The last 20 years have been key for a genre that for decades has been considered minor, such as the documentary, to make a qualitative leap (in its budgets and level of production) and quantitative (in terms of the number of annual premieres and spectators).
He has developed a greater artistic sensitivity, has played with his narrative modes and even with subjectivity.
Now, it is one of the main attractions in the massive catalogs of on-demand content platforms and some of its titles are among the most watched at the box office and receive awards beyond the one dedicated to best documentary.
Waltz with Bashir (2008), by Ari Folman
The semi-autobiographical account of the Israeli uses animation to confront the collective amnesia of his country, recalling the massacre of Palestinian refugees in Sabra and Shatila (Lebanon) in 1982. This hypnotic document is an emotional account of what it means to be a soldier in a situation, war, which is more universal than desired.
The film excels at something highly valued in the genre in recent decades: a great technical bill that dares to face the subjective, giving way to artistic sensitivity and psychological depth.
It can be seen on Filmin and on Apple TV
.
01:44
Trailer for the movie 'Waltz with Bashir'
Trailer for the movie 'Waltz with Bashir'.
'Faces and places' (2017), by Agnès Varda
In the early 1980s, the Belgian toured the murals of Los Angeles, reflecting the city's multiculturalism in
Mur Murs
(1981).
More than 30 years later, the tireless filmmaker embarked on a personal journey through rural France with street artist JR, nearly six decades her junior.
Together they create in this film, also through murals, the portrait of a country and a self-referential testimony that serves as Varda's legacy and brings together some of her constants: the clean gaze that she always dedicated to ordinary people, the miracle of his eternal curiosity and his particular way of making art from humanism.
It can be seen on Rakuten TV, Apple TV and Filmin
.
A good number of her previous documentaries are available on MUBI.
02:12
Faces and places.
Trailer
Faces and places.
Trailer
Andrew Jarecki's Capturing the Friedmans (2003)
A typical American family for a pioneering documentary.
They are an upper-middle class Jewish couple with three children.
Everything seems perfect until the police burst in, precisely on Thanksgiving day, and arrest Arnold, the father, and his 18-year-old son, Jesse.
They are accused of pederasty.
The director's narrative agility when putting together this puzzle from the home recordings of the protagonist's family laid the foundations for launching a subgenre, the
true crime
documentary, which is still in fashion almost 20 years later.
It can be seen on Filmin
.
'Honeyland' (2019), by Tamara Kotevska and Ljubomir Stefanov
The relationship between the planet and the humans who inhabit it is increasingly complicated and toxic in every possible way.
Perhaps that is one of the reasons why a documentary made in North Macedonia connected with international audiences a few seasons ago.
The directors followed for years the work of Hatidze Muratova, a middle-aged woman bee collector who lives in Bekirlija, a place without electricity or running water hundreds of kilometers away from another human being other than her own mother.
She could do otherwise, but she only keeps half of the precious honey she collects, leaving the rest to its rightful owners.
Many elements feed the visual poetry of this sustainable and anti-capitalist fable that reminds us that, at least from time to time, another way of life is possible.
It can be seen on Amazon Prime Video and on Filmin.
'Fuocoammare' (2016), by Gianfranco Rossi
The Italian details life on the humble Sicilian island of Lampedusa, closer to the African coast than to Europe and turned into a gateway for immigration.
The film has in mind the more than 20,000 people who have drowned during the voyage since the 1990s, but it is not intended to be a journalistic exercise.
The daily life of the local people occupies as much or more time than the drama about the sea often seen on television news.
There are no apologies or confrontations in this story that prefers to limit itself to confirming the sadness that is shipwrecked on the island's shores.
It can be seen on Filmin
.
01:57
Fuocoammare |
FUTURE PLANET
Fuocoammare trailer.
Werner Herzog's Grizzly Man (2005)
In the documentary genre, tragicomedy can also be worked on, as the German filmmaker demonstrates by following in the footsteps of the naturalist Timothy Treadwell.
The man, eternal aspiring actor and former alcoholic, spent 13 summers living among bears in an Alaskan nature reserve, without weapons or preparation, as if these wild animals were more peaceful than the people he surrounded the rest of the time.
He recorded his experiences.
Until a bear stopped his delusions and killed him along with his girlfriend.
Herzog uses some of this material from his personal archive to analyze human madness, in the style of his
De él Fitzcarraldo
(1982), instead of a bucolic nature documentary.
It can be seen on Pluto TV
.
'Searching for Sugar Man' (2012), directed by Malik Bendjelloul
This is the curious story of a mysterious music star and a world before globalization.
Sixto Rodríguez was an unknown singer-songwriter in the sixties, until two music producers heard his melodies in a Detroit bar.
They recorded two albums with which the success they expected did not come.
He was not the successor of Bob Dylan, but he did succeed in apartheid South Africa through bootleg recordings.
The dignity of his maverick lyrics resonated in the least expected place.
The Swedish director Malik Bendjelloul reconstructs the history of the musician decades later, in a didactic and emotional way and confronting the urban legends surrounding his figure.
He can be seen on Movistar Plus + and on Filmin.
'The silence of others' (2018), by Almudena Carracedo and Robert Bahar
The two directors, screenwriters of this documentary, which they also produce together with the Almodóvar brothers, review individual testimonies about people whose relatives were thrown into ditches or buried in mass graves, still pending exhumation, and about stolen children.
A group of victims of Franco's regime face the so-called
Pact of oblivion,
the Amnesty Law of 1977, approved in the middle of the Transition, with a narrative rhythm typical of a thriller.
It can be seen on Netflix.
02:00
Trailer for 'The Silence of Others' (2018)
Trailer for 'The Silence of Others'.
'Pineapple' (2011), by Wim Wenders
The celebrated German filmmaker convinced his compatriot, the choreographer Pina Bausch, to shoot a documentary about his work.
But she died in 2009, when the film was in pre-production.
The director decided to go ahead with the project, with a 3D feature film about the dance company she founded.
It was shot in urban and natural settings in Wuppertal, the city where the artist and her company lived.
Instead of being a film about Pina Bausch, it is a “for Pina Bausch”.
In addition to paying tribute to a friend, it is a pioneering dance exercise shot in cinematographic format.
It can be seen on Filmin
.
'The look of silence' (2014), by Joshua Oppenheimer
In Indonesia, between 1965 and 1966, a military coup exterminated nearly half a million people in what is one of the largest genocides in recent history.
The director recounted it in
The Act of Killing
(2012), a classic of the documentary genre.
Two years later he created a more personal story around the same theme, through the particular gaze of a relative of one of those executed.
Adi is an eye doctor and was born shortly after his brother's death.
He seeks answers for him and he does so by asking directly some of those responsible for his death.
Both titles can be seen on Filmin
.