The 10 (or 11) best documentaries of 2021

It’s hard to remember any year for documentaries quite like 2021 — and not just because the overall quality was so high. Unusual numbers of documentaries were released this year. This led to lively public discussions about the definition and classification of documentary.

Was it okay for director Morgan Neville to use “deepfake” technology to approximate Anthony Bourdain’s voice in his bio-doc Roadrunner? What about Vanessa Lapa’s team hiring actors to recreate (from an altered script) taped conversations between a screenwriter and an ex-Nazi in Speer takes his talents to Hollywood? Is it possible that HBO would have made a film about Alanis Morissette? She was willing to take part, but she later rejected. The crew that made the music video was a fan favorite. The Summer of Soul were criticized for claiming they’d rescued long-locked-away footage that had actually been found and circulated years before.

This is a good time to talk about deceptive methods documentarians employ to tell their stories. It also helps to discuss biases and how they contribute to the project. It’s important to note, though, that showmanship and even outright trickery shouldn’t automatically be disqualifying when it comes to documentaries. The 11 films on the list below often rely heavily on re-enactments, theatricality, and slanted perspectives… which is what makes them so memorable. Understanding their goals and limitations — really seeing them — makes these docs more rewarding.

(One quick note: This list easily could have been filled just with the terrific music documentaries released this year, so let’s give an honorable mention to Tina, Sparks Brothers, The Volcano, Kenny G – Listen Now, and all eight hours of Peter Jackson’s Recover Your Money.)

All Light. Everywhere

Photo: Hulu

This is the bold debut feature of 2016 Rat FilmTheo Anthony, a cinematic essayist explores Baltimore’s racial-economic divides by following the history of vermin invasions. He continues his work with, All Light EverywhereA different approach is taken to a similar topic. Here, Anthony covers the development of surveillance cameras, while simultaneously weighing some people’s perpetual insistence that if everything was recorded and processed by purportedly “neutral” sources, then both criminal activity and authoritarian malfeasance would be reduced. Anthony doesn’t dismantle this argument so much as approach it from multiple angles. His provocative vignettes explore related topics, like the stealthily subjective ways people process images, and the state’s natural inclination to control who ultimately gets watched.

All Light. EverywhereStreaming is available Hulu.

Attica

Showtime photo

Stanley Nelson’s oral history of the 1971 Attica prisoner uprising is impressively focused, beginning in its opening minutes with the initial riots, and ending with the dehumanizing punishment meted out to the convicts who survived. Nelson briefly retraces his attention to show how the Attica civil-rights movement inspired it. He mainly uses news footage from the time and interviews to give a minute-by-moment account of what took place in that five-day period in New York. The institutional culture, the locals’ attitudes, and a larger American backlash to anti-racist reforms combined to produce an atrocity that still feels fresh.

AtticaStreaming is available Showtime.

Flee

Image by NEON

The first-person testimony of an Afghani refugee given the protectively anonymous name of “Amin” becomes an animated drama rendered in multiple styles, overseen by director Jonas Poher Rasmussen. The story itself is remarkable, following a boy who fled with his family to an anarchic post-communism Russia — and then spent years trying to escape yet again, to one of the Scandinavian countries. What is truly remarkable? Flee so gripping is the contrast between the flat “everyman” character design and the specificity of Amin’s story, which isn’t just about a kid running and hiding, but about someone who did all this while struggling with secrets he was afraid to share even with his loved ones.

FleeThis film is only currently available in limited theatrical release.

Operation Varsity Blues/A Cop Movie

Netflix Photo

Sure, it’s a bit of a cheat to sneak two movies into one slot. These two movies have much in common, besides being both available on Netflix. Netflix has been a great home for some truly adventurous documentaries. Chris Smith’s Operation Varsity Blues, The College Admissions Scam tells the story of the recent university-admissions cheating scandal (the one that embarrassed celebrities like Lori Loughlin and Felicity Huffman), by combining interviews with dramatic re-enactments of the recorded conversations between parents and a persuasive standardized testing and college application “fixer” (played by Matthew Modine). And in Alonso Ruizpalacios’ The Cop MovieThe romanticized story of two Mexican City police officers becomes a fictionalized version of a true story. It is told by two actors who distrust law enforcement in real life. Both films present abstracted versions of “the truth” — while also encouraging the audience to notice how any established system can be manipulated by the powerful.

