The best documentaries of 2023

One of the biggest movie trends of 2023 was the way talented filmmakers like Martin Scorsese, Greta Gerwig, Wes Anderson, Christopher Nolan and many more delivered the most creative and commercially successful work of their careers. There was just something in the air this year as one big artist after another made big swings that were connected.

The same was true in the world of non-fiction film. Half of the films on this list were directed by filmmakers already responsible for some of the best documentaries of this era: reliable old hands like Frederick Wiseman, Errol Morris, Matthew Heineman, Amanda McBaine and Jesse Moss… and again, Martin Scorsese. Perhaps there is a greater sense of urgency as the planet moves from crisis to crisis. Our best film artists don't have time to make anything too frivolous.

Some venerable documentarians just missed the selection for this list, such as Hoop dreams director Steve James, whose film A compassionate spy (streaming on Hulu, about the long aftermath of the Manhattan Project) would be a great addition to both Nolan's Oppenheimer and Morris' The Pigeon Tunnel. Also see: Wham! (streaming on Netflix), the excellent documentary about 80s pop heroes George Michael and Andrew Ridgeley, by Chris Smith, the great director behind American movie, FireworkAnd Tiger King.

Like most years, many of the best documentaries of 2023 were about visual artists and musicians. But even the films here that aren't specifically about art are still about how people try to order and understand their world – and themselves.

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10. The Pigeon Tunnel

Where to watch: Apple TV Plus

Writer David Cornwell, known to the public by his pseudonym John le Carré, died in 2020. But in the last years of his life, he agreed to be interviewed at length by Errol Morris, the famed documentary filmmaker known for his ability to his subjects talked until they revealed hidden truths. Considering Cornwell worked for the British intelligence services MI5 and MI6 – and wrote best-selling spy novels – Morris had his work cut out for him. But if The Pigeon Tunnel The film moves through the details of Cornwell's life and poignantly captures an old man's regrets about the broken international order his generation helped create.

9. American Symphony

Where to watch: Netflix

Director Matthew Heineman is known for hard-hitting political documentaries such as Cartel country And Retrogradebut he easily switches to a more sentimental mode American Symphony, a moving, inspiring film about a year in the life of musician Jon Batiste. Heineman and his team were there as Batiste experienced both the career highs of winning an armful of Grammys (including Album of the Year) and the personal lows of watching his wife, author and journalist Suleika Jaouad, to endure leukemia. This is a story about creative people who turn all the things in life – their past, their joy, their heartbreak – into art that breathes and bleeds.

8. Personality Crisis: One Night Only

Where to watch: Paramount Plus with Showtime

Killers of the Flower Moon This year understandably attracted a lot of attention from Martin Scorsese fans, but for those pining for the director's 'New York Stories' side: Personality crisis should meet that need. The film is co-directed and edited by David Tedeschi – Scorsese's creative partner on most of his recent documentaries – and uses a David Johansen cabaret performance as an anchor for a loose, discursive look at the wild adventures of the legendary New York Dolls frontman. In interviews, on stage and in archive footage, Johansen describes in funny, colorful and sometimes surprisingly emotional terms how the blossoming of underground art in the 1960s led to proto-punk in the 1970s and to modern queer culture.

7. Smoke sauna sisterhood

Where to watch: Currently in select theaters

Deep in a wintry Estonian forest, a group of women gather in and around a homemade sweat lodge, where they alternate long sessions in sweltering steam with vigorous exercises in the icy open air, all completely naked. Director Anna Hints keeps the camera focused on these ladies as they soak and scrub in the twinkling, misty sunlight, and as they talk about growing older, dealing with changing family dynamics, and navigating a culture that often reduces them to their bodies alone. Smoke Sauna Sisterhood is a beautiful, delicate exercise in intimacy, bringing you close to people who are so physically and emotionally bare that they are awake to every sensation. (YouTube won't embed the trailer here because it is age-restricted, but it is can be seen on the site.)

