Michael Ward on Saturday, January 02

THE BEST DOCUMENTARIES OF 2020

2020 Image.jpg

Through its various different forms and presentations, the documentary film has the potential to inform, anger, excite, and make us react in ways unique to the movie-going experience. More than ever, in a pandemic where (most) of us stayed home and quarantined for much of the year, we saw more and more movies emerge on streaming platforms. A significant proliferation of documentaries reached more and more viewers easier than ever before.

Documentary filmmakers were helped, in large part, by the expansion of the growing Video on Demand market. Streaming platforms embraced the medium like never before. Multi-part documentary series’ became the newest binge watching experience. Shows like Tiger King: Murder, Mayhem, and Madness, The Last Dance, Cheer, The Vow, McMillion$, I’ll Be Gone in the Dark, Hillary, Surviving Jeffrey Epstein are only a handful of the episodic documentaries which created trending topics on Twitter, unending Facebook posts, and all those virtual watercooler-style chats with co-workers, family, and friends via text, FaceTime or Zoom.

COVID-19 impacted everything in 2020, and will continue to do so into the early months of 2021. Movies and television, like all great art, help bring us together - even if we are going to work and school virtually and reckoning with the impact of nearly 350,000 Americans lost to COVID-19 and another 1.8 million people who have died globally. For many of us, we are directly or indirectly connected to someone who has suffered loss or pain and anguish from the virus, or have loved ones who are not able to experience any form of a Happy New Year.

The impacts of such catastrophic loss will be immeasurable for years to come. Two of the year’s best documentaries not only showed us the horrific realities in the initial stages of the pandemic’s arrival in China (76 Days), but also provided a damning, irrefutable, of-the-moment look at the bungled Trump Administration response to the pandemic’s reach in the United States (Totally Under Control).

In the case of 76 Days, MTV Documentary Films put their stamp and relatively dormant imprint on one of the best films of the year. For Totally Under Control, Hulu subscribers got to see the movie through a partnership with the streaming service and NEON, the independent film studio which helped drive Parasite to its historic Oscar victories in February 2020.

All of this to say, the reach for documentary filmmakers grew exponentially: MTV - Hulu - Netflix - CNN - Amazon Prime - Apple TV+ - Disney+ - they all turned to documentaries to bring new audiences and eyes to their services. Over the course of 2020, nearly 400 documentaries saw some from of a release and Netflix accounted for 36 feature-length film documentaries and a couple dozen episodic documentary series by themselves.

There is no doubt we are in a boom period for nonfiction filmmaking and storytelling. The 25 films listed below begin with the Top 10 best documentaries I watched in 2020, and offers 15 more to consider. Even if the subject matter does not appeal to you, the stories documentaries share with us deserve to be told. And if more opportunities and platforms exist for those stories to reach us and inform our views of the world, I truly think we can all be the better because of it.

So, let’s count them down and learn how these movies came to us from the filmmakers’ own words.

10. BLOODY NOSE, EMPTY POCKETS
Director: Bill Ross IV, Turner Ross
Release Date: July 10, 2020
Where Available: VOD Rental through all major platforms

When the inhabitants of a New Orleans watering hole known as “The Roaring 20’s” face the bar’s final hours, the regulars arrive throughout the day and night, sharing stories, getting drunk, and facing the realities of what life will mean for them when their safe place and makeshift sanctuary closes its doors for good.

Bloody Nose, Empty Pockets pushes the boundaries of what a documentary can and should be. The film’s premise is a construct by the filmmakers - brothers Turner and Bill Ross. The bar in question is still operational and the “regulars” include a few professional actors (Michael Martin is given a particular storyline to perform) and real-life civilians. This blended reality makes for a fascinating experience, where unscripted conversations and behaviors are loosely connected to a pre-determined premise, as people get exceedingly drunk and wrestle with real emotions, fears, and uncertainties in their lives.

