This Week In Documentary
Theatrical & Streaming Releases - New & Recommended - December 20-26, 2024
Happy holidays to all of you. Please, consider giving the gift of a paid subscription to Nonfics. Also, for those of you who are unpaid subscribers, accept my gift of the Best 24 Documentaries of 2024 list, which until now has been partly hidden behind a paywall. After that, you’ll find this week’s other highlights, listings, and coming attractions. There’s not a lot, but between that year-end list and our showcase of Christmas documentaries, you have plenty to watch until next time. For more inclusion, also check out the Ed Asner-narrated 1973 PBS documentary short Hanukkah (now streaming on the PBS website via MPB Classics) and the Kwanzaa feature The Black Candle (streaming on Prime Video, Peacock, Tubi, and Shout! TV).
Nonfics Picks Of The Week: The 24 Best Documentaries Of 2024
Earlier this month, I posted my list of the best documentaries of 2024. I included 24 titles — shorts, series, and features — starting with The Jinx - Part Two and ending with…
For nearly 10 days, the top 10 titles on my list have been accessible only to paid subscribers. Now, through the end of the year, these 10 best documentaries of 2024 can be seen by anyone. To make it less of a tease, here are those top 10 titles:
10. The Dynasty: New England Patriots (Matthew Hamachek)
9. Pictures of Ghosts (Kleber Mendonça Filho)
8. Ennio (Giuseppe Tornatore)
7. The Turnaround (Ben Proudfoot, Kyle Thrash)
6. Ren Faire (Lance Oppenheim)
5. Slave Play. Not a Movie. A Play. (Jeremy O. Harris)
4. Soundtrack to a Coup d’Etat (Johan Grimonprez)
3. Super/Man: The Christopher Reeve Story (Ian Bonhôte, Peter Ettedgui)
2. No Other Land (Yuval Abraham, Basel Adra, Hamdan Ballal, Rachel Szor)
1. Flipside (Christopher Wilcha)
Read more about each documentary, why I ranked it among the top 10, and where to watch now here (excluding Soundtrack to a Coup d’Etat and No Other Land). And check out the other 14 best docs while you’re there if you haven’t already.
Other Documentary Highlights
Don’t Look Back (1967) & Robbie Williams (2023)
Two new music biopics are opening on Christmas Day: the Bob Dylan drama A Complete Unknown and the effects-heavy Better Man, in which Robbie Williams is portrayed as a chimpanzee. The former is okay. I like Timothée Chalamet’s Dylan impersonation and Edward Norton as Pete Seeger, but it’s not as focused as it could be. The latter is weird but watchable, and there’s a semi-documentary aspect to the movie given that it features real interviews with Williams for some of the voiceover narration. I don’t get the reason for making Williams an ape anymore than I get why the animated Pharell Williams film Piece by Piece is done in Lego, but at least they’re both going for something different.
If you’re looking to stay home on the Christmas holiday and take in a Doc Option instead, Dylan and Williams are the subjects of great documentaries. Dylan is the subject of several documentaries, but D.A. Pennebaker’s classic Don’t Look Back is “the original” and was filmed during the period dramatized in A Complete Unknown. It follows the singer-songwriter in England just ahead of his notorious appearance at the 1965 Newport Folk Festival. You should also check out Murray Lerner’s 1967 documentary Festival and the more recent film The Other Side of the Mirror: Bob Dylan at the Newport Folk Festival as they focus on a few years of the festival, including his electric scandal, but for Dylan being Dylan, Don’t Look Back is essential.
In place of (or in addition to) Better Man, I can recommend the four-part docuseries Robbie Williams, which was executive produced by Amy director Asif Kapadia. Watching a feature-length musical about Williams where he’s a motion-capture reject from the Planet of the Apes movies is fun and fine. However, three and a half hours of documentary material is more genuine and comprehensive. And it’s a better introduction if you’re not already a fan or even familiar with the subject. If you’re also specifically more curious about his time in Take That, you might also be interested in the film Take That: For the Record — if you can find it — but I can’t vouch for it.