6. Aurora's sunrise

Where to watch: Free to stream on PBS.org until January 21, 2024

A notable newcomer to the small subgenre of animated documentaries, Aurora sunrise tells the story of Aurora Mardiganian, who became a minor celebrity in the early 20th century by serving as a living witness to the atrocities inflicted on the Armenians by the Ottoman Empire. Director Inna Sahakyan has some interview footage of Mardiganian from late in her life, as well as some excerpts from the largely lost 1919 film Auction of souls, starring Mardiganian and based on her memoir. But mostly Sahakyan relies on painterly animated sequences (accompanied by illustrator Gediminas Skyrius) that recreate a world that no longer exists, while illustrating the ongoing nightmare of a woman who repeatedly described its demise throughout her life.

5. The Disappearance of Shere Hite

Where to watch: Currently in select theaters

Nicole Newnham's title The Disappearance of Shere Hite has the feel of true crime, but there's no grim mystery here. The subject of the documentary, the late American sex researcher and best-selling author Shere Hite, only disappeared from public view after he moved to Germany in the 1990s. Yet the wealth of images of Hite in this film – who shares her controversial findings on female and male sexuality on TV talk shows in the 1970s and 1980s – becomes cumulatively haunting. Hite was a prominent public figure who forced people to reconsider their preconceptions about sex. This moving film shows how the outraged reaction to her books drove her – but not her ideas – into exile.

4. Judy Blume Forever

Where to watch: Prime Video

When directors Davina Pardo and Leah Wolchok started making this moving documentary about beloved YA author Judy Blume, they probably had no idea that all the old stories about outraged parents who ban Blume's novels would become more relevant than ever in 2023. Judy Blume forever is not an overtly political film; it's more of a gentle, sweet biography of a low-key American hero. But looking at it might remind older people how exciting it was for a child to read books Are you there God? It's me, Margaret And Blubber, and feeling like an adult finally told the truth about growing up. As this film makes clear, this is an experience that no child should be denied.

3. The mission

Where to watch: Hulu/NatGeo

A distinctive feature in the documentaries of Amanda McBaine and Jesse Moss (who previously collaborated on Boys State) is their empathy for decent people whose good intentions sometimes lead them to embrace questionable ideologies and make terrible mistakes. In The missionMcBaine and Moss tell the story of Christian missionary John Allen Chau, who became a cautionary tale (and the target of more than a few cruel internet memes) in 2018 after he was murdered by the inhabitants of a remote island. The film places Chau's willingness to violate international law in the context of missionaries throughout history, exploring how religious passion can be both personally satisfying and socially disastrous.

2. Close to Vermeer

Where to watch: AmazonVudu and other digital retailers

It may not seem like much in this documentary, which reports in 78 brisk minutes on the efforts to organize the most extensive Vermeer exhibition to date in Amsterdam's Rijksmuseum. But director Suzanne Raes discovers many fascinating wrinkles here, as she watches the curators deal with the challenges of borrowing works of art, and as they confront the possibility that some paintings attributed to Vermeer may actually be by someone else. As the title suggests, long stretches Close to Vermeer consist of art experts peering at canvases, discussing technique and pondering the concept of authorship. What begins as a kind of curatorial procedure develops into a thoughtful meditation on what makes art art.

1. Menus-Plaisirs: Les Troisgros

Where to watch: Currently in select theaters

At the age of 93, Frederick Wiseman delivers a late-career masterpiece with this four-hour film about a restaurant in France considered one of the best in the world. Working in his usual quietly observational style, Wiseman immerses the audience in long scenes without contextual narration or on-screen titles, urging us to watch patiently and fascinated as a family of great chefs and their staff purchase ingredients, discusses recipes and prepares preparation elements. , arrange plates and guide their guests through a unique dining experience. Viewers can draw their own conclusions about the meaning of it all, although a chef's casual comment about the continued refinement of dishes offers one interpretation. Even an old master like Wiseman has to keep tinkering and finding a sense of purpose in the hundred little details that go into an act of creation.