Documentaries

When Hurricane Katrina left more than 250,000 pets stranded, the infrastructure was set up of a nationwide dog rescue effort. Since then, millions of Southern rescue dogs have been transported to new homes, thanks to the tireless efforts of a grassroots network of dog rescuers.

The term “mama’s boy” used to be a pejorative, loaded with connotations. It could signify anything from a man’s relationship deemed unhealthily close with his mother, to a sensitivity out of step with conventional societal views on masculinity, to a general “failure to launch” into adulthood.

From climbers stuck on Mount Everest to citizens trapped underneath the rubble in Kathmandu, Aftershock: Everest and the Nepal Earthquake shows what it was like to experience the deadly 2015 natural disaster from different locations and perspectives. The new three-part Netflix documentary centers around 25 survivors who share their harrowing stories through sit-down interviews and personal footage.

Nonfiction movies generally provide the cheapest form of travel there is, offering entrée to a diverse array of different cultures, worlds, and points of view. It’s probably also true, however, that the natural inquisitiveness of talented documentary filmmakers is infrequently matched by a visual vocabulary that elevates the subject being explored in their movies.

It is not often that we see a big Hollywood star attach his name to an unknown filmmaker from one of the smallest countries in Europe. But Idris Elba didn’t have to think twice when the Belgian photographer Hannelore Vandenbussche pitched her six-part sports documentary to him.

First, there was a movie, then there was a six-part limited series, and now, with the release of the documentary The Trapped 13: How We Survived the Thai Cave, we finally get to hear from the real survivors. Through interviews and first-hand footage from the rescue and reenactments of the events, the Netflix documentary shows how 12 young boys and their soccer coach were able to survive in the flooded Tham Luang cave for 17 days.

"We are the ones between dos mundos, time suspended on the shelves, where home is always somewhere else. " – José Eduardo Aguilar “El Deportee” The Guadalajara Film Festival in Los Angeles – an HFPA grantee – is intent on focusing on issues that especially beset the Latinx population.

Stories of revenge permeate cinema — so much so that if extraterrestrials had to write up a report on humankind based only on an observational surveying of our most popular entertainment, they could be forgiven for arriving at the belief that accountability was only possible through eye-for-an-eye violence. But there is another side to the pain of loss to that which typically motivates vengeance.

Directed by Jamie Roberts, the new documentary Escape from Kabul puts an emotional human face on the harrowing events of its title — a humanitarian disaster that unfolded in August 2021, during the last two weeks of American military forces on the ground in the Afghanistan capital. Premiering September 21 on HBO and HBO Max, the movie assays the largest non-combatant evacuation airlift in modern history, with by some counts an estimated 124,000 panicked Afghan civilians eventually escaping, as one puts it, the impending “hell of judgment day” set to be imposed by a retributive and repressive regime returning to power two decades after having been driven out, in the aftermath of the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.

Throughout a long and distinguished career, the most defining characteristic of Werner Herzog’s canon has been sheer variety, driven by an enormous sense of curiosity. In his prolific documentary work, the 80-year-old German filmmaker has shown an intense interest in people (Little Dieter Needs to Fly, Meeting Gorbachev), in addition to the natural world and its history, both culturally and scientifically (Cave of Forgotten Dreams, Fireball: Visitors From Darker Worlds).