Turner Ross spoke to Indiewire in January 2020: “Outside that bar door you see the great manifestation of American excess. You see American affluence. Why are these often transient people in the bright lights seeking the shadows of a dark bar? For us that was intrinsic in what we were after and the great framework of the film.

We spent so much time thinking about what happens at certain times of day and what is the arc of a drunk, of the closing night, and of the themes we want to get through. So, if there are five people in the bar who don’t know each other well at 2:00 in the afternoon what’s the greatest and most honest thing bringing them together? ‘Jeopardy.’ Give them some drinks and turn on ‘Jeopardy’ and they’re going to find common ground and find things to argue and talk about. Just little things like that, like ‘John you’re going in at 10:30am with a bag of donuts, go.’ And it just goes from there.”

9. TOTALLY UNDER CONTROL
Director: Alex Gibney, Ophelia Harutyunyan, Suzanne Hillinger
Release Date: October 13, 2020
Where Available: Hulu

Public health officials discuss the U.S. government's response to the COVID-19 pandemic.

In damning and factual detail, Totally Under Control leaves no stone unturned in illustrating the timeline of the Trump Administration’s response to the COVID-19 outbreak in the United States. Filmed and created in secret, directors Alex Gibney, Ophelia Harutyunyan, and Suzanne Hillinger interview whistleblowers, former Administration officials, epidemiologists, politicians, and medical experts to provide an irrefutable, maddening, and enraging timeline of our government’s failed response to the pandemic.

Notably, the film was finished the day before President Trump tested positive for the Coronavirus.

Hillinger told Forbes in November: “When the pandemic hit so many people started making films, and a lot of them still are and they're starting to come out. I certainly had the same urge [to ask] ‘what is the story that I can help tell?’ When Alex (Gibney) called we knew it was going to be a crazy schedule, we knew there were going to be challenges. By the time we started, New York had been fully shut down, most of the country was, so we knew there was going to be some creative problem solving happening to figure out how to do this and do it safely. We were able to put together kind of a dream team of really hard working, smart people from our researchers to our editors, everyone was like ‘all hands on deck,’ so we [made a film] in five months and it was pretty amazing.”

Gibney (on his biggest takeaway): “To me, the most terrifying thing that we discovered was the intense likelihood that this administration intentionally slow walked testing for political reasons. [They thought] if you don't test and you don't know how many people are sick, and then maybe it'll all go away, people won't get so upset, and the economy will be great. The irony is that slow testing is what allowed the disease to spread, it put us all at risk. And the idea that it may have been done intentionally is terrifying. That is the biggest thing for me.”

Harutyunyan: “Very early on the administration removed scientists from the messaging and completely took over the information coming out of the White House. People didn't know what they could trust. The CDC in these situations is supposed to be the agency talking to people and giving messaging, [and] the messaging has to be very clear. At the same time [...] we were getting one thing from the CDC, one thing from the White House, one thing from somewhere else, and people were extremely confused. Sidelining the scientists, not letting them speak to the public... I think [...] that was a huge failure.”

8. THE HISTORY OF THE SEATTLE MARINERS: SUPERCUT EDITION
Director: Jon Bois
Release Date: September 24, 2020
Where Available: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TIgK56cAjfY&ab_channel=SecretBase

The Seattle Mariners are eminently lovable, profoundly human, and outrageously weird. This is the story of the most fascinating sports team on Earth, as told by Secret Base’s Jon Bois and Alex Rubenstein.

Is it a visual podcast? A PowerPoint presentation? Or a documentary film? Yes.

The History of the Seattle Mariners: Supercut Edition is an amazing 3 hour and 40 minute creation that flies right on by, documenting the unbelievable fortunes of a Major League Baseball team who have the legacy of being the only team in MLB to never play in a single World Series game. Creators Jon Bois and Alex Rubenstein dig deep into the newspaper clippings, clubhouse tales, and rumors, completing a factual, comprehensive, statistical and chart-driven dive on the bizarre stories, incidents, and situations which have made the Mariners, in their view, the most fascinating professional sports team ever. This is truly the most unique documentary of 2020.

