoke Sauna Sisterhood is a cathartic and lovely experience, letting us sneak a peek into a private ceremony that quickly trades its mystique for hospitality.—Jacob Oller
The Stroll
Though it may not be marketed as such, Zackary Drucker and Kristen Lovell’s documentary The Stroll is a ghost story. As we walk with Kristen and her fellow former sex workers along what they used to call “The Stroll”—their little section of 14th Street in New York City’s meatpacking district where transwomen once lived, worked and formed a community—the spirits of the past emerge from the margins. Lowell escorts us through the early 1980s until the early 2000s when The Stroll was most active, charging the now gentrified space with psychic residue from the lives and deaths that were paved over to make it possible. The Stroll is a staggering work of conjuration. Lovell, her friends, and her interviewees unpack the history of the place and all the vibrant spirits who once teemed in the street. These few city blocks become a microcosm that reflects the macrocosm of American transgender history. The women of color who worked on these corners were the same women fighting for gay liberation even when the movement turned their backs. We encounter icons like Sylvia Rivera, and the encampment she set up for other homeless queer people, much later in life. We meet women whose names we might not know or women like Ceyenne Doroshow, whose names we’d better learn to know. Drucker and Lovell expertly weave all these energies of sisters past and present so that we cannot unsee their specters as we walk down the street. While The Stroll is a trans film because it proudly centers trans lives, experiences and culture, it’s also a trans film because it queers everything into a state of transition. Transgender, local and American histories are stories of flux, rarely “progressing” but changing from one form to the next. Most importantly, The Stroll grabs hold of the transition beyond life and brings it close to us again, haunting us in revolutionary ways. By richly contextualizing sex work as work, the women as coworkers, and the coworkers together as unions, The Stroll divinely demonstrates what becomes of the surplus value generated by those that society casts aside. Most miraculously, The Stroll transforms the way we think about space. Through Kristen Lovell and Zackary Drucker’s insightful and intimate interviews and interspersed archival footage, 14th Street becomes layered like an archeological diagram, allowing us to see the striations of strife and survival that stack on top of each other underneath what is now an Hermes store. The space becomes electrified by the past, allowing us to truly see the corrupt present so that we might imagine a transformed society as we stroll into the future.—B.L. Panther
Youth (Spring)
Youth (Spring)—the first installment of Wang Bing’s larger project Spring—is a laborious film, in terms not only of its mammoth runtime of 212 minutes, but also of its subject matter: Chinese workshop labor. Wang has been charting how the Chinese economy affects people’s lives since his colossal first feature West of the Tracks in 2003. He got the idea for Spring after talking to some of the migrants he filmed in 2016’s Bitter Money, an aptly titled portrait of Chinese couples’ relationships gone sour due to poor economic conditions. Youth (Spring) continues Wang’s predilection for creating an account of larger communities through smaller portraits of individuals. Divided into 12 parts, Youth (Spring) transports us into the lives of young migrant garment workers in China. We never hang onto any one protagonist in particular. More specifically, the film focuses on the Zhili region on the Yangtze Delta basin, just outside Shanghai (one of the richest cities in China), which is best known for producing the bulk of children’s clothing in China. China has the largest textile industry in the world, and the Zhili region is just one small part of that. Young people from all over more rural parts of China temporarily move to the Zhili region in the spring to work in the approximately 20,000 workshops there, in order to save money for their futures, and return home for the winter. The Zhili region is unique for many reasons, one being the garment workers’ slightly higher levels of freedom than in other regions; we watch the young men and women tease, play, argue, fall in love, and fight for higher wages from their workshop managers. One could deride Youth (Spring) as overly repetitive—seemingly endless—and that would be completely missing the point: Youth (Spring) is possibly the most significant document of Chinese garment workers ever created. Day in and day out, the workers repeat the same motion thousands of times, with only the sewing machines’ hum to listen to (unless they bring their own music, which they sometimes do). Wang has successfully captured the lives of people who have never been on screen before, and aren’t allowed to see their own film. American journalists have been quick to center their interpretation of Youth (Spring) around American labor problems; at the Cannes press conference, Wang was asked for his opinions on the writers’ strike and on the influence of new AI technologies on labor (of course, neither subject comes up in the film). Wang’s responses were poised and well thought out—and he always returned to, and seemed genuinely interested in discussing, the lives of the people he filmed.—Katarina Docalovich