Operation Varsity BluesStreaming is available Netflix. The Cop MovieIt is also available streaming Netflix.

Procession

Netflix Photo

For this stirring documentary, director Robert Greene worked with a group of adult survivors of sexual abuse — all molested as boys by Catholic priests — to help them process their trauma by recreating some of their most painful memories on film. ProcessionThis article focuses on the anger that these men have towards the authorities for not punishing the many crimes they committed. The story is about the therapeutic nature of these men’s experiences. They can share similar stories or revisit the exact places they were abused. After they’ve been told for most of their lives to forget about what happened (mainly because their testimony makes people uncomfortable), it’s epiphanic for some of them to make the pain real again.

ProcessionStreaming is available Netflix.

The Summer of Soul

Photo: Searchlight Pictures

To tell the story of the long-forgotten Harlem Cultural Festival of 1969 — a series of performances featuring a stunning lineup of jazz, pop and R&B legends — director Ahmir “Questlove” Thompson and his team made some bold creative choices, by integrating interviews and vintage news clips into the old performance footage. Questlove may have been a little bit hesitant to show the uncut songs of Nina Simone (Sly and the Family Stone), the Staple Singers and the 5th Dimension. The Summer of Soul (…Or When the Revolution Couldn’t Be Televised. The film retains a lot of live music but also creates a historical context. It has a reflective tone that makes the songs more meaningful.

The Summer of SoulStreaming is available Hulu.

The Truffle Hunters

Photo: Sony Pictures

In the wilds of Northern Italy, a handful of eccentric old connoisseurs and their adorable dogs search for one of the most prized foodstuffs on Earth — and then they gather with their friends, family, and colleagues to complain that the business isn’t what it used to be. The film was directed by Gregory Kershaw and Michael Dweck in long, well-constructed takes. The Truffle HuntersThe movie is like a set of fine art portraits. It depicts a long-standing culture that’s being threatened by deforestation and industrialization. The movie has a relevant social message, but it’s presented as a collection of quirky sketches, featuring clever humans who just want to keep providing something special to chefs and diners.

Truffle huntersStreaming is available Starz.

Val

Photo: Amazon Studios

Val Kilmer has shot home-video footage of himself and his castmates throughout his acting career — even back when he was still a promising young student, he documented both behind-the-scenes goofing around, and his own rehearsal process. Now slowed considerably by his long struggle with throat cancer, Kilmer and the directing team of Leo Scott and Ting Poo (plus some skilled editors, and Kilmer’s own son Jack as the narrator) have turned those old tapes and some new slice-of-life scenes into an unusual kind of cinematic autobiography. Val only tells one side of the movie star’s story, but Kilmer is disarmingly self-critical throughout the film, both appreciating how good his life has been and lamenting that he didn’t make the most of it.

ValStreaming is available Prime Video.

The Velvet Underground

Photo by Apple TV Plus

One of the greatest bands ever, the Velvet Underground, is a pioneer in blending primitivist garage rock, avant-garde sound, and poetic explorations into the demimonde. Yet during their 1960s heyday, the group was largely ignored — or actively dismissed as a minor pet project from one of their early backers Andy Warhol. Since there isn’t a lot of vintage VU footage, for his documentary The Velvet Underground director Todd Haynes shot new handsomely lit and framed new interviews — including several with people who ran in the same cultural circles as the band’s frontman Lou Reed and their cellist John Cale — and then threaded them between mesmerizing clips from old experimental films. Haynes successfully recreated being an art-lover in New York, back during a decadent era.

The Velvet UndergroundStreaming is available Apple TV+.

The Viewing Booth

Photo: Roco Films

This 2021 documentary is among the most straightforward, but it’s also the most intriguing and disturbing. Director Ra’anan Alexandrowicz invited college kids to watch and comment on scenes of Israeli soldiers interacting with Palestinians in the West Bank. The reactions of one young, bright woman, who was a pro-Israeli college student, fascinated Ra’anan Alexandrowicz. She became skeptical about the footage, but then changed her mind and began to be more open-minded. The Viewing BoothThis film is a counter-comedy to late-night television comedy segments where a reporter mocks and interviews ill-informed protestors. The film, which is far from being a reproach to someone who has strong opinions but documents the way that even people with open minds filter information through pre-existing worldviews.

The Viewing BoothCan be rented Straight from the film directors.