In writing about the project on the SBNation blog, Editor-in-Chief Graham MacAree shared: “Being a Mariners fan is frequently traumatic, but despite the sustained, impressive and yet still somehow surprising ineptitude the overall experience hasn’t been all that upsetting. There is something about this team that sort of transcends sports, turning an 18-year playoff drought into an extremely funny dark comedy, rendered even funnier by our willing participation.

Technically, the Mariners are a sports team. Admittedly, they’re a team that probably should never have existed, and is lucky to still exist, one that’s squandered more or less every good thing that’s ever happened to them in increasingly bizarre and upsetting ways.

The Mariners should not have any fans. None! Their default state, disguised by a seven-year blip, is rampant and frequently surreal futility. Just how surreal (and no matter what you’re expecting, you’ll be surprised) is something you’ll discover during Jon and Alex’s documentary. Yet the fans still exist, bound to this odyssey of a team by inexplicable, unbreakable ties.”

7. WELCOME TO CHECHNYA
Director: David France
Release Date: July 3, 2020
Where Available: HBO Max

Activists risk their lives to confront Russian leader Ramzan Kadyrov and his government-directed campaign to detain, torture and execute LGBTQ Chechens.

Shot in secret, through hidden cameras, cell phones, Go Pros, and other concealed devices, Welcome to Chechnya is a harrowing, unforgettable look at the “Gay Purge,” an effort led by the Chechen government to round up and detain people believed to be gay, bisexual, or transgender. First reported in the spring of 2017, hundreds of people have gone missing, been tortured or killed, in a sustained effort to conduct a so-called “prophylactic sweep” of the country.

The risks involved in documenting the work of activists attempting to expose these practices, while also freeing innocent people proved so significant and dangerous, director David France oversaw a groundbreaking technique where people’s real identities were hidden by imposing the real faces of allies and activists from outside of the country. The stories are real, the faces are not, all in an effort to protect innocent people and minimize their risk in speaking their truth.

France spoke to NPR in June 2020: “This really is the net result of (Russian President Vladimir) Putin's weaponization of homophobia in Russia beginning…with the adoption of the so-called gay propaganda law that makes it illegal to say anything that might be deemed in favor of LGBTQ Russians in the presence of minors because that would be disruptive to the minors.

And so when the Kremlin is doing that, then when you reach down to the further extremes of the ideologies within that very large country, you find people like (Head of the Chechen Republic, Ramzan) Kadyrov, who interprets that in the most horrific way. But I see Kadyrov as being like the tip of the whip that Putin is swinging. And that's why Putin is doing nothing to intervene.”

6. ATHLETE A
Director: Bonni Cohen, Jon Shenk
Release Date: June 25, 2020
Where Available: Netflix

Reporters from The Indianapolis Star expose Dr. Larry Nassar's sexual abuse of young gymnasts.

As awful as they are, the news stories and reports failed to properly document the scope of the depravity and abhorrent abuse. Athlete A is a searing, unflinching, gut-punch of a film which exposes the depth that abuse ran unchecked and was covered up and ignored by an institution Americans celebrate and champion every four years - the United States Women’s Gymnastics Team.

Tracking the steps taken by reporters with The Indianapolis Star newspaper, directors Bonni Cohen and Jon Shenk’s film focuses in on team physician, Larry Nassar, and the more than 500 women who came forward with allegations of abuse committed by the doctor over a near 20-year period of time.

Cohen and Shenk spoke to the Chicago Media Project prior to the film’s premiere at the virtual DOC10 festival this past April.

Cohen: “That’s the crux of why we wanted to make the film, this new lens of looking at Olympic sports. And how we consume it as Americans. Gymnastics is the most watched and the most sponsored and has the most advertising dollars thrown at it, so it’s a beloved area for Americans. But the idea with the film is that you’re going to find out how these Olympians are created, and it’s this dark and abusive space. And in the end when you start to analyze it, we’re all culpable of it. How could we all let this go on?”

