Doc Corner: The Best Documentaries of 2022
Thursday, March 2, 2023 at 6:00PM By Glenn Dunks
There’s only so much one can watch! A recurring refrain inside my brain as I attempt to cram as many more films into my watch pile in order to offer myself, and you dear readers, the best chance at a definitive list of the best documentaries of 2022. It’s always doomed to failure of course. There are many films that I was unable to watch that I wanted to before hitting publish. Some were simply too long to fit in (Mr. Bachmann and His Class) and others were unavailable in my location (Lowndes County and the Road to Black Power), while others make it difficult to even know if they should be eligible. Again, there’s only so much one can watch. I’m already falling behind on 2023!
But here today are my top 15 documentaries of 2022. And because I watched a lot of stuff, a few little extras up top. Are you ready?
Best movie that isn’t a documentary, but could be:
You would be forgiven for thinking David Easteal’s three-hour sorta road trip movie The Plains along the freeways of the inner suburbs of Australian city Melbourne (my home town, I recognise those buildings!) was a documentary. It is not. It is a dramatic (“dramatic”) recreation of a series of conversations that the director, then working a legal firm, had with a colleague while stuck in traffic. Sounds dull, but it’s curiously involving. So while it may not be a documentary, what it does with the non-fiction form is fascinating.
Most currently prescient documentary:
Sebastian Pardo & Riel Roch Decter’s The Computer Accent wouldn’t have made my list even if I had expanded it to 25 (like we did last year), but in the months since I watched it it only becomes more and more relevant. Watch as indie band Yacht go on a journey to create an entire album using Artificial Intelligence software. It’s not all bad, but it’s certainly not all good either. Proceed with caution.
Trend alert—the remnants of war:
It would be easy to note that there were a lot of films about Ukraine and various other cultural conflicts throughout the last year (some of which are in the list below). But three titles, all quite good, took similar tacts to their stories about the Holocaust. Three Minutes: A Lengthening, Nelly and Nadine, and From Where They Stood all took minimal remains of war footage and dove down into history with fascinating results. Three Minutes images of a Polish village before the invasion will haunt. Nelly and Nadine’s same-sex love story from the concentration camps will linger. From Where They Stood’s imposing of classic images on contemporary spaces will haunt.
The best of the music docs:
Musician bio-docs are a dime a dozen these days. Selena Gomez: My Mind and Me is the least effective of the ones I’m selecting here, mostly because it doesn’t really focus on the music. That’s Gomez and Alex Keshishian’s prerogative, but I felt while its focus on mental health is important, it lacked some of the greater context that would’ve come from letting us experience her talent. It's hard to not compare it to Madonna: Truth or Dare, let's be honest.
Much more impressive for me were Anonymous Club (full review) and Moonage Daydream (full review), which took visual experiments in the stories of Courtney Barnett and David Bowie respectively. From the former’s vivid 16mm camerawork to the latter’s boldly colourful clash of sound and image, they both impressed in an area that needed to be reinvigorated. My favourites, however, of the year were probably Poly Styrene: I Am a Cliché and The Return of Tanya Tucker Featuring Brandi Carlisle. Both balanced reverence with insight with the right amount of personal. Sublime.
Experiments:
James Bennings’ The United States of America and Expedition Content from Ernst Karel & Veronika Kusumaryati at the Sensory Ethnography Lab are hardly what we’d call accessible. The former by one of Texas’s most beloved filmmakers takes images from across the country (or does it?) and is an at times alarming, beautiful and mundane state of the nation. For Expedition Content, another title from the Ethnographic Lab, we are descended into a world of sound without any images at all (barring one brief introduction of fire) that makes us attempt to comprehend the nature of the world around us as it once was and what it maybe/probably is not anymore.
End of life:
Both Chris Smith's Sr. (full review) and Orli Timoner's Last Flight Home (capture review) gave us dignity in dying and were exceptionally moving experiences.
