Film Fest Report contributor Julia Mann rounded up her 10 favourite documentaries of 2021, worth discovering and remembering.
If 2021 wasn’t the complete return to normality that we all hoped for, cinema finally returned and offered audiences moments of grace and movies to remember for a long time. Film Fest Report’s Julia reflected on the 10 documentary films which moved and marked her this year. Read on, take notes, and have fun!
1- FLEE (Jonas Poher Rasmussen)
Flee premiered at Sundance 2021 where it received the World Cinema Documentary: Grand Jury Prize. The film tells the extraordinary true story of a man, Amin, on the verge of marriage which compels him to reveal his hidden past for the first time. A secret he has been hiding for over twenty years threatens to ruin the life he has built for himself. He recounts his dramatic journey as a child refugee from Afghanistan to Denmark. Told mostly through animation, Flee weaves together a stunning tapestry of images and memories to tell the deeply affecting and original story of a young man grappling with his traumatic past in order to find his true self and the meaning of home.
Julia’s comment: A well-deserving favorite for the Best Documentary Oscar, Flee is the type of film that does not come around too often. As a near perfect combination of form, feeling, and content, Flee tells the story of a young Afghan boy’s journey to find a home, both within and outside himself.
2- DARK RED FOREST (Jin Huaqing)
Presented at the 2021 Ji.hlava International Documentary Film Festival, Dark Red Forest is an exploration of the mysterious daily life of women devoted to their faith. 20.000 Buddhist nuns live in a monastery on a snowy plateau in Tibet, China. Surrounded by harsh nature and secluded from the outside world, these women offer us a glimpse into their religious exploration of life’s biggest questions. Far away from their families, the nuns commit everything to reach a divine state, entrusting themselves to the guru and each other.
Julia’s comment: A stunning observational look at the lives of Buddhist nuns living in a monastery in snowy Tibet, one eventually threatened by the Chinese government. Dark Red Forest examines, in a curious and non-judgmental manner, the role of religion in these nuns’ lives and when a religion becomes life (and death) itself.
3- BY THE THROAT (Amir Borenstein, Effi Weiss)
Starting from a security check at the Tel Aviv airport, By The Throat explores a more deeply engraved border, albeit an invisible one, that defines the sounds and words we can pronounce. We carry with us these limits, created by our mother-tongue, becoming ourselves a mobile check-point, wherever we are.
Julia’s comment: This is the type of film it is best to go into with as little prior knowledge as possible. However, I will say that it is an “elevated” essay film — one that takes viewers on its own quest for understanding human communication.
4- THE RESCUE (Jimmy Chin, Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi)
The Rescue premiered at the 48th Telluride Film Festival. It follows the Tham Luang cave rescue, a 2018 mission that saved a junior association football team from an underwater cave.
Julia’s comment: The latest film from Free Solo directors Jimmy Chin and Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi, this nail-biter film recounts the heroic rescue of 12 Thai boys and their soccer coach trapped deep within an underground cave complex. The Rescue places particular emphasis on the cooperative international effort that convened to save these boys, a heartening reminder of our ability for partnership and connection in an increasingly isolated and disengaged world.
5- TWO MINUTES TO MIDNIGHT (Yael Bartana)
Presented at CPH:DOX, Sheffield Doc/Fest, Docaviv, Her Docs Film Festival, or IDFA, among others, Two Minutes to Midnight looks at a group of actors on a stage who play the all-female government of an imaginary nation. In light of the looming threat posed by an enemy country that is increasing its nuclear stockpiles, the government assembles in its Peace Room – so named as an inversion of Dr. Strangelove’s War Room, because here, peace is preferable to war. Two Minutes to Midnight is the final stage of a four year transdisciplinary series: ‘What if Women Ruled the World?’.
Julia’s comment: A hybrid film set in a fictional (or hopeful?) world in which women quite literally rule the world, Two Minutes to Midnight experiments feminist foreign policy in the face of a potential nuclear attack.
6- BLUE BOX (Michal Weits)
Director Michal Weits recalls being raised on the story of her great-grandfather Joseph as the father of Israel’s forests, a pioneer who established Jewish settlements under the slogan of “a land without a people for a people without a land.” Through a fascinating combination of family interviews, archival footage, and her great-grandfather’s diary excerpts, Weits chronicles the deeper complexities of her family’s legacy and Israel’s national history. A profound and haunting journey of discovery.
Julia’s comment: Israeli producer Michal Weits’ directorial debut focuses on her personal reckoning of her grandfather’s role in the plight of Palestinians during the founding of the State of Israel. Blue Box often feels like a political version of Sarah Polley’s Stories We Tell, weaving varying family members’ recollections, questions of the past, and examination of what it all may mean today, both for the directors and the viewers.
7- THE WITCHES OF THE ORIENT (Julien Faraut)
The Japanese volleyball players called the “Oriental Witches” are now in their seventies. From the formation of the team at the factory until their victory at the Tokyo Olympics in 1964, memories and legends rise to the surface and blend inextricably.
Julia’s comment: Set against the backdrop of a post-World War II Japan eager to revive itself and its world image, The Witches of the Orient tells the story of factory workers transformed into Japan’s Olympic gold medalist women’s volleyball team. As the women, now in their seventies, look back on these days, we understand their legacy as national heroes during a time the country needed just that.
8- LISTEN TO THE BEAT OF OUR IMAGES (Audrey Jean-Baptiste, Maxime Jean-Baptiste)
Based on audiovisual archives from France’s National Center for Space Studies (CNES), Listen to the Beat of Our Images deals with the establishment of the Guyanese Space Center in Kourou, French Guiana, from the perspective of a young Guyanese woman, who watches as the land around her is transformed.
Julia’s comment: Sixty years ago, the French government chose to build their space center in French Guiana. This short film is an archival remembrance of the impact of this decision on the indigenous peoples, told from the point of view of a loving granddaughter.
9- MLK/FBI (Sam Pollard)
The film follows Martin Luther King Jr. as he is investigated and harassed by the Federal Bureau of Investigation.
Julia’s comment: A hundred more documentary films can be made on Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., (I hope they will be) and we still may never understand all the intricacies to this man and what he endured, both as an icon and a person. In MLK/FBI, the US government’s surveillance and harassment is put on full display, offering even more perspective on what Dr. King was up against.
10- TRADE CENTER (Adam Baran)
The voices of five gay men who cruised for sex at the World Trade Center in the 1980s and 1990s haunt the sanitized, commerce-driven landscape that is the newly rebuilt Freedom Tower campus.
Julia’s comment: Several gay men recount their stories of sexual exploration at the former World Trade Center in the ‘80s and ‘90s. Their voiceover covers footage of the landmark today in its sanitized, memorialized, and patriotic fashion, showing not only an immensely changed New York, but also the great divergence in both memory and meaning of a place among different peoples.
