The 22 Best Documentaries Of 2016 - Page 2 of 4

THE_WITNESS

17. “The Witness”
James Solomon‘s deeply absorbing and ultimately very moving doc is a fascinating exploration of how the media coverage of a tragedy can metastasize the original event into something far more corrosive and socially debilitating. In 1964, Kitty Genovese was murdered, stabbed to death right outside her Queens apartment building, and the New York Times, which here emerges as almost as much a villain as the murderer, covered the story with a headline about how 38 people in the apartment complex had witnessed the drawn-out murder and done nothing. So the sordid details of a young woman’s violent end became a national cautionary tale about dangerous New York City, and a byword for a kind of dehumanizing apathy that was believed to be taking hold of modern society. The ensuing national outcry spurred the development of the 911 system, but in 2004, when the NYT partially retracted some of its coverage, Kitty’s younger brother Bill, a Vietnam vet who lost both legs in the war, embarked on a quest to get to the truth of the so-called “38 eyewitnesses” and in the process ended up rediscovering his sister. Solomon’s film is formally fairly tame, and there’s a restaging of the crime that seems inserted purely to provide a dramatic finale, but these are small complaints when the story “The Witness” tells is so compelling, not just in its hunt-for-truth narrative, but in the reclamation of a lost, beloved sister from the inky prison of one sensationalist headline.

Life-Animated

16. “Life, Animated
A love of film can be an infectious, beautiful thing to behold. But as Roger Ross Williams’ tender, open-hearted Sundance documentary “Life, Animated” proves, it can also open up windows into minds once thought unapproachable, and possibly inaccessible, allowing us to connect in ways few imagined possible. This is the life story of Owen Suskind, the autistic 23-year-old son of Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Ron Suskind, who regained his speech — while also learning empathy, interactivity and the joy and sorrow of emotional turmoil — through his obsessive, all-consuming love for Disney animation, notably films like “Aladdin,” “The Lion King” and “The Little Mermaid.” It’s an intensely gratifying study of how the love of film can provide expansive, inviting opportunities to bond with others in approachable, easily acceptable terms. Of course, Disney movies only go so far before whisking away with their happily-ever-afters, and the film must also ask how Owen will learn to approach adulthood and topics like sex, independent living and heartbreak when Disney characters typically avoid such complicated matters. Williams’ cuddly, compulsively affectionate teddy bear of a documentary is among the most heartwarming films of the year — live-action, animated, fictional or otherwise. But more than that, it’s a reminder of the potential and influence of great cinema, and a tear-inducing powerhouse that demonstrates how even the most deceptively simple films can provide a path for human growth and deeper emotional understanding. Film can be an amazing tool for personal development, and a joyous point of access into a life previously unseen — or, more accurately, undrawn, and where the love of film is as inspirational as it is here, it is also highly contagious.

Zero Days

15. “Zero Days”
Well, it would hardly be a documentary list if it didn’t feature an Alex Gibney title or six, now would it? But as much as Gibney’s work as a director, producer, evangelist and ambassador for documentary TV and filmmaking can mean it sometimes feels as though he’s stretching himself a bit thin and wearing rather too many hats, when he connects, he really connects. And that’s what happens with “Zero Days” — and turning in a doc this clear-sighted, witty and terrifying is all the more impressive because of the apparent dullness of the topic. The Stuxnet computer worm was the most worrisome, precedent-setting act of high-level, international cyberespionage (or cyberterrorism, depending on how you look at it) ever to have occurred, and Gibney’s genius in “Zero Days” is in how hard and real he makes that often rather abstract, oh-no-is-someone-going-to-do-math-at-me threat feel. Detailing the evolution, rapid spread, detection and potential future of the worm and somehow making it all rather thrilling is only half the remit though; the doc’s other great asset is how it exposes the self-defeating and desperately undemocratic secrecy surrounding the worm and its origins. Getting right the heart of the matter, and talking to impossibly high-level players (whose frequent “no comment”‘s are almost as illuminating as their actual revelations), the film becomes a canny and enthralling two-pronged attack: on the very idea of the Stuxnet worm; and on those who, for the basest of reasons, want to restrict the public’s access to information about it and the clear and present threat such cyber attacks pose to world security.