Lastly, a few additional titles that I did not get to talk about this year but which impressed me a lot. Paula Eiselt & Tonya Lewis Lee’s Aftershock and Tia Lessin & Emma Pildes’s The Janes were painfully relevant in 2022; Giuseppe Tornatore’s Ennio is indulgent, yes, but pays greater attention to its subjects art than most (Quentin Tarantino doesn't show up until the 58-minute mark, how's that for restraint); Bruce Weber’s The Treasure of His Youth: The Protographs of Paolo Di Paolo was a lovely dive into the career of a man who helped give us the image of Italy that persists to this day; Stéphanie Lamorré's Being Thunder is scrappy, but offers a rare glimpse into the life of a two-spirit person; Chivas DeVinck’s The Great Basin doesn’t reach the heights of the works its emulating, but it does offer an often hypnotic view of contemporary America.
THE 15 BEST DOCUMENTARIES OF 2022
15. DREAMING WALLS: INSIDE THE CHELSEA HOTEL, Amélie van Elmbt and Maya Duverdier
Isn't just a paean to a building, but a funeral for Manhattan as the centre of the world and for how society engages with art. A tribute to outcasts in a gentrified world. Haunted with the spirits of eras gone by, accentuated by sublime use of 16mm—its images echoing Akerman quiet deliberately more so than, say, Andy Warhol with whom the Chelsea Hotel is probably most closely linked in an artistic sense.
14. COW, Andrea Arnold
The plot (as it is) for Arnold’s film as listed on Letterboxd is simply this: “A close-up portrait of the daily lives of two cows.” I mean, it’s not wrong, but it is a far more complex film than that and one that I certainly responded do much more than Gunda (the black and white pig movie). When I sat on the jury of the 2021 (!) Hot Springs Documentary Film Festival, our jury quite unanimously awarded this Cannes premiere our Best International Documentary prize. Richly deserved.
13. DESCENDANT, Margaret Brown
Appropriately sombre and potent, its feet firmly grounded in the exploration of history through the eyes of those who live it in the present day. I was particularly taken by the editing of Michael Bloch and Geoffrey Richman, who find moments of beautifully shot reflection amid the lives of people dedicated to uncovering the truth of their generational trauma. Full review.
12. THE SUPER 8 YEARS, Annie Ernaux and David Ernaux-Briot
I have never experienced the world that Ernaux embeds us in, but she welcomes the viewer through narration and the intuitive editing of Clément Pinteaux in such a manner that it feels like reliving a memory that I have never experienced. I was transported. A brisk dream of 65-minutes built entirely out of her family’s super 8 camera home movies that is all fleeting memories stung with melancholy and bliss. Come to think of it, a more fitting double-feature with Charlotte Wells’ Aftersun I could not imagine. Full review.
11. A TRIP TO INFINITY, Drew Takahashi and Jon Halperin
lol i watched this while on an edible.
10. and 9. FIRE OF LOVE, Sara Dosa; THE FIRE WITHIN: REQUIEM FOR KATIA AND MAURICE KRAFFT, Werner Herzog
Which of these do I prefer? I actually can’t say, which is why I am pairing them together. The former by Sara Dosa, is the more high profile picture having won at Sundance and then continued all the way to an Oscar nomination (and I am predicting a win). It is wonderfully edited in its use of only archival footage although I didn’t need as much of Miranda July’s narration (full review.) Herzog finds the operatic in the Krafft's work, more interested in the pair as filmmakers and craftspeople. But it could’ve been tighter. In the end, it doesn’t matter which is better. They’re both great and I’m glad to see this story told through the lens of two very different filmmakers. Let’s call it a draw.
8. THE TERRITORY, Alex Pritz
Early on we are shown timelapse satellite images of the titular territory. Once just another patch of rainforest, land clearing and logging has encroached ever closer to the Uru-eu-wau-wau’s borders. Now surrounded on all sides by agriculture and farming, and with less than 200 of their people left, it seems there is little that can be done to protect this beautiful, natural landscape. And therein lies what gives The Territory its vital tension. Full review.
