20. “Dolores”
“Yes, we can” may have been the rallying cry of the Obama era, but as the former president readily confirmed, that ennobling phrase was dreamed up by another revolutionary figure: Dolores Huerta, the legendary activist who fought for the rights of farm workers across the nation alongside Cesar Chavez. Directed by Peter Bratt, “Dolores”chronicles Huerta’s astounding life using grainy archival footage and interviews with everyone from Huerta’s children to Hillary Clinton. That’s another way of saying that Dolores is, in many ways, a standard-issue talking-heads documentary. But Bratt’s conventional storytelling allows us to get a beautifully clear-eyed glimpse of a woman so brave and unyielding that she was willing to call out sexism even among her political allies and survived having her spleen removed after being brutalized by police at a peaceful demonstration. Bratt also shows us more recent footage of Huerta—at 87, she’s still standing up for progressive causes. The fight goes on. — Bennett Campbell Ferguson
19. “Whose Streets?”
It’s hard for any documentary on historical events to feel definitive, especially if it’s about something that only happened a few years back. There may yet be some great “OJ: Made In America” style epic to be made about the protests in Ferguson after the death of black teenager Michael Brown at the hands of a cop, but in terms of capturing the mood and reality of the time from the ground, it’s hard to imagine anyone doing it better than Sabaah Folayan and Damon Davis do with “Whose Streets?” The filmmakers, who are activists and organizers as well as directors, mix their own work with found footage from social media and elsewhere to visceral, powerful effect, not examining the case that sparked the protests as much as the protest itself, the way it waxed and waned like an organic thing, and the disagreements within the movement that have only become more bitterly divisive as time has gone on. Individual figures stand out, but it’s really a movie about the power of the collective, a testament to citizen journalism, and in some ways less a documentary than a piece of historical evidence — firsthand testimony that crystallizes one of the most intractable issues defining the interesting times in which we’re all cursed to be currently living. — OL
18. “The Departure”
Take nine Post-Its. Write down three of your greatest aspirations, three people you love, and three things that are precious to you. Slowly crumple up each and throw it away, until there’s nothing left. Japanese Buddhist monk Ittetsu Nemoto has each of his pupils conduct this exercise, explaining that it represents suicide. This sequence sets the tone of Lana Wilson’s revelatory second feature “The Departure.” The documentary follows Nemoto as he counsels suicidal people, fights heart failure, and parties through the pain, all while growing into fatherhood and middle age. Wilson first drew critical attention with her 2013 feature “After Tiller,” about late-term abortion following the assassination of Dr. George Tiller. Both in her debut feature and in “The Departure,” Wilson displays incomparable deftness and empathy. This Tribeca premiere and Independent Spirit Award Best Documentary nominee offers a contemplative portrait of a multifaceted man, immersing viewers in Nemoto’s eccentric, exquisite life. Wilson welcomes audiences into her subject’s world with humor and delicacy, marrying introspective dialogue with Emily Topper’s luminous visuals. No 2017 work better explores the intersection between life and mortality, or more expertly balances authorial distance and compassion. — Lena Wilson
17. “Wormwood”
It’s almost forty years now since Errol Morris first weirded audiences out with his first dispatch from the crevices of forgotten America, “Gates of Heaven.” His latest is called “Wormwood” [our review] and it shows that the nation’s foremost cinematic biographer hasn’t lost a step. In this slow-burn masterpiece, we hear the life story of Eric Olson, whose father Frank Olson, a military researcher connected to the CIA’s infamous MK-Ultra program, fell to his death from a Manhattan hotel room in 1953. Whether Frank was pushed or jumped, and how much if at all it was due to MK-Ultra’s focus on LSD and mind control, has obsessed Eric since losing his father at a very young age. Morris constructs the movie in a swirl of moods, from Eric’s no-nonsense rat-a-rat delivery to the camera to his audacious recreations of the events surrounding Frank’s death (these are shot in lusciously dark tones and feature Peter Sarsgaard, Molly Parker, and Tim Blake Nelson). It’s a byzantine story filled with mystery and surprisingly plausible conspiracies give surprising credence by Eric’s haunted yet somehow level-headed approach to the dark, beating heart of Cold War paranoia. “Wormwood” was released as both a six-part series on Netflix and a four-hour theatrical edit. The latter is somewhat overwhelming in its oceanic flow. But given the nature of Eric’s obsession and the ever-retreating nature of the truth he seeks, it’s best to be overwhelmed. — Chris Barsanti
16. “Icarus”
One of the most valuable aspects of documentary filmmaking is its dexterity, the way that real life can surprise and invigorate a concept and send it hurtling off in the most unexpected of directions. This is truly the excitement of Bryan Fogel’s “Icarus,” a film whose engaging first half, in which Fogel decides to do a Morgan Spurlock-style experiment by pumping himself full of drugs before entering a gruelling cycling race, is blasted out of the water by its far more knotty and psychologically rich second half. In the course of Fogel’s experiment, he meets and bonds with Grigory Rodchenkov the endearingly eccentric head of Russia’s anti-doping unit, who paradoxially agrees to help him dope up and beat the tests he himself designed and administered. The friendship between the two men grows as Rodchenkov is first threatened with exposure and then turns whistleblower in the single biggest doping scandal ever to hit world sports. How much of “Icarus” was pure serendipity and how much was great filmmaking is up for debate, but the resulting film is fascinating on a bunch of different levels, not least in its topicality, with Russia being banned from the Seoul Winter Olympics only a few weeks ago as a result of revelations that started with Rodchenkov and were almost incidentally witnessed by Fogel. — JK