The 10 best documentaries of 2022

Social media and gossip websites make it seem like everyone knows everything about the famous and wealthy. And yet in 2022’s crop of outstanding documentaries, one dominant theme was celebrity intimacy. When people spend too much time in public, they often loose control of their story. As the media and the public force them to write soap opera stories filled with betrayals. Film after film, 2022 saw the stars push back and take us inside their mental-health problems and families traumas. They also explained how it’s hard to keep critics and fans happy.

It’s possible to make a “10 best 2022 documentaries” list just from those movies: Jennifer Lopez: Jennifer Lopez HalftimeThis article is about the stress involved in putting on a Super Bowl Show. Louis Armstrong’s Black & Blues (which tells a jazz hero’s story via his private archives), Lucy and Desi (a look back at one of TV’s most volatile couples), Nothing compares (tracking the rise and fall of Sinéad O’Connor), Tanya Tucker Returns(about a country-music icon reluctantly going back to basics) Selena Gomez: My Mind & Me (a harrowing glimpse at a superstar’s performance anxieties), Spring Awakening: Those You’ve Known This is where the stars of Broadway’s smash show reflect back on their youth StutzJonah Hill is honored by both his therapist (and his therapy) Sr. (Robert Downey Jr.’s simultaneous salute to his filmmaker father and lament for the drug-fueled lifestyle they once both led), and Tony Hawk: Don’t Let the Wheels Go Flat A study on athletic obsessiveness

All of them fell short of our final list cut. Some of these list-makers are able to capture their spirit. All these films, including the one above, show that great documentary storytellers can find new and interesting angles to material we know. Whether it’s celebrities, gun violence, systemic racism, addiction, or love, these movies made common problems feel new.

10. The Princess

Photo: Alamy Stock Photo/HBO Max

The British royal family was in the news a lot in 2022, perhaps as much as they’ve been since the very public rise and fall of the romance between the current King Charles III and his late ex-wife, Diana Spencer. Ed Perkins’ surprisingly intense The Princess tells Diana’s story from her first introduction to the public as a bride-to-be to her later embrace of philanthropy and social activism — and then her eventual death while trying to flee relentless paparazzi. Perkins uses only home-movie footage and news clips to highlight the fame pressures that Diana was subject to. It’s a cautionary tale about what happens when the press and the public turn a real person into a fantasy character.

The PrincessStreaming is available HBO Max.

9. All the Beauty and the Bloodshed

Foto by Neon

Photographer Nan Goldin rose to prominence in the New York art world by documenting the communities she lived in throughout the ’70s and ’80s: the queer folks, the punks, the sex workers, and the political radicals. Laura Poitras’ documentary All the Beauty and the Bloodshed is partly about how Goldin’s creative journey was shaped by living among misfits, artists who built their own scenes, then kept them going through the ravages of AIDS and drug addiction. The movie also focuses on the controversy that Goldin has created as an activist, demanding museums end their ties to the Sacklers. This wealthy art patron family made much of the opioid crisis by making a lot. Poitras insightfully connects these pieces of Goldin’s life, showing how grassroots organizing and radical honesty drive her.

All the Beauty and the BloodshedThis film is only currently available in limited theatrical release.

8. Is It Black Enough??

Image courtesy of Netflix

Elvis Mitchell is a veteran movie critic who draws inspiration from 1970s blaxploitation films like this thrilling blend of cultural history, personal essay and historical perspective. Super FlyAnd Foxy brown This is a great way to learn more about the complex history of Black representations in American film. You can find it all here Is It Black Enough??Here are clips of action photos like the smash hit ShaftAlternate with scenes of long-forgotten weirdities. All interspersed by commentary from Black showbiz icons like Samuel L. Jackson and Whoopi Goldberg. Mitchell is the voice of reason and the principal character. His vast knowledge and extensive experience in cinema allows him to see the bigger picture even in the most mundane moments.

Is It Black Enough??Streaming is available Netflix.

7. Janes

Image by Max

The most obvious selling point for Tia Lessin and Emma Pildes’ thoughtful look back at abortion-rights history is that it’s suddenly relevant, given the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn its previous Roe V. Wade decision. It would be a disservice to treat the film like homework. JanesThe book, which is less about abortion than about how feminist thought developed in the 1960s is more about underground networks and the ways they helped to spread the gossip between the women. The surviving members of the clandestine Chicago health care organization JANE tell stories not just about connecting desperate women with helpful doctors, but about how they let those sisters know they weren’t alone.

