Documentaries

Attica! is a riveting documentary that revisits an American tragedy exactly 50 years after the prisoners’ rebellion at the Attica correctional facility in upstate New York which would become infamous in American prison history. On this anniversary the revolt has spawned several retrospectives, such as HBO Max’s Betrayal at Attica.

Arriving less than 10 months after Donald Trump’s supporters ransacked the United States of America’s seat of government in an attempt to forestall the certification of the country’s presidential election results, the new documentary Four Hours at the Capitol lands somewhat understandably as more of a rough first draft of history than a wholly refined, polished overview of the events of January 6, 2021. And yet, within that framework and context, it’s still a gut-punch work — a movie which, by way of its telling, grapples with the question of whether the alternate political and social realities in which Americans are seemingly living can coexist with the foundational principles of democracy, and in the end, sadly, affords no easy answer.

Pete Buttigieg’s historical run for the White House, as an openly gay and serious contender for a major party nomination, is a recurring theme in Jesse Moss’ new documentary, Mayor Pete. World-premiering at the Chicago Film Festival, Mayor Pete streams on Amazon Prime November 12.

The new documentary The Mustangs: America’s Wild Horses opens with a quote from Luther Standing Bear, a Native American author, educator and actor of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Man’s heart away from nature, he opines, becomes hard, and a lack of respect for growing, living things soon leads to a lack of respect for humans too.

Many Americans, especially younger ones, may not know who Arthur Ashe was and how significant his achievements were in and out of the realm of sports. For starters, Ashe was the first Black tennis player selected to the US Davis Cup team and the only Black man ever to win the singles title at Wimbledon, the US Open, and the Australian Open.

Once upon a time … Americans sipped coffee and ate pie around communal tables at the Horn & Hardart’s iconic Automat, where they could share their struggles and dreams with strangers they had never met before (and would never see again). Lifetimes ago, these largely working-class palaces nourished a sense of unity and community that bridged diverse social classes, languages, genders and races in the increasingly rising urban melting pots of the East Coast.

In 1956, when the French diving pioneer Jacques-Yves Cousteau (1910-1997) made his documentary, The Silent World, in 1956, it was a novelty in many ways that he himself could not have anticipated. The feature was co-directed by Cousteau, who was then 46, and a young director, Louis Malle, 24, who would go on to become a major voice in French and world cinema (Lacombe Lucien, Atlantic City, Au Revoir les Enfants) in the next three decades.

What a film is about is not the same thing as the story it tells. This is useful to remember when watching the new Netflix documentary Britney vs Spears, released in advance of an important legal hearing on her case in Los Angeles the following day.

Alanis Morissette’s 1995 album Jagged Little Pill, which would go on to sell 33 million copies worldwide, arrived with a bang, stirring up no small amount of cultural commentary and controversy with its emotionally raw lyrics. So, it’s perhaps fitting that a documentary about its making, reception, and touring, which recently enjoyed its world premiere at the 2021 Toronto International Film Festival, would end up also engendering friction.

The People’s Choice Award winner in the nonfiction section of the 2021 Toronto International Film Festival, The Rescue recounts a three-week story that gripped the world’s imagination in the summer of 2018 – a race against time in impending monsoon conditions to locate and extricate 12 members of a junior football team, ages 11 to 16, and their assistant coach trapped inside a flooded cave in northern Thailand. Co-directed by Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi and Jimmy Chin, the Academy Award-winning married tandem behind Free Solo, this well-crafted and highly engaging movie, set for theatrical release later in the year by Greenwich Entertainment, is almost certain to be a mainstay on awards season documentary shortlists.