Don’t Look Back is streaming on Max and The Criterion Channel — the latter for free through January 1. Festival is also streaming on The Criterion Channel. The Other Side of the Mirror is available digitally. Robbie Williams is streaming on Netflix.
National Film Registry Additions
Last week, the National Film Preservation Board announced this year’s entries into the Library of Congress’s National Film Registry. The 25 works chosen are surprisingly light on nonfiction compared to years past, and only one is officially classified as a documentary. Here are the three nonfiction entries, why they’ve been deemed “culturally, historically or aesthetically” significant, and where to watch them:
Annabelle Serpentine Dance (1895) - One of many short “actualities” starring dancer Annabelle Moore produced by The Edison Manufacturing Company. According to the NFPB, this one “constitutes an excellent example of what the industry created to entice and enchant audiences” at the dawn of cinema exhibition. “In another attempt to lure cinemagoers, many prints featured hand-tinted color.” As Annabelle Serpentine Dance is in the public domain, you can easily find and stream the minute-long film on YouTube.
Zora Lathan Student Films (1975-1976) - Collections of personal works, whether made up of home movies or experimental student films, are common in the National Film Registry. This entry is comprised of six shorts, sometimes classified as home movies (but not so by the filmmaker), shot by Zora Lathan while she studied at the University of Illinois, Chicago. They include the animated collage American Pie, in which her mother and cousin bake a pie. I’m uncertain of the other five given that Lathan had seven student films recently preserved by the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History & Culture. The NFPB celebrates how “Lathan sought to create visually compelling short films featuring intimate vignettes about the whimsy, experiments, and delights of everyday life.” You can watch five of Lathan’s films, including American Pie and Aerial, within a video entitled “Zora Lathan and Iman Uqdah Hameen: On Black Interiority” on the Smithsonian’s YouTube Channel.
Common Threads: Stories from the Quilt (1989) - The one documentary feature added to the National Film Registry this year is a no-brainer, as it’s an Oscar-winning film by Rob Epstein and Jeffrey Friedman about the AIDS Memorial Quilt. Common Threads joins Epstein’s earlier docs Word is Out: Stories of Some of Our Lives (co-directed with Nancy Adair and Andrew Brown) and The Times of Harvey Milk in the registry, and I hope it’s not his (or Friedman’s) last. The NFPB highlights this one because it “stands both as a heart-breaking record of the nation’s greatest catastrophe of the 1980s and an extraordinary monument to the power of grief and activism to effect change.” Common Threads: Stories from the Quilt is streaming on The Criterion Channel and Kanopy.
Oscar Shortlists
Also last week, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences revealed the shortlisted 2024 titles contending for nominations in several Oscar categories. In addition to the nonfiction films named on the shortlists for Best Documentary Feature and Best Documentary Short Film, a few made their way onto the shortlists for Best International Feature and Best Music (Original Song), as is common. Three other nonfiction shorts landed in the Best Animated Short Film category, which is rare. They are listed below by category and with links to our coverage (if it exists) plus notes on where they can be watched now (if available).
Documentary Feature: The Bibi Files (Jolt); Black Box Diaries (coming to Paramount+ with Showtime on January 7); Dahomey (Mubi); Daughters (Netflix); Eno (streaming via Oh You Pretty Things on January 24); Frida (Prime Video); Hollywoodgate (in theaters); No Other Land (back in theaters on January 31); Porcelain War (in theaters); Queendom (VOD); The Remarkable Life of Ibelin (Netflix); Soundtrack to a Coup d’Etat (back in theaters on January 3; on VOD January 7); Sugarcane (National Geographic, Hulu, and Disney+); Union (Gathr); Will & Harper (Netflix).