Shenk (addressing a pivotal scene near the end of the film): “Of course, as you know, part the story of the “Me Too” movement is that so many women (and men) have been through these troubling circumstances…we started filming Athlete A in 2017, before that victim impact statement happened in the Michigan courtroom, and that was the most public thing that happened in the Nassar story. When you have something that powerful in your tool chest as a filmmaker, it presents an editing challenge. That victims impact statement scene…it’s a rising up, it’s this incredibly hopeful and beautiful moment and as amazing as some of the athletic feats you see in the film.”

5. DICK JOHNSON IS DEAD
Director: Kirsten Johnson
Release Date: October 2, 2020
Where Available: Netflix

A filmmaker and her elderly father stage his death in various ways to help them face his inevitable demise.

This idea: Staging a number of fantastical ways in which your father may die does, at first blush, seem a bit morbid and bleak. Yet, in the hands of gifted director Kirsten Johnson, Dick Johnson is Dead is a beautiful celebration of life tenderly told through the lens of a daughter’s love of her father.

The film creates numerous scenarios with which Dick could perish and he is tickled to participate in acting out every last one of them. Over the course of the film, Dick, a retired psychiatrist, is diagnosed with dementia and the movie takes on even more poignancy. The film views death as an inevitability. Though what seems sad and tragic becomes quite the opposite, as Kirsten and her father create a tapestry of experiences around the galvanizing message of living for every moment.

Kirsten Johnson spoke with NPR in October: “One of the primary places this came from was the experience we had making my previous film Cameraperson and this wonderful editor I work with, Nels Bangerter. He placed a shot of my mother alive after a shot of her ashes in a box. And it so startled me, I really had the impression that she came back to life. It was like, ‘Oh, right, cinema can do this!’ And then, of course, I had a dream in which I saw an open casket and a man who wasn't my father sat up and said, ‘I'm Dick Johnson and I'm not dead yet.’ And it just clicked something in me, like, ‘Wait a minute! My time is running out with him.’

(On her father’s dementia): “It's doing so many things to him. He is distilled to his essence, which I would say, he can call me multiple times in a day and simply say to me, ‘I'm just checking to see if you know that I love you.’ And that is who he has been in my entire life, just affirming that. All of these words are applicable. I do think the loss of his capacity to have an extended conversation, an analytic conversation — it's a profound loss for him and for me. But, every once in a while I can still come in with a question and he'll just go deep analytic and be right in there for the length of that question. So in some ways, it's taught me new ways to think and talk and interact with him.”

4. BOYS STATE
Director: Amanda McBaine, Jesse Moss
Release Date: July 31, 2020
Where Available: Apple TV+

Texas teens learn about American democracy by organizing political parties and running a mock government.

In polarized political times, Boys State takes us into the political futures of more than just Democrats and Republicans, showing us how teenagers (boys, in this case) begin to learn and understand the machinations with which the gamesmanship of politics is really played.

Amanda McBaine and Jesse Moss’ film embeds with 1,000 teenage boys attending the annual Boys State conference in Austin, Texas for one week. Divided into two parties - the Federalists and the Nationalists - students run for office and in addition to leading their party, the top prize is being named the Governor. As campaign managers learn and grow with their influence, the candidates experience the good, the bad, and ugly that comes with running for political office. Focused mostly through the perspective of Steven Garza, the Nationalist candidate, and Federalist campaign manager Ben Feinstein, McBaine and Moss lay bare our political divides and question what awaits our next generation of political leadership.

The directors shared their thoughts with The Credits in August.

Moss: “We see two models of leadership, of empathy versus a sort of militant strength. We understand that those are being worked out in national politics in different ways. It’s a kind of struggle of optimism and hope versus a dark cynicism. We hadn’t fully anticipated the degree to which we would have a really valuable prism, or perspective, into this contest of wills and masculine identity formation.”

