The best documentaries of 2023

Part art-heist thriller, part personal history, married co-directors Sara Nodjoumi and Till Schauder deliver an engrossing portrait of one of Iran’s most revolutionary artists — who also happens to be Nodjoumi’s father. In telling the story of his quest to locate more than 100 of his so-called “treasonous” paintings that disappeared after the Iranian Revolution, is, naturally, shot through with social and political commentary. But there are so many other threads here, too, making it a work that substantively addresses personal identity’s relationship to family history, as well as a generational portrait of a woman’s sacrifice. The big, looming question, though: voices of political opposition can be exiled, and protestors tortured or even killed, but what does it mean to a society to vanish works of culture?

A work of sober reflection, both on the part of the subject and its maker, documentarian Errol Morris’ latest offering begins as a straightforward interrogation of the life of David Cornwell, the British former spy who’s enjoyed a celebrated career writing under the pen name John le Carré. Slowly, almost surreptitiously, however, the movie extends into more universal themes, and an examination of the current state of the world. Richly sharing stories of his upbringing and his absent mother and especially his con-man father (“I can see my own life as a succession of embraces and escapes,” he says), Cornwell eloquently elucidates some of the perceived value of assumed masks and false identities—qualities that are richly evident in political and social realms today.

In 1993, the biggest rock ’n’ roll band in the world, U2, chose to effectively splash cold water in the faces of hundreds of thousands of European concertgoers. As part of its groundbreaking Zoo TV Tour, the band featured live nightly satellite link-ups to citizens trapped in Sarajevo during the bloody Bosnian War. It was both heartrending and eye-opening. Director Nenad Cicin-Sain’s , which had its world premiere in Berlin, tells the story of how this risky emotional high-wire gambit came to be, plus all that flowed from it. The end result uncommonly balances insight and uplift — showcasing the pulsing, indefatigable human need for creative expression, as well as art’s essential role in combatting the horrors of war and weaponized ethnic hatred.

Winner of both the Cannes L’Oeil D’or and Gotham Award documentary prizes, director Kaouther Ben Hania’s film is a profoundly introspective work of inventive and layered storytelling, staged with a deceptive simplicity. A piece of cinematic therapy, reconstructs the story of Olfa Hamrouni, a Tunisian woman whose two eldest children have been lost to the radicalization of Islamic extremists. By casting professional actresses as the missing daughters, along with acclaimed Egyptian-Tunisian actress Hend Sabari as Olfa, the movie explores trauma and taps into a deep wellspring of the human spirit, while honoring the complexities of motherhood, loss, grief, and resilience.

Last year Daniel Roher’s Oscar-winning Navalny, named for the leading Russian political opposition leader, presented an incredible tale of personal sacrifice in an autocratic state. Bobi Wine is no less engaging as a portrait of resilience and unfathomable courage. The top prize winner at the International Documentary Awards, Moses Bwayo and Christopher Sharp’s film follows the titular 41-year-old music star, activist, and opposition leader during Uganda’s 2021 presidential election. Beautifully and intuitively balancing the intimate and the dynamic, is a well-crafted movie that sweeps you up in both the personal and broader arcs of its stories.

Few nonfiction films of 2023 present more jaw-dropping moments than , which tells the story of various families as they attempt to escape the brutally oppressive North Korea. Director-editor Madeleine Gavin has a keen grasp on pacing and tone; the film’s embedded-viewer aesthetic gives it an inherent tension and propulsiveness, but she also knows how to elicit incredible viewer investment in character, especially in the form of a man who has served as a longtime guide to freedom. In-the-moment explorations of life-or-death stakes don’t get much more compelling than this.

Paying loving tribute to a French family’s culinary legacy, legendary documentarian Frederick Wiseman’s latest effort, Menus-Plaisirs: Les Troisgros centers on a Michelin-starred restaurant that has remained in the same family for four generations. Languidly paced but never dull, the film showcases everything for which one could yearn in a movie — interesting characters, conflict, humor, and the application of enormous skill and discipline in a pursuit of a dream. Skip The Food Network’s clamorous holiday programming and slot this affectionate, inquisitive gem at the front end of a double feature with The Taste Of Things, before treating yourself to a sumptuous meal.

Buoyed by a canny, superlative, and enriching technical package, director David Guggenheim’s documentary is an elevated, stirring tale of unbowed hopefulness and continued engagement with the world at large, despite its subject’s grappling with the debilitating effects of Parkinson’s Disease. Working with editor Michael Harte, Guggenheim incorporates footage from Fox’s filmography and blends it with flashes of staged recreation, other archival footage, and interviews old and new to craft a narrative which courses with a lively, forward-leaning energy that perfectly complements the remarkably gifted Fox. Affecting but also thought-provoking, makes a powerful statement about living and loving.

Jesse Moss and Amanda McBaine’s film tells the story of a young man, John Allen Chau, who embraced the fervor of religious evangelicalism. Left unsatisfied by a number of missionary trips, Chau then set his sights on a sort of holy grail of Christian conversion—making contact with and preaching the gospel of Jesus to a small pre-Neolithic island tribe off the coast of India. The casual brilliance of lies in the way it examines everything from white-saviorism and modern influencer culture to hormonal male energy and the impact of familial embarrassment. All of this is done in a way that presents questions without definitive answers, deftly acknowledging the polarities of a world that will sometimes remain unbowed and indifferent to even our strongest convictions.

The , and more broadly the fragility of life, are affectingly unpacked in this singular documentary, which traces eight years of romance and heartrending cognitive decline as Chilean journalist and television presenter Augusto Góngora is cared for by his wife Paulina Urrutia, both before and through COVID. While not short on direct emotionalism, director Maite Alberdi’s skillfully edited eschews cheap sentimentality, connecting eroded memory on an individual level to the broader issue of a country’s identity.

A high-wire act of emotional excavation, Asmae El Moudir’s cinematic memoir takes as its leaping-off point the question of why there exists only one grainy and somewhat dubious photo of her as a child. The Best Director winner in the Un Certain Regard section at the Cannes Film Festival and the International Documentary Awards (where it was also nominated in the Best Feature and Best Writing categories), is a sort of spiritual cousin, perhaps, to Sarah Polley’s Stories We Tell—a high-degree-of-difficulty unpacking of personal identity, family, trauma and unspoken truths, incredibly interweaving interviews and voiceover narration with miniature puppets and sets which painstakingly recreate the Casablanca neighborhood of El Moudir’s youth. The one-of-a-kind end result, in which layers of additional resonance and meaning come slowly into focus, is the most deeply personally felt movie of the year.