While 2023 was a banner year for narrative films, at least in my opinion, I was less enthusiastic about the year’s crop of documentaries. There were a handful of standouts, such as the thrilling Beyond Utopia (pictured below), but none of my picks for the Best of 2023 approach what I would consider a masterpiece. At any rate, my personal favorites are as follows. My caveat here is that as of this writing I have not yet seen Frederick Wiseman’s Menus-Plaisirs – Les Troisgros, which by most accounts is excellent.
10. Joan Baez: I Am a Noise
This biography of Joan Baez by Karen O’Connor, Miri Navasky and Maeve O’Boyle initially plays as your standard rockumentary — well, folkumentary as the case may be (although try saying that out loud) — but takes an excursion into darker aspects of the folk icon’s past.
9. Desperate Souls, Dark City and the Legend of Midnight Cowboy
Based on the book by Glenn Frankel, Desperate Souls, Dark City and the Legend of Midnight Cowboy examines the making of the Best Picture Oscar winner for 1969 and contextualizes how the X-rated cinematic phenomenon reflected its turbulent time period. Full disclosure: One’s appreciation for Nancy Buirski’s documentary is likely to depend on one’s appreciation for Midnight Cowboy.
8. Little Richard: I Am Everything
Richard Penniman finally gets his due in Lisa Cortés’ lively documentary that spotlights the seismic impact Little Richard had on rock ‘n’ roll and American culture at large. Or to put it another way: Wop bop a loo bop. A wop bom boom.
7. A Compassionate Spy
Celebrated documentary maker Steve James tells the little-known story of Ted Hall, a Manhattan Project scientist who in 1944 passed atomic secrets on to Russian spies. Through reenactments and lengthy interviews with Hall’s widow Joan, A Compassionate Spy details how Hall, one of the youngest scientists recruited by J. Robert Oppenheimer, believed that scuttling the U.S. monopoly on nuclear weapons would force a detente of peace among the world’s superpowers. The doc is a nice companion piece to (what else?) Christopher Nolan’s Oppenheimer.
6. The Disappearance of Shere Hite
If you remember the 1970s, chances are you might vaguely recall the uproar that surrounded The Hite Report on Female Sexuality. That 1976 book by Shere Hite, purportedly an exhaustive survey on the sex lives of American women, was alternately praised as a feminist milestone and condemned as unscientific garbage. Hite herself skyrocketed to iconic status before an equally sudden fall from grace. Nicole Newnham’s The Disappearance of Shere Hite is an absorbing recounting of her story that benefits from exhaustive archival footage.
5. It Ain’t Over
And now for some lighter fare. Yogi Berra is indisputably one of the most famous names in the history of Major League Baseball, but the on-field glories of this Hall of Famer have arguably been eclipsed by how pop culture has caricatured the man. Well, writer-director Sean Mullin is having none of it. Having come to a fork in the road and promptly taking it, his It Ain’t Over (the title comes from one of Berra’s many celebrated sayings) pays loving tribute to the longtime New York Yankees catcher, who died in 2015. Baseball fans should not miss it.
4. Sam Now
Reed Harkness spent many years training his camera on his half-brother, Sam, chiefly for surprisingly innovative home movies that the pair made as kids growing up in Seattle. The subject matter abruptly changed in their teens. That’s when Sam’s mother disappeared from the family (Reed and Sam share a father) with a departing request not to go looking for her. Sam Now is a small, intimate window into the tensions between responsibility to family and responsibility to one’s self. This compassionate documentary reminds us that damaged people spur more damaged people — but that the cycle can be broken.
3. Still: A Michael J. Fox Movie
Aided by copious amounts of archival footage and film clips (the advantage of chronicling a TV and movie star), veteran documentary maker Davis Guggenheim gives us a bracingly clear-eyed portrait of the celebrity and his life with Parkinson’s Disease. Still isn’t hagiography, but it is impossible not to see Fox’s naked honesty here as heroic. The guy has humor and humility, and Guggenheim gives only passing mention to the $2 billion+ that the Michael J. Fox Foundation has raised for Parkinson’s research. Still is not solely about the heaviness of Fox’s health; it is also an entertaining tale of Hollywood success and peppered with insights about an actor’s psyche.
2. Beyond Utopia
If Beyond Utopia is conventionally constructed, the courage of its subjects is anything but conventional. Director Madeleine Gavin focuses on a handful of North Koreans trying to escape the real-life dystopia that is their homeland. The documentarian is given astonishing access to chronicle the perilous journey of the would-be refugees. The hero at the film’s center is Pastor Seungeun Kim, who himself fled North Korea years ago and has made it his life’s work to help others do the same. Interviews with former North Koreans who have successfully escaped provide valuable context about the horrors of day-to-day life under Kim Jong-un.
1. Four Daughters
The less you know about Four Daughters going in, the better. Suffice it to say, Kaouther Ben Hania’s film stands shoulder to shoulder with such astounding works as The Act of Killing and Casting JonBenet in terms of testing the boundaries of documentary. The film introduces us to Olfa Hamrouni, a Tunisian woman whose world was shaken when the two eldest of her four daughters disappeared from home. Ben Hania tells their story largely through reenactments, sometimes with the actual people and sometimes with professional actors playing Olfa and eldest daughters Rahma and Ghofrane. The result is extraordinary.
Cutting to the Chase with Phil Bacharach 