McBaine: “We had these big questions in our heads about the health of democracy, and polarization, and so many things. When we got to Texas, we recognized what an incredible window we had to boyhood in 2018, around when #MeToo and toxic masculinity conversations were happening. Suddenly we saw we had this vantage point into how our young men are growing up in this atmosphere, and to what extent that plays into politics. We saw machismo and fronting, and tribal groupthink. Some of it is very Lord of the Flies. I had a lot of preconceived ideas of what I’d see, and a lot of them were met, but then there was an enormous amount of surprise in the range of masculinity that I saw, and the range of power that empathic leadership had, even in this space.”

3. 76 DAYS
Director: Weixi Chan, Hao Wu, Anonymous
Release Date: December 4, 2020
Where Available: Virtual Cinemas

Health care workers and patients combat the COVID-19 outbreak during a lockdown in Wuhan, China.

Undoubtedly, dozens of films will be made, documentary or otherwise, detailing the 2020 outbreak of COVID-19 and the devastating effects it has had on the world. An astonishing historical record of the first wave of Coronavirus is found in 76 Days, a cinéma vérité-embedded look at several hospitals in Wuhan, China, as the virus first raged out of control.

Weixi Chan, a journalist, teamed with director/producer Hao Wu, along with a second journalist credited as “Anonymous,” gaining unprecedented access and witnessing first-hand the unrelenting emotional toll these nurses, doctors, and hospital personnel experienced day after day. While not all patients featured in the film are COVID-19-related, the virus is always a presence, defining and reinventing hospital protocols and the psychological mettle necessary to commit to this work day in and day out.

Hao discussed 76 Days with Variety in December 2020. “I was in New York, and my co-directors Anonymous and Weixi Chen had been filming since January. To this day, I’ve still not met them in person. We had one video call and that was right at the beginning. After that, we spent time collaborating over the cloud where they would send me rushes. That’s how we worked through this process - virtually.

I reached out to over a dozen filmmakers for this. As soon as I saw their footage, I was shaken and moved to tears because it transports you to the frontline. It was so personal. Even now, we don’t have much visual evidence of how horrible COVID-19 is. That’s for privacy and hospitals fear liability.

I think, in the West, we think of the data and statistics, or the political debates. But for me, this was about the human face of COVID. It was about sharing personal stories and experiences.

I wanted people to go on the emotional journey.”

2. TIME
Director: Garrett Bradley
Release Date: October 9, 2020
Where Available: Amazon Prime

Entrepreneur Fox Rich spends the last two decades campaigning for the release of her husband, Rob G. Rich, who is serving a 60-year prison sentence for a robbery they both committed in the early 1990s in a moment of desperation.

Time is unapologetic in its stance that the criminal justice system seeks not to rehabilitate families but drive them apart. Our narrator, Fox Rich, is unrelenting in her push to reunite her family, as her husband, Rob, serves a 60-year prison sentence with no possibility of parole. Under advising of his attorney at the time, Rob refused to take a plea bargain for an armed robbery he and Fox committed. Fox, on the other hand, took the deal and served a little over three years.

With five sons and working tirelessly to support her family for more than 20 years, Fox fights constantly to bring Rob home. Initially, director Garrett Bradley envisioned the Rich story as a short film, but near the end of the process, Fox opened a Pandora’s Box of sorts for Bradley, the filmmaker having earned her trust. Bradley received nearly 20 years of home video footage that Fox and her family had taken, documenting a life’s record and history for Rob’s hopeful return home. With Fox’s blessing, Bradley used the footage to allow her film to reach a staggering level of unanticipated depth, emotion, and power.

In January, Bradley sat down with Film Comment.