My Love Don’t Cross That River

14. “My Love, Don’t Cross That River”
Your heart is probably not, and could never be, prepared for the South Korean documentary “My Love, Don’t Cross That River,” directed by Jin Mo-young. The heartbreaking and poignant film became a smash hit in South Korea, the biggest indie film in the country ever. It captures the twilight of a 75-year love story between a married couple who refer to each other as “Hubby” and “Honey.” At nearly 90 and 100 years old, they go about their lives the way they always have, albeit slightly slower, working and caring for each other, always taking the opportunity to laugh, joke or lovingly tease one another. It’s amazing that they still delight in the other’s company after all these years, and their relationship provides a realistic yet inspirational model for long-term love. It’s not all adorable matching outfits and elderly flirting, however — with Jin’s unobtrusive, observant style and subtle storytelling choices, there is an undercurrent of deep sorrow about the losses that can’t be erased with time. In “My Love, Don’t Cross That River,” time is a gift and a precious commodity of which there is never enough. Be sure to stock up on tissues before you watch.

Fire At Sea

13. “Fire At Sea”
With documentary films so often the very models of content over form, it’s easy to see why Gianfranco Rosi‘s Berlinale Golden Bear winner has become so acclaimed: It’s the rare non-fiction film that is actually more convincing in the painstaking, long-haul, beautifully observed manner of its presentation than in what it is saying as a whole. A film of two separate halves, it’s about the ancient rhythms of life on the Italian island of Lampedusa, especially as seen through the eyes of little Samuele and his family, but it’s also about the migrant crisis of which Lampedusa is on the front line as an endless stream of desperate refugees lands on its shores. Both these strands are fascinating in their own right, but the difference in how they are treated is uncomfortable —Samuele, a riveting pint-sized superstar, is individualized and held up as representative of something greater than himself; the migrants are an undifferentiated mass of the living, the dead and the half-dead. The disconnect between the islanders and the humanitarian catastrophe happening a kilometer down the road is, of course, part of Rosi’s point, but by locating his own, and our, point of view within that island community, it can be argued that the film’s contribution to our understanding of the migrant issue is unedifying at best, and complacent at worst. Yet that portrait of island life, amid which Rosi lived for years in order to get this incredibly intimate and engaging portrait, is of itself hugely valuable, beautiful and moving, and there’s the rub.

iamnotyournegro_01

12. “I Am Not Your Negro”
The best and worst part about this documentary from Raoul Peck is that it’s as relevant today as when James Baldwin unknowingly wrote its script before he died in 1987. Driven largely by just 30 pages of manuscript that would’ve made the book “Remember This House,” “I Am Not Your Negro” tells the history of race in America through the lives and deaths of three civil-rights champions: Medgar Evers, Malcolm X and Martin Luther King, Jr. Peck intersperses historical footage of those men, Baldwin and others with film clips from sources as varied as “Stagecoach,” “The Defiant Ones,” “Lover Come Back” and “Elephant,” presenting a perspective on America, and its views of black men and women, through cinema. But this documentary is at its most piercing when it cuts to contemporary footage of Black Lives Matter and other recent events that demonstrate that we haven’t come as far from the unrest and inequality of the 1960s as we’d like to think. In Baldwin’s absence, his writing is read by Samuel L. Jackson, whose narration restrains his voice to near-unrecognizability, somehow making it even more powerful through control. “I Am Not Your Negro” joins “O.J.: Made In America” and “13th” in the trio of films that are 2016’s essential viewing on race that will incense and engage their audience in the conversation that we continue to need to have.