7. SALVATORE: SHOEMAKER OF DREAMS, Luca Guadagnino
I was quietly consumed by this, with the way Guadagnino moves through this man's life. A less confident director would fill a story without as much archival footage with recreations or animation. Instead, he allows us the space to contemplate through images and silent movies about the life Ferragamo must have seen and existed in. Its talking heads add colour and context as well as information; we see more of shoes being made and how he crafted them and what they meant to the wearer than his love life. It conjures memories we can never have.
6. IS THAT BLACK ENOUGH FOR YOU?!?, Elvis Mitchell
This sort of essay film is often hard to pull off, with too many reliant factors at play that need align perfectly. This one does it. Extremely impressed, impeccably watchable, balances academic tone with a necessary lightness.
5. WE MET IN VIRTUAL REALITY, Joe Hunting
It’s easy to watch Huntings’ film with something like skepticism. A permanent cocked eyebrow, suspicious of what its being shown. Virtual reality is, after all, still something that many of us do not engage with or understand. But I suppose much like the internet’s early days of messenger apps, livejournal accounts and message boards, the appeal becomes clearer and the movie ultimately won me over with its humour, its sweetness and its poignancy. Full review.
4. TRENCHÉES, Loup Bureau
“We're gonna fucking hurt them... or whatever. We'll get them later.”
A limbo warzone. A frontline where soldiers play first-person shoot 'em ups in preparation for an attack that they may never get to experience. Digging and re-digging trenches to protect their country just as much as it is to pass the time. The black and white images give the illusion of this being any war at any time if it weren't for the smart phone technology and the discussions about tattoos. Just a vicious circle, but for us, the viewer, knowing what is around the corner lends it a bitter tragedy as they discuss their return to civilian life.
3. CHILDREN OF THE MIST, Hà Lệ Diễm
The remarkable debut feature by Hà Lệ Diễm. A real knockout of a surprise when I saw this on the big screen at a local film festival, further evidence of South East Asia as one of the most important regions for non-fiction. Here, tradition of the Hmong people is balanced with a contemporary cinematic outlook, told with an economy of runtime yet no shortage of indelible images and ideas. Capsule review.
2. MR. LANDSBERGIS, Sergei Loznitsa
Sergei Loznitsa is just unparalleled at this. The four-hour+ Mr Landsbergis is epic in length, but laser-focused in its telling of Lithuania's independence from the USSR. Allows its archival video and compelling interview with titular subject to unfold with clarity. Powerful stuff. And among its many virtues, I thought it particularly interesting to finally get an interview that presents an alternative view to the image of Gorbachev. After multiple fawning docs, I was glad to finally see something critical. Yeltsin!
1. ALL THE BEAUTY AND THE BLOODSHED, Laura Poitras
The best movie of the year. Full review.
Reader Comments (5)
Outstanding as always.
Suggestion: A brief word on where we could find these films would be welcome.
Typo right before #15, it says best documentaries of 2021 instead of 2022.
Awesome to see All the Beauty and the Bloodshed at #1. It really was that good. A lot of the top races are so disappointing to me this year so I’ve been putting all my enthusiasm behind All the Beauty winning Documentary, The Whale winning makeup, and Bardo winning cinematography. Gonna be super bummed if none of those win. But if they all happen to win, I promise to never complain about Everything Everywhere winning Picture and Director.
Surprised there is no mention of Michelangelo Frammartino's extraordinary IL BUCO
I don't know when will be released in the U.S. but my favorite mexican documentaries were "The Secret of Dr. Grinberg", "Pobo-Tzu (White Night)" and my #1 film (not just documentary) from 2022 is "Gods of México", is just an excepcional experience to watch it in big screen.
Nice call about "Il Buco" from Joe Stemme , in fact reminds me to "Gods of México" because are more sensorial films. The sound is phenomenal.
Cesar, GODS OF MEXICO is a March 3 theatrical release so it will be a 2023 title. And I *loved* IL BUCO, but I wasn't sure about including it in a documentary list as, much like THE PLAINS, it plays with the form enough that I'm not sure if counts