JanesStreaming is available HBO Max.

6. Second Chance

Showtime Photo

Many true-crime documentaries today just focus too much on the sinister details of sex and violence. To fill the time available on streaming or cable TV, too many have been split into several parts. Ramin Bahrani’s strange, surprising Second Chance runs a refreshingly zippy 89 minutes, and though its story is full of death and conspiracies, it’s more of a pointed character sketch about a colorful bulletproof vest magnate who sold himself as a friend to law enforcement and the military while his company was putting lives at stake by cutting corners. Though often funny and gripping, this film is really about how we define “criminal,” and about the people we as a society — rightly or wrongly — consider worth saving.

Second ChanceIt’s currently in limited theatrical release. Showtime Anytime.

5. Love is the Fire of Love

Image: National Geographic Documentary Films

When French volcanologists Katia and Maurice Krafft died on the job in 1991, they left behind a voluminous archive of notes, tapes, and photographs, which collectively offered insight into the decades they spent risking their lives to understand one of nature’s most dangerous phenomenons. But the Kraffts’ real legacy was their film and video footage, which captures eye-popping images of smoke and lava, dwarfing their fragile human figures. Sara Dosa’s Love is the Fire of Love sets those pictures — full of searing color and eerie landscapes, all abstract and alien — to a haunting score by Air’s Nicolas Godin and narration by Miranda July, turning this couple’s romantic adventures into something grandly cinematic.

Love is the Fire of LoveStreaming is available Disney Plus.

4. In Virtual Reality, We Met

Image: Joe Hunting/HBO Max

A welcome counterpoint to alarmist takes about alienation and extremism in the social media age, Joe Hunting’s lively animated documentary In Virtual Reality, We MetConsiders how online interaction has proven to be beneficial for people who have physical, neurological and psychological limitations. This movie, which was recorded entirely in the VRChat online community, celebrates real relationships. The film hails the creativity and good humor that led users to create so many attractive gathering spaces filled with sexy, whimsically funny human-animal hybrids.

In Virtual Reality, We MetStreaming is available HBO Max.

3. Descendant

Image: Participant/Netflix

Margaret Brown is most well-known for making nuanced documentaries about Southern culture. Her 2008 documentary “The Southern Culture” was a great example of this. The Order of Myths.Find out more DescendantBrown took her camera to Alabama’s coast, where amateur treasure-hunters and historians were searching for a notorious shipwreck. In 2019, the discovery of the Clotilda — the last known slave transport vessel to reach American shores, arriving in the mid-19th century — sparked a lot of interest and conversation internationally. But for this film, what matters is that all the attention gave the Black Alabamans of “Africatown” a chance to reflect on how their ancestors’ stories have largely been erased from the historical record, leaving only folklore and anecdotes as the way the community preserves its truths.

DescendantStreaming is available Netflix.

2. Riotsville USA

Magnolia Pictures

In the late 1960s, civil unrest across America led to a national debate about possible solutions, and to two major initiatives — both covered in Sierra Pettengill’s remarkable and revelatory Riotsville USA. In one corner, a bipartisan commission studied the riots’ root causes, and found that the best way to reduce crime and violence would be to improve education, introduce job programs, and acknowledge institutional racism. A coalition of law enforcement and military leaders built fake cities in the middle nowhere. They used these blocks to teach soldiers and officers how to break the skulls and arrest ethnic minorities and hippies. Assembled almost entirely from archival film and TV clips, Pettengill’s film is set more than 50 years ago, but feels like it’s about the 2020s.

Riotsville USA, is now available to purchase Amazon, AppleGoogle Play and.

1. Moonage Daydream

Image by Neon

Don’t come to Brett Morgen’s sprawling, sensational cinematic experience Moonage Daydream Expect to find out the basics about David Bowie, the pop singer and experimenter. With the immense help of the Bowie estate — which gave the director access to a vast archive of audio and video — Morgen has produced a kaleidoscopic 140-minute movie, blending old film clips and cranked-up rock music into a dizzying swirl of sound and vision. The film frames its subject’s frequent metamorphoses as a performer and a public figure as the work of a brilliant actor, disappearing into the role of an eccentric celebrity as a way of entertaining his fans while keeping his real life and self partially shielded from view.

Moonage DaydreamIt is also available to rent and purchase Amazon, AppleGoogle Play and.