We have rounded up our 10 favourite documentary films, as spotted along our journey through the 2021 film festival season. They premiered at Sundance, Berlin, Cannes, CPH:DOX, IDFA, and they all are major accomplishments.
As you know, Film Fest Report’s editorial line is influenced by our team’s love for documentary films. Among the festivals we attended this year as press are a number of festivals fully dedicated to documentaries such as CPH:DOX, Hotdocs, Visions du réel, Cinéma du réel, Nordisk Panorama, IDFA… As we wrap up the 2021 festival season, we rounded up our top 10 documentaries of the year, for you to discover below.
1- Bring Your Own Brigade (Dir. Lucy Walker)
With Bring Your Own Brigade, Director Lucy Walker delivers an urgent, thought-provoking, wrenching, humanist, layered, in-depth investigation on the wildfires raging across California. The film premiered at Sundance 2021 and literally blew our mind. LA-based accomplished filmmaker Lucy Walker crafts an in-depth study of the conditions in which such natural catastrophes occur. The film proves to be a major accomplishment. It is the fruit of a meticulous, honest and generous work, which make the film essential. It is moving, insightful, layered and deep. But what might be best about Bring Your Own Brigade is the palpable generosity, empathy and respect of Filmmaker Lucy Walker towards her characters. Her love for them is touching and offers a number of poignant dialogues between them.
2- Writing With Fire (Dirs. Rintu Thomas, Sushmit Ghosh)
After premiering at Sundance 2021 where it took home two awards – the World Cinema Documentary Special Jury Award: Impact For Change as well as the World Cinema Documentary: Audience Award, Writing With Fire traveled around the world of film festivals, where audiences were honored to virtually meet remarkable female characters, fighting for their rights in the North of India, where they started and run a female-led newspaper. The film is a masterclass of storytelling, it is both poignant and inspiring. We were delighted to sit down with directors Rintu Thomas and Sushmit Ghosh at IDFA 2021, check it out.
3- In The Same Breath (Dir. Nanfu Wang)
With careful craftsmanship, director Nanfu Wang delivers a solid piece of in-depth factual reportage and an important piece of testimony. In The Same Breath is an eye-opening, wrenching documentary depicting the human cost of the coronavirus outbreak’s mismanagement and celebrating the individuals who risk their lives for others and for the truth. In In The Same Breath, the filmmaker sheds a much-needed light on the actual conditions of the coronavirus outbreak in China and denounces the mismanagement, censorship and lies of the Chinese government. The film premiered at Sundance 2021.
4- Flee (Dir. 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.
5- I’m So Sorry (Dir. Zhao Liang)
The film premiered at the 74th Cannes Film Festival, in the brand new Cinema for the Climate section, and was also presented, among others, at IDFA 2021. Zhao Liang’s I’m So Sorry is a powerful, heartbreaking anti nuclear manifesto, full of mastery and flair. The film plunges us into the hell of the devastation caused by the nuclear power plants of Chernobyl and Fukushima showing that the only things which are left are loneliness, agony, and death. Then, from an anthropoligical filmmaking style, the film shrewdly hones in on what looks more like an activist film. With careful craftsmanship, the film does well in suggesting the absurdity of this Frankeinstein that men have created. Finally, the film culminates in a gut-wrenching scene sure to leave audiences deeply moved, if not heartbroken.
6- He’s My Brother (Dir. Cille Hannibal, Co-dir. Christine Hanberg)
Directed by Cille Hannibal and co-directed by Christine Hanberg – who is herself a character in the film, not only does He’s My Brother (original title: Skyggebarn) deal with a strong, poignant topic, but it is also an absorbing and brilliant documentary, which received a much deserved Special Mention at CPH:DOX 2021. What is so impressive about He’s My Brother is that the film does not settle for exhibiting its extra-ordinary, strong theme. Unlike lots of films which would not bother making directing choices, but just show and let their topic speak for itself, He’s My Brother turns out to be directed with intentions, know how and gentle touch. We were delighted to chat with the talented duo of filmmakers behind this strong tale on pure love, dedication and humanity. Check it out.
7- Children of the Mist (Dir. Diem Ha Le)
Children of the Mist (Những đứa trẻ trong sương), directed by Diem Ha Le, premiered at IDFA 2021. The film follows Di, a 12-year-old girl from the mist-shrouded mountains of northern Vietnam, who belongs to the Hmong, an ethnic minority in which girls get married at a very young age. We were excited to witness the tremendous success of Diem Ha Le’s film, which received two awards at IDFA’s Awards Ceremon: the IDFA Award for Best Directing (€5,000) in the International Competition went to director Diem Ha Le, who also received a Special Mention for her film. Check out our interview.
8- Sabaya (Dir. Hogir Hirori)
Sabaya is an extraordinarily immersive, harrowing and heartbreaking documentary on a heroic group of volunteers from the Yazidi Home Center rescuing young women held by Daesh in the Al-Hol camp. Set in – and around – the most dangerous Daesh (ISIS) camp in the Middle East, the film follows Mahmud and his colleagues from the Yazidi Home Center as they attempt to identify and rescue Yazidi young women who were enslaved by Daesh and still held captive in the notorious Syrian Defense Army guarded Al-Hol Camp in Northeast Syria, overloaded with Daesh members imprisoned here. Those girls are called “Sabaya” by Daesh, a term that refers to the Yazidis girls who became their sexual slaves. The film is obviously extremely poignant and crude. One can only acknowledge the heroism, humility and the infinite immensity of the main character’s humanity. Director Hogir Hirori was awarded the Best Director Award at Sundance 2021 for this outstanding piece of documentary filmmaking.
9- We (Dir. Alice Diop)
The RER B is an urban train that traverses Paris and its environs from north to south. Multi-award-winning documentary filmmaker Alice Diop takes us through these suburban spaces and confronts us with some of the faces and stories of which they are composed. A moving testament to the importance of filming as a process of bearing witness and remembering, We is timely in many ways. It is subtle and shrewd in a world that favours shortcuts and easy answers. Justifiably adopting the fragmented structure of a patchwork portrait in order to describe a riven society, Diop displays impressive control of her essay and its impact. In the film’s first few minutes, a deer is observed, through binoculars. A certain sense of awkward, man-made distance stays with us. Isolation, discrimination and nostalgia for hierarchies, inherited from a monarchical past … Divisions haunt France’s present. But the human urge to give as well as to receive stubbornly creeps into every situation, observed or triggered. Could this be the one thing that still keeps a nation together? The film premiered at the Berlinale 2021.
10- Taming the Garden (Dir. Salomé Jashi)
With Taming The Garden, Georgian Filmmaker Salomé Jashi delivers a visually stunning, observational, entertaining fable which examines the human and local consequences of a single man’s Promothean ambition to defy nature. The film premiered in the World Cinema Documentary Competition of Sundance 2021 and was also presented at a number of festivals including Berlinale Forum or IDFA 2021, to name but a few. The events of the film unfold in Georgia near the Black Sea where a powerful anonymous man has acquired a number of old trees, to be removed from the ground and transported to the sea where they will be shipped to his privately owned island, where he has been building a garden for himself. With impressive mastery, and in a beautiful and subtle mosaïque, the film successfully depicts this project like an ambitious and eccentric project which aims at defying nature.