(Regarding Fox Rich’s home videos and receiving access to use them in the film): “I think it was also therapy for her. And I think part of what I wanted to do at least at the beginning of the film was to show her as a mother—to show the sacrifices a mother makes, and to show also these private moments that she took for herself that many women feel like they don’t have the right to take. And to show that she never had doubt that he would see the tapes. To me, that was incredible. It was like my worst nightmare and my biggest dream come true. I believe it was almost 100 hours of footage. And I watched all of it. And the short film transitioned into being a feature.”

(On making an issues-oriented film her way): “…we needed to have a conversation around the distinctions between journalism and documentary filmmaking. Do we need title cards? How do we get the facts in? I am really thankful to them for allowing me to make the decision to not do that. Let’s omit that stuff like titles and let the film be about the human experience.”

1. COLLECTIVE
Director: Alexander Nanau
Release Date: November 20, 2020
Where Available: VOD Rental through all major platforms; free through Spectrum On Demand

Collective follows a heroic team of journalists as they uncover shocking, widespread corruption. After a deadly nightclub fire, the mysterious death of the owner of a powerful pharmaceutical firm, and the quiet resignation of a health minister - seemingly unrelated events, all within weeks of each other - the team of intrepid reporters exposes a much larger, much more explosive political scandal.

A Romanian documentary about a tragic nightclub fire in 2015 is not something I anticipated would provide the framework for the best documentary of 2020. Collective, however, is no normal story. With as many twists and turns as a scripted thriller, the film first discusses the lives lost and forever altered by the fire, but also brings to light evidence of medical malpractice and neglect. This neglect led to a spike in deaths among those who initially survived the fire, further raising questions on the practices and protocols within the Romanian healthcare system.

But there’s more: A mysterious death occurs. A sports reporter leads the charge on exposing the malfeasance, resulting in significant consequences within the Romanian government. As civilians learn the realities surrounding the professionals and elected officials they are asked to trust, Collective morphs into a film which reaches beyond its country of origin. Collective becomes a story about the collective trust we place in the institutions designed to protect us, and the power of a free press to inform its citizenry of any and all wrongdoing.

Collective leaves an unsettling feeling in your gut, but this is an exceptional emotional journey. And all of what that fire meant and brought to the surface feels, at once, necessary, immense, and daunting. Death and hope co-exist. Reformation and resignment walk side by side. Tragedy and anger are uncomfortably nestled in together.

As good as any film released in 2020, Collective captures who we are.

Director Alexander Nanau was interviewed by Reverse Shot in November 2020: “For two weeks there was a mix of generations in the streets protesting because of the fire and the lack of precautionary measures. There was this national trauma. We knew there was corruption in Romania, but nobody until that point realized that the corruption was killing. It forced the government to step down, and then they put in a governmental specialist for one year. I wanted to try to capture [those who were] sick, and I also wanted to follow something that could tell us about what was happening in society.

…There’s something going on right now, all over the world. We all feel we're all together in this. We don't really know anymore how societies function. We don't really trust that those in power are really governing in our interests. We are really polarized, either black or white. Having screened the film all over the world, I have the feeling that we all see a tsunami coming, and we don’t know what to do. Everybody is just clueless about what will happen in one week’s time. We feel like we are sitting on a bomb in a world that is governed more and more by populists. And we just don’t know when it will go off. Will it suddenly implode and we will start killing each other? I felt that [while filming] without really being aware of it. The film triggers right now this feeling of - how can we correct it, what is our society?”

AND 15 MORE DOCUMENTARY FILMS
NOT TO MISS FROM 2020

  • ALL IN: THE FIGHT FOR DEMOCRACY

  • CITY HALL

  • CITY SO REAL

  • CRIP CAMP: A DISABILITY REVOLUTION

  • DESERT ONE

  • DISCLOSURE: TRANS LIVES ON SCREEN

  • THE DISSIDENT

  • FEELS GOOD TIME

  • folklore: the long pond studio sessions

  • GUNDA

  • JOHN LEWIS: GOOD TROUBLE

  • MLK/FBI

  • ON THE RECORD

  • THE PAINTER AND THE THIEF

  • RED PENGUINS