Seven Documentaries Not to Miss in 2016

Thursday, April 7, 2016 at 3:17 p.m.

Courtesy of Sundance Institute Kate Plays Christine: the actress Kate Lyn Sheil is shown deep in preparations to play the part of Christine Chubbuck, the Sarasota, Florida, TV newscaster who in 1974 shot herself on camera to protest her station’s growing obsession with violence and sensationalism. 1/7

Courtesy of Sundance Institute Cameraperson: Filmmaker Kirsten Johnson, a veteran cinematographer and camera operator on such films as Michael Moore’s Fahrenheit 9/11 and Laura Poitras’ Citizenfour, constructed her film out of footage cut from others she had worked on. We see discarded interviews with Bosnian farmers; vast Wyoming landscapes; empty amusement parks in Afghanistan; the outside of a prison in Yemen; a courtroom in Texas. We also see the filmmakers inserting themselves into the story: They help save the life of a baby in a Nigerian hospital. They tell an overwhelmed single mother in an Alabama health clinic that she can never consider herself a bad person for what’s happened to her. We see Michael Moore offering to help pay for one of his subjects’ legal fees. Cameraperson is a cinematic memoir in which we not only see the ways that documentary “reality” is constructed but also begin to get a sense of the consciousness hovering behind the camera. 2/7

IFC Films Weiner: a psychological portrait of Anthony Weiner, a man whose ambition is matched only by his capacity for self-destruction. It also increasingly becomes about Weiner’s marriage to Huma Abedin, whose calm veneer cracks as more allegations emerge, and whose loyalty is complicated by her own position as a top aide to Hillary Clinton, soon to be a candidate herself. 3/7

Screenshot of the Sherpa trailer Sherpa: This film starts off resembling another slick, beautifully shot and entertaining mountain-climbing documentary — this time from the point of view of the oft-neglected Nepalese ethnic group who for decades have done the heavy lifting as various Westerners summited Mount Everest. Introducing her movie, the high-altitude-shooting specialist admitted that, on previous mountaineering films she had worked on, footage of the Sherpas often wound up on the cutting-room floor. As a result, she was prompted to make this movie, which starts off following the 2014 climbing season from the perspective of those doing the majority of the actual, often deadly work. But when an accident on Everest kills 16 people, most of them Sherpas, the film effectively becomes about a labor-rights dispute. 4/7

Screenshot from the trailer of O Futebol O Futebol (On Football): Director Sergio Oksman presents at first what seems like a highly rigorous, cerebral approach to the personal documentary. Over the course of the 2014 World Cup in Brazil, Oksman reconnects in São Paulo with the father he hasn't seen in years. Much of the film consists of static, observational shots, often filmed from a distance; what (little) movement we get comes courtesy of a camera placed in the backseat of his dad’s car as the two men drive through the streets, rarely saying anything at all. But this ostensible portrait of alienation takes a startling turn near the end, shifting what might have been a dry, tidy essay film into something emotionally overwhelming as the distance and austerity become less an academic conceit and more an attempt to hold the pain of the world at bay. 5/7

Screenshot from the trailer of Helmut Berger, Actor Helmut Berger, Actor: You might expect Andreas Horvath’s Helmut Berger, Actor to be a dishy look at the aging Austrian heartthrob who once graced films by Luchino Visconti and Vittorio De Sica. But Berger, who now lives in a run-down, cluttered apartment, turns out to be a moody, cantankerous subject. He spends much of his time discussing what to watch on TV or fighting with his director, only vaguely reflecting on his once-fabulous life. Oh, and jerking off: The film opens with Berger simulating masturbation and ends with the real thing, as the actor pleasures himself on camera and insists that Horvath also expose himself to help things along. (“Aristocratic!” Berger observes after getting a glimpse of the director’s package.) 6/7

Screenshot of the Starless Dreams trailer Starless Dreams: Iranian director Mehrdad Oskouei’s documentary about a prison for teenage girls in Iran. In a setting that’s more rehab center than jailhouse, the girls — most of whom are there for drug-related offenses — gossip, pray, goof off and argue. But the real emotional dynamite comes in Oskouei’s individual interviews with the young inmates, who reveal unfathomable depths of shame and self-loathing. 7/7

Seven Documentaries Not to Miss in 2016

The 13th annual True/False Film Festival in Columbia, Missouri is not a particularly huge festival — held over four days, it screens around 40 features — but its profile has risen substantially over the past few years. It may not be quite as comprehensive as Doc NYC, AFI Docs in Washington, D.C., or HotDocs in Toronto, but the small-town setting, unorthodox screening venues and “thousand-plus” army of cheerful volunteers give it personality.

True/False’s programmers take the nonfiction form very seriously. As their event’s name suggests, they like movies that transform, that push at the boundaries of what is real and what is artifice. Here are seven films screened there this year that should be on your list for 2016.

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