Documentary Short Film: Chasing Roo; Death by Numbers; Eternal Father (The New Yorker); I Am Ready, Warden (Paramount+); Incident (The New Yorker); Instruments of a Beating Heart (The New York Times Op-Docs); Keeper; Makayla’s Voice: A Letter to the World (Netflix); Once Upon a Time in Ukraine; The Only Girl in the Orchestra (Netflix); Planetwalker (Los Angeles Times); The Quilters; Seat 31: Zooey Zephyr (The New Yorker); A Swim Lesson (PBS via POV); Until He’s Back (PBS via POV).
International Feature: Dahomey (Mubi); From Ground Zero: Stories from Gaza (in theaters beginning January 3).
Music (Original Song): "Never Too Late" from Elton John: Never Too Late (Disney+); "Piece by Piece" from Piece by Piece (in theaters and VOD); "Harper and Will Go West" from Will & Harper (Netflix).
Animated Short Film: The 21 (coming in February); Percebes; The Wild-Tempered Clavier.
Documentary Release Calendar 12/20/24 - 12/26/24
Friday, December 20, 2024
Dead Birds Flying High (2022) - A feature documentary about photographer Jürgen Friedrich Mahrt. (True Story)
The Flying Fercos (2024) - A documentary about a family of performers who shared their home with 20 lions, tigers, and panthers. Watch the new trailer for the film below. (VOD)
Inside the Enchanted Forests Episodes 5 & 6: “Boreal” & “Extreme” - The latest episodes of a docuseries about the inhabitants of Earth’s forests. These installments look at the coldest and driest ecosystems, respectively. (National Geographic)
Saturday, December 21, 2024
Inside the Enchanted Forests Episodes 5 & 6: “Boreal” & “Extreme” - The latest episodes of a docuseries about the inhabitants of Earth’s forests. These installments look at the coldest and driest ecosystems, respectively. (Hulu and Disney+)
Sunday, December 22, 2024
A Plan to Kill Episode 9: “The Business of Murder” - The latest episode of this true-crime docuseries about meticulously planned murders. (Oxygen)
Tuesday, December 24, 2024
ChiefsAholic: A Wolf in Chiefs Clothing (2024) - A feature documentary about a Kansas City Chiefs fan who was secretly a bank robber. (Prime Video)
Hard Knocks: In Season With the AFC North Episode 4 - The latest installment of the Hard Knocks franchise follows the titular NFL division, including the Baltimore Ravens, Cincinnati Bengals, Cleveland Browns, and Pittsburgh Steelers. (HBO/Max)
Thursday, December 26, 2024
Lost Treasures of the Bible Season 1, Episode 1: “Noah’s Great Flood” - The latest episode of this Biblical history docuseries looks at recent discoveries about Noah and the flood. (National Geographic)
Mysterious Islands Season 1, Episode 10: “Lost Endeavor Island” - The latest episode of this docuseries about strange islands involves a legendary shipwreck, military structures, and stone disks. (National Geographic)
Sneak Peak At What’s Coming Soon
1/10 - Diane Warren: Relentless - A feature documentary about the titular award-winning songwriter. (In Theaters)
1/14 - In the Shadow of Beirut - A feature documentary executive produced by Hillary Rodham Clinton and Chelsea Clinton about four families living in Lebanon’s Sabra and Shatila neighborhoods. (VOD)
1/17 - Grand Theft Hamlet - A documentary about a production of Hamlet staged inside the video game Grand Theft Auto. Watch the film’s new trailer below. (In Theaters)
1/27 - Ladies and Gentlemen…50 Years of SNL Music - A documentary by Ahmir “Questlove” Thompson (Summer of Soul) and Oz Rodriguez about music performances on Saturday Night Live. (NBC)
1/27 - Resistance: They Fought Back - A feature documentary about the Jewish resistance fighters during the Holocaust. Read our review of Resistance: They Fought Back. (PBS)
2/7 - Becoming Led Zeppelin - A feature documentary following the origins of the titular rock band. (IMAX Theaters)